January 28th, 2010 Workout – Snowboarding
Went snowboarding after work with my little brother for a few hours. Conditions were not good and it was pretty much solid packed snow/ice with a thin layer of powder on top.
I had set out wanting to try more freestyle stuff in the park, but the conditions completely sapped the confidence out of me. Ended up only trying airs off some rollers and even then I could tell that I just wasn’t feeling sure of myself.
It’s a weird feeling, because I know I can handle myself in those conditions when riding without a doubt, but when it comes to trying something new, that feeling of doubt creeps in and if I let it, it will take over. I won’t let that feeling take over again this weekend – going to go to blue and I’m going to chuck myself off whatever I can find… when I fall I’ll get up and try it again until I stop falling. I fell a bunch of times last night and other than a little soreness, I’m still alive.
January 27th, 2010 Workout – HIIT
I didn’t get home in time to get to Muay Thai yesterday – blargh. I am going on Monday come hell or high water. Anyway – I got home and did 20 minutes of HIIT on the recumbent bike which is always tough, then did a few sets of push ups.
Going snowboarding tonight… going to work on my fear of hopping onto park features. I’m not bringing the camera, because I fully expect to be bailing hard onto rails and boxes.
100 Things I Will Do in 2010
I like to do stuff. I dislike not doing stuff. So to keep me doing stuff, I came up with a list of things I will do before the end of 2010. Why make a list of things you aren’t going to do when you could do the opposite?
I did something similar a couple of years ago and it worked out really well and I ended up finishing most of the list. This time I made a list of 100 things. Some of them are pretty mundane and simple and some are a little more involved. Some of the things can be done in a moment or a day and some will take the entire year. Nothing really major – these are all things that I believe I will accomplish before the end of this year.
I’ll keep this updated at the end of each month! Time to get cracking!
2010 List
- Create a new set of 1 year and 5 year goals
- Get a new tattoo – my planned reward for when I get down to 200 pounds
- Get my advanced-green ranking in Muay Thai
- Go skydiving
- Explore an abandoned building
- Climb the CN Tower in under 30 minutes
- Snowboard at Whistler
- Stomp a FS 180 off a kicker
- Do a proper FS/BS boardslide
- Spend a weekend camping with my dog
- Beat last years record of 30 snow days
- Get down under 200 pounds
- Take my Mom to the Art Gallery
- Get rid of clutter from my room
- Ride 50 km on my bike in one go
- Build 5 Halloween props
- Build a fake disemboweled torso out of latex/foam
- Take my Dad to a football game
- Learn to rollerblade
- Make 95% of the food I eat from scratch
- Get 5 new freelance clients
- Do a 48 hour weekend fast
- Learn 5 magic tricks
- Go to the Science Centre
- Go to the ROM
- Deadlift 315 pounds
- Squat 225 pounds
- Read 25 books
- Spend a weekend snowboarding with my little brothers
- Grow a herb garden
- Climb a tree
- Ride the entire single-track trail at Albion Hills
- Ride the entire single-track trail at Glen Eden
- Walk in the rain
- Become proficient at AJAX
- Do a 22 km run
- Launch the zombiepedia website
- Go to the carnival
- Bake a cake
- Volunteer my time for a good cause
- Try being vegetarian again for 21 days
- Try being vegan for 21 days
- Get a raise
- Revise and stick to a new budget
- Have a 100% TV-free month
- Build a Facebook application
- Take a night class
- Paint a giant painting
- Go to the shooting range
- Learn 5 new effects in After Effects
- Teach the dog to not be scared of the nail clipper
- Make a new snowboarding video
- Create 10 website layouts
- Build my portfolio website
- Try indoor rock-climbing
- Learn to Salsa
- Donate blood
- Make a gift for someone by hand
- Visit a Renaissance fair
- Snowboard in the summer
- Be part of a zombie movie
- Start a new business venture
- Talk to 50 strangers… stranger danger!
- Learn to make a Paella
- Decorate a Munny!
- Go on a random and pointless roadtrip
- Write a children’s book
- Become a triathlete
- Try wakeboarding
- Train with a champion
- Zombie around with my ghouly friends!
