Changes are Afoot

So. My last post was back on June 14. One week after that, I was laid off from my consulting job, making this twice now that I have been laid off in this current recession (the first was in May, 2006). 6 months have passed, and I have had a grand total of two interviews. In short, this job market sucks ass. Money has been extreeeemly tight, and the associated depression has really sapped my motivation to go to the gym, blog, play poker, pretty much any kind of social interaction. For whatever it's worth, I've made a bit of progress on the weight loss front. At one point I managed to drop down to 269.8 lbs. I've since ballooned back up to 279.4 lbs as of this morning (12/31/09), but I'm still down from the 282 I was at in June.

That being said, I'm tired of being a slug. I'm tired of not going to the gym, I'm tired of not blogging, and I'm tired of being depressed. But because I don't quite feel like I've got enough going on to support two blogs (I am STILL unemployed), I'm going to put What Happened on hiatus and combine its subject material (my fatness) with my original blog, The Randomness of Hoff. Please feel free to follow me over there to witness the transformation of Hoff. Hey, it's a new year, why not a new approach? As things progress, I may come back to What Happened and kick it back into gear. Until such time, point your RSS feeds and Bloglines listings to The Randomness, and enjoy the show.

2009 was Teh Suck. Bring on 2010!

The one in which we bid 2008 a resounding Meh

Readers? Anybody out there? Bueller? Anybody? Man, 2008 turned out to be teh suck. I looked over my post from 1/1/08 to see what horrifically unobtainable crap I actually considered attempting. 2 pounds per week, under 240 by summer, get more organized, blog more, play more poker, yadda yadda yadda. Yeah, pretty much none of that was realized. There were a variety of factors in my trip on the Fail Boat, but they mainly come down to the overall fact that I'm lazy and self-indulgent. Shocking, I know, especially to those who know me, but I tend to have fun first and then cram to get whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing actually completed. Paying bills, housework, gym, whatever, I was just the master of the douchebaggery.

There were other things bad in 2008. Lots of personal stuff with DAPGF (not between us, just her own personal issues), the ending of my Santa Ana work assignment (that wasn't conducive to blogging and poker, but was great for exercise), and the commencement of an assignment in Riverside County that forced me to drive my gas pig Jeep 140 miles round trip 3 to 4 times per week. I got reimbursed for mileage, and despite the horrific gas prices (at the peak, $4.79/gal for 87 octane...it cost me around $90 per tank) I actually came out ahead on that aspect of things. Mileage cap on my lease was another story, though, and I wound up buying a piece of crap commuter box that ate up way too much money to minimize the impact on the Jeep. The absolutely worst thing about 2008, though was very personal. Ginger, the nicest Doberman on the face of the earth and all around best doggie anywhere, lost her battle with cancer just before Thanksgiving.
She's up in heaven, chasing the bunnies and such, but DAPGF and I hadn't really realized just how much our lives were structured around her until she wasn't there. I had no reason to bundle up and go for an hour long walk at 11 pm, and there was no stubby wagging tail greeting us when we'd come home. Very sad, and had the additional effect of eliminating an opportunity to exercise. We looked into getting a 7 month old puppy from a breeder, but it had behavioral issues that would likely require a several month stay at a Cesar Milan Dog Whisperer boot camp, so that was a no go. We are now waiting for a litter to be born in March, so we can get one in June, after the shots and such are all taken care of. So for the interim, no doggie.

But I'm not giving up, dammit! I'm going to fight my way out of this morass that was 2008, and I'm going to have a multi-pronged approach. Some of these mirror what was proffered a year ago, but the loss of Ginger has kind of given me an energy and opportunity to kick my ass in gear.

1. Exercise. Since I no longer have to wake up to walk and feed the dog, I've got a solid half-hour or so of free time. I'm going to go for a run in the morning...approximately a mile or so, depending on how I'm handling it. I used to do this when I lived in Orange County (pre-DAPGF), and I was a good 30 to 40 pounds lighter back then. I'm also going to get back into the gym rhythm. When DAPGF teaches, my first shot after work is to the gym. After that, then I'll go home and relax (or go to the store, Home Depot, whatever). I will also get back into the habit of logging my exercise onto MyFitnessPal.com.

