I figured I'd start my own diary. As of 2 years ago, I was in pretty good shape... I played semipro football, was/am a martial arts instructor and pretty much had a very active lifestyle. Well 2 or so years ago, I decided to take it easy with the full contact football and so I decided to play flag football. While play I was simply running a little pass pattern and wound up tearing my achilles! (Lesson to be learned, If your gonna play, play hard ) Anyway, after a long rehab period, I was very out of shape and unmotivated. To this day my ankle still hurts which was part of the issue with getting back into things.. but I have decided enough is enough. Before this incident I was probably a little over 200lbs. Im 6', maybe 6,1. As of a month ago I shot up to 240. I have since been able to get back down to 217. My intention is to bring my body fat level back down to where it used to be, currently its at about 17%, get back in shape, and hopefully play football again....

The first thing I did was to do the master cleanse "Lemonade" Diet. I did it for multiple reasons. First I like the idea of cleansing my body, god knows I have treated my body like a playground and it could use some cleansing. Second, I figured that after a 10 day period of not eating solid food, it would be a lot easier for me to change my lifestyle and the foods I eat on a daily basis. And of course, thirdly, to lose some weight. They say that when you do the diet, shortly after you go off of it, you will gain back half of what you lost, I figure thats due to water weight loss and the fact that you havent eaen any solid food in a while. I kept a daily journal of my experience on it and if anyone is interested in seeing it, I would post it. At the conclusion of the diet I had lost a whopping 20 lbs. and I was full of energy during the whole experience which ws surprising to me. Afterwards I did gain back 6-7 pounds but I was able to work that back off. About 5 days into the cleanse I started walkig around a lake. Each lap is 1.3 miles and I increased my laps to 2 or 3 at times. Also while I was on the cleanse I had a lot of time to think about how I was going to eat differently afterwards... I toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian. I decided that wasnt going to work for me, but I have since cut down significantly on my meat intake. I also drink 95% water now. I never used to like water, but I didnt mind the tatste of fiji water. So now I drink that all the time. I figured Id rather dirnk water, and save the multitude of claries tha are in most drink to afford me the ability to eat certain other foods i would rather eat. unfortunately, it (Fiji water) is a lot more expensive then regular water,,, but I can taste a real difference between them. I will write more about my journey to date later...

According to all the sites, they say My Ideal weight based onmy height and everything, is 180. Then depending on where you read they say that is a loose guideline and depending on if your an athlete, that could be way off. How do you define an athlete.. I definiely used to be, presurgery.. but that was almost 2 years ago.. Do I still qualify? Im trying to get back to where I was but.. I am a long ways off.. Things that make you go hmmm....

It looks like you are off to a great start! Keep it up!!

As for your ideal weight, I think whatever weight you feel good at and can reasonably maintain is good.

So, after my Master Cleanse regiment, I decided to do a rudeced calorie regimen for 4 weeks. After all even a reduced calorie phase is more calories then I had taken in for the past 10 days. I found the outline of a program I thought was interesting and decided to try it out... basically, you eat 4 times a day. Each meal begins with 2 pieces of produce... whether it be 2 fruit, or a fruit and a vegetable or 2 veggies... then I drink a protein drink.. then after eating that.. depending on how hungry I am after that, I eat up to an additional 300 calories. The surprising things is that after eat the fruit and drinking the drink, Im usually not hungry... For the past 2 weeks I have been doing this although I havent completely stuck to it.... I generally do pretty good monday to thursday... then I may indulge a bit on the weekend... but I dont think my calorie intake has exceeded 2000 calories on any given day. I also have been doing a lot off cardio most days, which helps offset some of those calories anyway. I only intend to keep this up for another 2 weeks... but I am surprising satisfied most days.. I figure (and hope) that the four protein drinks I drink each help mitigate catabolism...

