T.Rob W.

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Made it to onederland at last! Normally I have a policy that the weight milestone doesn't count until I've maintained it for 3 days but for this one I'll make an exception. I made it, I'm sticking to it and that's final. After walking almost 15 miles on Saturday I went out and did another seven on Sunday to make sure I'd make my weigh-in this morning and there's no way I'm backsliding after an investment like that.

My son asked me how I was planning to celebrate. I told him I was headed to the all-you-can-eat buffet. The first few times I laid that line on him or my daughter they bought it. After all, that would have been normal for pretty much their entire lifetime. They are not falling so easily for that any more. I celebrated by getting big hugs from him, my daughter and my wife. I think my son was even a little choked up.

Somewhere in the next 10-20 lbs I will hit the next milestone: half my prior weight. I topped out somewhere near 370 but the official record is closer to 360. So I'm shooting for 180 before plastics and that's just 20lbs more to go. I'm only losing 5 or so lbs a month lately but maybe I can step up the exercise and knock this one out over the summer. That's the plan, anyway. Wish me luck!

I've been out setting and meeting goals lately.  Today I completed a half-marathon!  I am really beat but it felt great to finish.  My course around the neighborhood is 6.7 miles and I did two laps.  On the second lap I nearly quit a couple of times but I kept telling myself that it would haunt me.  The weather is only getting hotter from here and if I didn't do it today then my chances would be getting slimmer and slimmer as summer wears on.  Not unlike myself.  

So I pushed onward and completed the second lap and in pretty good time too.  A marathon is 26 miles and I went about 15 which makes it a little more than half.  I'm going to wait for fall (or at least a cold spell) to try for three laps, then by spring I hope to complete a full marathon distance.

When I woke up this morning I was 203.7 and after the walk I was 202.5.  I was a little disappointed but I guess that means I was drinking enough water while on the road.  I loaded up a Camelback with 1 1/2 liter bottles of Smart Water (electrolytes).  Then as I passed my house about 8.5 miles in I stopped for a protein shake and a refill of Smart Water.  Even with 2.5 liters in me I was only down 1.2 lbs.

But I'm sure I will keep losing overnight and tomorrow.  I can feel the metabolism burning calories away right now.  Heart rate is still up to 69.  (It's normally about 55 these days.)  I did real good on meals today.  Couple protein bars, some raisins, some cheese and some spinach souffle for dinner.  My goal is to make it to onederland by the end of Memorial Day weekend.  If not by Monday then at least by my surgiversary on the 29th.  Will be posting the good news here soon!

Well, it's a good thing I lost all that weight before flying into and later out of White Plains airport in New York. The picture below is THE ENTIRE terminal. Yes, that's right, the whole thing. The security gate is right behind the big archway on the left. Once you get past security, everyone squeezes into this little room and if I was at my full weight, I'd not have been able to manuever without stepping on a few people. At my current weight, I was able to just pick up my suitcase and thread my way through the crowd.

To the far right in the back under the light blue monitor are two doors. These are Gate A and Gate B. These lead out under a covered walkway onto the tarmac where your plane waits. There was at least a little snack stand but this is the first airport I've been in where there was no newsstand or other shops in the secured area. My mother in-law was hoping for an I Love NY tee shirt too.

In other odd news, I picked up some Tamari Almonds at Trader Joe's. The problem with buying anything at a whole food or health food store is that it can taste so bad that you wonder how far out of date it is. Trader Joe's addresses this problem by including the epoch in the expiration date. These almonds expire in September 03, 2008 AD - in case you tasted them and thought they might have expired in September 03, 2008 BC. That would make them 4,016 years old. They actually tasted quite good and if I did not have the benefit of the labeling I would have guessed that they had not expired at all or if they had it was definitely only within the last century or so.

Happy Easter to those of you who observe the holiday!

-- T.Rob

I just posted a couple of new pictures and as you can see I'm a lot skinnier than I was before.  Used to be if I stood in front of the Liberty Bell I would blot it out of the photo.  Now it dwarfs me.  I have to say that if I didn't lose another pound I'd be happy with the results.

But I want to lose more weight and that's a little frustrating.  I am going through a career phase right now that has me working 16 hours a day, sometimes more.  In the greater scheme of things this is a sprint but it feels like a marathon and I won't get through the worst of it until mid to late April.  Sitting at the computer for 80 - 100 hours a week does not exactly make for rapid weight loss.  Hell, it barely makes for *any* weight loss.  I was stalled flat for two months and am now inching down a pound or so a week.

On the other hand, I really love the work I'm doing.  The project I'm on was my own idea and I'm thrilled to now be with a company who is willing to let me run with it.  If I can accomplish even half of what I expect it will be a resounding success and really make a difference to the company and our customers.  It might also help a lot of people who are working very long hours get their lives back and make opportunities for some to step up as leaders.  Of course the trick is to actually make it work and to keep up on all my other professional obligations at the same time.  So there is a lot of midnight oil burned around my house lately, but very little fat burning.

