I did not come out and tell too many people about this from the start, But to be completely honest I wanted to make sure I was not going to quit on myself before the end. While it has only been two full weeks, I can report I doubt I will quit on myself.

I have entered a contest at work, my secretary wanted to lose weight, I have been saying I needed to loose some, as well as some others here. So She came up with the idea to ‘make it interesting’ and before we knew it we had a total of six people entered in our version of the ‘Biggest Loser’ contest. There is a $50.00 entry fee that will go to the person who has lost the largest percentage of weight.

We did not go with the largest amount of weight as some of us are really overweight, and just because they could win the pot, they would still be overweight. So we went with the percentage. Here is how we will figure this out.

Weigh yourself and record your current weight. At the end of the contest record your finish weight. Subtract your finish weight from your start weight. Divide that number by your start weight. Multiply that number by 100. That will give you your final percentage. For example 175-150=25.....25/175=.14.......14x100=14%

Ok, so why did I wait until now to let you know I am trying to lose a bit of weight, well to be honest I have never had much success with this task in the past. The reason, I have figured out, was I never had a goal, a challenge, a means to turn this into a competition! Sure I can compete with myself but how fun is that? My love of food and cooking might have something to do with it, but I have found out a few little facts that negates those excuses.

So Let me tell you how I am doing, and where the other people in this competition are. I would introduce them to you but I figure some may not want others to know how much they weigh much less tell everyone how good/bad they are doing. But I can tell you there are Two Females (One does not work here but is the wife of one of the other contestants.) You can guess the one female is my secretary Amber, it does not matter if I give out her stats as she has given out the ‘super secret’ website where I am posting all the stats from everyone, to all her friends.

The rest of us are guys, some of us are really overweight, I am not the heaviest but I am not the lightest guy either. But I may be soon! Ok so on 8-11 we had a weigh in at 7:30 in the morning. I tipped the scales at 235 pounds! Yikes, that was 10 pounds heavier than I had given myself to be. I thought I weighed 225-228 and was honestly shocked to find myself well over that. By the way Amber, my only real competition weighed in at 124!

The rest of them weighed in at 148, 227, 256 and 265.

At the end of the first week, Amber was the big winner losing a whopping 7 pounds! I lost what I thought was a disappointing 4.5 pounds. The rest came in at 147, 228, 253.5 and 263. Yes you read that right one actually gained a pound.

Today we had our 3rd weigh in, our 2nd week of competition. Amber remained the same at 117. I lost 6 more pounds for a total of 10.5 pounds! I am now sitting at 224.5 and am now the lightest of the males. The rest weighed in at 144, 228.5, 252 and 266.5. Yes, one gained another half pound and one gained a pound from his original weight.

So now I have a fire, and to borrow a phrase from Dave Ramsey, a Gazelle intensity to continue this trend. I have made a few alterations to my life as this has been going. SO here is what I have done to lose the 10.5 pounds so far.

The first week I started walking, about 3 miles a day. Now I know that if I walk 3 miles in the evening it does a bit of good, but not as much as if I were to do it in the morning, so I get up every morning, drink a small glass of orange juice and head out for my 3 mile walk at 4:20 in the morning! After a week and a half of getting up every morning at that time I have extended my walk to 3.5 miles done in the same amount of time, just 50 minutes! There have been some exceptions to my walk, Sunday Morning I get up and go to church, me being Catholic I stand, sit and kneel which I figure is about the same as a 3 mile walk!

I did not walk this morning either, I picked up a bike over the weekend, and rode into work, about 12 miles, on a Diamondback Bike, which I will post a picture of later. I thought walking 3 miles and then riding 12 was a bit overkill for the first day of riding, but as I type this I whish I had done the walk, might have stretched the old legs out first. I still have to ride home.

I have also changed my eating habits. The first week I thought just reducing my consumption would be enough, but I did not lose as much as I thought, so I went European. I moved my big meal of the day to lunch, still reducing the intake. Then I eat fruit, salad and maybe some cottage cheese for dinner. This seemed to work well. I can still eat foods I like without exception, so long as I reduce the amounts and eat my main meal well before bedtime; this also has some weekend exceptions. I tend to be busy weekends and can’t eat until evening.

So that is where I am, I will post more every Monday to keep you all informed if you like.

I have an IRA with Merrill Lynch...I wonder if I should be worried...?

Okay, pardon this rant bt am so pissed right now that need to vent.

(*&%$#@!!$^&*) Vista, If MS engineering approval people were in front of me right now I'd blow their freaking heads off.

I'm no computer slouch but for the love of all that is holy WTF are these people doing! SP1 destroyed my puter, finally get it back up and installed now half my crap don't work anymore and there is no fix for most of my crap to go along with SP1.

ever since 3.1 they have gotten progressively more and more stupid and less and less user friendly.

AAAaaaaahhhhhhhhhhgggggg.


Now back to your regularly scheduled rants...

"Hi...I'm...um...a robber...and I have been asked to call you to...umm...come and arrest me...?"

And this is why we have the Second Amendment.

Go, granny, go!!!

The body of deceased Angel Pantoja Medina stands erect and leans against a wall by his coffin during his own wake in his mother's home in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Monday, Aug. 18, 2008. The last wish of Medina, 24, who was found dead on Aug. 15, 2008 underneath a bridge in the capital, was to be standing at his own wake, and was embalmed for the occasion.

Guess that's a way for them to increase enrollment?