How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) “Two dollars. I want my two dollars!” This morning during my weigh in, that’s all I could think about, a silly little quote form an 80′s cult favorite, “Better off Dead”.  This past week, I thoroughly kicked my ass, kicking it up a notch to mix my metaphors by adding in two P90x-type classes and multiple two-a-days to my already fairly challenging training schedule. So imagine my dissapointment when I saw on my scale a drop of only 2 pounds. Two Pounds? That’s it? Switching to 4 Christmases, “A flashlight? That’s it? Why don’t you love me daddy?”

All kidding aside, the weight loss happens as it happens and in fairness, while I ate exptremely well, I can still reduce my portion size even more. I really wanted to be under 200 pounds by the time I run in Los Angeles on March 20th, and here I am lingering on the 210lb bubble like Virginia Tech, even after a decisive win against #1 Duke.

So as good as I thought I was last week, I need to hit it even harder. The one consolation is that I am confident that I am actually losing fat and not muscle during this experience. There’s nothing like being skinny fat, you know those folks that look really skinny (or not even so skinny but just doughy) and don’t have enough muscle to hold themselves upright?

But I digress. The facts are that I now weigh 210 pounds, and continue to progress in the right direction, albeit slower than I would like.

The rest of my report focuses on my process goals where I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. My grade?

Overall, for week 8 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations. Let’s jump into particulars.

My year to date weekly progress:

• Week 1:  -1.5
• Week 2: -4.0
• Week 3: -1.0
• Week 4: +/-0.0
• Week 5: -4.5
• Week 6: /-0.0
• Week 7: -2.5
• Week 8: -2.0
• Total to date: -15.5

Report Card – Week 8

February 21– February 27:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

February 21– February 27:

Eat light and often: Thanks to having Cindy around, I ate healthy snacks all week long. As I mentioned earlier, I can still reduce my portion size. I think that may have started to creep back up.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Consistently.

Eat fresh whole foods and protein: Ate oranges and string cheese along with tofu I picked up form my last trip to Cleveland

No chocolate: Had one 100 calorie pack of Oreos on Saturday. Still crave the good stuff.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Well done, except for that 100 calorie Oreo package.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Not as good as I would have liked as I either worked or worked out until just before going to sleep.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Exceeded Expectations

February 21– February 27:

Workouts captured on Buckeye Outdoors, a free online training log.

Workout early: Yes – up early each day and either worked or workout first thing. All of my workouts were scheduled in Outlook and that made a HUGE difference in my ability to get them in.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: A great week with 6 Rides (80+ Miles), and 4 Runs (35 Miles).

Resistance training: Two P90X-type classes with Cindy this week kicked my ass.

Stretch and Core: Pushups and stretching after almost all of my workouts and at least one Pilates class made this a solid week.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

February 21 – February 27:

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: A good week of sleep and recovery.

Conclusion: A really well-managed week of training. All workouts were included in my Outlook Calendar and I had access to everything I needed. The weather in NE Ohio sucked this past week, but I used the gym to its max and having completed my 21-miler last Sunday, this was a down mileage week for me. I focused primarily on strength and speed and saw performance improvements in each area. Looking forward to heading back to warm weather this week. See you in a week.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) I guess I’m just getting greedy. I spent the better part of the past two weeks in Los Angeles and Minnesota and while I did a really good job of getting my workouts in, my nutrition two weeks ago wasn’t exactly stellar. Don’t get me wrong, by normal standards, it was pretty darn good but it wasn’t what I would describe as ruthless in terms of doing what is necessary to achieve the goals I’ve set forth. I didn’t have a scale handy that I was confident in last Monday so my best guess is that I didn’t lose or gain any weight. This morning, I did do a weigh in which showed that I dropped another 2.5 pounds. Pretty good. I so want to get below the 210 lbs mark so I can set my sights squarely on dropping below 200 lbs in March.  I now weigh 212 pounds, continuing progress in the right direction.

The rest of my report focuses on my process goals where I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. My grade?

Overall, for week 7 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations. Let’s jump into particulars.

