The Yo-Yo

I've paid about as much attention to weight loss as I have to this blog, and what a mistake that has been. I've yo-yo dieted for years, and my excuse for it was "at least I'm not back up to my heaviest." What a crock. I've gained back half of what I lost - not so bad I suppose, if it was only a few pounds, but we're talking 60 lbs I've gained back here!

What I didn't blog about in the years I've been silent, was a new good habit - biking. I love it, and despite the accident I still make it out to bike. Don't read the "accident" as a terrible life changing event - it wasn't. I was unable to bike for only a couple weeks, and at this point things are mostly healed. I had some bone chips in my elbow, a leaky irritated bursa, and a row of stitches on my forearm.

The problem wasn't the accident, the problem was the downtime afterwards - I got lazy and de-railed a terrific exercise regimen. The day I got hurt I was performing better atheticaly than I had ever performed before. I hiked/rode for 2 hours to get some altitude, rode for another hour, and through all of it was 85 percent to max heart rate and was feeling like I still had more energy to burn! Then, I fell - right when I started to enjoy the payoff of all the hiking and hogging up the the hills with that bike. Perhaps I was tired, so wasn't as carefull - or I simply was going to fast out of inexperience.

Basically, I want that feeling back and it's been a bitch trying to get there. I had plans for my fitness, and like my dieting and this blog I let bumps in the road get in my way. I'm tired of my fragile good habits, they don't stand a chance against the sturdy and well entrenched poor habits. Here's to another try. I'm getting older, so just maybe its my last chance.

Hiking in Briones National Park

I've been meaning to share more pics with everyone, so now seems like a perfect time since I got ahold of a friends digital camera (thanks Mike).


Here is the road leading in to a trail that follows the creek for awhile, from the Alhambra staging area.











Here is me near the Briones peak! I'm about 50 feet of elevation away.


The camera was set to place a time/date stamp on the bottom right corner of each pic. I didn't know the camera was set up to do this. Not only was the date wrong, but it looked ugly. So, I photoshopped them to remove the stamp. I was tempted to add some more hair, but I resisted.

The top pic's edit is hardly noticeable, but I got tired of doctoring and did a rush job on the photo of me.

Hiking has been fun, and great excercise. It's a whole heck of alot easier to eat well and feel good when I'm active often. My goal is to hike at least 3 times during the week and once on the weekend. I was one hike short last week, but this upcoming week I'll be right on track.




AS you can see, in this last pic I was too lazy to edit the stamp out. Ignore the date, it was taken today. I think this is one of my favorites...