2020 Is divided into two phases: the actual program and a maintenance phase. My program is 20 weeks and my maintenance phase will be 12 weeks. I’m now 10 weeks into my first phase and with another 5 weeks down comes another set of measuerments to assess my progress.

I’ve included the initial, 5th week, and 10th week numbers below.

• Weight: 244 -> 227 -> 211
• Blood Pressure: 134/90 -> 122/72 -> 118/72
• Body Fat: 36.3% -> 31.7% -> 22.6%
• Chest: 46.5" -> 43.75" -> 43.5"
• Waist: 45" -> 42.5" -> 39.75"
• Hips: 45.25" -> 44.25" -> 42"
• Biceps: 14.75" -> 15.5" -> 14.25"
• Thigh: 27.25" -> 23.5" -> 23.75"
• BMI: 36.9 -> 34.3 -> 32.0

So another fine bunch of progress. When I get under 200 that will be a big psychological barrier crossed. 202 lbs will actually be half way to my goal (which so far is 160 pounds). I’ve adjusted my mental goal slightly to be based on body fat percent rather than weight. I want to get a body fat percent less than 15%, so I’m waiting to see what my weight is when that happens.

So it turns out that I can get a massage every other week for free. I went in today for my first one. It was great! First professional massage I’ve ever had and I heartily recommend it to anyone. Fantastic stuff. I’m greatly looking forward to my next one.

Well, I don’t seem to remember what week of 20/20 I’m on anymore. I think it’s somewhere around 8. I started November 30th, so that would make some sense.

Anyway, I had a big 5 pound week while I was sick and am now down to 216. So that’s 28 off so far. Not bad at all. Still lots of distance to go though. Going beneath 200 will be a big milestone. It’ll be more than halfway to my goal and also a nice change in ye olde first digit. I’ll probably hit that sometime in March if nothing crazy happens.

In dietary news, I’m up to 2 servings of grain per day now (about 2 slices of whole wheat bread). Not bad not bad. I need to get my hands on some good whole wheat tortillas and someone who can make me chicken tacos or something with ’em.

Bleh. Looks like I finally caught the flu. It’s been going around the office for a while, but just last night I finally came down with something. After exercising I was coughing alot. This morning I woke up feeling pretty bad, but without a fever. And now I’ve got a fever, chest pain, and headache.

Unusually for me, I went to see the doctor today right after falling ill (usually I wait until I’ve had a 105 degree fever for a week or so) and he said it’s too early to tell whether it’s the flu, some other virus, or some bacterial infection.

So to cover my bases, I’m taking a veritable cocktail of medicines:

• azithromycin
• tamiflu
• promethazine – codeine

This should stop my cough, kill the flu (if I have it), and kill any bacterial infection I may have. Let’s see if it works!

I saw the Pro Club podiatrist, Dr. Adad, today. I was having pains in my left foot and knee during training and physician suggested it at the 5 week checkpoint.

Turns out that not only am I extremely flat footed, but my left leg is a bit shorter than my right, which causes a number of problems. Dr. Adad put a lift in my left shoe and told me to buy some Superfeet (some may say I should have just listened to Amy, but then I may never have found out about my weird asymmetric legs). I trotted down to Foot Zone and got the inserts and will be using the new setup tomorrow in my Beasts. At first it all felt really odd, but I’m getting used to it.

Maybe next time I go to Disney World standing in line won’t be as excruciating an experience as the last 14 times.

I’ll probably also need some custom sandals for summer (Dr. Adad said he could hook me up), foot beds for my ski boots (and new ski boots), and some other custom inserts for my rollerblades.

Time to go ski boot shopping before the Utah 2005 trip in February!

Saw my dietician Stephanie today and I’m down 21 pounds total now (4 last week). Have 63 more pounds to go to reach my goal. Of course, my goal seems a bit odd now that I find I have 155 pounds of lean body mass. If I were to get to 160 pounds without losing any of that, I’d need to have only 3% body fat, which is neither realistic nor healthy. Of course, I’m sure I’ll lose some of the lean weight too. We’ll have to see how it goes and consult with the 20/20 crew as to what my goal lean weight & body fat should be.

As for my diet, I can eat 2 – 4 servings per day of whatever fruits I want, but the real news is that next week grains are being added back into my diet. It was scheduled to be legumes, but since I detest almost all forms of beans we’re skipping that and moving straight to grains.

Does this mean I’ll be able to have a sandwich next week? Only time (and Stephanie) will tell.

Today marked the beginning of my 6th week in 20/20. Last week I got milk and cheese added back into my diet and this week I get the rest of the fruits (except bananas).

But let’s see how the numbers look after 5 weeks:

• Weight: 244 -> 227
• Blood Pressure: 134/90 -> 122/72
• Body Fat: 36.3% -> 31.7%
• Chest: 46.5" -> 43.75"
• Waist: 45" -> 42.5" (this is anatomical, not tailor waist — that’s gone from 40 to 38 as far as pant size goes)
• Hips: 45.25" -> 44.25"
• Biceps: 14.75" -> 15.5" (rar!)
• Thigh: 27.25" -> 23.5" (wow. big change)
• BMI: 36.9 -> 34.3

So overall, everything looks pretty good. The program’s coming along smoothly. I definitely feel healthier, stronger, and thinner.

I wish I had a picture from 5 weeks ago, but I took one today, so I’ll have a full set at something like 5 week intervals by the end. That should be good. I really should take like one a day and put them into some crazy movie, but there are limits to my desire to do things.

Ok, so this Polar S410 heart rate monitor is pretty cool. I wear a band around my chest when I work out that has electrodes on it and also a watch. The watch receives the heart rate measurements as I go and stores them in its very limited memory. I think a higher end model must have orders of magnitude more memory than this one, but that’s ok. It serves fine for my purposes.

Anyway, I come back to my computer after the exercise and download the data into the software that came with the watch. The download process is pretty weird. The watch sort of chirps into the computer’s microphone.

The software, Polar Precision Performance, is pretty cool. Attached are some screenshots. I don’t know a good way to format images on this MSN spaces thing yet, but here they are.

The calendar mode is pretty neat. You can see what exercises you did on what days. I included two samples of exercise heart rates and histograms. They’re pretty self-explanatory. The heart rate history one shows average heart rate over exercises from various days. This would probably be more useful to people doing serious endurance training and repeating the same exercise each time. With me I vary my exercises so much my heart rate bounces around alot. But one interesting thing to note is that it tends to be higher on days I’m doing individual exercise than on the days I see my trainer. There’s also a screenshot of the time in HR zones history that shows the total time spent in pre-defined (as a percent of max heart rate) heart rate zones.

Anyway, as for the title of the post: the second and third screenshots are from today, where as an experiment I played Dance Dance Revolution on my X-Box for an hour instead of going to the club. As you can see from the heart rate measurements (and compare them with the ones from my workout with my trainer yesterday) DDR is a pretty high intensity video game. It’ll add some nice variety into my workouts when I don’t feel like going to the Pro Club for whatever reason.

Lost 3 pounds last week. Stephanie (my dietician) made no changes to my diet, but I did have my second visit with my psychiatrist today. She’s nice enough, but it’s hard to see what we can really do if we only talk every 5 weeks or so. Basically I say everything is going well and she says glad to see that and we do that for about an hour. She is very encouraging, though. Maybe that’s her job.

I seriously need to find a good caesar salad dressing that fits my nutritional requirements. Stephanie suggested one on Monday that I need to check out. I really like grilled chicken caesar salads if I can find one that works.

In answer to some questions from comments:
1. Karen: Yes. No more cookies, at least for the next several months.
2. Jen: For exercise I do the eliptical trainer, stairmaster, treadmil, and upright bike. And tomorrow I’m going to try DDR for exercise. I’ll post more about that tomorrow.
3. Nana: Soybeans count as protein, not veggies. And edamame would be great, but salt is not really allowed. I should ask Stephanie about that though. I do enjoy edamame.

Well, I lost 4.2 pounds last week, for a total of about 10 pounds in 2 weeks. Not bad. If I keep this rate up, I’ll weigh nothing at all in no time. Unfortunately, I’m sure I’ll slow down, but then I think I’ll up the workouts from 5 a week to 6 a week.

As for the diet, this week my dietican added yogurt to the diet. Yippee! Actually, I have no strong feelings about yogurt one way or the other. She did specify a brand though – Cascade Fresh Yogurt. Apparently most yogurts have a ton of sugar in them, but this brand uses fruit and milk sugars, so it’s not as bad for you.

Anyway, the upshot is I’ll be adding a serving of yogurt into my day or maybe replacing some soy nuts or an apple with yogurt.

The point of this is, according to the dietician, to see how my body responds to a bit of dairy. Let’s see what it decides to do.