For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 8 of 10.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) The see-saw continues as Week 7′s surprise drop of 2.75 lbs was followed yet again by a corresponding increasing gain, albeit of only 1.25 lbs this time. This was a near perfect week for me with the only major gap being a lack of weight/resistance training. Therefore just as Week 7 yielded a surprise benefit, the Week 8 result is equally surprising, but considering that I have dropped and gained weight on an alternating basis throughout this challenge, I should probably be used to it by now. But it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. My grade?

Met Expectations Overall, for week 8 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations. The reason I can grade myself this way is because of my strict adherence to the process goals set forth; my nutrition was excellent, my portion control was good and I got in 10+ hours of endurance activities including 50 miles of running and 42 miles on the bike. Why the resulting positive weight gain? I have no freak’n idea except that the actual weight measurement itself may be dependent upon a number of other factors that I have yet to identify.

Before we get into this week’s details, I thought it would be fun to throw out a week by week log to illustrate exactly what I’ve been talking about:

• Week 1:  +3
• Week 2: -4.5
• Week 3: -.75
• Week 4: -1.5
• Week 5: +1.5
• Week 6: -1.5
• Week 7: -2.75
• Week 8: +1.25
• Total to date: -5.5

I know it looks like I’m counting cards, and to make it even more squirely, there is very little relationship between the gains/losses and how well I met my weekly objectives that week. To me this begs that there may still be important and relevant determining factors I am not measuring or a time lag between the implementation of positive behaviors and the resulting measured response. Your thoughts and opinions on an explanation are both encouraged and welcomed.

Report Card – Week 8

February 22 – February 28:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

Portion size: Actually pretty good this week.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Only issue was a few more bagels than I would have liked.

Eat light every three hours: Much better with this this week.

Eat fresh whole foods: Good. Salads almost every day.

Avoid junk food and sugar: No slip-ups this week at all. Ruthless adherence.

Eat protein first: Did this.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Hunger is ugly leaving your body.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

February 22 – February 28:

Workout early: Got out for 2 early morning runs this week.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: Excellent week for cardio, including a 23-mile run on Saturday.

Resistance training: Hit legs and chest this week but I could have used one or two more days of weight training to keep things off-balance.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Conclusion: I’m very proud of what I accomplished this past week although it didn’t result in the weight loss I had been hoping for. More work to do and a short time to get it done.

For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 7 of 10.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) The bagel week. This was a crazy week and the bottom line is that I ate too much and worked out too inconsistently. The result is that I lost another 2.75 pounds. Hunh? Proves yet again that this weight management stuff is highly irregular, the benefits are cumulative and not even close to linear. I’m down to 209.75 pounds which is really exciting but I can’t say that it’s due to a great week on my part. Only tangentially related to my weight loss objective, my athletic performance continues to climb, including having paced out a 16-miler at a 9 min/mile pace, which isn’t fast historically but it’s the fastest I’ve run distance in quite some time.

I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. My grade?

Less than Expected Overall, for week 7 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Less than Expected. How can I say that when I had my largest weight loss week to date? Because the focus must remain oon the process goals if I am meant to achieve the objective and then sustain it after the fact. I’m totally supportive of the motivational mantra of celebrating small victories but I can’t let the variability of the outcome goal give me a false sense of productivity. With some significant changes to my routine coming up, I really need to step it up this week.

Report Card – Week 7

February 15 – February 21:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Less than Expected

Portion size: Actually pretty good this week.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: I’m not sure about healthy but I ate breakfast most days.

Eat light every three hours: Think this stretched to four, five or even six on some days.

Eat fresh whole foods: Good. Salads almost every day.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Ice cream a few times this week. Just silly on my part.

Eat protein first: Sort of.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Crappy as all get out, eating too late almost every night.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Less than Expected

February 15 – February 21:

Workout early: Finally got out for a 5:30am run this week, but only once. Still having trouble waking up full of energy.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: Didn’t work out from Wednesday morning until Saturday, but when I did the quality was good.

Resistance training: I know I needed to do more but got a bit ill on Thursday so I only got one day of lifting in, which I focused on my legs on Saturday and definitely am paying for it.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Conclusion: It’s great that I dropped the 2.75 pounds but there is no rational reason for me having done so, and that can’t continue. More resistance training this week and a ruthless commitment to stay away from the sugar.  Results from all of the other great folks participating in this challenge can be found at the 10 in 10 blog. Have another great week.

