John Oliver's Personal Blog

Hello, I know it has been awhile since I last posted. I wanted to update my status for my getting fit goal.

The months of July and August were a bit challenging with vacations and a family reunion. These events paired good food and spirits (beer) in a manner that breaks down the self discipline wall that I typically adhere to.

My strategy for this was simple. I chose to participate freely; eating and drinking without counting (to some that is unthinkable).

Now in order to pull off the free days I have to offset it with hard work and tight calorie counting in my everyday doings outside of vacation mode. This is the whole lifestyle part of making a change. I do not recommend this for anyone with weak self control.

I have done pretty good with it and I am starting to get used to the mind set that I need to live healthy all the time and learn what’s in the food I am eating.

As far as signs that things are working out; my waist went from 42 to 38. It’s a nice accomplishment in making new belt holes just to make it fit.

I have owned the joliver.org domain since 2001 when I first bought it when I worked for a local internet service provider. Since that very first day I have had a very hard time visualizing what this site could be. I wanted to share things, but I did not want it to be intrusive. I wanted to archive my adventures in to posts so that I could go back and read old stories like I was flipping through a scrap book.

Unfortunately, I never seemed to find something that worked. I continued the site in various forms because I found second and third winds by geeking out with the underlying technology that runs the sites. PHP Nuke, WordPress, iWeb, you name it, I tried it. Since I was a geek I enjoyed the challenges of building the system as much as actually having a working system. But that was the problem. When I was done building, I didn’t have anything to say. Thus the neverending cycle of tearing down, starting over, and building up again.

Now, as this site appraches its 10th birthday, I found a personal blog on the web that shows exactly what I have designed in my head all these years. Cricketwalker.com is such a great personal site. It’s a blog that tells the author’s stories through short passages and beautiful photography. Everything flows very easily and the story you experience with each post is packed full of original content that keeps you drawn in. It is the “scrapbook” site I have wanted for my site.

Since great things are often imitated, I must say that I will draw from Cricket’s site and begin to shape this site in to my own story. This is the beginning of my scrap book. Enjoy the posts and visit often. It’s going to be fun.

It has been a little while since my last blog post. I apologize for the lack of consistency as I promised. I have been very busy at work and I went out of town for the July 4th holiday.

So let’s start with where my journey has taken me. As I write this I am down to 232 pounds. I have noticed that my waist line is a bit smaller and my pants are a bit looser than they were a few weeks ago. So I feel good about that.

I am still going to the gym rather consistently and feel good about my program. I did take a big step two days ago by switching from a 9pm workout to a 5:30am workout. I am really pleased with that change. Being able to do my workout before anything else each day takes out that little thing called life that always seems to stop me from consistently going at night. Plus, let’s face it, putting your workout at the end of a full day is not practical because your body IS tired and is ready to rest, not go 45 min on a treadmill.

My couch to 5k training had a false start because I left for vacation and did not have access or time to workout.

Speaking of vacation, my calorie intake went kaplooey. Between McDonalds, ice cream shops, seafood joints, and homemade treats I really fell off the wagon. When it was all said and done, my 4 day vacation put 3 pounds back on me.

To finish on a good note, I kept my calories in check and did the first two days of c25k. Add in that I am doing my workout at 5:30am and I think things are coming together nicely.

Tonight I started a new workout program called “couch to 5k”. The goal is to slowly build up to being able to run a 5k or 30 continual minutes over 9 weeks.

I started the program tonight after I came across the C25K app for my iPhone. Tonight consisted of a warm up walk followed by several 60 second jogs and 90 second walks.

So week 1, day 1 is in the books and I survived. If all goes to plan I will be running a 5k by September.

Since the app has twitter integration I will be keeping updates on there. You can view my most recent tweets in the sidebar.

Hello, it has been a few days since I posted last. The past week was rather busy for me. Work was crazy and I had to deal with a lot at once, which can definitely be overwhelming. The good thing is that I had a good group of coworkers that was there to back me up and take off some of the weight.