2. Diet. Now that I'm back to a driving assignment, it is way too easy to swing past a drive-thru or a 7-11 for some munchies. I'm going to get back into counting up my calories for the day and logging everything I eat into MyFitnessPal.com. I need to have some accountability, and publishing my heinousness in a daily web format should accomplish that. Plus, the tracking tools for calories consumed, calories burned, weight gain/loss, etc. are very comprehensive.

3. Weight loss. As I age and my metabolism slows down that much more (groan, sigh), I need to be a little more realistic. Based on my exercise and diet goals, I'm setting a weight-loss goal of 1.5 lbs per week, measured Friday to Friday. Why then? A couple of reasons. First, the weekends are always a little screwy from a timing perspective, and I think I can be more consistent on a Friday morning. DAPGF is scheduled to teach Thursday nights, so that will help me out on the day before the weigh-in. Sometimes the weekends include much more rich and filling dining experiences. And January 2 is on Friday. Why not January 1 as a start? DAPGF and I are attending the New Year's Day champagne brunch at the Hotel Del Coronado, which is expected to be non-diet-friendly. Ultimately, I'd like to hit 240 pounds, which is approximately 45 pounds lighter than my current weight today. At an average of 1.5 lbs per week, that puts me in the middle of July. Sooner would be better, but I think 1.5 lbs is attainable so that's what I'm going to run with.

4. Personal responsibility. This is a generalized category that covers a multitude of personal characteristics. Set aside time to pay bills. Set aside time to clean out and purge my financial files. Likewise magazines. Make sure that any needs/chores from DAPGF get prioritized ahead of my playtime. Granted, I'm not going to eliminate my fun times. In fact, I'm resolving to actually blog more than I did in 2008 (shouldn't be too difficult), as well as play poker more consistently (both quantity and quality). I'm just trying to make sure that I've got my priorities properly ordered.

So there we go. 2008 can GTFO, as far as I'm concerned. Bring on 2009. So what if it means my 20 year high school reunion? I know I'm getting old, dammit! Now get off my lawn!

Slowly, we continue the march...

Greetings, my peeps. I hope it isn't too hot where you are...it's somewhat thermal here in SoCal right now, but they are saying the temp is going to drop 10 to 12 degrees tomorrow, which means it will be in the high 70s instead of high 80s/low 90s. Every little bit helps, I suppose, which brings me to the topic at hand: my weight loss.

The progress has been slower than originally anticipated, but dammit, it's still progress! I continued my adherence to the "one little day" concept last week. Last Sunday (5/11), my weigh-in was 281.0 lbs, which led to my weekly loss goal for 5/18 of 279.5 lbs. Lately, Mondays have been good alternate gym days, because DAPGF has been out with friends on those evenings. I get to go to the gym, and eat a Lean Cuisine or two at home instead of going to some restaurant experience that will top 900 calories. Last week wasn't one of those days. Actually, the week wasn't that good for the exercise front in general. The only real exercise I got was my power walk on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday back to the train...the other days of the week, not so much. My daily weigh-in's reflect that pattern, with the weight that goes on from Sunday brunch (the weigh-in is obviously before eating) thru Monday dinner causing an inevitable 2 to 3 pound gain from Sunday to Monday (a weigh-in time that is 3 hours earlier doesn't help), slowly going off as I do my train walks on Thursday and Friday, followed (usually) by a trip to the gym Saturday and Sunday mornings. Same basic thing happened this week, which led to a 5/18 weigh-in of 280.2 lbs. Again, short of the goal by .7 lbs, but it still signifies a loss of .8 lbs for the week. I may not be achieving the individual goals that I set out to achieve, but I am still having positive results on the overall goal of losing weight. Since my recent rededication (my birthday), I'm down 5.2 lbs. Heck, since I started this blog, I dropped almost 11 pounds, gained more than 20 back, but I'm back to a net loss of 3.2 lbs, and actually making steady progress in the correct direction consistently for the first time in a while. And that, my friends, I will take.

Next Sunday (5/25), the goal is 278.7 lbs. See you there.

Happy Freaking Birthday!

