West Nile Fever

I got bit by a mosquito on a lovely Fourth of July weekend and despite having a wonderful time at parties I came down with West Nile Fever.

July was a pretty miserable month. I was so sick I lost ten pounds.

Back in Golden, Colorado

Hi Everybody.

Big gap in the blog. I left Oak Ridge, Tennessee and came back to Golden, April first. A lot has happened since April. Mostly me falling off my exercise program and getting some fairly painful psoriatic arthritis. My exercise dropped down to less than ten minutes per day.

I've been doing a lot of reading about my condition. I am experimenting. I am off of artificial sweeteners. That is helping the arthritis, and I think the psoriasis is going into remission. I've been reading about leptin and I'm trying to go on a low carb diet. That seems to help keep my appetite under control. I may try to be a vegetarian a few days per week. That also seems to cut the appetite way down.

Last week I threw my back out and I've spent most of the week flat on my back in bed. Oh well. At least the back injury killed my appetite and I'm under three hundred pounds again!

I hope to resume swimming soon and light exercise next week.

I'm 53

I am 53 today and I feel it sometimes. Vitamin I is my new best friend. I've been reading about health, medicine, psoriasis, and arthritis. The more medicine I learn, the more I want to stay healthy.

Stamina is up

I did 50 minutes on the exercise bike at level 13. That's an increase of only 5 minutes but it's also an increase of 10% in my stamina for the month. I got my heart rate up to 120 bpm. I feel like I'm on the right track.

I'm only averaging 18 minutes of exercise per day for March, and I need to get that eventually up to 30 minutes per day. I averaged 25 mpd for January and 24 mpd for February. I'm feeling the difference. I hope to start looking better this summer.

Made the goal for February!

It's a new month and today is weigh in day. The body fat scale shows me down 1% to 49.1% Body Fat. This corresponds to my weighing 308.4 pounds. I only lost one centimeter off of my gut. I really need to triple that this summer and lose an inch each month. It would make a great difference to my wardrobe. I've got lots of old clothes I want to be able to wear again.

I missed my goal for January. I hope to make that up later this year.

I need to add some more pictures to document this weight loss blog.

Now the goal for March is to do even better.

Not quite up to speed

Today was a pretty good workout. The arthritis was painful, but I was able to work through the pain and after a few sets I felt better. Unfortunately I can't lift heavy weights. I just don't have the grip. I've got the strength to curl 30 pounds but I'm only curling 15 pounds because it hurts too much to grip the weights.
The goal is to average 30 minutes of exercise per day by going to the health club four days per week. I averaged 26 minutes of exercise per day for January and I've now averaged 24 minutes of exercise per day for February. I hope to add cycling in March. I hope that will make it easier to get to my time goal.

The result is that I'm feeling a little better, my stamina is better, but I'm not losing enough weight. Weigh in is Monday. Goal is still to lose one percent body fat per month and also to lose three pounds per month.

A new goal is to put on one pound of muscle per month.

EVH

New distance record

A new personal best distance record today. I swam 3.4 km in two hours. That's two miles swimming pretty much non stop. I felt fine afterwards. My stamina is getting better. I need to diet more and see if my speed will increase as I lose weight.