- Sculpt something out of clay
- Give a speech
- Re-pierce my labret
- Eat chicken wings in Buffalo
- Spend an entire day at the beach
- Go on a brewery tour
- Ride through the glades
- Surprise someone
- Work at a haunt
- Do 10 pull ups
- Do 100 push ups
- Go to a big music festival
- Learn Yoga
- Watch the clouds drift by
- Watch a sunrise
- Go kayaking
- Watch a sunset
- Hike part of the Bruce trail
- Do a handstand pushup
- Eat a tasting menu
- Eat 5 things I’ve never tried before
- Ride on a powder day
- Build a haunted gingerbread house
- Explore a cave
- Make a Turducken!
- Finish 3 major projects at work
- Reformat my laptop
- Backup all my important files
- Eat at a White Castle
January 27, 2010 Weigh-In
Closing in on 50 pounds lost… and averaging about 5 a month which is a good rate. It could be faster, but it’s going in the right direction and I have patience. I’m going back to Muay Thai tonight, which will help out immensely in that area anyway and I’ve missed it… a lot. No more making excuses to justify a break from going – I am always going to go. I want to get my advanced green rank and get back to kicking ass!
Taken on January 27th, 2010
Weight: 243.4 (-46.6 lbs)
Bodyfat %: 30.9 % (-5%)
Hydration %:48.1 % (+4.1%)
January 23rd Workout – Snowboarding
Did some nightboarding at Blue Mountain with my brother and a couple of friends. I had an awesome night! Last night was pretty much everything that I love about snowboarding. Driving off and leaving your worries behind, getting out on the hills with your friends and having an amazing night of fun goofing around and experimenting and having a blast together. I’ve really found something that I truly love doing and I’ll snowboard for the rest of my life, no doubt!
I’m feeling really confident in my edge control and at controlling myself at high speeds. Before I wrote about how I was feeling sketchy doing little hops or getting air at all, so this time out I made myself do little jumps all over the place… on flats, off of little piles, off a kicker and off rollers. It turns out my balance is way better than I thought as I never actually fell trying these although I came close a few times. So I’m actually a little more comfortable at this than I thought, which means that next time out I have to push it further and try some bigger transitions and jumps on more varied surfaces.
It always feels great whenever I have a jump in progression, but more importantly, it was fun! I’m looking forward to the next trip out… hoping that conditions at Glen Eden won’t be too bad this week so I can get over after work and try some stuff in the park. But I’m really looking forward to February. I’ve got 2 blocks of time off and between time off, vacation and holidays, I’m only working 10 days the whole month and snowboarding pretty much every other day… nice birthday present :D
January 21st Workout – Carpetboarding!
I completely re-arranged my home office room and now I have a much larger space to workout in. Enough space to practice snowboarding in even!
I strapped on my park board and practiced a bunch of different stuff including:
- nollies/ollies
- nose/tail presses
- FS/BS 180s
I haven’t been feeling too comfortable doing the nollies/ollies and 180s at the hill, but after doing some practice and getting the motions down it will be a smaller transition than if I were to just do them right at the hill. I’m headed up to blue mountain tomorrow night and I am going to jump and fall all over the place!
January 16th-18th Workouts – Snowboarding/Misc
Playing a little bit of catch-up here. I spent the weekend up north snowboarding with my brothers and some friends and got in 2 good days of riding. For some reason this year I’ve been feeling really sketchy about getting air on my board. I’m not sure why, but the feeling was keeping me from really progressing in that aspect. I spent some time in the terrain park and went over the jumps a bunch of times and by the end I was getting used to that feeling again. I’m going to keep at it now and practice getting air all over the place off little rollers and transitions whenever I can to really work on my control.
Monday I got home and pretty much went right back to work. I didn’t have time to set aside for a full workout, so I took little breaks and did a bunch of push ups or pull ups. I picked up a set of push up stands a while ago and love them – definitely feel like I have to work a lot harder when using them.
I’ve got a project meeting tonight and after that I’m going to get started on re-arranging my office. I think I can make way better use of the space and free up some more work-out room in there.
