Louisville Rebel Newb

[SSquirrel]

Hey everyone, my name's Hagen (altho you will find me as SSquirrel on several geeky websites like ENWorld and the Moog Music forums, I'm Hagen over on Arstechnica) and I'm 36.  My wife and I are both overweight, but she's not quite at the point of wanting to work on it for herself really.  She's diabetic and her doctor finally finding what worked for her has helped her lose a lot, but she's plateaued and is mostly hemming and hawing at this point, but eventually I'm sure she will come around

 

I have 2 kids, both girls.  One is 7 1/2 and the other just turned 5.  I'm 5'9 239 (bought a scale last night), but over the last several years I've gone from a size 36 needing a belt to not fall off to a size 40 pants being a slightly loose fit and I'm not happy about that.  My Utilikilts have grown uncomfortably tight and those are too expensive to just turn around and buy another one cuz I got heavier, so I need to work out or be doomed to wearing shorts all summer heh.  Besides, taking my warhammer I bought from Legacy Forge to the Renaissance Faire in normal shorts wouldn't be nearly as cool heh. 

 

I recently bought a pair of VFF Bikilas to run in since my 7 1/2 yr old runs cross country at school and she has been wanting me to run w/her for practice.  I may snag a pair of Spyridons for trails b/c I grew up running around the woods near my mom's house and running around the apartment complex or on a track or something is about the dullest thing in the world to me.  I'm looking to start up the beginner bodyweight routine and I've been investigating the whole paleo thing.  One of the hardest bits of paleo for me would be giving up rice, especially since stir fries are such a great way to get a ton of vegetables in a meal for me.  I tracked all my meals for a week using the MyPlate app recently to give me an idea of what I need for the calorie count it spit out at me for my planned weight loss.  It let me know exactly how bad some of the meals I eat can be and also gave me a few excellent examples of how to have a perfectly good day of food and still come in right around my goal intake.

 

I would like to get down to more about 200, altho I know the same volume of muscle is heavier than fat.  Not looking to bulk at all, I would be happy if I can get back down those 2 sizes of pants to a 36.  I have a pair of leather pants hanging in my closet that have gone unworn for a LONG time heh.  When I was in high school and college I weighed 140 and could take 2 steps and vault over a friend of mine who was 6'6.  Even tho I weigh a lot more now, I can still do a diving flip over my oldest daughter (she's an inch or 2 over 4') into the swimming pool.  I would like to improve my flexibility some and regain some of my agility, altho clearly some things I still do pretty well like that. 

 

I was reading the article about Parkour the other day and commented to a friend that when we were growing up and Parkour wasn't yet a term, we ran thru the woods over any obstacle we came across w/o stopping.  There was also quite a bit of the "Hey guys, watch this" element too heh.  As I get back in the swing of exercise, I may incorporate the listed parkour exercises into my training program.  Even if I'm not actually doing the running around jumping all over things, it will still be a good way to round things out.

 

Ok, that's been a bit long for an intro, but I covered everything I think.

 

EDIT: Exact weight after buying a new scale

[Laureleye]

Whether or not you go paleo, minimizing the processed food and eating "real" food is a great start and would be great for your wife's health as well.  There's a challenge getting ready to start in a couple of weeks; if you click the CHALLENGE tab and go to the FAQs you can see what you'd need to do to be ready.  Good luck on your quest. 

[SSquirrel]

Yeah, she just tends to get sick of me dumping info at her all the time so she's probably tired of hearing paleo info at the moment heh.  She likes spaghetti squash tho, so we're trying something w/that tonite, which will be new for me.  She knows her weight loss from the Byetta is probably plateaued for now, so she may start doing some bodyweight stuff at home where no one will see her.  Heck, she doesn't even want ME around.  I'm trying to think about goals (besides my generic ones) right now and I'm wanting to start working out next week.  Not sure if I'll jump headlong into a challenge or not, I may want a bit of lead time to get into the rhythm of things first.

[Laureleye]

Well, if you're considering the challenge, you can bounce your goals off me if you like.  Most of us have had to adjust our goals a bit on our first challenge to make them more doable, so it's not a big deal. 

[NicoleCanoes]

Jump into the challenge. It's the best way to get the most out of this community/forum.

[SSquirrel]

I officially began things on Monday.  I'm not going to specifically track calories, but I am doing a log of all my food and exercise.  If I go a few weeks and I'm not seeing much progress, I may start tracking my calories and such more carefully.  This first week wil llikely have some items that are outside of my intended restrictions (no bread, pop or sweet tea and potato only 1x/week and 1 cup of rice up to 3x/week) like the one pop I've had each night so far since it's a flavor I know my wife won't drink and we don't let our kids have pop generally.

 

My food for work for today thru Friday is already prepared and sitting in the fridge ready for me.  Today is pork chops and kale for lunch, kiwi for a snack and 2 hard boiled eggs for breakfast.  The entree changes but the rest is my new standard for work.  Bought a new insulated lunch bag that is big enough to fit the Gladware entree container (most of the bags are too narrow and the entree container is a good size for a lunch) and I can load it w/my eggs, kiwi and lunch at night and just grab it out of the fridge in the morning.  The less work I have to do just after waking up the better

 

My personal log is in my sig.