Tag: riding my bicycle

Week 35

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Etsy, Exercise, Food, Health, Hobby, Jewelry, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

week 35 collage

I am absolutely freaking out that I can’t seem to lose weight anymore, and instead of maintaining my weight, I am actually gaining.  I have no excuses so I’m not going to say that it’s because of my back pain, which turns out to be scoliosis, because I got my bike back and haven’t been riding it.  I have no excuse for not riding it.

So why haven’t I been riding my bicycle and why have I been gaining weight you ask?  Well, I’m not going to blame anyone because I am in control of what I eat and what I do, or don’t do.  I would like to say that because I haven’t been able to afford the Smart Ones meals every week that that is why I haven’t been able to lose weight, but that’s no excuse.  Although I have been eating, or trying to eat healthy fruits and vegetables, I have also been eating the Banquet dinners which are a lot cheaper than the Michelina’s.  One of the Banquet meals was green in the Noom app, but all the rest have been either yellow or red.  But you can’t say I haven’t tried eating healthy because I have been eating 1 1/2 to 2 cups of broccoli or mixed veggies with broccoli, cauliflower and carrots before eating the Banquet or Michelina’s frozen dinners.  I have also been eating Malt-O-Meal for breakfast, which shows up as green in the Noom app.

I have been doing everything right, well, except for every time my partner buys cookies, I end up eating half of the package.  I have also been extra hungry and been snacking on more wheat thins than I’m supposed to be snacking on.  I’ve also been snacking on other things because the mad hunger seems to be back like it was before I went on my weight loss journey.  It’s hard to calm down my food cravings when I have deprived myself for so long.  Even though I know something is bad for me, I’ll want it that much more.  I could be eating much worse, trust me, but I’m doing my best to stay away from much worse.

So yeah, I am very disappointed in myself, but I got my check and printed out some coupons for the Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen dinners and we’re going to go to Food Maxx today to buy some and more Malt-O-Meal.  I love those.  I am also going to ask my partner if he will please stop buying cookies and any other snacks, and if he does, be sure to hide them from me so I don’t see them and eat them.  I am also going to ask that he not ask me if I want to go to the Mexican restaurant or McDonald’s anymore because those are too tempting for me.  I don’t mind Subway, but even that is bad because of the bread, despite the fact that I always get the 9-grain wheat.

I have been doing exercises at Physical Therapy 3 days a week for approximately 30 minutes each day, which averages out to 177 calories burned each time, but I need to step it up with riding my bicycle.  I haven’t been riding it, and again this is no excuse, because my back and front tires keep going flat on me and I don’t know why.  I don’t understand why this keeps happening to me.  It’s frustrating to me.  I can’t pump the tires with my hand pump because it irritates my carpal tunnel syndrome, and I can’t keep wasting the Co2 cartridges to keep air in them daily.  1 tire uses more than 1 cartridge of air.  That’s why I haven’t been riding, because I hate having to pull over every time my tires go flat, and I can’t find what is causing them to go flat.  It’s frustrating as hell.

I wanted to save the money from the Etsy shop to buy a new bicycle, but nobody is buying anything and the Etsy shop is costing me more money every month than I am making in profits.  If people don’t start buying keychains and earrings, I’m going to have to close my Etsy store because I just can’t afford to keep paying the fees.  Of course, I will keep what items I have listed because I had to pay to list them, so I will keep them until they expire, but if nobody buys them before then, then I won’t relist them.  Whatever doesn’t sell will end up being Christmas presents because I don’t know what else to do with them.  Boy that sure showed me how unpopular my ideas are.

Wow I have totally gone off topic, haven’t I?  Anyway, I will try to do better with my diet.  If I can’t lose weight, then at least I’d like to maintain a healthy weight.  I’d love to maintain 190 if I can, which means I need to lose 6lbs again.  I’m hoping the Smart Ones will bring me back down.  I need to start saying no more too.  Those are my 2 goals for the next month.  Hopefully I can get back down to 190.  Hopefully…

Week 33 – Weigh In Day with @Noom

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Doctor, Exercise, Health, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

week 33

I haven’t been doing too well with my diet lately.  I had hit a plateau that I couldn’t get out of, then last week I weighed in at 194, 2lbs more than I was the previous week.  This week after my last weigh in I had actually gone up to 199 and that was my aha moment.  I was gaining too much weight and realized that I wasn’t doing very well and in order to get back on track, I was going to have to go back to my healthy diet.