For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 6 of 10.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) Well last week I gave back all of my losses from the prior week and this week I recovered it back losing 1.5 pounds and dropping to 212.5. I’m starting to sense a pattern here and it’s not yoyo dieting, it’s yoyo weight loss – two steps forward and one step back. Losing the 1.5 pounds only took running over forty miles including a 20-miler on Friday and a seven-hour spin class on Saturday. Clearly cardio is not the issue, and while my diet wasn’t perfect, the one thing that was missing was resistance training. It’s pretty darn obvious, to even get close to reaching my objective this month, I need to hit the weights.

I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations.

Less than Expected Overall, for week 6 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Less than Expected, mostly because the nutrition needed a lot of work and I did hardly any resistance training. Need to step it up this week.

Report Card – Week 6

February 08 – February 14:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Less than Expected

Portion size: OK except for Saturday night after the Spin-a-thon and Sunday when we went to Troy’s birthday party. Pasta and salad seem to be the Ohio staples of dietary nutrition and I needed to prepare better.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Pretty good each day.

Eat light every three hours: OK.

Eat fresh whole foods: Salads almost every day.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Cake at Troy’s birthday party threw me off a bit.

Eat protein first: Failed miserably.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Ate right before going to sleep almost every night.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Less than Expected

February 08 – February 14:

Workout early: Not even close.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: No problem with the cardio this week but it wasn’t as moderate nor consistant as I would have liked. I did get used to pounding out 10 milers on the treadmill and did a 20-miler in McDonald and a 7 hour ride at the Spin-a-thon in Y-town.

Resistance training: After a great week at Equinox, I failed miserably at lifting this week.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: Sleeping has not been a problem.

Conclusion: It’s great that I dropped the 1.5 pounds but it took an irrational amount of cardio to do it, an amount that I obviously can’t continue. Need to get back to basics this week.  Results from all of the other great folks participating in this challenge can be found at the 10 in 10 blog. Have another great week.

It’s too damn hot for a penguin to be just walkin’ around here. I gotta send him back to the South Pole. – Billy Madison

Winter running is not something that should be dreaded or avoided. In fact, some of the most memorable runs you will ever have may be on a snow-covered trail, running past icy streams and snow-covered lakes. Winter running can be as serene and pure as running ever gets. But winter running can also present a host of issues for the uninformed, uninitiated or the stubborn.

On February 10, 2010, I co-hosted episode 68 of The Runner’s Round Table where we discussed Cold Weather Running, it’s opportunities, it’s risks and how runners can prepare themselves to enjoy this whitest of seasons. A number of questions were asked during the episode specifically about what to wear. I encourage you to listen to this episode either by subscribing on iTunes or listening through your computer.

Cold is both personal and subjective. While 40F may be cold for those running in Los Angeles, it’s down right balmy for those running in New England. Therefore the recommendations that follow are based on my reality.

The best thing you can do is create a gear log of your running wardrobe that documents what you wear under a variety of conditions and includes commentary about whether you were too hot, too cold, too wet or too chilled. This information will be valuable for years to come and can finally take the guess work out of running in the cold.

Below is an example of a clothing log that you can adapt for your own circumstances and preferences. Click on each of the orange hyperlinks for photos of various outfits for the described conditions and temperatures.

It’s important to remember that you don’t need to buy a ton of expensive gear to run in the cold. It’s most important to cover your head to minimize heat loss, protect your breathing areas (e.g., mouth, nose, neck), and external appendages or exposed areas that have a tendency to freeze (e.g., fingers, toes, ears, eyes). You can accomplish this with the clothes you already have. Yes it may mean that the articles won’t be feather-weight or ideal, but it shouldn’t deter you from getting out there and enjoying the roads.

Hope you’ll add your own thoughts and recommendations below in the comment area.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only weak people. — Bill Bowerman

Winter running is not something that should be dreaded or avoided. In fact, some of the most memorable runs you will ever have may be on a snow-covered trail running past icy streams and snow-covered lakes. Winter running can be as serene and pure as running ever gets. But winter running can also present a host of issues for the uninformed, uninitiated or the stubborn.

Currently, with those of us on the east coast of the United States braving Round 2 of Snowmageddon and our friends on the west coast doing their best to stay dry in the cold winter rains, we felt this was a perfect time to host an open forum on the topic of cold weather running.

