Thus, a few weeks ago I signed up to play on our church softball team, figuring that it would be a good way to commit myself to getting some exercise. We had our first practice on Friday night. I didn’t embarrass myself too badly, considering that it’s been nearly thirty years since I played little league baseball. I did a pretty good job catching fly balls, but I need to work on grounders (can I blame it on my bad knee and a glove that isn’t broken in yet?). At first, I was missing almost every pitch in batting practice. But my teamates pointed out that I was consistently swinging high. I was swinging for a baseball pitch, but with the slower softball pitches, the ball drops more at the end of its trajectory. Once I began swinging down under the pitch, I started hitting pretty consistently. We practiced for a tad over two hours, so I expected to be pretty sore over the next few days.

Saturday morning wasn’t as bad as I expected, though. I expected soreness in my legs, shoulders and throwing arm. But I didn’t expect the soreness in my right hand and in my feet. Still, not too bad. Then on Sunday, I did some yard work. I needed to finish pruning the crepe myrtles in front of our house, and also some shoots from the pear trees. Then I had to haul all the branches from the front of the house down to the woods at the back of our property.

Yeah, that did it. I’m really good and sore now. Fortunately, it only hurts when I move. I think I need to make time a couple of times a week to do a little touch-up exercising. That should help remind my muscles what they’re there for, and keep them from getting a once-a-week shock. It’s bound to mean more pain at first, but I’m looking forward to the pay-off (losing weight, gaining muscle tone) in the long run.

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Granted, I haven’t been strictly following our eating plan over all of last week, either. We went to the Stone Mountain Highland Games on Saturday, and sampled a few tasty treats there. And hey, wow — another sucky web site. If anybody who has pull with the organizers of the SMHG sees this, let them know that their web site really needs some improvement. Yikes.

On the other hand, the National Peanut Festival website, which I complained about last year, has vastly improved. Well, at least it looks a lot better, visually. The pages don’t validate, and they’re using table-based layout. But at least it looks professional, now.

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• Beer
• Hot dogs
• Hamburgers*
• Potato salad
• Baked beans
• Sauerkraut
• Diet soda (ha!)
• Sausage bread
• Pumpkin bread
• Chips
• Dip
• Chocolate cake
• Ice cream

Weight I gained as a result:

• 6 pounds

Number of kids under age 10 sleeping in our living room on Saturday night:

• 6

The reason for all of the above:

Happy 9^th birthday, Mary!

* Technically, a hamburger patty with no bun would be okay, along with some vegetables and maybe a baked potato or some rice.

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Anyhow, my current weight is 257 pounds, with the trend weight just a half pound above that. So over the past four weeks I’ve lost pretty close to 15 pounds. We finally got our treadmill moved into the garage yesterday, so that will let us get in some measured exercise, rain or shine. Hurray for technology

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We’re getting back on track now. Susan got a smoker for Christmas last year. We’re going to put it together and try our hand at smoking some chicken and turkey. That should give us some good stuff to eat

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I’ve written up some notes and added a new page to the site, where I’m tracking my progress. See the Weight Goal page for all the boring details. And a pretty graph. I like graphs.

I’ve also added a current weight stat at the bottom of my menu. So you can just scroll down towards the bottom of any page to see my progress so far.

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Now that we’re finally more-or-less settled, Susan and I both wanted to pay more attention to our health. We discussed several options: joining a gym or other exercise program (Jazzercise, Curves, etc), following an established diet/exercise plan (Atkins, Hacker’s Diet, etc.), or just doing our own thing (walking, watching what we eat). We were leaning towards the latter option, but finally decided that we’d like something more structured. We did some research, and after a lot of searching and reading many consumer report reviews, we’ve decided to give the Six-Week Body Makeover plan a try.

We received the materials for the plan a few weeks ago, and we finally made time to review them over the last week or so. Today is our first day on the plan. I won’t bother you with the details of it right now, but basically, it suggests eating five or six small meals each day, and it outlines a light cardio/resistance exercise program, designed to shape specific muscle groups, according to your particular “problem areas” and desired body shape. The program seems very reasonable and well thought out. We couldn’t locate any negative reviews in our research.

My breakfast today was an egg white omelette with tomato and a cup of fruit (pineapple and strawberries). At first I was thinking, “one cup isn’t very much.” But between the omelette and the fruit, it was a very filling breakfast. Susan had an omelette, some oatmeal and half a banana. For lunch, we made baked potatos topped with turkey chili (ground turkey, tomatoes, pinto beans, and a low-sodium mix of spices), with a side of steamed broccoli. Again, very filling.

Her plan is slightly different from mine (remember, it’s tailored to your gender and body style), but our meal choices overlap a lot, so cooking meals won’t be a hassle. We pretty much eat all the same types of foods, just in different proportions. For instance, I think she gets more of the complex carbs (like the oatmeal), and I get more fruit, and my protein portions tend to be larger (my omelette had four egg whites, hers had two).

I’ll be tracking my progress here, probably about once per week. The book says that typical first-week weight loss for men is about 5 to 10 pounds. I’m a little bit skeptical, but I’d certainly be happy for it to be true.

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Current weight: 261.9 lbs.

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