We went to Food Maxx and I bought 14 Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen dinners and I also bought some Malt-O Meal Original for my breakfast.  I had been eating Cheerio’s since January with a banana, but I needed a change.  I actually wasn’t sure if Malt-O Meal was going to be good for me, but it shows up as green in the Noom app so I guess it is.

Today was weigh in day and I am happy to say that I am back down to 192.8 which is what I was 2 weeks ago.  I think that I just needed to go off track for a couple of weeks so that I could gain a new perspective and a new momentum and refocus all of my energy again into losing more weight to hopefully get me back on track so I can get down to my ultimate goal weight of 170lbs.

The doctor told me that I didn’t need to lose any more weight, but I still have a fat stomach and I don’t want to have that anymore.  I really want to lose as much fat as I possibly can.  I know I can lose the rest of this weight in only a couple of months if I keep going the same way I did to get to this point.  I just need to have the same determination to get the job done and I will accomplish my goals with complete success.

I haven’t been riding my bicycle because of my back pain, also because of how hot it is.  I am also having issues with not just my back tire going flat, but now my front tire too.  I honestly don’t know what is wrong with my tires, why they keep going flat.  It’s mind boggling to me.  Neither tire have a hole in the tube and there isn’t a thorn or sticker in the tire.  I don’t understand how they can both go from being fully inflated at 60PSI one day, to being around 20PSI the next.  It’s supposed to hold it’s pressure for a long time, especially since my bike hasn’t moved an inch in a month.

When it cools down I will start riding it again.  I would much rather ride my bike before the sun comes out to not only avoid the heat, but also avoid the sun because I burn easily.  Because I broke my arm at night, my partner doesn’t want me to ride when the sun isn’t out because he thinks I will break my arm again.  It was an isolated incident and it had nothing to do with the sun and everything to do with me not paying attention.  I’m sure it would have happened no matter what time of day it was.

At any rate, I am hoping to be at my goal by at least Halloween if not sooner.  That would be awesome.  Not that I have a reason to be at my goal by Halloween, I just want to be that’s all lol.

Anyway, until next weigh in…

A Good Plateau

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, Diet, Exercise, Health, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

Noom Logo I’ve complained before about a plateau that I was stuck in when I was 197lbs, but now I’m stuck again, but this time for good reason.  Here are my Noom weigh-in’s for July.

  • July 1 – 195.0
  • July 6 – 193.6
  • July 13 – 193.8
  • July 20 – 193.6
  • July 27 – 193.2

From the July 6 weigh-in to the July 20th weigh-in, I believe the reason for the halt in weight loss is because I’ve been eating the Michelina’s frozen dinners and not the Weight Watchers Smart Ones.  See, I thought that because they had the same amount of calories, fat and sodium that they would basically be the same thing, but I guess not.  We recently bought 40 of those too, so when we are able to burn through those, I will start buying the Weight Watchers again.

The reason we bought all those Michelina’s was because they were on sale for .50 cents each.  You can’t beat those prices, especially when we were broke this month.  I had no idea this was going to cause a plateau or even weight gain.

I think I might have an explanation for my current week’s plateau.  On July 20th, I finally started riding my bicycle again, so it has only been 1 week and I have only been out on the bike maybe 4 times, but I’m assuming that this week the reason I haven’t lost any weight is because I am gaining muscle.  At least that’s what I think is going on.

We have a scale which has a Weight Watchers logo on it and it can tell me my body fat, water, bone and BMI, and this week my body fat percentage went down from I believe it was 30.9 down to 29.6, so even though I am still basically the same weight, my body fat percentage has gone down and I believe it is because of the bike.  So, perhaps I think that I am losing fat, but gaining muscle and we all know that muscle weighs more than fat, so therefore, the scale isn’t very helpful to me in determining my weight, but it is helpful in telling me my body fat percentage and BMI.

However, my waist has gone up by 1/2 an inch.  Last week it was 39.5 inches and this week it is 40 inches.  I mean who really knows for sure what is going on.  All I know is that I am going to continue riding the bicycle and I am going to continue to eat a proper healthy diet despite what the scale says because I know that I am going to lose fat even if I gain muscle.

Gaining muscle is actually a very good thing because men who have a lot of muscle will burn more fat when they sleep, so I need to get plenty of rest, exercise and eat a proper diet and I will be on my way to losing more weight.