Tonight, Wednesday, February 10th at 6PM EST, join expert runners Josh “Speedysasquatch” Maio, Justin “Mango” Manganaro, and Bill “I’ll try anything once” Risch as we discuss everything you’d want to know about how to safely enjoy running through the most beautiful season of the year. Join us at The Runner Round Table.

You can participate live by calling (724) 444-7444, Code: 34812, or by joining us in the chat room at TalkShoe where you can ask questions of the hosts and chat with other participants.

We plan on covering a variety of topics beyond what you’d ordinarily expect, including:

• How to avoid freezing your face off
• Protecting your peas and carrot – or frozen penis syndrome
• When to give in to the dreadmill
• Running on ice and snow
• Playing nice with cars and trucks that can’t see you and can’t stop
• Building a temperature-sensitive running wardrobe
• Frozen lungs
• Lederhosen and tassel hats
• Winter trail etiquette
• Handling conditions that are cold, wet, windy, dark or all of the above
• and more…

And if you want to feel confident in your hosts’ ability to speak on this subject, here is some early footage of SpeedySasquatch and Mangorunner as children proving once again that a Sasquatch can make a Mango cry.

See you all at The Table. We’ll leave you with this wise advice from the Suburban Lawns:

All action is reaction
Expansion
Contraction
Man the manipulator

Underwater
Does it matter
Antimatter
Nuclear reactor
Boom boom boom boom

I guess everything’s irrelative

I’m a janitor
Oh my genitals
I’m a janitor
Oh my genitals
Oh my genitals
I’m a janitor

This past weekend, I drove through the Snowmageddon in Ohio to show up at 7am on Saturday morning for the Spin-a-thon at the Central YMCA in Youngstown. Long story short, the Spin-a-thon was first postponed and then rescheduled for next Saturday. As with every challenge, this presented a new opportunity as I got to hang out with the organizers of the ride and got to try out the new Schwinn AC Performance bikes on a four-hour indoor ride of my own. At first glance this bike looks like an enhanced version of their Schwinn NXT, with more hand positions and a computer console. However, upon closer examination, this bike is a true departure from the traditional group indoor cycling bike and brings us much closer to the set up of a road bike on a trainer. To be specific, the AC Performance Bike has the following new features:

• Aero and road handlebar positions – more realistic
• Stem length adjustment – better individual bike fit
• Virtual Contact Resistance technology – magnetic resistance instead of the friction resistance created with felt pad and spring – smoother ride
• Road saddle – more adjustments and truer to outdoor bike
• M-Power performance console – a computer that measures power through wattage – can finally measure how much work you are actually doing

I’m sure there are other differences but these were the one’s that drew my attention. The biggest change by far is that the bike is no longer a fixie, meaning that when you stop pedaling, the front wheel keeps spinning. If you are still confused, on your old spin bike when you stopped pedaling the front wheel stopped also as it was directly connected or “fixed” to your pedals. What this means in practice is that with these new bikes you lose the benefit of the big flywheel helping to pull your legs around through momentum, and more importantly it means that if you are used to standing up and running during your workout, this will no longer be a break for you or easy to do.

Those with experience in the old bikes will feel a “hitch” when trying to stand and pedal. This is not a hitch, but simply the fact that your pedlas are no longer directly connected to your wheel in a one-to-one relationship. You’ll really need to drop your body weight and spin using both legs together and raise the resistance considerably to maintain a seamless spin while standing. Essentially you’ll have to do a “freeze” the entire time you are standing up. If you don’t ride outside, you’ll probably think something is wrong with the bike. If you do ride outside you already know what I’m talking about, it’s like trying to stand up and pedal on a flat road or downhill when there isn’t enough gearing or resistance under you.

The impact of this is that instructors who have been credentialized or certified as indoor cycling instructors with no outdoor riding experience will need to by necessity have to adjust their rides to be more life-like. No longer will they be able to teach a ride that bears little resemblance to an outdoor ride with instructors wearing tennis shoes and standing up in Position 2 (a standing run) for the majority of the ride and calling it a cycling workout. Personally, I’m very pleased about this turn of events.

This also creates the potential for a much tougher ride in a number of ways. If your butt hurt while riding in class before it may really give you issues now because with the previous fixed gear bikes you could stand up more often to get a both a breather for your lungs and your butt, and equally you would get the benefit of distributing more of your weight to your feet even while seated because you had built-in resistance to press against. With a free wheel to put more weight or to stand up on your pedals, you’ll have to a) wear clipless pedals and cleats, and b) add significant resistance to the bike to simulate riding uphill.

