Scott McLaughlin

Correction to previous post, checking my calendar I see that I was at 185.4 last sunday. This week has been good and productive, worked out 5 days out of 6 with pretty great workouts. Focusing most of time on weights now that huge weightloss isn’t my goal, but always starting out with 20 minutes of cardio across several different machines. Same plan as before only less cardio more weights.

I’m also back on my eating plan and paying more attention to what I stuff in my face hole. This week was good, I’m back to eating 5 times a day, and been able to get really great pre-cut fresh fruit from Fred Meyers next door to my office for breakfast each morning. At lunch I’m back to eating 1/2 what I order (and bringing the other half back to friends at work LOL) regardless of my hunger level. And of course with Michelle back on the band wagon dinners are back to being awesomely tasty but designed to be super low points in the weight watchers system, i’ve just had to curb myself from eating too much of it at dinner.

With that said, I’m happy to say that this week I lost 2.2 pounds hitting 182.2 this morning. My goal is to lose 1 pound a week until we leave for our trip. Which can be tough because with more weight lifting I’ll be turning fat into muscle which doesn’t necessarily add up to weight loss directly. Based on this week, my guess is I’ll probably see an immediate rapid loss of weight up to some point (no idea where) and then it will level out again or it might go up slightly, all in a short period. I think if I kept up 5-6 of 7 day workouts I would eventually exceed my original 172 lb record, which I’m not overly concerned about, but I want to be in the best possible shape before our trip in mid november.

Hitting the uber tanning place again today. See previous post for description of what we are doing there. (Description of this technology) Today from last weeks first tanning for me (I’m totally white boy), my white areas actually have little color, no longer red, but no longer white. So I think about a week apart will be perfect for now. We’ll see how this week goes. I was all itchy for a day or two last week, probably due to tanning areas that haven’t seen Sun in decades, like my chest and back!

Well that’s it, just talking about weight loss again, which might be boring. Lots of other things going on that I’m either not willing to post about or just haven’t had time to, but things are okay right now, mostly being anxious to leave for Petit St. Vincents.

Keeping my mind on other things as of late by starting to plan our trip. Did a lot of clothes shopping, we pretty much built new wardrobes for our trip since we live in the cold rainy areas we don’t have much great to wear on a Caribbean beach for over a week. Got amazing deals at Labor Day weekend sales, saving several hundred dollars which was cool.

For the past 6-8 months I’ve been paying somewhat less attention to my eating plan, although still trying to eat descent but not as hard core about my 5-6 times a day. Over time I’ve found it easier to be sloppier and sloppier and less picky about what I’m stuffing in my face. So I decided its time to get serious again and back on track. Since i was able to eat great things and not really “diet” it should be easy, its mostly about getting back on the track of eating 5-6 times a day and remembering to do so! I’ve programmed my blackberry to remind me when to eat, starting tomorrow.

My best weight was 172.4 down from 225 in just around 4 months, since then I’ve balanced out at 185.2 pretty much. Doesn’t seem to go up or down much. That’s without working out much.

Not working out hasn’t put the pounds back on, although I think over a year or mores time it probably would creep back. The problem with not working out is that the body fat percentage climbs and the muscle goes away. So I’ve gone downhill from that aspect. Both Michelle and I are going to get back to the gym starting today. We are going to try to go every day between now and our trip in November. I’m not as interested in losing weight before our trip as I am in toning up and getting rid of some of the body fat, so I’ll feel better about myself in damn near no clothes for 10 days.

Worked hard today, 20 minutes on the elliptical, 10 minutes on the stair-master and 6 minutes on the rowing machine for my cardio than hit my usual round of weights which takes another 15-20 minutes. I was drenched and worn out by the time i got back home. Guess we’ll see if I’m sore tomorrow or not.

We also decided to do a bunch of tanning before our trip. I’m not a big fan of tanning but I think it will important to go with a descent tan already in place to avoid accidental major burning early in the trip and ruining the fun. We are using a new place (tanning technology has come an amazingly long way in 10 years) that has this cool machine you stand up in for 12 minutes. It only uses 2% UV so it can’t burn you and 12 minutes goes pretty fast. (all you have on is these tiny UV goggles). Its amazing how hot it gets inside that thing, good thing it has big fans on top.. Anyway, probably hit that thing once a week for awhile until we get to the level we want then hit it every other week until we go. I figure I was so tan and in so much sun as a teenager coaching swimming that if I was going to get Skin Cancer I probably already have it, so what the hell.

I’ll try to post again more regularly if I can. Since I avoid Twitter and Facebook like the plagues that they are this is my only real outlet. Life is a bit more normal again.

Life kinda sucks right now for me, mostly personal reasons, hence my lack of posting all the things happening these days, I just don’t have the motivation to do anything … really at all right now.

Keeping my mind of things I realized I have this document that I keep my Firefox customization information and figured, a better place to store it was online, so why not my blog…and then why not share it with everyone else. Obviously your mileage will vary but I hate all browsers and Firefox is by far the best…and it needs extensive customization. Google Chrome is still most un-impressive, maybe I just haven’t found the right add-ons for it yet. It is light weight and fast but so is IE so when I need a quick hit browser that suffices.

Anyway I’ll keep this permanent page updated as my styles change, its permanently linked on the right side under Pages.

Firefox Customization