Bike ride

25Km on the bike today. About 2 hours total in the saddle. Legs are a bit tired, but good overall. Gotta remember to drink more water along the way.

Had an intention to go to Lorsch and back. Total of about, oh, 15km each way. Missed Lorsch since I was navigating by dead reckoning, rather than by maps or anything else. Went to Huettenheim instead, and then headed back from there. Overall, pretty lost the whole way along.

Nice ride though, good temperatures, though I did have to fight the wind several times.

Right. It's go time.

I've said it before, and I say it again. It is time to get things happening. Time to get started, again.

In one of my recent posts, I asked myself, what's different this time? What will make this a success? I said I wouldn't start again until I had an answer. And I think I may.

What's different this time is that I will be doing both things. Diet and fitness together. I've done diet alone, and diet with half-ass fitness. It's done me some good, but nothing that lasted. I've done fitness alone, and fitness with half-ass diet. And I've done half-ass diet with half-ass fitness. That one didn't do much at all.

This time, I'm gonna do them both. Fitness I can do. I have a gym membership. I have a bike. Getting outside shouldn't be a problem.

Diet is always the bigger issue. I get a bit too concerned about things when I count calories. So that option is out. And I'm over generous with simple portion control. Likely, I will be using fitday.com to do some rough calorie estimations for me. Something to keep me both honest, and also to give me a grounding of where and what I am eating.

I like keeping records, so I'll be tracking weight and calories on a day to day basis on fitday.com. At least until I feel that is undermining my efforts. Since I will be trying to build up riding distance, I will be tracking rides on mapmyride.com as well. Hopefully will do a bit of light running as well, though I do not know if I have good shoes for that here. I will have to check.

Right now, I'm keeping the goal simple. Weigh less. Specifically, down to 185. Timeframe, 14 weeks, starting immediate. Aggressive schedule, but I think it is still possible.

Athalos: I know you read this now and then. Permission granted to kick my ass into gear.

What's different about this time?

That is a question (more or less) that was asked on the xweighted site back in January. What is different about this time around? What will make this time different, so that the outcome (failure) will be different?

At the time, I didn't have a good answer, and thus far, that lack of an answer has proven true. Nothing has been different. And nothing has changed.

So, with my mind a-whirl on the idea of maybe, finally, kinda, sorta, losing some weight, I am forced to ask myself this question. And forced to give myself an answer. Without one, there is no sense in declaring an intention to lose weight.

Desire simply isn't enough. There has to be intent. There has to be will. There has to be committment.

Hopefully, I will have an answer for myself soon.

Amused

My Tuesday morning classes are supposed to be discussion-based. Everyone is supposed to show up, and talk about the trials and tribulations of working on their projects. Occasionally display the different parts of their project that have been going well, and maybe the parts that have been behaving poorly. I have to say that the idea is great. But the buy-in has been really low. A lot of students haven't gotten around to starting, or even choosing a project yet. And of those that have, there is only so much progress that they can make in a single week. Which leads to the class feeling really unfocused. Today's amusement came in the form of one of the "lost" student's presentations. They chose to present a possible idea for their project. But, the wording and structure put it forth as if they were the ones doing the research. It was about databases. Which just happens to be an area I understand. I throw out some questions, and really sort of wonder about what they are hoping to do in less than 2 months time on a difficult topic. Later, when it is my turn to present, they fire some questions at me. I was talking about implementing caching within my application, but they misunderstood what I was saying. As if I were talking about developing caching as a project. So I was a bit amused by it.

Deciding for myself

Been ruminating on the thought that I am an adult, and that means I get to decide what that means.

It's something I've known for a while, but haven't been very active in applying. Lately, though, with the way school and life are, it seems like a really good idea.

I've applied it twice in the last two days, and I'm happy with things thus far. One was to buy myself something I've wanted for a while - even though others have said it wasn't really worthwhile.

The other was to stop doing something I was no longer enjoying. I was doing it out of a hope for money, but I'd rather spend the time doing something I like than something I don't. Even if I won't get paid for the stuff I like.