I’m not expecting that my weight will go down next week, but I hope it will.  We shall see I guess.  Here are my profile, weight graph and exercise summary for the week.

week_30-1 week_30-2 week_30-4

Help Me Exercise

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Exercise, Health, Noom, WeightLeave a comment

Huffy Nassau

I have been riding my bicycle for years for exercise because I have a bad back which causes excruciating pain when I walk.  It’s just easier on my back to sit down.  I was diagnosed with Degenerative Disc Disease in my lower spine, but since then the pain has gone higher, near the top of my spine.  I have recently had new x-rays on my back and those x-rays will tell the doctor whether I need to have another MRI done or not so that I can finally get something done about it.  I have already lost 70lbs with diet alone, but I feel that by not exercising because I don’t have a bicycle to exercise with, I am probably not just losing fat, but also muscle tissue and I don’t want that to happen, so that’s why exercise is crucial to helping me in my weight loss journey with Noom.

Since I had my accident a few months ago that resulted in a broken arm, I haven’t been able to ride my bike.  It’s not because of the accident, but because of my back tire.  See, it was constantly going flat even though there wasn’t a hole in the tube, so I bought a no mor flat hard rubber tube for it and I couldn’t install it and I think trying to install it I might have made things worse.  The damage that no mor flat tube caused will end up costing me $30 for a new tire and $30 for a new rim, or more.  Well, my bike was only $60 to begin with and I have sunk far too much money into it and it’s old now so I would rather just start fresh with a new bike.

The bike that I want to buy (image above) is from Target.com for $125, although that is a temporary price reduction, by the time I have the money saved it will go up to $140, so that is why I am asking for help to pay for it.  I’m not asking for a handout, but simply asking if people bought a keychain or a pair of earrings on my Etsy store.  Whatever I make on Etsy will help me buy a new bicycle.  I already have half of the money, I just need the other half.

Below are my keychains and earrings and I am making more everyday.  The earrings are only $5 and the keychains are only $3.50 because I don’t feel right about asking for any more than that.  I always feel bad about asking for money, so that’s why I am selling these so cheap.  They literally take a couple of hours to make, so I am working hard for the few dollars I am asking for and also risking damage to my hands because I have carpal tunnel syndrome.

So if you find something that you like, please help me out and if you would like a specific color combination let me know and I will make it.  I have the following colors available.  Red, translucent orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, clear, translucent blue and translucent pink.  Thank you for reading.

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My Eating Disorder

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Food, Health, Noom, Restaurant, WeightLeave a comment

overeating disorder

When I was a kid, I had a huge appetite, but I never gained any weight because, well, I was a kid and kids back in the 70’s and 80’s were more active than they are now.  As a kid, I was always riding my bicycle, roller skating or doing who knows what.  As a pre-teen and a teenager I was busy working with my step-father in the apartment building painting vacant apartments or doing whatever it was that he made me do, so I was constantly burning calories.

I was actually very fit throughout my entire childhood and through my teen years and even through most of my twenties.  I was also a smoker from age 15 to 26, and that’s when it all went downhill for me.  As soon as I quit smoking it was like my taste buds were brand new and everything tasted awesome.  My partner hates it when I say this, but everything new was like having an orgasm in my mouth lol.  I kid you not.

When I quit smoking in 1996, it only took maybe 2 months before I went from 150lbs to 200lbs, it was that quick. The reason was that I was eating sunflower seeds from the minute I woke up until the minute I went to bed.  I was told to keep that hand to mouth going to keep me from wanting a cigarette, but nobody told me how fattening and salty sunflower seeds were.  It wasn’t just that, I also discovered something I rarely ate throughout my life except for those certain special occasions.  Twinkies, ice cream, cake and doughnuts.

You know when you are so proud of yourself for accomplishing something that you want to reward yourself?  Yeah, don’t do that.  I was so proud of myself for quitting that I was literally eating Twinkies and ice cream everyday.  EVERY DAY!  We had a Winchell’s down the street from us and we were constantly going there and buying a dozen and splitting the box and we both would just sit there eating doughnut after doughnut until the box was empty.  Not good!

We would go to McDonald’s and buy one of their birthday cakes and we would literally eat the whole cake by ourselves.  Holy crap!  It was good though.  We didn’t really have a grocery store near us, and the little markets didn’t sell cakes so that was the only place for us to buy cake.  Plus it was really cheap so that’s why we bought it there.