I did get out last weekend and walk the neighborhood and will be out again tomorrow.  My pedometer is broken so I'm not logging my walks like I was but I had it long enough to know where the mile markers would be in the neighborhood and how far I'm going.  Last weekend I went 3 miles, this weekend I'm going to go for 6 on Saturday and try to do the whole 8 on Sunday.  Maybe that will make for another pound or two this week.

Hello to all my OH friends!  That heaping helping of extra work is almost over and it was all worth it.  I'm writing this from my hotel room a block away from the Danube river in Vienna Austria.  Yeah it was a lot of work getting here so I took a day off to do the tourist thing.  It was a rainy overcast day so not a lot of outdoor photos but I did make it to St. Stephans' cathedral which was truly awe inspiring.  (Photos here)

I presented my session twice so far this week.  The first time was one of the first slots in the conference and I had some heavy competition.  Between the time slot and the competition I didn't get a lot of attendance and was a little disappointed.  But the second session was packed to overflowing, there was a lot of interaction and I was asked to try to schedule repeats.  I was much happier with the results after the second presentation.  Tomorrow I'll be presenting two more sessions but these are ones I did not author.  I've been practicing with the slide deck and researched some of the finer points so I am confident that these will go well too.

To top it all off, my new article was published.  I only found out when one of my attendees asked about it during the session.  Between the article and the presentations, I'm hoping that I've improved the security of WebSphere MQ, the product I specialize in.

I leave Friday afternoon but it will take until late Saturday to get home.  Then...two weeks of working from home, getting caught up on admin work and just resting and recovering from jet lag.  It's not a true vacation, I still need to work, but it's not under deadline and has no fixed schedule so it will be almost as good as a vacation.

Of course, I've already submitted abstracts to give an updated version of the presentation at three conferences next year and am working up a proposal for yet another new article so this could all repeat next year.  Maybe this time though I will get lucky and the deadlines won't all coincide.

I wanted to post one last time before things get too busy. Today I got up early and walked. Almost 7 miles takes me about 2 hours. Add in a shower and shave and that's the whole morning. Next I have to pack for my trip to Chicago and toss the bags in the back of the car. My grandson's first birthday party is today so I'll spend the early afternoon celebrating and trying not to make eye contact with the cake. From there I go straight to the airport and off to Chicago.

It's a short week in Chicago so I will probably be working 10 hour days at least. No down time expected. Worse, I'm staying at the airport Hilton. Not that the Hilton is bad, but at least in the city there's stores and restaurants on every block. With no local stores or restaurants it will be protein bars, tuna cups and room service all week. I come home Thursday night and have Friday to wash laundry and repack before flying out on Saturday to Vienna, Austria to present at a conference. Hopefully I won't be too jet lagged to enjoy myself a little while I'm there! With luck there will be something to eat besides those little sausages.

I get back from Vienna on the 10th of November at which point I plan to sleep for 16 hours straight. With any luck I will have some good numbers to post that Sunday and maybe a picture or two.

I've been very happy with my progress so far. My goal was to lose half my weight and go from 360 to 180. I hit the halfway point a while back and that was a big milestone. Now I've got just 60 lbs to go. Think about that for a minute...before surgery would any of us been able to say "just 60 lbs" with a straight face? Now it seems so easy it's inevitable.

Well, ta ta for two weeks. I'll post something when I get back.

-- T.Rob

My Weight Chart:

Well, some of you know I've been WAY busy lately.  In addition to the regular consulting gigs, I've been preparing two presentations for a conference in two weeks in Vienna, Austria.  Then last week I got an email from the editor of IBM's developerWorks online magazine reminding me I've got an article due.  So lots of work-related stuff going on right now. 

Unfortunately, my work-issued laptop has been fritzy lately and last week it finally went completely schizo on me.  The fine folks at my support department overnighted a new laptop with the base image on it and I spent half the weekend moving all my data and programs over.  As if that were not enough, I did something VERY stupid Saturday night.   Trying to save a few dollars, I bought Motorola's phone software from a reseller instead of from Motorola.  It was infected and I spent all day Sunday getting my PC cleaned and back online.    I took a hard drive image before I installed the software but it nailed my boot sector and I could not run the restore program.  Finally got the boot sector cleaned though and got restored.  Now I've got to go change all my passwords on 100 or so web sites including the bank, PayPal, eBay, Amazon... 

But wait, there's more!  (Sorry, Ron Popeil is my hero.)  We just bought a new car for my in-laws and gave their old car to my son.  Of course, you know who did all the research and took bids on the new vehicle.  And I am arranging for some work on the old car since we are keeping it in the family.  Meanwhile, the evaporator coil in my in-laws house has sprung a major leak and is dumping lots of water into the crawl space.  If I don't get that fixed ASAP we will have a mold problem and possibly foundation problems as well.