It’s a lot easier to do something you already know you can do
I’ve been re-reading all my old posts on amanreborn.com in search of some motivation. I started at the beginning and I’m up to about January 2008 now. Ironically as far as the numbers go, I’m pretty much right at the same spot now that I was 2 years ago. From January 08 to August 08 I went from around 245 to 210 and from around September 08 to November 09 I crept back up to around 255. I’m now at 245 and knowing that I had made to 210 by the end of summer before is a massive motivation for me now to keep on track and to just get it done because I already know how my body will react and that it is possible.
I’ve really enjoyed reading through the old posts and it’s made me realize that progress and growth is not something that can just be tracked through numbers alone. Everything has changed so much over the last 2 years. I just read the entries from my first 3 times snowboarding in December of 2007 and I can remember each of those days vividly. I fell so many times I was bruised and I was sore and in pain for days each time. I remember sitting at the bunny hill at Glen Eden and looking fearfully across at the main hill and thinking how massive it was. Snowboarding was something so new to me and progress came very slow but I had fallen in love with it and it’s now one of my biggest passions in life.
Now it’s 2 years later – I’ve been out snowboarding 50+ times since those first days and I’ve made a lot of progress. I still fall a lot because I’m still pushing myself to learn new things and every time I fall I get up with a giant smile on my face because I know my limits a little better and I pushed them a little further. I am fortunate enough to have the means and opportunity to make a trip out to Whistler this winter and I’m looking forward to looking up at it from the bottom and having that same feeling I got when I looked across at the hill at Glen Eden. Except this time, I’ll be looking at a 5000 foot vertical drop and not just a 250 foot drop, ha!
The other big push I got out of re-reading my old entries was reading about Muay Thai. I haven’t been to class for months now. To be honest, I’ve been ashamed of myself for that and embarrassed to show up so out of shape. But I read my old entries where I first decided to sign up and it got me thinking about how I’m in the exact same predicament. Back then I was scared of joining up because I didn’t think I could physically do it and wanted to wait until I was in better shape. But then something changed and I just said fuck it and dove right in and I never regretted it. So once again, it’s time to just dive back in. I’m going to start going back next week. I won’t be going very often because of snowboarding, but it’s a hell of a workout and I’ve missed that good-pain feeling.
I’m glad I decided to go through these posts again. Of everything I’ve done over the last couple of years I’d say that making the decision to start keeping this journal was the best choice I made. It forces me to be honest with myself and I’ve found that the times I’m not writing here are the times I’m not focused, so it’s an excellent barometer for tracking my consistency.
I’m headed up north for the weekend with no internet. Going to relax and do plenty of snowboarding. Once I get back I’ll start going through the rest of my posts from January 2008 until now.
January 14th, 2010 – Weigh-In
It’s been a month since I last put up a weigh-in result here – the last few weeks have been full of turmoil and stress and that had taken away some of my focus. The last couple of weeks I’ve been really consistent though and I’ve started making progress again. Down 3 pounds from a month ago and I’m happy about that. While it could have been more, I’m happy to be making progress again, especially to have a net loss with all that holiday eating included!
Taken on Wednesday January 14th, 2010
Weight: 245 ( -45 lbs)
Bodyfat %: 30.1 % (-5.8%)
Hydration %:48.1 % (+4.1%)
I am on the right path again. I know what I have to do and I am taking control and doing it with no more excuses.
Over the past year I’ve really struggled with keeping myself consistent in my diet and exercise routines. It’s lead to me losing almost half of my progress and thinking about that has really made me feel terrible and even less motivated.
I’ve spent the last few days going over all the contributing factors and possible reasons as to why I had let myself do this. I thought about where I could be physically and mentally now had I not let up. In the end, I came to the conclusion that everything I thought up of was just a bunch of bullshit excuses. There’s no point in dwelling on all of that negativity. The fact is that it all boils down to me making the choice to be lazy. I have nothing to gain by focusing on all those negative thoughts and they will serve only to keep me demotivated.
Instead, I am going to focus on the positives. I have a lot of positivity in my life right now and a lot of things to look forward to. I already know what I need to do to get me towards my goals because I’ve done it before and I recorded each step of it here. So I’m going to take a few days to re-read my old journal entries and re-live those accomplishments. I’ll take that energy and focus it on getting back to what I had previously achieved and then even more. I already know it can be done and I have decided to do it again.