My year to date weekly progress:

• Week 1:  -1.5
• Week 2: -4.0
• Week 3: -1.0
• Week 4: +/-0.0
• Week 5: -4.5
• Week 6: /-0.0
• Week 7: -2.5
• Total to date: -13.5

Report Card – Week 7

February 14– February 20:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Less than Expected

February 14– February 20:

Eat light and often: Back on track with my portion size

Eat Healthy Breakfast: This I did do.

Eat fresh whole foods and protein: Traveled a lot and ate oranges, string cheese and apples

No chocolate: Not my best, eating two cookies two weeks ago and some trail mix with chocolate chips in it twice this past week

Avoid junk food and sugar: Could have been better

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Still wound up eating late due to schedule, but they were small items for the most part. Still, an area for future improvement.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

February 14– February 20:

Workouts captured on Buckeye Outdoors, a free online training log.

Workout early: Yes – up early and at the gym before 6am on most days except the weekend – did this on both coasts even with the time changes

Min 45 mins of Cardio: No problem here with consecutive weeks of 50 and 58 miles of running respectively.

Resistance training: Got in two weight workouts two weeks ago, enough that I had trouble sitting and standing, but didn’t do such a great job last week.

Stretch and Core: Much better, incorporating at least short form core and stretching work after each of my runs.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

February 14 – February 20:

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: A good week of sleep.

Conclusion: Now that I’m back in the center of Midwest winter with freezing rain, I won’t be able to enjoy the running mileage I’ve put in during the past two weeks in sunny SoCal. That however isn’t a bad thing, being able to focus more on weights, stabilizers and strength workouts. My goal for this week is to do what is necessary to drop below the 210 pound mark. I have my work cut out for me. See you in a week.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) After a challenging week four, I pulled it together and had a very solid week five showing a loss of 4.5 pounds and bringing my total weight loss for the year to 11 pounds. I now weigh 214.5 pounds, which is far from my objective but a continued progression in the right direction.

The rest of the report focuses on my process goals where I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. My grade?

Overall, for week 5 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations. I clearly still have room for improvement in a few key areas, but I was pretty darn pleased with my effort. Let’s jump into particulars.

My year to date weekly progress:

• Week 1:  -1.5
• Week 2: -4.0
• Week 3: -1.0
• Week 4: +/-0.0
• Week 5: -4.5
• Total to date: -11.0

Report Card – Week 5

January 31 – February 6:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

Eat light and often: Back on track by being ruthless with my diet and my portions

Eat Healthy Breakfast: This I did do.

Eat fresh whole foods and protein: Carried around apples and oranges and had a renewed access to healthy salads.

No chocolate: Nothin, nada, nunca

Avoid junk food and sugar: No sugary treats this week

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Still wound up eating late due to schedule, but they were small items for the most part. Still, an area for future improvement.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Exceeded Expectations

January 31 – February 6:

Workouts captured on Buckeye Outdoors, a free online training log.

Workout early: Yes – up early and at the gym before 6am on most days except the weekend

Min 45 mins of Cardio: As you can see from above, this was a big week hitting 37 miles running (decent) and a combined 108 miles of cycling or Spinning (good) accounting for more than 12 hours of cardio this week.

Resistance training: Still haven’t worked this into my schedule.

Stretch and Core: My friend Jessi Stensland is probably really disappointed in me right now. Not much of a role model am I? The short of it is that I need to set time aside in my schedule to get this done. That’s all there is to it.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

January 31 – February 6:

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: A good week of sleep and a slightly better week from a stress point of view.

Conclusion: After last week’s slippage, I really needed a solid rebound to my planned routine and I accomplished this and more. While I’m thrilled with the loss of 4.5 lbs this week, I have to think that some of it is due to the fact that I’m still a bit dehydrated from Saturday’s 5-hour ride and Sunday’s 2-hour indoor run. No matter, it’s clearly in the right direction. It is, however imperative that I begin to build core workouts into my routine and with me being in Los Angeles next week, I’m hopefully going to be able to enjoy getting off the treadmill and onto the streets and trails to get a bit more mileage in. See you in a week.