Insanity, not so much.

See that guy laying on the floor in the picture with the circle drawn around him and the word FAIL pointing at him, that was Jodi and I. Let me explain.

  After putting on a full metal knee brace, an ankle brace and wrapping my whole abdominal area with the binder I got when I had surgery, for two days of insanity, we decided that it just wasn't for us. Kind of bummed, but it's probably for the best.  Jodi didn't like it, I didn't mind it, but I don't think I was doing everything correctly, so that's why I didn't mind it. I went in knowing I hadn't did anything like this in over 13 years. I figured it was tough, but I still wanted to do it. I also kept saying lets do this at our own pace and just try to get through it. I figured, at least we are doing something for 45 minutes a night instead of sitting on our asses watching tv. The bad thing about doing any of these "fitness DVDs" is that with my knees, anything involving lower body moves is painful. So I have to modify pretty much every move in the Insanity arsenal, which in turn, makes everything easier. Im also looking at it like this, I have to go to a job outside of home where I have to climb up and down out of a truck all day, I don't need to be injuring myself and being out of work with no pay.  So where Jodi was full on doing everything like you should, I was basically half assing it. Even half assing it, it was still hard as hell.  So we decided that going from not doing anything remotely close to insanity to diving right in to it, probably wasn't the smartest thing.  

After the insanity fail, Jodi said we should try Jillian Michaels 30 day shred. I was a little hesitant at first because I looked at it as a women's work out. Then after doing level one of it, I realized it was pretty tough. This was more up our Steam Pipe Ally. It wasn't crazy like the insanity DVD, but it wasn't  just a stand around and move your arms a little bit DVD either. Probably a better choice to start out with, honestly. I guess I don't care what the hell we do, as long as we are doing something together. I wanted us to workout together so we didn't have the excuse of saying we had no time to workout. I always felt bad going to the gym after work around 5pm and coming home at 6pm to eat dinner, get kids their bath, put them to bed, then off to bed in an hour or so after that.  That gave no time for Jodi to go to the gym at a reasonable time and workout. I figured, if we both did a DVD workout, we could get everything done by 8pm, then get ready to do a workout by 8:30pm and then have some time to chill after, before bed. 

So now we decided that we would do her Jillian Michaels 30 day shred DVD a few days a week. Throw in a few days of bike riding after dinner. Also we would do the Insanity Fit test every Monday and Friday and maybe throw in another one of the insanity DVDs to work out with as well. I don't want to abandon the idea of doing insanity. Who knows, maybe I'll do it on my own in the morning, just to see how long I can do the program itself. Yeah, probably not. Ha!

What's up!?

Well, I'm back at it again. I have a few ideas for some post, but I'm trying to craft one in particular so that its not too much personnel information. It's one thing to talk about stuff with your dude friends and even your doctor, it's another to just type it out for people you know and random people in Russia to see. I don't care my self personally, but I'm sure my wife doesn't want to be embarrassed about the stuff I typed and she has family that reads this as well. I guess that hasn't stopped me before, I've always tried to be very honest and blunt about the stuff I write here. I do that because some people's blogs about gastric bypass aren't. And as a former fat dude searching the interweb, I appreciated the blogs I found that were open and very honest about their times going through gastric bypass. So with that said, if you see a post entitled with the phrase, TMI, open at your own risk.  Of course you know you will, that don't have the saying, curiosity killed the cat for nothing. :)

It's been a long, but fast year since I made the decision to go forward with having  Roux En Y ( RNY) surgery done. At the end of June, beginning of July is when I was too fat to pass my DOT physical and decided to do something about it.  As you all know, when I had my first meeting with my surgeon, he asked what weight I wanted to see at the end of all of this. Basically, what weight did I want to be down to by the end of a year to 18 months after surgery. I told him that if I could be 250lbs, I'd be happy as a pig in shit. Well, I can say as of yesterday, June 1st, I made that weight. Now, I'm not totally happy with that number. I say that because since that talk with my surgeon in August 2012, my goals have readjusted because I was losing weight a lot quicker than we expected. So the number I wanted to be at when June 1st rolled around was 245lbs. I know, big deal right? I missed it by 5lbs, but that number was a goal that I should have been easily beat had I stayed on track with things.  I didn't though, I didn't stay on track and missed an easy goal that was set by my surgeon a few months ago. It's my fault though. I put my gym membership on hold 2 months ago because the weather in Michigan WAS getting nice and then sure enough, shitty ass Michigan weather turned around and made it cold as shit and snowy. I wanted to be able to take the kids out side and go for walks and bike rides and not be stuck inside a gym for an hour. So when the weather turned back to shit gain, I decided I would go in Maintenance mode. Now most people that have had the surgery, don't hit maintenance mode until the "honeymoon" is over which is about 12 to 18 months after surgery. That's when you should be at your goal weight and from there, you start maintaining that weight for the rest of your life. Well, at the rate I was going, I was gonna hit my original goal weight (250lbs) about 6 months after surgery. In my eyes, that felt really quick. To me, that seemed like a lot of weight to drop in a short amount of time with out some kind of unintended consequences springing up to bite my ass. For example, having my gallbladder taken out. Which I'm sure will happen eventually, maybe not, but I don't need it out this year.  I've been 260lbs since the beginning or so of April. Since then I've been in maintenance mode. I say maintenance mode, but really it's not. Maintenance mode means you're watching what you're eating and working out. I've just been eating what I can and hanging out. I started riding my bike to work and back (about 5 miles in total round trip), but beyond that, nothing. Made my own TRX straps, medicine ball and kettle bell. Did a little bit of heavy bag training, which I didn't win. The bag, that is. If you remember, I joined a weight loss competition through Reset Nation Project and at the end of 45 days, you would see how much weight you lost by percentage. I lost 9.99% of my weight and the girl who beat me lost 10.37%. Yeah, I got beat by a girl. Haha. That I know of, I was the only one who had gastric bypass that entered the competition. Her and I were pretty far ahead of everyone else with losing weight. So she definitely kicked ass. Ok, got side tracked there, I just couldn't remember if I had posted on the blog what the outcome was with that. 

Basically I've been "normal" since the beginning of April until now. Tomorrow (Monday June 3rd) my wife and I start the DVD crazy, Insanity. Yeah, I truly can't wait! We are gonna ease into it at first. I don't want us to get discouraged or worse, injured. I want us to be able to complete the whole course which is about 67 days of jumping around and running in place and pretty much sweating our balls off. Can't wait. I'll report back how the first week goes next Sunday. Until then, much love and respect (add the finger point to you, what up John Basedow!)