To give an indicator as to how screwy my life has become, my birthday was actually last Saturday. Sigh. That is probably one of the things that I miss most about no longer working in real estate development and now working as a consultant...hourly billing. As a consultant, I have to track my time in 15 minute increments and for a solid majority of the time have a project to bill my time against. I haven't figured out which billing code I can put "blogging" into and get away with it. I am working on it, so when I figure it out I will let you know. Back in the formerly superheated San Diego real estate market, a lot of my time was wasted in the "hurry up and wait" game. I had plenty of work to do, but much of what I did was dependent on work that my consultants (architects, structural engineers, landscape architects, etc.) would prepare. It left me plenty of time to blog (see the 2005-2006 archives for What Happened and The Randomness). Now, not so much. But enough of that.

I am now 37. I. am. getting. old. As my sweet little sister so kindly pointed out, no matter how old I get, I'll always be older than her. Pbtpbtbpt! With said increase in age comes a corresponding decrease in my metabolic rate. Combine that with DAPGF not teaching as often, and Hoff has fewer opportunities for a workout at the gym (yeah, I'm really getting my $32/month out of the deal...not!!). And to top that off, one of the nights that would theoretically be a gym opportunity is one of the days that I work late in Santa Ana...a day that if I'm lucky I get home by 7. The last thing I want to do at that point is change clothes and head to the gym. One minor thing that is helping a bit, is that DAPGF is also getting older, and she claims (not that I can see it) that she's gaining weight. So I've convinced her to start walking after we have dinner (which is another issue entirely). So we do a half-hour stroll through some random San Diego neighborhood after dinner, to try and minimize the inevitable damage from dinner. Ah, yes, dinner. When DAPGF taught several nights per week, those were nights that I could hit the gym after work, and then come home to a simple Lean Cuisine meal (or two...some of those things are pretty damn small), and play some poker. Now, 3 or 4 nights during the week we go out to various restaurants (cheap ones...can't afford to do it up richly every night) where she tries to get us ordering healthy foods, but she's at least as much of a carbaholic as I am. Breads, tortillas, french fries, pasta, rice, bring 'em on. I'm trying to keep a lid on that behavior, but I love 'em too. Meh.

Which brings me to the moral of the story: a birthday is a perfect time to set some new goals. To set the stage, I decided that my birthday would be a blowout of sorts. Friday night was a poker night with a bunch of friends ($20 buy-in, by the end of the evening I'd pretty much tripled my money), so that was a beer laden evening. Saturday started off at me and DAPGF's favorite tapas buffet, Azul La Jolla. I really tried to maintain some semblance of portion control, but if you saw the spread they laid out, you'd understand. The day was gorgeous, so we walked around La Jolla for a bit, and then dinner. Steak at Lou & Mickey's in the Gaslamp District. The meat is so flavorful there, it's almost painful. And their scalloped potatoes (more carbs) are a cheese-laden delight. And it was topped off with a piece of layered chocolate cake so moist and rich that you'd think it wasn't cooked all the way through. Oh so freaking good. So Sunday morning, I weighed myself before hitting the gym. 285.4 lbs. Yikes! But there's my starting point. 285.4 lbs. I want to get down to 240 lbs by Thanksgiving (just in time to put it all back on!). That's 45.4 lbs to lose over the next 7 months. Approximately 6.3 lbs per month, or just about 1.5 lbs per week. I think I can make that work, so dammit, I'm going to do it! Admittedly, I'm not off to a great start. No gym on Monday, and I drove to Santa Ana today so no walk back to the train depot, but I've got plenty of week left to get through. My goal for next Sunday morning will be 283.9 lbs. Fat and stupid is no way to go through life. Not sure what I can do about the stupid, but maybe I can at least work on the fat. Wish me luck, peeps!

Mowtivayshun - I can has pleez?

With apologies to the lolfans out there, March equals motivation. I have decided that I am motivated to actually accomplish a few things.

1. Stay caught up on emails. This is more difficult than one might think. 3 days per week, I work in Santa Ana in an office where I am blocked from accessing hotmail, yahoo mail, and Gmail. Between those three services, I have 10 or so email addys, 3 of which require regular attention. Before I leave in the mornings and before I crash out at night (DAPGF is asleep by this point), I'm going to make an effort to catch up on things.