We went to Sizzler in Hollywood and we discovered that they had an all-you-can-eat salad bar.  We took advantage of that because it wasn’t too expensive and we would keep going back until we were full, which you know you shouldn’t do, but you do it because you feel you want to get your moneys worth.  Then one time we went and decided not to get the salad bar, but to get some actual food, so I got Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken.  That was the very first time I had ever had that.  My mother never made it when I was growing up and I never even heard of it before that day.  OH MY GOD!

As the years went on I was getting fatter and fatter.  We discovered Hometown Buffet and Golden Corral.  We couldn’t leave the place unless we were both so full that we literally couldn’t swallow another drop or eat another bite of whatever.

My hunger went off the charts at home.  I would eat a big breakfast and within an hour I was hungry again, so I would eat something.  I would have lunch and the same thing would happen again, I would get hungry, but this wasn’t just a hunger, this was a demand from my stomach.  My stomach would literally hurt, that’s how hungry I would get.  My stomach would grumble and I would feel pain and my hands would start trembling like I was a drug addict and I needed a fix.

I couldn’t just eat a sandwich for lunch, If I did have one, I would still be hungry so I’d make another and I’d probably still be hungry so to have something different I would put 4 hot dogs, yes, you read right, 4 “four” hot dogs in the microwave.  Guess what?  I’d be hungry again an hour later.  My stomach would hurt again and I’d get the shakes.

Whenever we would buy pizza, we always got 2 large pizzas with 2 toppings each, but they had different toppings so we had two choices.  I would usually (to be polite) put one of each on my plate and eat them, but then I’d go to the kitchen and as I was “putting the boxes away” I would eat two more slices, one of each.  In an hour I’d come back to the kitchen and grab one more, then another and another.  We always had enough pizza for lunch the next day, but only because I felt guilty about eating so much so I was saving those last slices lol.

I was going to the grocery store every day to buy our dinner, but I would always leave with an extra goodie that I would eat on the walk home.  Then I started getting greedy and would buy a couple or a few goodies.  I was snarfing a package of Twinkies and a candy bar or two.  I can just imagine what people were thinking as they were passing me while I was holding the grocery bag(s) with one hand, and stuffing my face with the other.

Suddenly I was no longer just 50lbs overweight, I was more than 100lbs overweight and I couldn’t stop my hunger from controlling my life.  I had type-2 diabetes because I was eating so much food and sugar.  I was trying to control my diet by cutting out the sugar, but I was still eating bread and pasta which we all know turns to sugar, so I wasn’t really controlling it like I thought I was.  The hunger, the stomach pains and the shakes were still there, still controlling me.

I want to say it wasn’t my fault because I take medication that has that side effect, but I also had an addiction to food, so I can’t just blame the medication.  When most people think of an eating disorder, they typically think of people who either don’t eat or they eat and then puke it all up, but they are unusually thin.  I have the opposite.  Sorry, I had…  I have to correct myself because that was the old me and I am not that person anymore.

I will be 43 in less than 2 months and I am just now learning how to eat properly.  I mean, I’ve always known, but I ignored it because I wanted to eat poorly because I was selfish and stubborn and stupid.  I didn’t care until I noticed how bad it was getting and how horrible the pain was.  I now know what I have to do to live a healthy lifestyle and I am never going back to that unhealthy place again.

Thanks to the Noom app on my cell phone for helping me to learn what is right to eat and what is wrong, I now can eat healthy food so I can avoid the mistakes I made before.

Since January 5th, 2013 I have lost 50.4lbs officially as of today, April 20th, 2013.  I couldn’t be more happy with my progress.  I feel so much better about myself and I am no longer starving all the time.  I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to eat a normal portion of food and be satisfied with it.  I don’t live to eat anymore, now I eat to live.

I have set the Noom app to lose 63lbs and according to the estimated end date, I will be finished by June 3rd 2013, but that date changes weekly.  It is so close I can feel it.  I know I will reach this goal and then I can continue to lose more weight.  I don’t want to be fat and unhealthy anymore.  I quit smoking and I don’t drink or do drugs so I don’t have any actual addictions, and now I have kicked my eating addiction so I am officially addiction free.  Well, I am still addicted to Facebook, but I mean come on, who isn’t?  Right?