The other thing was that I made a boo boo on one of my projects. The boo boo caused a bit of an issue with quite a few groups. I am disappointed that it happened as I know I am better than that. I am a bit down due to all the fall out that these type of boo boo’s come with.

I am the type of person that will dwell on things like this for a very long time. I try to control the thoughts but the more I think about it the more I obsess over it. One of the things that helps me deal with my mistakes is looking at the positives that came from it. Yes, I did something wrong, but there was a lot that I did right which also enabled me to quickly fix the problem. Plus I am proud of myself that I responded well when brought in to an anxious situation and was able to perform well to resolve the matter.

Well, just like a player in baseball, my chance to get back in the batters box is only a short time away and I will be doing more of this work next week. I will take my lessons learned and apply them and I have no doubt that everything will go very well.

Wow I am really tired tonight so this is going to be a short post. As far as the “diet” and gym goes, it was one of those days that you wish you could repeat every day.

I stuck to my morning routine of making coffee at home and drinking it on the commute in. I usually have just enough left to make it through the first 30 or so minutes of my work day. After that I switch to all water until lunch. My lunch consisted of my lesser half of the mexican I had yesterday. It was just as tasty and just as filling. I had some chopped celery and an apple to fill in the hunger gaps. For dinner tonight I had a grilled pork chop with a little season all and worcestershire sauce, steamed vegetables and potatoes, and apple sauce.

Overall I did amazingly well and only took in about 1100 calories. I know that you should not get below 15oo as it will kick off a starvation response but I hardly think doing this one day will hurt. Just got to make sure I keep track and not do it too often.

I made it out to the Gym tonight as well. I did a quick mile where I walked at a 4MPH pace for 10 minutes, jogged at 5MPH for about 3 1/2 minutes (believe, thats progress), and finished the rest of my 20 min with 3.5MPH walking. That walk/run was the most intense thus far where I really felt it both with the pain of pushing to the end and the heavy sweating that came with it. It really felt good.

I also did a cycle of weights working all the muscle groups. One thing I noticed was that I started to cramp up a bit. That is probably because i’m not holding my end of the bargain up on the water intake. I serious need to force myself to start downing some water.

I didn’t do any weigh in’s this morning but there were a few times where I noticed a slight change in how I felt. Let’s hope that tomorrow brings a similar day.

Good night.

I had a wonderful fathers day. I am truly blessed to be able to spend time with my wife, children and our parents. Of course, the go to tradition in our family on these special occasions is to go out to eat at a nice restaurant. The old me would welcome the days events and look forward to good times and good food.

Naturally, the new me was a bit more apprehensible with what the days dining would bring come bedtime when I have nothing left but a number of calories that I had eaten.

Breakfast was our first stop and we chose a nice local diner-like location that had good traditional breakfast fare. My plan of attack for the day was to eat a decent breakfast, skip lunch, and eat a decent dinner. So after a little perusing of the menu, I chose a two egg, sausage patty, and potatoes meal. It came with wheat bread and a small sticky bun. I chose water for my beverage. When the morning was over, I had taken in a little over 1000 calories. Needless to say I had let temptation lead me a little astray. But, with about 800 calories remaining for dinner I still held hope that I could make it work.

The choice for dinner was pretty difficult, Mexican. Now traditionally you would think that mexican was fairly healthy given that most everything comes with vegetables, but the cheese, sour cream, fried tortillas of american-mexican food is quite literally, killer.

I stuck to my normal meal choice of a single large burrito stuffed with chicken and steak fajita meat and vegetables with a side of rice and refried beans. A few quick mental calculations had me sizing this meal up as over 1000 calories easily. Sticking to my knowledge of what I had left for the day, I went ahead and ate 1/2 of the meal. I had a few (6) chips and salsa, and two unsweetened iced teas. When it was all over, I estimate that my calorie intake was about 926. Granted, not the sub 800 number I was shooting for, but not exactly a calorie disaster. I was satisfied.

Unfortunately, after I got home and everything got settled I chose not to go to the gym. I was feeling a bit run down and I am fighting off a sinus infection. I am calling this a postponement of my cardio workout until tomorrow when I will hit the gym to double up on cardio and strength training.

