I think I thought up a few items last year, but they didn’t last past February, so this year I wanted to take another swing at them and do them in a different way. So I am setting a goal for each month. Some will be easy and other will take work every month before their goal month to accomplish. Anyways here they are:

January

Use my iPad more

I love my 10.5in iPad Pro  it amazing, but since I got the iPhone X, it’s been sitting in its sleeve. So this month I’ve been getting it out more and more to read, browse and also to write this blog post with. I’ve also been trying to use it more as a second display on my MacBook Pro from time to time. I’m still hoping that one day I can easily develop apps on this device I love its portability and the battery life and would love to be able to use it less as a consumption device and more for creating things.

Back in June of this year after getting caught in a down pour at Disney, Tiff (my wife) noticed that I had a small bald patch in my head.

It bothered me, but unless my hair was soaked it wasn’t noticeable at all. Sadly it didn’t stay like that the patch continued to grow until it reached my hair line which made it annoying to try to cover up. My old hair style too me less then 30 seconds each morning to style, now I was spending a few minutes just trying to cover up the spot in hopes that it would eventually grow back.

I did see a doctor about it who confirmed it was Alopecia areata, She also told me that my hair follicles were still there and that it should grow back. Then she  gave me cortisone injections in my head (ouch), and I get to go back at the end of the month and do it again. However in the mean time I am done trying to cover it up so after Church this morning I went ahead and shaved it all off.

So for now this is the new me. I don’t mind it. I’ll probably be wearing a lot of hats because my head is really cold already and it 70 degrees right now. So this winter is gonna be fun!

One good thing about it all is I was able to have a mohawk again for a couple minutes.

So I’ve decided to take a different approach to blogging. Rather than type it out on a computer. I’m using an app called Nebo and writing it on my iPad with my Apple Pencil.

My handwriting is pretty horrid and after just a few sentences my hand is already starting to ache a little, but I still think it will be a fun experiment.

So what I plan to do is use Nebo to write it out, then use it’s awesome export to text feature to post to my blog. I will also be adding an image of the notes I wrote in the app so you can see just how awful my handwriting truely is and see if it improves over time. I haven’t written with a pen and paper (so to say) on a regular basis since High School which was 17 years ago! 👴🏻

I’ve been wanting to create a semi-steady blog for a while so hopefully this project will help me with that.

Also feel free to tell me I’m crazy.

Had a great time at Disney World last week, but now I have to get back in the swing of things. Goal is to start weighing in again starting on Monday.

In the past the only way I have been successful at losing weight was by not eating less than 1500 calories, most day less than 1200 (which I know is not enough). I’ve been trying to fix that this time around, but the results have been well basically nothing.

What I’ve been doing:

So my goal the last few weeks have been to eat close to 1800 calories each day and have an active calorie burn of at least 600 calories. But the results have been me basically losing and gaining the same 2 lbs over and over.

What am I going to do next:

I have to change it up, cause this hasn’t been working. So I am going to increase my active calorie burn to at least 800 a day and decrease my intake to 1600. That way I’m burning half the calories I’m eating.

I know this is not the best approach and will be less maintainable for me in the long run, but if I don’t start seeing some progress soon. I’m gonna wanna just give up altogether.

Sorry for the rant, just had to verbalize my frustrations!!

Pretty decent start. I could have done better tho. But I’m going in the right direction and that’s what this is all for. Hoping to increase my active calorie burn and step count this week. 

Weight loss: 2.5lbs

Active calories burned: 5,132

Calorie intake:  11,212 (not as accurate since I didn’t have Monday and Tuesday fully logged)

Total Steps: 83,329

Active time: 5h 40m

It’s a life long never ending struggle. I’m still way far from where I used to be, but also far from where I want to be and lately the curve is going the wrong way again so I have to do something to stop it now before it goes to high up.

So what am I going to do?

The goal is from a week today I am going to start posting my weight publicly again. I did this a couple years back and it was a huge motivator. I’m giving myself a week just as an extra push for the first week to hopefully lose a good amount before I start posting.

How am I doing it?

I own the withings smart scale. It allows me to automatically post to Twitter and Facebook as soon as it records my weight. That means even if I’m not happy with the weight there is no stopping it from going public. The goal is to weigh in everyday. I know that the body weight fluctuates from day to day so this isn’t the most accurate way to weigh in but it’s a good way to build the habit fast and see quick results when I don’t do as well as I should.

What else am I going to do?

I plan and also hope to start blogging more. I want to talk about the apps I use and anything else that might be beneficial to others. I am also hoping to make a couple apps myself through this journey that I plan to use to help me.

I’ve officially lost 100lbs, so I’m going to Disney World! (I may have already been going tomorrow anyways.)

It’s taken me a lot longer then I wanted it to, and my process isn’t something that I’m necessarily proud of. I am, however proud of the outcome. Looking at the chart above you can see it’s been a struggle of ups and downs. I’ll be writing more about the process later.

I’m not finished yet. I still want to lose another 20-30 pounds to get under 200 and get my BMI in the “healthy” range. This is the healthiest I’ve been my entire life, ==it feels great!==

I went back through some pictures and found one of the night that I weighed in at ==321lbs==:

And this one was taken today at 220.4lbs:

I am loving this healthier lifestyle and I look forward to all the extra years of life it should/will give me to spend with my family.

So many tracking options.

This week just keep getting more and more awesome for a fitness tracking loving person like myself.

I just updated my Pebble Steel Watch to v2.6 which added fitness tracking to my Pebble, then I added the Up for Pebble watch face. Which allows me to have my pebble now act as my UP band best part about it is Jawbone has ported over the idle alerts to the Pebble, which I mention was the main reason I picked it over all the others.

So far I am unsure if this is going to work as well as I hope. I logged into my UP account via the UP for pebble app, but my steps for the day did not sync over from my UP24 band. So I am confused as to where these steps counts are going right now. But hopefully starting tomorrow things will all be working as they should.

Link to the new app go get it now and add me to your team.

When I saw the first post about the app being available I got really excited, then I saw the details about how it was for users who didn’t have the bands and was confused. I still don’t fully understand why they need to make this a completely separate app, but I am excited about what the end results will mean.

Here’s why:
I love my UP24(band), it’s motivated me the last few months to live healthier, but I only know one other person who has a band. I know about 10 people with a Fitbit, so I end up wearing both (yes I wear 2 fitness trackers, 3 if you count my phone). But soon I may not have too. With HealthKit and a couple more app updates from UP & Fitbit. I should be able to use my UP’s step data for my Fitbit app and my Fitbit friends if they choose could use their data in the UP app. Jawbone has already announced that they will be adding this in soon. So hopefully Fitbit will as well.

My only concern with all this is I don’t want to see the UP band go away. Jawbone has had a lot of issues with it, but overall I still think it’s the best motivating tracker out there. They have one feature none of the others I’ve seen/used has: Idle alerts, my band will vibrate every 30 minutes of inactivity(setting is customizable) to remind me to get up and move. That setting alone with worth the $80-$150 dollars for the band.

*I know I could have already used the M7/8 chip in my iPhone for Fitbit, but I find that chip to be very inaccurate compared to my Fitbit One and Jawbone UP24 step data, which are at most a couple hundred steps apart. The M7/8 chip usually 2,000 steps higher then the Fitbit/UP data and I feel like I am cheating myself and Fitbit friends when I use it.