So… until next week. 🙂

Games on my Samsung T-401G with Net10

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cell Phone, Games2 Comments

When I needed to buy a new cell phone, it wasn’t for playing games on, it was for those emergency phone calls while I was riding my bicycle, which by the way I never had, an emergency that is.  So I wasn’t buying it for games since I have a PSP, games on my desktop, games on my CR-48 netbook and even my Nook has games.  I’m good on games, I don’t need another gaming device.

However, there are times when I’m sitting in a waiting room bored out of my mind and Sudoku on my cell phone just isn’t doing it for me.  My phone also has another game called JumpBoy which is really difficult to play.

We went to the doctor’s office on Thursday and while I was waiting I decided that I wanted to buy a game from the game store on my phone.  I bought Lego Batman.  I have Lego Batman for PSP but I wanted to see how it played on the cell phone.  It was $4.99 or 49 minutes and I had plenty of minutes that I never used so I bought it with my minutes.

It starts to download and it gets to about 82% and I lose my connection because the Net10 service really sucks here in Bakersfield.  I never have a full strength signal so it wasn’t shocking to me that this would happen, although I wasn’t thinking about it at the time.

I tried to download it 4 more times and I got a message telling me that I have downloaded it too many times.  What?  I have attempted to download it but I haven’t successfully downloaded it.

When we came home I tried to download it again, not to download it but to get the phone number that is listed in the message.  I called the number and went through the menu and they told me to email support@gameloft.com.  I sent them an email telling them what happened and they emailed me the next day.  I am very glad that I’m a patient person.

They gave me a link to download the game again so I tried it 3 times at home and it still didn’t work so I rode my bike to the mall and tried it there.  2 more times and no go because I downloaded it too many times.

I email support again telling them what happened and I get another email within 24 hours telling me that there was a glitch in the game download file and offered me a new game.  I don’t know what to do so I log into gameloft on my cell phone and this is what I see.

I had to crop it and I added the :p face and the “lame!” lol.  Notice my signal strength?  That is normal for my phone.  Half the time I have 2 bars and the other half of the time I have no bars.

At this point I don’t know what else to do so I went to the gameloft website and I don’t really see anything I want so I just told them in the email that I wanted Green Farm.

So I get the email from them today with the link for Green Farm and tried to download it 3 times at home with no success.  I went to the store because the signal is stronger there but for some reason when I tried to download it, it got halfway then said I had no signal.  Even though it still showed that my signal was strong, 5 bars.

WTF!

I go home and think, I only have 1 more shot at this, I think what I’ll do is download it with my netbook then email it to myself.  No problem right?  So that’s exactly what I did.  I emailed it to myself then connected to my email account on the phone and I downloaded it and it worked.  It got to 100% and then it installed.  I’ve been playing it for like 20 minutes and it plays great.

Unfortunately I still cannot access the gameloft site through my phone and in fact, there are links missing in the browser to connect to gmail and to connect to weather and what not, not like I use those but still.

So I think this game is the last game I will buy for my phone.  If I had this difficult of a time downloading Lego Batman and Green Farm then I’m done.  If I had better cell phone service then I think it would be worth it to try it again but until that day comes I think I’ll just stick with using my PSP to play video games with.  Well, besides being able to play Green Farm on my phone lol.

I don’t blame GameLoft, heck I don’t even blame my phone for what happened to me.  I blame Net10 for having such crappy service.  Come on Net10, give me a better signal here will ya?  I am so sick of this crappy signal.  I can’t count how many times I wanted to throw my phone against the wall.  If it weren’t for the fact that it’s an $80 phone I would have.

My Faster Bike Rides and New Goals

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Cycling, Exercise6 Comments

I was riding my bicycle this morning and was paying close attention to my average speed.  Lately it has been 11.5 mph give or take.  Today it was 12.5 mph.  That meant that I got home 30 minutes earlier than I usually do.  Riding faster doesn’t just mean that I will exercise faster, it also means I will burn more calories every time I ride.

I have these index cards which I used to use to keep track of my bike riding.  I would write it out so I had a hard copy because digital seems to get deleted a lot.  I first started writing it down on November 3rd 2008.  My average speed was 10 mph and I only rode for 38 minutes burning 345 calories.  Gradually over time I can see that my speed goes up to 10.7, 10.9, 11.1 etc.