Still wondering why I haven't posted much lately? 

Amidst all that fun, I went for my 4-month checkup.  Labs were all normal, which I am happy about.  But the better news is that I am now way small enough to fit in the MRI machine!  I have some cysts (we hope) on my kidney which we were only ever able to image with X-Rays and ultrasound, and not good images at that.  So I had the MRI done and am waiting on the results.  I did get confirmation that my hernia is back, though.  Dr. says to wait until my weight stabilizes to do anything about it - unless of course it becomes strangulated. 

That's all the bad to mediocre news.  Now for the good stuff!  Had my NUT visit last week and on their scale (which runs behind mine a few lbs) I had lost 103 lbs so far.  My unofficial century mark is now official and I'm no longer morbidly obese but now just "merely" obese.  For some reason when I heard that I flashed back to being a fat person but in the land of Oz.  I could swear I heard a Munchkin say  "He's not merely obese, he's really most sincerely obese!"

Today I was running (yes, RUNNING!) down a hill in my neighborhood and my 2XL shorts fell off.  Fortunately, I caught them before they got too far and tripped me but I was laughing so hard I nearly crashed and burned anyway.  Got to get some 1X or just L next time.  And I only got these a couple months ago.  Woo hoo! 

But here's the thing, I bought new jeans today.  Yeah, I'm still tickled when I buy $14 jeans at Sam's or BJ's instead of the $45 ones from Casual Male, but that's not the best part.  They were size 38.  To give you an idea what that means...I wore size 38 jeans IN HIGH SCHOOL!!!  When I met my wife just out of high school I was 190 lbs and popping buttons on those size 38 jeans.  I'm not far away from being the smallest she's ever seen me. 

The thing is, I've got a lot more to lose - about 65 to 75 lbs.  Today the thought struck me like a thunderbolt that...before this is done, I'll be down to size 36 or less...and I wore 36 jeans in middle school!  That was quite a realization.  I actually had to sit down and think about it for a minute.  Here I am in my forties and about to fit into pants sizes I haven't seen since middle school?  Woah. 

This has been like my own personal time machine.  I feel like I'm getting a second chance to relive my youth and do some of the things I passed up because of my size.  In spite of everything else that's been going on, each new day is like a gift I can't wait to open. 

I wanted to write more tonight but it took soooo long to format and upload the new pictures I ran out of time. The good news is I've hit the 100 lb mark. You can call me Centurion now!



 

Well, despite my best intentions I've been neglecting my blog and my friends here. Sorry about that! So, what's been keeping me away? Work, travel, home life, you name it. Since my last post I've been to Portsmouth, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. And of course none of these were particularly uneventful. New York was the worst. My first week there an underground steam pipe burst opening a large crater near Grand Central Station. Then on my return trip in Brooklyn, a tornado touches down about a mile away. This was the first tornado ever recorded to touch down in Brooklyn. Coincidence? I was tempted to post an ad on Craig's List asking people to pay me to stay away. I'm due back next week. We'll see what happens.

Of course, some of the wierdness in New York was rather more subtle than a tornado. For instance, during the course of the week I developed a completely inappropriate man-crush on Billy Baldwin. Yes, Alec's brother. And I'm not gay or even bi so it was starting to really concern me until I happened to notice the magazines on the side table. I hadn't really given them a second look all week but when I did, it explained everything.

I posted a new pic from last weekend. My wife says the weight loss is really apparent but I have to really study the new and old pix to see it. I guess it's sobering to know that after losing 85 lbs, I'm still so big! No worries, though. I will break through to the 260's this week.

I was convinced though one night when I took the dogs out for a walk in my new duds. The jeans were brand new, pitch black and still a little snug. The shirt too was brand new and snug but it is a glaring shade of bright yellow. As dogs dragged me to the vacant lot across the street I saw a couple of neighbors approaching on foot. Although we've never met, the husband tells me that his wife's first reaction on seeing me was "that guy looks like Freddie Mercury". Has anyone ever told me that, he asks? Hell, no! Freddie was a skinny as a rail and I've been over 300 lbs for the last decade and a half. For some reason, the comparison has managed to escape everyone in my life until this very moment. I chalk it up to the clothes being snug and the high-contrast black and yellow color scheme. Freddie used to wear spandex with glitter. So it's close. But still, it was nice to hear and made my day.

This weekend I will try to catch up on emails and respond to those of you who sent private messages. Please bear with me!

They say the camera adds 10 lbs but it's not true.  I weighed it and it adds 6.6 oz.  Not enough to push me over the edge back into three-derland.  I won't consider myself in two-derland until I'm there for three days straight but I could not resist taking the picture today.