Reading, Setting an Example

Reading is important to me. It’s something we’ve tried to instill in our children from early on. We’ve always read to our kids since they were very little. Before they could even fully comprehend what was happening. Jen still reads all the time to the young kids she cares for.

One thing I’m bad for though is not setting the example. For a long time my kids would never have seen me sitting down to read for myself. Lots of the reading I did was either in my office, on the computer, or when they were in bed. Reading more has been a goal of mine for some time now, but haven’t done a great job at working at it. In the past couple of years though I have read more books than I had in years, but that’s still not a big number.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Fatherhood and Parenting in general but I’ll write more about that soon. Yesterday morning though I had just a small simple experience that helped remind me the effect we can have as parents on our children. Caile and I were home along for a bit of time. We were all ready, chores done and she was playing on her iPod in the living room. After making myself a coffee I came and joined her on the couch with my book I’ve been reading.

We talked a little bit, but for the most part we were each involved with our own task, or so I thought. Not long after I sat down with my book Caile got up and put her iPod away. She went to the kitchen and then came back with her book she’s been reading and we sat and read together until it was time for us to go meet everyone else.

On our drive I took the opportunity to talk about reading in general, it’s importance / benefits, and about the book she was reading. This wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t seen me showing by example that reading was enjoyable and something worth me using my time to do.

Week Four Summary

This has been a rough week. Typically I check in on the scales to see how I’m doing throughout the week to make sure I’m on the right track. This week when I checked in I was actually up a considerable amount. This had me feeling very down and unmotivated.

Up until that point in the week I was still doing great with my eating and exercise and yet somehow the scale had me up over 3lbs from what I weighed in at last week. I let this get the better of me. I let me eating slip a bit. Not much but I did give in and have a few treats that normally I would have stayed away from. I also skipped two of my evening workouts as my desire and drive were way down, and especially at night all I wanted to do was lie on the couch.

Luckily I was able to keep going with my running and even had a great win yesterday and was able to go the full 10k I wanted to. When I was back from that run the scale actually showed me at 200lbs which would have been down 1lb on the week. That is far from what I was looking for but still better than where I was mid week. To bad my weigh in day wasn’t yesterday morning because today I was at the same spot I was last week.

Results:

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

It’s obviously better than going up but still makes me feel really crappy. Starting at 216lbs and being four weeks in I’m now officially behind on my goal of 3.8lbs per week. Realistically I know I need to look at the big picture and the fact that since mid July I’m down 25lbs and 15lbs in the last four weeks, but it’s hard especially when I can’t point to something that I know I did wrong the beginning of this week.

run

Needed a Win

I’ve been struggling this week and today I just needed a win. About a month ago I set a goal on Runkeeper to be able to run 10k again by October 1st. That would give me almost two weeks to better my time. Today was my planned day to go for a long run and I picked my route hoping I could make it 10k. The route had a bail point at about 7k where I could stop or take another route and make it shorter or continue on for the 10k.

There are a couple hills on this route with one major one that is quite long and steep. This is a route I used last year when I was getting ready for the Valley Harvest 10k and the hill was always painful. The first number of times I ended up walking it or at least parts of it. Not today though!

The hill was certainly the slowest part of my run but I did it without stopping and was able to do the full 10k. In fact I was feeling so good at the last bit that I really pushed it for the last 1.5k and had by far my fastest times then.

I’m very happy with this and hoping it was the win I needed to get me back focused on my goals. Now that I know I can do 10k again I have almost a month to work on my pace.

10k-run-goal

Street Fighter II Turbo

I’ve never been much of a gamer. Nintendo has always been my console for their easy games like Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart, and one of my favourites Street Fighter II Turbo.

We’ve had a Nintendo Wii for a while and it seems to go in and out of favour with the kids. They’ll play it for a while and then it will sit and not do anything for a long time. Every once in a while I’ll sit down and play some of my favourites. I still really like some of the old versions like Super Mario Bros. 3. I like to put that on and rip through it and beat Bowser.

Recently though I heard reference to Street Fighter and I wanted to play. So I got a copy on the Wii but realized I needed the classic controllers to play it. Thanks to Amazon I had a set ordered pretty quickly. When they arrived I showed Noah and he liked the game too.

It wasn’t until tonight though that I took some time to sit down and really play it. Things started to come back to me and the after a bit and a lot of continues I ended up beating M. Bison in the end. I did it all with Ken as he was one of my go to characters back in the day. The next time I’ll play with someone else and try to learn their moves all over again too.

It’s fun to shut off the mind every once in a while and go back to those early days sitting around with friends where we would have tournaments in our living rooms.