I’m not opining on which bike provides a “better” workout, because that depends upon your specific workout, I’m just saying that for the same workout on two different bikes, these AC Performance Bikes will kick your tush. I think that traditional indoor fitness cycling enthusiasts will absolutely hate these bikes, and roadies and triathletes will be thrilled that they finally can do a sport-specific indoor workout without having to drag their own bike inside on a trainer.

So should you buy one for yourself? Jury’s out on this but if I’m correct in understanding the price to be around $3,000 for one of these bikes, in my humble opinion, for $3,000 I could stick my own bike on an awesome Computrainer, add surround sound and a killer flat screen and still have enough to buy some chocolate milk when I’m done. You can read more about these bikes at Indoor Cycle Instructor.com.

For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 4 of 10.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) This week closes out the first month of the year and I’m excited that with all of the ups and downs I succeeded in losing an additional 1.5 pounds bringing my total loss for the month to 4 pounds for a current weight of 212.5 pounds. I weigh myself at the same time of the week and the same time of the day right before I workout in the morning. The amusing thing is how much weight I lose when measured after a workout of only one hour. After today’s workout I dropped from 212.5 to 208 pounds. What I like about it is that the post workout weight makes a great target for the next week’s pre-workout weigh in.

I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations.

Met Expectations Overall, for week 4 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations, recovering from last week’s slide and got myself back on track. And I was definitely concerned because I know that the sins of one week definitely carry over to the next. So this result even though it may not seem big from a magnitude standpoint, was pretty pleasing to me.

Report Card – Week 4

January 25 – January 31:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

Portion size: Much better, the only poor day I had was Sunday evening when I splurged on CPK and tried both their fish tacos and had my traditional Halloween pizza.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Are you kidding me. Being in New York this week, our friend Carolyn provided us with fresh squeezed juice every morning. We even took up the daily ritual entitled, “Guess the secret ingredient”, which included lime, cactus fruit, pineapple, ginger, apple, and others depending on the day.

Eat light every three hours: Much better at this as well.

Eat fresh whole foods: I throw the daily fresh juice into this category as well as great salads almost every day.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Pretty good except for an ice cream party on Saturday night that accompanied the game “Apples to Apples” with a whole slew of characters in the old neighborhood.

Eat protein first: Still difficult to get enough isolated protein to make this work.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Nah, we stayed up late and crashed by necessity.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

January 25 – January 31:

Workout early: Not really but it didn’t hurt my ability to get my workouts in.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: Had a great week in this area primarily because my friend Kamal secured a pass for me to workout at Equinox in Scarsdale. Special thanks go out to Anthony Cichessi, the manager over there who couldn’t have been more helpful and generous. I really took advantage of both the Stairmasters (4600 PT) and the Gauntlets (SM916) as we don’t have access to either of those machines back here. I also adjusted my training schedule for the Los Angeles Marathon a bit so that I could run 20 miles in 18 degrees with my good friend Phil at Rockies on Saturday. And I have to say that the result of that run was very encouraging. By the way, help me wish good luck to Phil who’s running his first stand alone marathon in Austin, TX next Sunday.

Resistance training: Again, I took advantage of the access to Equinox to lift most every day I could.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: I slept a lot.

Conclusion: A solid week that resulted in only a pound and a half of weight loss but put me back on schedule in almost all of the right areas. Good job. Results from all of the other great folks participating in this challenge can be found at the 10 in 10 blog. Have a great week.

Do you workout with a trainer in your local gym? Do you see trainers working out with other members and think, hey that’s the life, they get paid to boss their clients around and count to 8 or is it 10 or sometimes 12? How hard can it be to get paid to workout all day while getting free massages from their attractive and fit colleagues? And how many of you look at these trainers and think, they must have been jocks in high school or maybe college and yes they know how to lift weights and live an active lifestyle, but they can’t possibly be any more vapid or one dimensional? On the one hand I can’t argue with any of these statements, after all, I was a full-time trainer and I did it for over ten years back in the 80′s and 90′s in Los Angeles, and I did count to ten and boss my clients around and worked out multiple times each day. And yes, I even got free back massages from attractive and fit colleagues while getting paid to do so.

