How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) I had a really good week, I mean really good and my result was? One and a half pounds GAINED. Hun? Whaaat? How the heck could I have gained 1.5 pounds after eating really well and working out consistently. I even pulled my belt another notch tighter. Oh well, these things happen. Such is the variability of any individual weigh in. Chalk it up to misfortune and get back at it. Onto week #3.

I now weigh 214.5 pounds, and am still down 4.5 pounds for the challenge. 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 for this week?

Overall, for week 2 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations. It’s Met Expectations not because i lost or gained but because I really stayed true to the process goals that I know yield beneficial and desired results. Let’s jump into particulars.

My year to date weekly progress:

• Week 1: -6.0
• Week 2. +1.5
• Cumulative Challenge Results to Date: -4.5

Report Card: Week 2

January 16 to January 22:

The chart above is created using Joe’s Goals.

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

January 16 to January 22:

Eat light and often: I ate light all week. Similar to last week, I did not however eat as often as perhaps I should, meaning, I didn’t regulate my eating to align to my goal of eating regularly every 3 hours and map to the timing of my caloric expenditure.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Pretty goo. A few days I workout out or traveled so I missed eating breakfast.

Eat fresh whole foods and protein: Lots of fresh whole fruit. Protein came primarily through eggs.

No chocolate: Haven’t had chocolate since December 31, 2011.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Pretty good.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Pretty good here as I didn’t snack before going to sleep.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

January 16 to January 22:

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

Workout early: Yes – for five out of the seven days.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: A good week with 4 Runs (30 Miles), two of whoich were really quality – a 10-mile Back Bay run and a 11.5-mile snowy Towpath run, and 3 other cardio workouts, including my first swim workout at the Renaissance Club Sport in Aliso Viejo. I missed two full days of training due to business travel.

Resistance training: I did hit two great Pilates classes last week which felt great! Not enough!

Stretch and Core: Overlap with Pilates. Not enough!

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

January 16 to January 22:

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: A good week of sleep and recovery and my stress levels were fairly low, even with a challenging week of work.

Conclusion: A less than thrilling result after what I thought was a pretty solid week. In short, more work to do. See you in a week.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) My Outcome Goal is to lose 20 pounds in the ten week period. This will bring me down to 200 pounds for the first time in more than four years. I’m happy to have started this year lighter than I started last year and this has been a great start to 2012 but it still leaves me about 20 pounds heavier than where I need to be to get back to competition and where I feel healthiest. That said it is an AWESOME beginning to the year. How’d I do? I lost six pounds in the first week of this challenge. SIX POUNDS LOST. This is pretty darn exciting, in fact when I got off the scale showing 213 pounds, I felt energized, I felt lighter, and I felt really good!

I found a photo of myself from 2007 from the Cadence Kona Challenge and was shocked how how different I look now. My friend and fellow triathlete Tammy asked if I was discouraged or inspired by seeing this photo. In truth, I’m not sure of the answer.  Having reflected on it for the past day, I find that this has only strengthened my resolve to get back to a strong physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being.

Now to the six pounds lost. As excited as I feel about this result, I also realize that there is some variability to any weight result on any given day simply due to hydration and other factors. I need to take it all in moderation.

My weekend at ZenTri Base and Nutrition Camp here in San Diego definitely contributed to this positive result as I was taken out of my normal environment for 3 of the 7 days and surrounded by health conscious folks eating small healthy meals regularly primarily of green foods that don’t come with UPC labels.

The facts are that I now weigh 213 pounds, and am pleased with the way my own personal Challenge has started. I’m progressing 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 for this week?

Overall, for week 1 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations. Let’s jump into particulars.

My year to date weekly progress:

• Week 1: -6.0
• Cumulative Challenge Results to Date: -6.0

Report Card: Week 1

January 9 to January 16:

The chart above is created using Joe’s Goals.

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

January 9 to January 16:

Eat light and often: I ate light all week except for one digression for some Italian food. I did not however eat as often as perhaps I should, meaning, I didn’t regulate my eating to align to my goal of eating regularly every 3 hours and map to the timing of my caloric expenditure.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Consistently.

Eat fresh whole foods and protein: Lots of fresh whole fruit. Protein came primarily through eggs.