In order to get back into shape I decided I would start walking about 3 or 4 weeks ago...... After walking about 12 hours worth and running (jogging) about 2 hours worth I realized a disheartening fact. Although I knew there wasa disparity between calories burned from walking and running, i didnt realize how large it was until I saw some calculation which said that I had burned about twice as many calories in 2 hours of running as i did in 12 hours of walking...WOW! Needless to say, I try to primarily stick to running now. I dont regret the walking though, because from the get go I would not have been able to run. Im still not great at it, having to mix a little walking in here and there... Of the 2.5 mile course that I have been doing, of which half is down hill and the other half is up hill... I run half and walk hallf.. and yes, you guessed it.... I walk the uphill portion.... I figure the incline is making me work harder anyway...

I purchased the forerunner 305 last week.... This thing is amazing! Its a heart rate monitor on steroids! I have run about 4 times with it... it basically has gps built in to it... so while it doesnt have any maps it does keep track of the route you run along with other useful information such as speed, pace, heart rate and a host of other information. When I get home... I can think upload the data and see some nice graph which plot everything out... so I can see if im getting my heart rate into the proper zones... and I can use previos runs as benchmarks for future runs.... My goal is at some point to get back to a point where I can run a mile in under 6 minutes... Im not even close right now.. but with this tool I think I will get there faster....

I have lost about 23 lbs so far on my journey and I havent thought about exactly how much that is until someone put it in perspective to me... They said... "have you ever seen/bought a 5lb sack of potatoes?" to which I responded, ofcourse I have.. and they pointed out how heavy a bag is... which is true... it aint light when you think of the fact that there just potatoes... and they said... well you just took 4.5 sacks off your body... wow... I never thought of it that way.. .and in some way that has helped motviate me to keep going... I want to take the final few (3) off of me...

I jogged about 2.5 miles today... again, half of which is up hill and the other half down. I then walked another .8 miles... My legs are so very tired right now...

I work from home 4 days out of the week... Most people say, "Isnt it hard to be good at home?" (as far as what I eat... since the kitchen is right there... its surprisingly easy for me though... Going to work on the other hand is hard... My co workers always want to go out to lunch to somewhere like famous daves bbq, which has the most delicious rib tips.. mmmm... I need to stay strong! I will do my best.... off to work I go..... wish me luck....

No workout today... My legs were really tired and happy hour was calling.. this is the most I have drankin over a month... I must have had 5 drinks over a 6 hour period....Im definitely feeling it right now... I definitely need to run tomorrow.....

So I've read that drinking cold water in a sense helps burn calories... and the logic being that, your body has to heat the water up to process it... and then they go so far as to ask... after all, have you have had cold pee.... Well it makes sense to me for the most part... the problem I have is, wouldnt the water just naturally warm up considering your body is at 98.6 degrees? just another one of those things that run through my mind... hopefully I can get a run in later....

just got a tiring 5 mile jo-alk (Jog/Walk) in... overshot the hour marks by 5 minutes.... My goal is now to do 5 miles under an hour.... (half uphill half downhill).... I wonder if thats harder or easier then level ground... of the cuff I would think harder cause the up hill kills me... but then the down hill is somewhat like cruise control...although I find I have to stop myself from going too fast and falling on my face....

been slackin for a few days... I got about a mile jog in on saturday... didnt do anything on sunday... and Havent been eating the best I could... although overall, I'd say I have been doing better with my portion sizes... Why is it now that Im trying to eat better I wind up have to go to all sorts of function which are buffet style!!! it isnt fair i tell you! The good news (not that there was really any bad news) is that I tried on some slacks I had in the closet, which as of last month I couldnt put on beacuse the button couldnt reach the other side by at least an inch and a half, I was abe to put them on today... not quite a perfect fit yet... but close.....

Hey there! Good job with fitting into those pants!! That's always a great motivation. Yesterday I went to put on my belt and I usually put it on the second hole even though I COULd put it on the third. But it just slipped super comfortably into the third hole!! Woohooo.

Anyways just wanted to say hi and stuff