Week Six Summary

It’s been coming for a while, but this was the first week where I didn’t do any evening workouts. My big change this week was I started actually keeping track of my eating. Counting calories is no fun and I’m sure I’m not really accurate, but I did track everything I ate and used best guesses with the help of the My Fitness Pal app.

My goal was to eat 1600 calories a day and I was able to average that for the whole week. There were some days where I was a little below that but others where I was a little above. The funny thing is, leaving last week out of it, this is pretty much the same way I’ve been eating all along. Previously I just didn’t track it.

Counting calories always confuses me anyway. In My Fitness Pal it gives you your goal calories and that is what I tried to stay close to. But then if you had exercise it it basically gets you to eat more calories. Is that right? I just kept eating the original goal and trying to stay close to that number.

My running wasn’t great this week. I only got in four days of running. I did try a couple of short days where I only ran a couple of kilometers but tried to do it fast. One day isn’t shown in the image below, because my technology wasn’t working great, but I’m pretty sure I kept a sub 5 min/km pace for the two kilometers. Yesterday I was able to get in another 10k run. It’s looking like my 10k pace is going to stick around 6:00 min/km but I’m hoping I can lower that a bit in the next couple weeks.

Results:

Last week: 201lbs
Now: 197lbs
Lost: 4lbs

It feels really good to get below the 200lb mark again and to see the scale actually go down again too. It really confuses me though because really I’m confident I ate about the same as previous weeks but worked out less and now my weight is starting to go down again. It’s all very strange to me, but I’ll take it. I’ve conceded that I won’t hit my goal weight in my desired time frame, but I’m going to keep pushing forward anyway. Two weeks left and 12lbs to hit the goal I wanted. I might come pretty close but 6lbs a week at this point is a lot of weight to lose.

running

Here’s the day that I had the technology issues. Not completely accurate but I still went fast 🙂

a-bit-off

Sweet Sixteen

In just a few more hours it will officially be Alexandria’s sixteenth birthday. My baby girl is growing up so fast it’s crazy. My birthday’s are one thing to make me feel older, but when think that she is now old enough that she can get her license and drive a car it is overwhelming. Where did the years go? They seem so fast and yet so long at the same time.

Today we started the celebration. She had a couple ideas of what she wanted to do for her actual birthday party with her friends. A few years back the movie Hotel Transylvania came out right around her birthday and she and some friends went to see it. As it turns out the sequel  to it just came out and she almost choose that for her party with her friends. Ultimately she decided something else so instead we went as a family to see it today. It was a pretty cute and funny movie. Jen and I laughed as much as anyone else I’d say.

Alexandria you have grown into a beautiful woman and I love you very much. Stop growing up on me already though, I’m not ready to have you getting this old.

Public Speaking

Like many, or most people public speaking is a bit of a phobia of mine. It’s not one that I can’t get over, but certainly not something I enjoy. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had to get up in front of people but that’s going to change soon.

Over the past little bit I’ve had a few offers to talk about WordPress in particular, I’ve never come out and given straight answer on whether I would do it or not. Deep down I want to be able to these sorts of things but it is just so uncomfortable. So I leave the door open but never come right out and jump in.

That’s going to end soon. It’s good to get out your comfort zone and do things that are hard, it will help me grow. The first time coming up will kind of force me into it. At our coming all company get together each of us will do a flash talk. It can be pretty short and about any topic we want so that makes it easier, but it is still in front of a bunch of people most of who I have never met before.

I’m also going to commit to doing a talk at our local Refresh Annapolis Valley meetup that we do once a month. The organizer of the new WordPress meetup in Halifax has helped me work out a good topic for me to talk about at a future event there as well.

Hopefully when I get a few of these under my belt I’ll feel better about doing it more often. Talking about and helping people with WordPress is something I really enjoy doing either one on one or in small groups. If I can do that with even more people it will be even better.

Technology Woes

Most of the time technology and I get along really well. Much of my time is spent working with technology and helping others use it. That’s the way I like it, me being the one to figure something out and help someone else use it. When it goes the other way and technology doesn’t work the way I expect it to, right or wrong, and I can’t figure out how to make it work I get frustrated.

Today I took a break from work to go for a run. My running companions are my iPhone with the Runkeeper app and my Pebble watch. Obviously I can and should run without these things, and just go for the enjoyment. However I love tracking and working to improve my running. Whether it’s to go faster or to go further or both. Being able to do better than I did before is a big motivator for me. Runkeeper does the hard work of tracking everything and while I’m running it displays how long I’ve been running, my average pace, and my distance.

Usually this whole process works perfect, today however and a few times in the past, the information doesn’t show up on my watch. Usually I don’t notice because I start my run and put my phone in my pocket and start out. It’s usually a little bit later when I look at my wrist to see and get my pace where I want it. Today my goal was to try and keep a pace of 5:00 min/km for as long as I could. I felt like I was running blind when I couldn’t easily see and keep track.

After my first km I stopped and tried to get it figured out. There is no reason I can figure out that causes this to not work when it does. Everything is still connected I was receiving email notifications right before I started. A big part of it is likely because I don’t fully understand how the connection works and how things need to be setup. It just usually works and I don’t worry about it. I tried restarting both the watch and the phone, disconnecting bluetooth and setting it back up again.