No chocolate: Haven’t had chocolate since December 31, 2011.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Pretty good. Less about sugar, can still make progress on chips and breads.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Pretty good here as I didn’t snack before going to sleep.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Less Than Expected

January 9 to January 16:

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

Workout early: Yes – for four out of the seven days.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: An okay week with 7 Runs (25 Miles), and 2 other cardio workouts.  Not great as I missed two full days of training due to business travel.

Resistance training: Nothing

Stretch and Core: Got to participate in MovementU with Jessi Stensland here at ZenTri Base and Nutrition Camp but I have a lot I can do better here.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

January 9 to January 16:

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

Conclusion: A really fantastic result after a week that was primarily dominated by effective nutrition. I adapted to my environment of being in three cities in three states this past week and still did enough to keep progress moving forward. Next week has even more challenges that I will have to overcome by effective time management and keeping healthy foods as close as possible as I will lose the support that the camp provided and will be working and living out of hotel rooms. See you in a week.

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.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) This week sucked. Let’s just put it out there. No change up or down and I should thank my lucky stars that I didn’t give anything back by adding weight. Week four began with me not even having time to post my Week 3 report – I lost one pound that week by the way, bringing my year to date total to 6.5 pounds lost. Not too bad but then in Week 4 all forward progress skidded to a screeching halt due to my trip to Connecticut, firefighting work hours, the Northeastern Snowstorms, missed workouts, dinners out on Friday and Saturday night with friends and multiple days of traveling, including an 11-hour drive from NY to Ohio yesterday. Suffice it to say that I’m thankful that I didn’t gain weight this past week.

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 4 I gave myself a self assessment of Less than Expected. As you can see from my report card below, there are a whole lot of holes. 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
• Total to date: -6.5

Report Card – Week 4

January 24 – January 30:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Less Than Expected

Eat light and often: I don’t even know where to begin. String cheese, oranges, apples, and a few other odds and ends – anything to try and keep some positive momentum. In reality, I did as best as I could to balance a few healthy snacks with the reality of client dinners, friends meals and skipped meals along the way. Not a good week, but I sure did put up a valiant effort.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: This I did do.

Eat fresh whole foods and protein: Filled in what I could, when I could, but more restaurant food than I would have liked.

No chocolate: Two cookies grabbed out of frustration more than anything else from the front desk at The Holiday Inn where I was staying in North Haven. Pissed me off that I showed that level of weakness. Opened up the door for grabbing a whole lot more throughout the week but I did somehow avoid those other temptations.  Mainly pissed off.

Avoid junk food and sugar: The two cookies plus two slices of pizza. See above for piss poor attitude.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Not even close. As I wasn’t eating at normal times, I found myself eating late, working late, being out late, essentially I was just late – I don’t even know what that means but I do know I didn’t have that slightly hungry feeling when falling asleep that I know pays huge dividends, knowing I will wake up in the morning feeling awesome! “Hunger is ugly leaving your body” ~ Ancient Supermodel Quote.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Less Than Expected

January 24 – January 30:

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

Workout early: No, not really. Does getting on calls at 6AM and getting off at 9PM count?

Min 45 mins of Cardio: I only completed three workouts of 45 minutes or greater. Travel, work, snow storms and exhaustion really messed me up. I did force myself to get in a quick 40-min session on my friend Kamal’s Elliptical before Friday night’s Spelling Bee duties in Scarsdale. Have I told you how much I dislike the Elliptical? Messes up my stride and places way to much stress on my calfs. That said, I did do it, so that’s something.

Resistance training: Uh yeah, No!.

Stretch and Core: I stretched on Friday when my back felt like crap and before my snow run on Saturday.

Recovery/Adaptation = Less Than Expected

January 24 – January 30:

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: Did this at the expense of my workouts, but my stress level was so high this week that I’m not sure I got much benefit out of it.

Conclusion: I was very conscious all week of my limitation and while I did slip up multiple times and miss workouts, I did otherwise make a number of good but challenging choices throughout the week. I also was faced multiple times with being around good intentioned friends who tried to be supportive but in the end created a few too many temptations than I could withstand. I really need to avoid these situations or extract myself from them gracefully without feeling guilty that my goals are selfish. I guess they are, but I still need to do it if I’m going to continue forward toward my goal of losing 40 lbs in 2011. See ya next week.