Photo 2015-09-11, 6 35 39 PM

Midweek Check in and I’m Feeling Down

I’ve been feeling really good about my eating this week the same as last week, and I moved to a new week in my workout program that has been kicking my butt. Running has been going just about the same as always. I’m working at getting faster and getting a good number of runs in. So when I hopped on the scale this morning for a midweek check in I was depressed. So far I’ve actually gone up in weight this week.

I’m hoping this was just an off morning and I’m going to keep pushing the same as I have been, but it was pretty demoralizing seeing me go the wrong direction.

Luckily I’ve made pretty good progress the previous weeks so I was on good track to meet my goal, but I don’t know if I can still meet it if I actually go backwards.

Today was going to be a break day from running, but after seeing that I think I better get out there and kick my own butt some more.

Chocolates, Oh My!

A few nights back I happened upon a Twitter party going on for the upcoming BlogJam conference that is coming up. I interacted a bit because I’m genuinely excited about attending. At the end I saw a tweet from them saying I had won a prize. I didn’t even realize there were prizes to be won!

Turns out the prize was a gift box of chocolates from Rousseau Chocolatier in Halifax. Not the best gift for someone who is working hard at watching what they eat to lose weight, but oh my I was excited anyway.

rousseau

The other night at the Refresh Annapolis Valley get together I was delivered the prize. I figured I would be strong and bring them home to Jen. I gave in yesterday afternoon and opened it up and ate one. Now I’m going to be battling myself not to eat the rest of the box because it tasted as delicious as they look.

Photo 2015-09-09, 3 02 27 PM

A big thanks to both BlogJam and Rousseau Chocolatier for this awesome treat!

Labour Day Long Weekend

This past weekend was Labour Day weekend. In past years it was always our last little get away for the summer. This year though the kids started school a couple days before and we had a few getaways this summer already so we didn’t take off. We did have lots of fun though. It was also a little sad though too because it was my sister and brother in laws last days here with us before flying home yesterday.

Saturday we did a trip around the lower part of the province.

trip

Sunday we went to the shore to celebrate my brother in laws birthday with a bunch of people. We cooked wieners on the beach and had some s’mores and other treats. It was a nice relaxing day on the beach.

Monday Caile and Ella were in a parade for their dance company. They danced their way through the whole parade even though it was a really hot day. They’re not scared of some hard work. Once the parade was done we headed out to a lake with everyone to cool off and spend some last time with our visiting family.

Getting Out and Being Social

This is something I struggle with. Working from home I am always interacting with co-workers and other people, but it is all online. As a family we go and do lots with other families and this is wonderful. Our group of friends are a great group and I always have a lot of fun with them and talking to them. Having these in person relationships and conversations are essential for me to stay a sane person.

Tonight I went out to a meeting with a group I haven’t been to in way to long, Refresh Annapolis Valley. There were three presenters tonight and they were all unique. Renée Downs is one of the organizers of the upcoming conference BlogJam in Halifax. She spoke about being a reluctant blogger and her story how she got started. Cheri Killam spoke about her year long project she’s undertaken called 5 Down. I’ve been following along and it’s an extremely interesting project, I encourage you call to take a look. The last speaker was Laura Churchill-Duke talking about her site and blog Valley Family Fun.

Equally beneficial to hearing the speakers is just the social interaction with other people. There were new people who I met for the first time and there were friends who I hadn’t seen or talked to for some time. Just tonight I’ve been invited to speak at a future Refresh event about WordPress. Tonight I also got talking with a professor who asked me to come be a guest lecture about WordPress to one of her business classes.

After getting a little taste I’m now even more looking forward to going to BlogJam and hearing and talking to more Bloggers in real life and to the upcoming first meeting for the Halifax WordPress Meetup.

Welcome Back Old Friends

It’s almost the end of summer, but today I welcome back some old friends. They had been packed away in a tote under my bed for a while now.

After my successful weigh in yesterday I decided to see if they were ready to come back. Today I’m wearing a pair of size 34 shorts again!

Still have a good ways to go just to get back to where I was last year, but I’m getting stronger, lighter, and faster, every day. 

Week Three Summary

This week I maid much closer attention to how much food I was eating. Even though I’ve been eating and snacking on pretty good and healthy food I’m pretty sure I was still eating to much of it. Meals were OK but I was eating a lot of fruit especially in between meals as snacks. As a result I’ve been much happier with my results this week.

Due to some scheduling things, just generally being sore, and not feeling overly well this week I only put in four runs. Even though they were only four I was still pretty happy with my progress. The two 5k’s this week were at a pace I was happy with, and I put in two longer runs this week working my way towards my 10k goal. I did a 6k earlier in the week and a 7k this morning. Evenings worked out better and I was able to get my six workouts in this week. 

Now for the results:

Last week: 206lbs
Now: 201lbs
Lost: 5lbs

Now that’s more like it. A total of 15lbs lost since I started documenting this for formally. Puts me back on a good track to be at my end goal after 8 weeks.

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