2012 Resolutions

At the end of December I was contemplating making a New Year's Resolution to work out everyday in 2012 after reading an article from someone else who had done this. (You can read my blog post about it here...) This led Christy and I to have a discussion about our New Year's Resolutions. I don't normally make resolutions, but we decided to give it a go...
Here's the list (at least my part):

1. Work out at least 20 minutes a day, every day of the week but Sunday.
2. Severely limit my potato chip consumption by not keeping any here in the house.
3. Be in bed by 10:45pm each night.
4. Update my blog at least once a week.

So, how am I doing? Here's the breakdown:

Work out at least 20 minutes a day, every day of the week but Sunday. January 1st was a Sunday, so we started on January 2nd and went to the gym. And then we skipped the next 45 or 46 days. For the last three weeks or so we've gone 2 or 3 times a week. I guess technically we've failed on this one, but since we've been going consistently the last few weeks we are still felling pretty good about it.


Severely limit my potato chip consumption by not keeping any here in the house. I'm doing good on this one. I had a pretty serious chip habit. I'd come home from work pretty hungry and get dinner started. To "hold me over" I'd bust out a bag of potato chips and a large glass of milk. By the time dinner was done an hour later the bag of chips would almost be empty. I was shoving down at least 600 to 800 calories in potato chips easily...
So, I'm not completely cutting them out like I have soda. I was at a birthday party and had some... I got a snack bag with my subway sandwich the other day... I bought a bag of kettle chips the other day when I was doing some driving... The point here is moderation.

Be in bed by 10:45pm each night. I'm doing really good here. I've had a lot of nights where I've beaten my deadline by 15 to 20 minutes. Studies have shown that proper sleep is a big, big key to weight loss. One study compared kids who spent their day playing outside to kids who spent their day inside playing video games. There was no clear correlation between the kids activity levels and their weight. But then they looked at the amount sleep the kids were getting. The kids with the earlier bed times who got the recommended amount of sleep had much healthier weight levels than the kids who were allowed to stay up late.

Update my blog at least once a week. Well, since this my first post in a month, I'd say I've bombed on this one...

Overall I'd give myself about a C+. Weight-wise I'm sitting between 325 and 331. My lowest ever  since beginning the Journey was 315 last April. March 24th will mark the 2 year anniversary of the Journey. I really could've been in the low 200's by this point if I had stayed focus the whole time. I had really hoped to be under 300 by this point, but I'm a long way away.

So, I will do the one thing that can be done: continue on. I'm still grossly overweight but if I hadn't started this Journey when I did I would easily be over 400 pounds by now. I was almost at the point of no return...