Evolution of the support group meetings.

Last night, I did the "Ham".
I got up in front of everyone at the support group meeting and did a warm up act for the presentation while they were doing food prep.
The new office has a great room with state of the art audio/video equipment, including a number of HD TVs, a sound system with wireless mics, a large projector type screen, and a camera aimed at the professional kitchen.
They were supposed to have a grocery store come in and do a demo about fresh veggies and how to prep them, but they cancelled out at the last minute.

So, while they were scrambling with food prep, I did my thing.

The crowd was just as huge as usual. I keep thinking of how hard it is to get a support group together and here we have over 100 people on a regular basis. I should sell stuff there. I wouldn't have to work!

The meeting went well after I got off the stage. The camera allowed everyone to see what they were doing and the food got passed around for folks to try. Stuff was good. Squash, and some other stuff were sprinkled with toppings and baked. The aroma was worth the price of admission (free?).

I helped out where I could and when we broke into groups I wandered around and talked with lots of people about my experiences so far.

We have a covered dish picnic coming up and hope to see another huge crowd!

In October, we will be dressing up in our fat clothes to show off what we lost. I told them I could give them all a thrill by not wearing anything under them, but they said no for some reason.

Oh well, life is good!

Forced to write, yeah, right!

I am not being forced to write. I like to write. What I am starting to not like is to sit still.
I never thought it would happen, but I really don't like to sit down anymore than I have to. If you haven't experienced this feeling, I hope you do sometime in your journey to lose weight.

I went to my workout today and met the new workout guru. He isn't as pretty as the lady workout guru, but I am not there to oogle the pretty female.

I started out on the treadmill to warm up. Someday, I'll be able to learn how to work the damn thing. I decided to try a hill climb program, so I entered all of my specs as requested, and stated that I didn't want to go above 3.5 mph jogging or a 6% grade. I have to walk fast or jog at 3.1, and have no problem climbing hills now. A 6% grade is steeper than an old locomotive can travel. Most of them won't go over anything more than a 4%. I know this because I walk rail trails here and they are set to no more than 4%.

So, the machine starts out at a very slow pace. I increase the speed to 2.5 which is a slow walk for me. I want to warm up, so I start out slow and work up to faster speeds. Anyway, I do this for about 5 minutes, and the machine beeps to tell me it's going to change. I glance down and the machine tells me it is going to increase my speed to 4.5 mph. I exclaim "holy s***" and plant my left foot on the side rail followed by the right foot.
I then go to shut the machine down and start over. In the meantime, the gurus hear my exclamation and come running to help. How many gyms do you know of that people will run over to help you? Not any that I've been to.
Anyway, I reset the machine and end up doing 30 minutes at speeds from 2.5 to 3.5 at the same grades as listed above. They have an automatic heart rate monitor on the handles, so I watched my rate go up to 147, and I kept it there for most of the workout. I varied things to make sure I kept everything where I wanted it.
After I finished that, I did weight machines. I am working to help the gurus rewrite the papers so I can record my results better. The way it's set up now is not very efficient. This makes it difficult to see improvement.
I next went onto the elliptical and ran that for 10 minutes, again keeping my heart rate up around the 147. Since I had already done a lot, keeping my heart rate up didn't take as much effort.
Oh yeah, after each machine, I walk around a bit. If you haven't felt the effects of re-gaining your footing, you should try the moving machines! I walk around until my legs work again. Until then, I walk very carefully...and funny!
Looking back to last month, I have made much progress. I couldn't do more than 5 minutes on the elliptical, and no more than 10 minutes on the treadmill at much slower speeds.
I feel good!

The day before work

I have been enjoying the freedom to work at my own pace at things I want/need to do this summer. It's a privilege not too many people have, except for teachers, school bus drivers, and the rich. There are others also. I just don't feel like thinking too much about them right now.

So, I have worked on my body and mind. My mind is worthless (not really) and my body is improving. I don't know how much I have lost in weight since the beginning of the summer, just what I have lost in total. 100 pounds.
I have been stuck at 205 most of the past month. I have started working out, and still do more aerobics than weight training. I plan to do both in excess soon.

So, tomorrow I start driving the school bus again. Actually, on Friday, I started by picking up a student who is lucky enough to go to a private school. It is a very progressive school with a college type curriculum. The student seems smart and is very friendly.

I started out the beginning of last week with one route, as I said in a previous post, and managed to get back to a small bus that I can take home with me.

I now have 3 schools that I will cover for my district. I still don't know how many kids I will transport, or where they all live. I ran the route yesterday (Saturday) to see the houses on my list so far. I found out one thing that I don't really like, but it will be OK I think. That is, I have to go past the private school in the afternoon and take all the other kids home, and then go back to that school to pick the student up. This means a lot more travel and more time. If I could get them all at once it would be fine. But, the school doesn't let out until much later than the other schools. Now on the positive side, the private school has longer breaks during the year than the other school, so there will be times when I won't have to go at all. And that school lets out a whole month earlier than the other schools.

In addition to 3 different schedules that I have to coordinate, I have to be aware of the weather. If the home school district has a delay due to weather, then I delay. If they have off, I have off. This may cause some friction with parents, but I don't have nay control over that. You see, the home school district is quite a distance from the area I will be going to and that means the weather conditions may be different.

So tomorrow, I will go to 2 of the 3 schools to and from with 2 students I think. The other school doesn't start until September 9th due to construction at the school. They will also go until at least the middle of June since they start so late.

The fun part will be checking the schedule every morning to make sure which kids I have and what schools. Then, I hope I don't screw it up. Oh, I forgot to mention one student will be here for two weeks, and then has two weeks off. If you can imagine juggling with an odd number of balls, you might get a handle on this.

Did I also mention that some students will only ride home with me? I will drop them off at someones house because I won't have time to take them all the way home.

But, I get to take the bus home with me, so that is good!

Next:
I am starting to get serious about getting out of debt so I contacted someone to help me do that. I may talk about it in depth another time.

Next:
I am reading more recipes and am going to try something with beef or chicken in a stew that doesn't use breading, beans, or potatoes as it's filler. I want to be able to crock pot it so I can store it. I bought more containers for that purpose. Our new freezer in the fridge has more storage so I will be able to mix and match stuff. One of the ideas is something Mexican in nature, such as a taco mixture with veggies.
One more thing is that I decided to look into alternate meat, such as Buffalo. I've heard that it is good and lower in fat than regular beef.
If you have any ideas, let me know.

I left the stairwell for last in my painting project, so sometime this week I will finish it. I also have a few more things to move from the back bedroom and the closet. I could use one of those organizers for the closets, but don't have the funds just yet, so I will leave that alone.

And, I am still in the planning stages for my guitar/voice project. I think I will work on that too.

Other than that, I need to lose 10 more pounds this month and 40 after that before I can say I'm finished with weight loss and move to maintenance.

That's it for now.