My last entry was when I hurt my shoulder and I stopped riding, that was July 20th 2009.  My average speed was 14.0 mph.  That of course was doing 23 miles in 1 hour and 38 minutes.  Of course I was probably gone from the house for 2 hours with breaks but I don’t seem to recall.  I also see that I started riding in October 2009, I only got 3 bike rides logged then stopped, my shoulder was still in a lot of pain but I wanted to get exercise.  Then my shoulder got better and I started riding again and had 2 entries in July 2010 for 23 miles each but the next day after my 2nd bike ride my back wheel broke and the log entries end right there.  Of course I wasn’t used to riding anymore so my average speed was only 11.9 and 11.0.

I will add all of those old logs to my Bike page soon.

Today my average speed was 12.5 mph which has gone up from 11.2 since July 6th, 2 weeks ago when I started logging my cycling times again.  I had been riding since early June but couldn’t get my bicycle computer to work since I put the tire on backwards which meant the magnet was on the wrong side.  Oopsie.

I think that I am progressing very well and I’m sure that it won’t be too far off when I’m going 14 mph again, or even 15 mph.  The riding times will get shorter even though I will still be doing the same 23 mile route.  If that becomes the case then I will step it up and continue on to Hart Park.  That will add 10 miles to my route, 5 miles each way.  I have mapped it out:

That start point (A) is my halfway point where I stop riding and rest for a few minutes so this still might be a resting point before I continue on to Hart Park.  Once I get used to the ride then I will probably just continue on until I get to Hart Park and rest there.

Of course I’m probably talking many months before I’m in enough shape to do it but I will eventually do it.  When my average speed gets up to 15 or 16 mph then I will definitely do it.  In fact, I was ready to start doing it just before I had to stop riding because of my shoulder in July 2009.  I made a video and put it on YouTube that showed my bike ride from where I get on the bike path over on Truxton all the way to Manor St. and made a sequel from Manor all the way to China Grade Loop.  I wanted to do a 3rd video from China Grade Loop to Hart Park but… my shoulder and all.  So that never happened.

My goal now is to continue as I am now (training) until I am not in as much pain from the bike ride so that I may ride to Hart Park.  The day that I plan on that is the day I will bring my video camera with me to film it.  I know it’s boring to most people but it is an achievement to me and I’m sure to others.

I can’t wait to see how many calories I will burn from riding 33 miles every day.  The fat will just melt off, I hope lol.

Back On The Road To Being Healthy

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, ExerciseLeave a comment

I made a commitment to start riding my bicycle again regularly as soon as I got my new wheel for my bike last month and I didn’t start riding as regular as I had liked because I was too out of shape from not riding for a few years.  I went out with a friend a total of 3 times in the last month and it just isn’t enough so I have made that commitment again but as a solo act.

When I was riding with the friend I was riding with, I didn’t feel like I was getting anything out of the experience.  First of all, she was riding so slow, which I can’t blame her because she is more out of shape than I am, but it was too slow for me.  I wasn’t even breaking a sweat.  I came home with a dry t-shirt every time.  If I don’t come home with a soaked shirt then I know I didn’t try.

Summer is coming and this week is supposed to be in the mid 90’s which means bike riding is not going to be very pleasant during the day.  If I wake up at 5:30am and leave at 6am then I can get out on the bike trail and hopefully be back by 8 or 8:30am before the city starts to heat up too much.

Last night I set the alarm on my cell phone for 5:30am and I got up just as I wanted to and got ready to go and yes, I did go.  My bicycle computer isn’t registering so I can’t say how many miles I rode or how long or calories burned or anything.  All I can say is I rode my ass off and my thighs are in pain to prove it.

When I came home and took off my camelbak then took off my t-shirt I knew I did a good job because the back of my shirt was completely soaked.  I feel like I was beyond productive and I’m very satisfied with the solo ride.  I don’t think I will be riding with anyone anymore unless they can keep up with me and go my route instead of wanting to take shortcuts.

My new schedule will be 5 days a week from 6am to 8-8:30am.  I can’t make any promises on how much weight I may or may not lose but I can promise that I will do my best.

Hart Park Trip Postponed

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, ExerciseLeave a comment

I was planning on riding my bicycle all the way from China Grade Loop to Hart Park and video tape the trip as part 3 of my BikeCam series.  However, due to my shoulder injury I will have to postpone that trip.  I am very disappointed but I have to do what’s best for my body.

I haven’t been on the bicycle in weeks and it really is upsetting to me because I’m gaining weight, most of the weight I worked so hard to get rid of.  I went through weeks of plateau and frustration just to undo all of that.

I will eventually get back on the bike and I will get right back to my route and some day get all the way to Hart Park.  I just know it.