2. Blogging. I am not only going to post more regularly at all of my blogs, but I'm also going to do a better job of keeping my Bloglines feed under control. Currently, I've got 582 unread posts. That is unacceptable. On nights DAPGF teaches, I will take an hour or so to run thru my Bloglines feeds, and maybe do a post or two. Some of this I can do at work, and will try to make circumspect use of that time.

3. Get back on the diet. Just to confirm how serious I am about this, I weighed myself at just after midnight, on the morning of March 1. 285.4 lbs. My goal is to lose at least 10 pounds over the course of March. The diet was the first "motivation" element I thought of, and I thought of it for one main reason. I turn 37 years old in April (when in the hell did I get old?). I really don't want my weight increasing with the years of my age, so I'm getting back on track. More consistent workouts, and more willpower when it comes to my food intake. Earlier in the week I succumbed to the siren call of a Chinese buffet. It was hawesome, but bad all at the same time. No more. No more vending machines, none of that. No more purchasing snacks to keep at the office. Nothing.

So there's my motivational goals. Wish me luck.

Busy busy busy

Weird observation of the day. Jello Pudding Pops. I love's me some pudding, and I loves me some ice cream. Combine the two, and Hoff is a happy camper. Conveniently, Jello Pudding Pops only have 80 cal each, so it's a frozen, yummy, not too evil treat. I recently purchased a box that contained Vanilla, Chocolate, and Swirl. I must say, the flavors were really accurate pudding flavors, particularly the vanilla (you can definitely tell the difference between vanilla ice cream and vanilla pudding, much more so than the difference between chocolate pudding and chocolate ice cream). But the weird observation is this: after 3 days in the freezer, they've all assumed the same temperature. The chocolate ones were nicely frozen, as you would expect. The swirl ones seemed softer, and the vanilla ones were very soft. I had no idea that different pudding flavors had different freeze characteristics. Sounds like something NASA or the Department of Homeland Security should be studying. Anyway...

This work schedule of mine makes it really difficult to keep up on my blogging. Tuesdays are the days that I have my weekly goals scheduled for, and in the past I would usually post on those days to give an update to my status. Unfortunately, Tuesdays have me jumping on a train first thing in the morning and going up to Santa Ana. And the office there is laden with IT nazis who don't want me to be able to do anything fun. I cannot access Blogger, hell, I can't even access Yahoo Mail or Gmail! So suffice to say, blogging doesn't happen up there. So now I'm going to provide a much needed and deserved update.

When last we blogged on January 8, we were at 282.2 lbs, aiming for 280.2 lbs. Well, we didn't exactly make it. I was making a little bit of progress through the week, but a Chinese buffet got in my way on Monday, and instead of 280.2 lbs on 1/15, I hit 283.6 lbs! Oops! So this past week was going to be a solid effort. Careful on food, working out whenever possible. Friday's weigh-in on 1/18 was actually down to 280.0, but I was afraid that the weekend would nuke me, as it usually does. I did gain a bit over the weekend, but just small amounts. 280.2 lbs. 280.6 lbs, and then the weigh in on Tuesday 1/22: 280.8 lbs. Yes I'd come back up from the low point, but I was nearly a full pound below my goal of 281.6 lbs, so I'm proud of myself. And to top it off, this morning's weigh-in was all the way down to 279.6!!! Below 280 for the first time in quite a while!!! Woo hoo!!! All this walking up several flights of stairs for the train, plus the 3x per week brisk 1.6 mile walk from the Santa Ana office to the train depot seems to be paying off. Yay me!! Wish me luck in keeping it going.

Happy Freaking New Year!!

Happy New Year all you freaks and such. Hope you had a fun and safe New Year's Eve, and that you are now ready for some heavy duty resolutions and weight loss efforts. Personally, I had a great NYE. Me and DAPGF went to an 80s party in a converted church. GF commented on how interesting people's different takes on the 80s were, especially those who missed them the first time. Me, I was there in all my headbanging glory. There were those dressed as hair metalers, or wearing concert Ts (some even appeared to have gone to the shows...damn my fatness that made all of those t-shirts unwearable). There were the New Wavers, with their Depeche Mode or Cure wigs and makeup on, Boy George was there, as were several Madonnas and Flavor Flav (pre Flavor of Love, natch). A couple of Molly Ringwalds (no Long Duk Dong, sadly) and one Marty McFly. Good times. On to bidness.