On the other hand, I always felt just a little bit embarrassed back then because we didn’t have “real” jobs, had a bad taste in my mouth when people would roll their eyes at me or my friends when we’d tell them what we did for a living. “Gigolo Job” was what it was most commonly referred to as. And hey maybe it was, but in that little community of trainers, greatness emerged. And I feel proud to have been part of a group of the smartest, dedicated and most determined group of human beings I’ve ever worked with. It was here at Sports Club/LA that I learned that we were not in the service business, we were in the experience business. It was also here at Sports Club/LA that I learned about transformation and how transformation is not defined in terms of effort or desire but in terms of measurable results, or benefits that are sustainable over time.

For the past fourteen years, I’ve worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Los Angeles and New York and during that time, I constantly worked to pass those simple messages on, sometimes with success but more often than not it was quite the struggle. Many of the folks I worked with saw my background in exercise science as less valid than those with degrees in accounting, engineering or business. At best it was met with a sense of amusement. Their lack of ability to grasp the concepts of creating experiences that delight and measuring their performance by the performance of their clients isn’t because the people there aren’t as smart or dedicated, to the contrary, PricewaterhouseCoopers professionals are razor sharp, some even brilliant. The issue is that the system rarely supports thinking in those terms; the dominant drivers of chargeability and billability run directly in the face of creating an end result that truly delights and is sustainable.

I love that social networking and customer experience and business transformation are all now “hot topics” in business today. We were doing all of those things thirty years ago and it didn’t require an initiative or a center of excellence or an investment request to do so. It’s just what we did. I love that there are businesses like The Human Performance Institute that has an incredibly successful business helping executives realize that performance is not created through finding more time to work but rather by putting more energy into the time that you have, by achieving a dynamic and holistic balance in all areas of your life, by getting the most out of your physical, mental, spiritual and emotional energy. Duh, that’s private training 101.

What amuses me is that all of these tenets were so clear and obvious to us back in that gym in Los Angeles and while business schools and multi-nationals companies search for and pay six figure salaries to executives who can help them to achieve even a modicum of success in these areas, all they had to do was look down the street to the gym on the corner. Because every day, dedicated trainers across the country and throughout the world are delivering on all of those promises, many without even knowing these are issues out in the “real” world. In that gym on the corner, clients are walking out the door transformed, they have received experiences that delight, they are a part of a vibrant and positively contagious community and they refer their friends to that business establishment and trainer every chance they get. And how many businesses wouldn’t love to achieve those metrics? Over the next few posts, I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do for years but never did, profile some of the trainers I had the honor and pleasure to work with, those that just might change the way you think about private trainers from now on.

But don’t be too in awe just yet, I’ll let you in on another secret; we never actually did keep count when you were lifting, we just always relied on the fact that you didn’t. Three more. Or is it four?

For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 3 of 10.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) During week 3, I succeeded in losing .75 pounds and am now at 214 lbs, and overall I’m down 2 lbs from my starting weight.

Peter Gabriel, No Self Control

I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations.

Less than Expected Overall, for week 3 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Less than Expected, sliding back from all of the good work I did in the first two weeks because of a complete #failwhale related to portion control. The Peter Gabriel video above says it all! I ate two full pizza’s this week without even knowing it in two different days. Well of course I knew that I did it, but it’s back to the addictive personality. Being back in NY this week, I found myself out at lunches and dinners with friends and got caught up in that all too easy self convincing attitude of “It’s only one time”. For me, my nutrition and “feeding” needs to be a stand alone event where I get the food, eat the food and finish, separate and apart from other distractions or activities.  It’s far too easy to get caught up in the moment and then realize that I consumed the gross national product of Uganda before the evening was complete. The result is that all of my great routine built up during the prior two weeks is snapped and I’m forced to go back to the beginning. I lied where I had gotten to, that place where my body tells, me “Hey idiot, you’ve eaten enough and if you eat any more I’m going to make you feel sick.” But if you keep piling on, your body won’t be able to tell you. Just like a muscle, it adapts to the behavior you impute on it. Major need for a quick refresh to get back on track. Only seven weeks left.

Why am I rating myself Less than Expected when I still lost weight? Just like in Week 1 when I actually gained weight, the outcome goal does not always reflect what really matters and that is my behavior in executing on and achieiving the process goals I’ve set forth for myself. Yes, I lost .75 pounds, but in reality, that’s just blind luck, or more likely a timing issue. I know from practice that what I do nutritionally on one day doesn’t show up in my weight for five to seven days. All this means that my work is REALLY cut out for me this week, just to stay even.