So its time for bed, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings….

For those that do not know me, I am one those types that has to figure things out on my own. I have done it with just about everything that requires you to practice in order to get better. When I first started playing golf I had developed such a weird swing its a wonder no one, or me, ever got hurt. The same thing when I started getting serious in to bowling. I just about broke my wrist learning how to properly roll a hook.

So it goes without saying that weight loss is something that I want to figure out on my own. As the saying goes, “no one can do me, but me”. Now some of you are probably shaking your head and saying I am pretty full of myself for wanting to develop sound weight loss knowledge without seeking the advice of professionals.

Normally I would agree but I also have another trait that eggs me on, and that trait is that my brain is wired to be an analytical person. Thats right, I enjoy research and taking the time to develop a sound plan of attack. Of course, even with all the research in the world, I am not completely naive in thinking that I can essentially become my own personal trainer but I think I can get started with enough knowledge to put together a well rounded routine.

My intent of this post is not for it to become my very personal research paper on weight loss so I am going to get down to the major points of my plan.

1. Count Calories and log what you eat.

In order to understand where you are and what you are eating, you need to have a foundation or history of what you are doing so that you can make adjustments. My approach is to count calories and nothing else.

My theory is based off a very simple and basic concept that goes like this: One pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. Your body has a natural level of calories it burns every day. The goal is to find out what your body is burning daily and to establish a meal and exercise plan that reduces the amount of calories per day to equal a 3500 calorie deficit per week. By doing so, a one pound per week weight loss will occur.

The counting part is the most important aspect of this step. To do this I am using a tool from myfitnesspal.com that allows me to input what I eat in to my iPhone as I eat it. In return the system lets me know how many calories I have consumed and how many calories I have left to consume for that given day.

Having a smartphone with these tools available and able to tap an online system is very valuable. First, it allows me to have access to an ever changing database of food products. Second, it allows me to quickly understand where I stand throughout my day when I am tempted with food and I need to know how it will impact my calorie budget. Finally, the trending and reporting is very nice in showing me where I have done good and where I have room for improvement.

2. Exercise

Step 1 alone can and will provide a fair amount of success when it comes to losing weight. The problem is that you are not really changing who you are physically, you are just forcing yourself to be different. In order to physically change who you are, you need to work hard and that means lots of exercise.

My plan is pretty simple when it comes to this approach as well. I will setup a cardiovascular work out and a strength training workout. I will work out 5 days a week and leave 2 days to allow for “life getting in the way”.

In order to have a safe approach, I am going to rotate between cardiovascular and strength training on a every other day basis. This is done so my muscles have a 2 day rest and recovery period in between workouts.

To better help facilitate my strength training, I joined a gym. The availability of professional equipment that is designed to work out all parts of your body is crucial to maintaining balance and shaping the body.

In addition to the strength items, the advanced treadmills and bikes are very convenient as each one has its own TV. This may sound pretty counterproductive in a gym, but having the TV on provides a fair amount of distraction to the actual workout which allows me to go longer without getting bored with it.

3. Write about my progress on this blog

If I am writing about what I have done every day, it means I am doing something every day. And every day I am working towards my goal, it is one less day that I have to wait to get to where I am going. Right now I am really motivated and I am looking to tap in to my writing to maintain that motivation and desire to continue to eat right and exercise. I am also going to use twitter to post quick blurbs throughout my day as I encounter various triumphs, challenges, and questions.

So there you have it. I apologize for such a long winded post but I felt it was appropriate to share what my plan was so that you have some background when you read my future posts.

Hello and welcome to joliver.org, the personal homepage and blog for John Oliver. This blog will chronicle my journey in getting fit, losing weight, and becoming a better personal overall.

Through the years I have maintained this site with little or no true content and I wanted to come up with a topic that I could write about. I chose to blog about my health goals because I needed a place to log my effort and in a way to also keep me motivated.

Primarily this blog is for me to look back and read past experiences on this journey. Beyond that I am putting this out there so that others may draw motivation to continue on their own journey.

I am excited and look forward to the future and all that it has in store.