NYE morning, my weigh-in was 284.6, a decidedly bad weight, a good 7 pounds higher than my lowest point of 2007, but at least 6 pounds down from my highest point of 2007. January 1, 2008. Weigh in at 284.0 lbs. There is a small qualifier here, in that this weigh-in happened much later in the morning than normal, and as such likely would've been higher had I weighed myself early as is my normal practice. Still, it was my first weigh-in of 2008, so that's where I start. I'm also going to take advantage of the calendar and see if I can address a recurring problem from last year. I usually did alright during the week and fell apart on Sunday, erasing much if not all of my progress from the week. So given that January 1 is on a Tuesday, my weekly goals are now going to be from Tuesday to Tuesday. It just seems logical. Besides, DAPGF's teaching schedule is all screwed up, so I'm not sure how often I'm going to get to hit the gym during the week, so I may as well make it Tuesday to Tuesday and just run with it.

To formalize all of this, I'm sticking with the goal of 2 pounds loss per week, and I'm going to try and get back into tracking things regularly on My Fitness Pal. My work schedule makes it very difficult to get any kind of meaningful time on the internet, so it should present a whole new batch of challenges. In any respect, I don't see myself getting below 200 lbs, or at least in a healthy fashion, so my resolution is to lose enough weight to get below 240 lbs. I'm sitting at 284 lbs, so 44 pounds. Assuming I make my goals each week (nobody's THAT optimistic), by summer I should be ready to hit the beach. I'm going to try like hell to hit that, and in that regard, my current work assignments may actually help. Because of my limited time in my assignment in Santa Ana, I expect to take the train from San Diego to Santa Ana, work from 9:15 to 2:15 each day without taking a lunch (there's the key), at most eating a small snack from the lounge. If I can hold to that, that should cut out 200-500 calories per day.

Related to the assignment is my resolution to be more organized in my entire life. Tall order I know, but so many of my shortfallings, both professional and personal, can be traced to this one aspect of yours truly. I plan to hit this in several different ways, some of which I've already started. Blogging. Because of my limited internet time during the work day combined with my uncertain amount of free time in the evenings (depending on DAPGF's teaching schedule), finding time to both post and read other blogs is difficult at best. The first step I've taken is to setup a Bloglines reader. Most of the bloggers I know from the poker blogging world use them, and it's high time I do likewise. The great thing is that I can see at a glance who has new posts and how many. Reading them is little more than clicking on a link in the reader. No redirect, no having to "back page" or anything like that. I also plan to set aside periods of time at least twice per week (depending on DAPGF's schedule) to post on my blogs. I'm trying to use the Google empire more and more to keep things in my life accessible and organized. Google calendar is pretty slick and the email reminders are priceless. Google docs allows me to post something to an internet folder that I can access from anywhere. Having access to excel sheets that I use for budgeting or tracking my timesheets from home, my office, or my client's office is a real help. Right now the other key thing I'm trying to organize is my bill paying process. It used to be that I simply kept everything in my briefcase and paid them during a slow period at work. I've managed to get most of them able to be paid online, and a few are automatic debit. Still, I need to remember to pay the online ones, and there are a few that I actually have to mail a payment in for. My plan for this is to pay the mail ones while on the train. Dead time with no internet access, it should be a good way to work. The electronic ones I've been setting Google Calendar reminders, and hopefully I'll be better about minding those than I have been through November and December. I am also working hard at organizing my desk/computer area to make it easier to actually do some of these activities here at Casa de Hoff. Finally, every night before I crash out I'm going to take a half hour and log in my daily activities. Meals, exercise, and calories will go onto My Fitness Pal at that time, and any spending I've done will go onto my budget and expense worksheets. So I've got exercise, finance, and blogging planned out. Whether I can stick with them is anybody's guess, but I'm for damn sure going to try. Wish me luck, peeps, and good luck to all of you.