Finally after trying these things a few times I got it to work and started to go again. This time the problem seemed to be with Runkeeper though. The run it tracked showed further than I really went and as a result my pace was crazy fast. For a while it was showing 2:15 min/km which obviously wasn’t right. I ran another km anyway and then stopped and gave up on the run for today.

If anything though this helps me relate to the people I talk with each day. When one of them is displaying frustration trying to use something I’m glad that I’m able to help them figure things out and get things working for them.

Jen has Started Blogging

Over the years I’ve tried a few times to get Jen to start blogging. Maybe if I had ever kept it up for a solid amount of time myself she would have been more inclined to start. Maybe this time I’ve kept with it long enough that she’s giving it a shot.

She’s still working on it but she has it looking good and has a few posts up. She is using it similar to I am as a type of journal to keep track of the things we do. I tend to throw in some other things every once in a while but if you end up following both our blogs you’ll certainly get some overlap. One of the great things about blogging though is that even writing about the same topic each person is different so you’ll get a different perspective.

So without anymore preamble her site is http://dreamofsummer.com take a look, give a follow.

Pumpkin Planting and Picking

Back in the beginning of June we made, what has become our annual trip to Ross Farm Museum to take part in the Pumpkin planting weekend. It’s a great event where you can go and plant your own pumpkin seed in their fields. They put a large number of stakes in the ground in rows and each person gets a number. This year we were in the high 500’s, so it’s a popular event.

We always enjoy visiting this museum anyway and get an annual family pass so we can visit when ever we want. I’ve written before about the Maple Syrup Weekend they do.

This past weekend was when you could come back to “pick” your pumpkins. It is more like pick up your pumpkins because they do a lot of the clean up and make sure that everyone has a pumpkin, because inevitably I’m sure not everyone’s seeds actually grows, and even if they did each plant produces more than one pumpkin. So they detach all the pumpkins and remove all the plants from the field and make sure each post has a pumpkin waiting for you to come get it.

This year they made it even better than before because the provided wagons and wheel barrows that you can use to carry the pumpkins from back in the field out to your vehicle. I still ended up with the task of making three trips to the car carrying the four pumpkins because of the large group of friends that came the wagon we took only held a few of the pumpkins.

Luckily I only carried one the whole way from the field because most of the people took a horse wagon ride to the field and then back closer to the entrance. Then I just had to carry the other three from there out to the parking lot.

Besides picking up the pumpkins the kids also enjoyed stopping by the cottage where they had baked some molasses cookies to sample. The other highlight was something they don’t get to do every visit, but they were able to milk a cow this  time.

Planting the Pumpkins back in June:

Our trip back to get the pumpkins:

Photo Bloopers

The other day I was trying to take a picture of Jen and Noah after his birthday party. It turned into a bit of a hilarious disaster and I just kept taking pictures as it happened. The two of them were falling all over the place and laughing. Caile was trying to jump in and photo bomb them but you can only catch her leg in one.

It ended with a nice picture though so it was worth it.

animated

Week Five Summary

This week it has become obvious to me that I know nothing about how to lose weight. In my week four summary I was still working out pretty solid and eating pretty good as well and I lost no weight. This week however I gave in many more times on my eating and snacking. Then pretty much gave up on my evening workouts. I think I only did one maybe two this week.

I was scared to get on the scale this morning for my weigh in but as it turns out I was still the same weight. This makes three weeks in a row my weight hasn’t moved but I’ve been doing worse with my eating and working out, so it is very strange to me.

Running however has still been going well. I had five runs in this week for an almost 30km total distance. My 10k run this week was under an hour. Not as fast as my last years Valley Harvest run, but it is getting closer.

Results:

Last week: 201lbs
Now: 201lbs
Lost: 0lbs

Starting this week I’m going to start tracking my eating more. I hate counting calories but I think I need to for at least a bit so I can bet back into the swing of things.

running

Noah’s Birthday Party

Today we had Noah’s birthday party with all his friends. We rented the local community centre which has rooms you can have the part itself in and then access to the gym as well.

The party had a Skylanders theme. The plates, treat bags, some presents, and one of the games all related around Skylanders. The game is one that Jen created and it was a big hit.

The kids all sat in a circle in the middle of the gym and played pass the present. The idea is music gets played and you pass the present around the circle, when the music stops if you’re holding the present you’re out. If you were the last one you get to keep the present. This time there was a twist though. If you were out you came up to the big Punch Out Kaos board and punched out a space and inside was a piece of paper with a task to perform. When you perform your task you received a small prize.

Some of the tasks were easy like sing a nursery rhyme, do 10 jumping jacks, and lead a conga line through the gym. Last night I was helping Jen come up with some more tasks so I added ones like score a soccer goal on Sandy, and hit Sandy with a dodge ball. The kids seems to get a big kick out of them all and I got a bit of exercise in the process.

Happy Birthday Noah

Today is the first of three of my kids birthdays that fall in September. Noah, my youngest, turns six today!

He’ll have his actual birthday party with friends this weekend, but there is only a half day of school today so he’ll also have lots of friends here after school to celebrate and have cake today too.

Cutie little Noah
Gets to eat a special birthday breakfast that I had to go buy at 11:00pm last night. Froot Loops
Noah’s First Birthday
New Born Noah