Report Card – Week 3

January 18 – January 24:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Less than Expected

Portion size: Horrible. As described in my preamble. Enough said. Cut the portions down to levels not required by Attila the Hun!

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Healthy but I allowed the portion size to creep up here as well.

Eat light every three hours: Not even close. I ate every three hours on some days, skipped meals on others and ate light then heavcy, then even heavier then light. Yuck!

Eat fresh whole foods: Probably the positive side of the nutritional elements. I did eat a lot of whole fresh foods, just too much of it. The one change this week is living off of Carolyn’s juicer. Each morning, we’ve been playing “Guess what’s in the juice?” So far she and Cindy haven’t tried to put in my athletic socks. Brett Blankner and Christine Lynch would be really proud, as they also have been on the smoothie kick, but we’ve gone one better because we’re using Carolyn’s heavy duty auger.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Not too bad with sugar this week. None of Aunt Duck’s oatmeal raisin cookies to graze on.

Eat protein first: Kind of a mix here. I can still be much better. Who am I kidding? I didn’t eat protein first, yet again. No self control, cue the Peter Gabriel song.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Average at best with a number of late nights grazing.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

January 18 – January 24:

Workout early: Got out early on the weekend but still not regularly starting my days out by working out or running. I know how important this is because it really does set the tone for the rest of the day and allows me the flexibility of getting in a second workout later in the day or evening if my schedule allows.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: No problems here, and was happy that the issue in my left calf didn’t rear its ugly head again, even with me getting in 48 miles of running this week including a 19-mile long run on Saturday followed by a 10-mile run at Rockefeller Park on Sunday. Total time training for cardio and resistance was 11 hours.

Resistance training: As you can see from my Joe’s Goals report above, I only lifted two days this week. So important! Need to do even better.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: Not much to say here. I slept a lot.

Conclusion: Stop being such a glutton! Not much more to say than that. Keep up the good work on getting in my runs (I’m only a few weeks away from the Los Angeles Marathon) lift even more and drop this BS weight. Do the things I know I need to do. Results from all of the other great folks participating in this challenge can be found at the 10 in 10 blog. Have a great week.

For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 2 of 10.

How’d I do? During week 2, I succeeded in losing 4.75 pounds and am now at 214.75 lbs, and overall I’m down 1.75 lbs from my starting weight.

Below is my report card from the past week. I use three levels of performance measures. Less then Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. Overall, for week 2 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations, building on the good start from week one and working even harder in a few areas. Recall that in week one I actually gained 3 pounds but knowing that I was doing what I needed to do, I persevered and the results this week have been positive. That said, I still have plenty of room for improvement.

Report Card – Week 2

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

Portion size: Better. But still have a lot of work to do here! I definitely had a few slip ups but I consciously recall walking away from food when I otherwise would have continued to eat. And wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t starve in the process.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Continued my breakfasts of cottage cheese although I threw in a bit of cereal on occasion.

Eat light every three hours: Still a work in process, but eating frequently did help with the typical hunger I might otherwise feel.

Eat fresh whole foods: Probably still my weakest link. Still a slave to too many processed foods. Trying to hit the salad bar immediately after working out to avoid last minute convenience choices.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Good except for an indulgence in Aunt Duck’s oatmeal raisin cookies that were irresistible. Continued to avoid chocolate and it’s getting easier.

Eat protein first: This one is most difficult because protein is hard to come by at every meal around here. Need to get more creative.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Better as well, only having some dried apricots at the one hour mark.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

Workout early: Still not getting into the gym as soon as I wake up. I think this is because there is still so many moving pieces in the other parts of my life and I’m trying to attack those first thing in the morning as well. I did get out and run on Saturday and Sunday before seven am, so its getting better.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: No problems here, and was able to return to running after my lay off due to the calf injury, including an 18-mile long run on Saturday.

Resistance training: Unfortunately the return to running also meant that I slacked off on the resistance training which I know is absolutely critical to building lean body tissue.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: Pretty good about going to sleep early this past week, which also allowed me to get up early feeling much more energized..

Need to continue what went well and work even harder on what didn’t as I move into week 3. Love seeing all of the great results being posted on the 10 in 10 blog. Keep up the great work and don’t be discouraged about any lack of expected progress in the outcome goal, keep focusing on those process goals and the outcome goal will take care of itself.