a new year, a new me

Hello friends.

With a new year starting, I’ve decided to get back on my diet and lose another 40 pounds! Last year I started my diet in February and lost a grand total of 40 pounds. I’ve maintained the weight loss and eased away from my strict dieting over the holidays. My ultimate goal has been a 90 pound loss, but I’m going to make a 2012 goal of losing 40 more pounds for the year.

Starting tomorrow, Monday Jan 9, 2012, will be the beginning of the new me.

My plan will consist of the following:

• Maintain a high protein diet with slow carb foods (beans and veggies).
• No fruit! Fruit has a lot of sugar. There is no such thing as good or bad sugar. Sugar is sugar.
• Cutting out diet soda and drinking more tea/coffee.
• I’ve had a strict seafood and chicken diet for several years now, but I’ve decided I need to include some lean meats to increase my dietary options. So I’m planning to throw in lean bison meat, maybe some (I mean very little) beef.
• I will continue to have a cheat day once a week on Saturdays.
• Running more often. I like to trail run compared to regular track running. Burns more calories and keeps me concentrating with every step.
• Training for my 4th MS 150. Riding every Saturday morning.
• Mountain biking whenever possible.

That’s it! That will consist of my diet and training. Those of you who are planning to lose weight for the new year, keep on pushing through. Everyone fails at one point, but it’s about coming back from those failures. I’ve failed miserably at losing weight most of my life. Only this passed year I somehow over came the hurdles and lost 40 pounds. If I can do it, anyone can.

i heart carbs

After my wedding in May 2010, I started to slack off on my diet. I ate whatever I want, drank beer all the time, and working out became a once a month deal. MS150 was over, so I had no need to train.

Well with the hiatus I was taking from health, I gained back around 12 lbs. I know you’re like WTF, but I can easily put on some weight. I crap and I lose a pound of two. That’s how quickly my weight can shift.

So a little over a month ago I started reading a book called the 4 hour body by Tim Ferris. And I found my self being motivated once again to start a healthy diet and to train again once more for MS150. I started a “slow-carb” diet. Which is a lot like the low carb diets out there. What makes it different is the low fat high protein approach which is similar to south beach diet. BUT! there is a cheat day. You designate a cheat day once a week where you eat whatever you want. When you include the cheat day, you purposely spike your glucose level and keeps your glucose in check for the rest of the week. You gain a pound or two the day after, but within 2-3 days, you shed that off minus additional weight.

*Tip – When you cheat, consume lemons, limes or grapefruit juice with your meals to lower the impact of weight gain. This works wonders.

How’s my diet going? I’ve lost around 15lbs in a month 22 pounds in 3 month. I’ve been training “almost” every Saturday for MS150, I’ve been eating healthy, and I feel great. Clothes that used to fit years ago are finally starting to fit once more. And people are finally noticing that I’ve lost weight.

*Tip – When someones dieting, and you tell them that you can tell they lost weight, it makes them feel like freaking rainbows.

For anyone interested, here is rough outline of my diet plan:

Breakfast
within 30 minutes of waking up, chug a EAS low-carb protein shake. (17grams of protein)
3 boiled eggs sometimes with turkey bacon (lean)

Snack
Celery sticks with some peanut butter

Lunch
Salad with tons of black beans, salsa, jalapenos, lean ground turkey, sour cream and guacamole. I have a rotation of black bean and lentil soup, or wild salmon with lemon and salad.

Snack
Roasted nuts.

Dinner
Salad or wild salmon fillets with steamed veggies.

I eat tons and tons of salads every week. I try to stay with only organic foods, especially organic meats and eggs. I’ll throw in another EAS protein shake once in awhile as a snack when I feel hungry. Great alternatives to snacking are cheese sticks, sugar free jello, grape tomatoes, scoop of peanut butter and raw nuts. (My meals vary, I try to change it up here and there.)

MS150 is this weekend and I feel excited to be apart of an amazing event once more. I dreaded the ride this whole year during training but now that it’s finally here I’m looking forward to the challenge once more. If you find yourself wanting to donate to the MS Society, please make your donation through my link: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/jsuh . I’m $400 short of my goal of raising $1,000.

If you’d like to follow my progress of my ride during MS150, you can follow me on my twitter or facebook. My cyclemeter app will be auto updating every 15 minutes or every 10 miles of my status. If you reply on twitter or facebook, I’ll be able to hear your encouraging words to motivate me across the finish line.

twitter: j5uh
facebook: you should know this already.

apple’s keynote announcement predictions

Apple announcements are today and the rumor mills have been churning non-stop. Here are my predictions/thoughts.

1. Apple will announce a new apple tv called iTV that connects to the iTunes for movies music and most importantly app store. That means there would be netflix, hulu, and abc apps to watch your tv shows and movies. And I bet you’ll be able to start tweeting right from your tv and more. Please no stupid foursquare app where you check in from your tv.

I also see a big potential market for games. I think this will be apples way to break into the whole console gaming to compete against xbox, playstation and nintendo. People would use iPhones as controllers. It would be the most high tech controller there is with gyroscope and retina display. Imagine playing poker with friends and your iPhone becomes your cards you play. Or imagine playing a racing car game and your iPhone becomes the steering wheel. ORRRR imagine playing tennis and you swing your phone around like a wii controller. All plausible.

2. Obviously the iPods and touch will get a refresh. Rumors says there will be a smaller nano with touch screen. Also new ipod touch with front facing camera and new form factor. I’m pretty sure facetime will be on the itouch as well.

3. Just being hopeful… new ios 4 for iPad and new ios update for the iPhone 4 to fix the proximity sensor. Please apple. Come on!!!!! Fix the proximity sensor damn it!

i <3 slo-mo

Tempus II from Philip Heron on Vimeo.

rap song for the web devs

darth vader calls apple

getting back on the bike

I’ve been itching to get back on the bike and start cycling again but none of the fools I trained with for MS 150 want to bike. So I went searching for people to bike with and I found a meetup.com group called, “Come Ride With Us“. They get together every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sundays and cycle together all over the greater Houston and some other places around Texas. I first rode with them last Thursday and I had a great time. Everyone was pretty laid back, and welcoming. Thursdays are usually a moderate pace ride at around 15 mph and it was a nice 22 mile ride around Houston inner loop area. If you want to ride, come on out, it’s a lot of fun when you cycle with other people.

I rode with the group again yesterday and I decided to use my new iphone 4, with the map my ride app, and map the course out. So here it is: