Month in Review, January 2007

January is the month of beginnings. Last January I began to emerge from the prison of fat I created for myself. This January, I rededicated myself to knocking off the remaining excess weight and learning a challenging sport I'd never practiced before. No, not blogging, bicycling.

I began by setting an ambitious goal: lose the remaining 75 extra pounds I carry and become a good enough bicyclist that I can ride in the MS Bike-a-thon. Oh, and do both by July.

So far I've taken a great leap towards one of those goals. I've lost 13 pounds this month! That's the second largest loss since I started last year. (Largest was 25 pounds in the first month.) My month ending weight was 262, 123 pounds less than my weight on January 3, 2006. The new, lower calorie totals and stepped up exercise has helped. I don't expect the 13 pounds a month rate to continue without some more intervention on my part. We'll see.

The bicycling hasn't progressed as rapidly; I've only been on the bike a couple of times this month, due to the weather. I've been concentrating on improving myself physically so when good bike weather returns, I can "hit it hard", as my friends at the gym say. Unfortunately, I don't foresee any good weather in February, so I might not be able to get the practice I need until March. At that point it becomes important I "hit" the bike "hard" every day, learning to control it, maneuver it on the bike path, ride in traffic, ride with a group, and get stronger and stronger. That's five months. An ambitious goal in a short amount of time. But I'll make it. And you can read all about it here.