Fitness Accountability - 2/4/2012 02/04/2012
I'm Back! I haven't done a fitness accountability for quite awhile, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working hard! I've been hitting the gym 5-7 times a week, and even raising the intensity of my workouts. I will mention that I've been concentrating a lot of energy on strength training, thus I've been gaining muscle – which will certainly show in the weigh in this morning. I suspect most of the weight (but not all) I've put on is indeed muscle, because my clothes fit almost exactly the same as they did a few months ago, with the exception of my shirts being a bit tighter because my upper body has gained bulk. Going forward, I must put an increased focus on cardio (which I have started this week) The reason is, on Thursday I registered for the Twin Cities Marathon. The race will be held on Sunday, October 7th, and I've set a goal for myself to finish in 3 hours and 30 minutes. This will improve upon my personal best by 34 minutes, and if I want to have any chance of accomplishing this goal, I need to get lean. My wife, Vonnie, has also hit a critical point with her fitness level where she is ready to get back on the fitness horse. Her and I will be tracking Weight Watchers points together, using the material that we had from a few years ago when we were enrolled in their program. Additionally, Brad (@enemyofdebt) and I have started exchanging daily food journals to keep each other on track. Between these two things, I'm confident I can keep my eating right where i want it! Weight Check: Weight: 196.2 Weight goal: 178 Workout Summary:
My motivational song of the week is “Blackout” by Breathe Carolina. My spinning instructor used this as the “lead off” song for class a couple times, and even though I'm mainly a hard rock guy, it really inspired me. It's actually about drinking too much, but the great thing about music is you can take the lyrics of a song and apply them to your own personal situation. I'm only getting started: Pretty much sums up how I feel right now. I've been rockin' the gym hard since January 2011. This is the longest I've been on continuous fitness kick in my life. I feel great and I'm in the best shape of my life. But I'm just getting warmed up – with a marathon to run in October of this year, I've got a lot of work to do. Let's go a little harder, I'm on fire: If I want to reach my goal time when I run the marathon, I need to raise the intensity of my cardio. But I still want to work on my strength training too. I'm going to have push hard to do both. I may be in the best shape of my life, but I want more! This won't stop, 'till I say so: I'm addicted to the effects that working out have on my body and mind. I make each workout count, and make exercise a priority each and every day. Nobody is going to tell me otherwise. Goals for next week:
Add Comment What's a Dell? It's a Vacation Destination! 02/01/2012
 If You Like Pina Coladas......go ahead, sing along! Do you remember this popular children's nursery rhyme? The farmer in the dell The farmer in the dell Hi-ho, the derry-o The farmer in the dell Did you ever wonder just what a “dell” is? I know I did, but as a child I never asked. But thanks to the power of Wikipedia, I now know that a dell is a small wooded valley. I thought it was necessary to know what exactly a dell was since my family and I had been planning a mini-vacation to one since the end of last summer. Wisconsin Dells is a small town in south-central Wisconsin near the Wisconsin River which is a popular tourist destination in the Midwest. During the summer time, there are boat tours along the scenic river, in addition to outdoor water and amusement parks. The outdoor attractions are obviously closed in winter, however many of the major hotels have elaborate indoor water parks which makes Wisconsin Dells a perfect off-season, not so far from home, vacation spot to forget about the snow and the cold. Pointing the mini-van east, we traveled a mere two and a half hours along Interstate 90, making travel costs less than a tank of gas. Being away from home for 3 days can be expensive, regardless of where you are. Therefore, we did several things to keep the costs at a minimum, and the fun at a maximum.  Charlie's Angels getting ready for laser tag The More the Merrier Our mini-vacation was actually a neighborhood event. 5 families for a total of 19 people went on the trip. We scored a sweet condo at one of the hotels which included the following amenities:
Timing is Everything Hotel rooms are always cheaper during the week. The price of this particular condo almost doubles on the weekend. Since our kids do very well academically, we felt comfortable pulling them out of school for the vacation. We talked with their teachers weeks ahead of time, and they both had all their homework completed and turned in prior to leaving for the trip. Use the Facilities as Much as Possible Admission to the water park is $34 per person, per day, but is included in the price of the accommodations as long as we're staying at the hotel. The hotel also boasts an indoor amusement park complete with go-karts, laser tag, rope jungle, and a climbing wall. This cost us an additional $20 per person, but the ticket was good for the length of our stay. We went to both parks every day we were there.  Justin Bieber sighting on the go-karts? Nah, it's just Tristan. Bring Your Own Entertainment After a full day of water and amusement park action, we hit the game table at the condo playing any number of games that we brought with us. My son also brought his xbox which we connected to the flat screen for the kids to play. Cook Your Own Food Since we had a full kitchen, we decided to cook most of our own food. I volunteered to cook breakfast each day, and we asked each family to supply one meal for the entire group. Here's the menu of what we ate during our stay:
 Is my daughter small, or is that just a HUGE tootsie pop? Out of ten meals over four days, we cooked seven of them. The most inexpensive meal was hands down the pancake breakfast. All I needed was a box of pancake mix and a bottle of syrup in addition to the cinnamon and chocolate chips I had in my cupboard at home. The supplies for this meal cost me less than $7 out of pocket. It was a fantastic vacation, and we all had a blast. I was skeptical at first, but renting the condo at the hotel turned out to be a fantastic idea. Each family had their own bedroom/bathroom, we had a kitchen to cook meals, and we had the amenities for entertaining ourselves in the evening. The water park had great rides (including one in which people can body board or surf indoors), and doing laser tag as a group was unforgettable. We'll definitely consider going back. The next time we need to break up the cold and wintery months, we may just bust into a verse or two of that familiar nursery rhyme, and head for “The Dells.” Blog Reboot 11/28/2011
Confession time. I haven't been excited to write a post here for a long time. One night last week as I was trying to fall asleep I was pondering why that was, I realized that I have completely gone astray from why I started this blog in the first place. Somewhere along the way I became consumed with traffic hits, comment volume, and alexa ranking the way many people in debt are obsessed with their credit score. To keep that Alexa ranking moving in the right direction, I needed to post several times a week. So, I started writing more frequently. When I had trouble coming up with subject matter for multiple posts each week, I started posting about my weight loss journey just to kick out an extra article. The Quest To Make the Wii Fit Stop Calling Me Fat was never supposed to wander outside it's own page on the site. I found myself always rushing to get the next post ready. Continuously being disappointed when I could never seem to find enough time to create as many posts as I thought I needed to. I wasn't looking forward to writing anymore. Sometimes a finished post would be something I was proud of, much of the time it was not. Our Journey To Zero was never supposed to be about spending a significant amount of time writing. It was supposed to be a supplement to my posts in the CareOne Community. It was supposed to be my own little corner of the universe where I could have complete freedom to experiment with my writing when I had something additional I wanted to say. I always said that when writing stopped being fun, I would quit. It hasn't been very fun lately. I even told some people that this post would announce that I would be shutting this site down. I'm not going to, but I am making significant changes:
Having relieved myself of the unnecessary pressure of making this blog something I never intended it to be, I am again excited about writing, and sharing my story with you. So don't unsubscribe, don't stop visiting Our Journey To Zero. I'll see you real soon. Rock The Vote! 11/21/2011
 My friends over at ImpulseSave are hosting a blogging contest called Turkey Talks. Entries were to talk about a person's money story, and why you were glad you went through it. Three lucky bloggers will get a $500 blogging contract, and you can help me by voting for my entry! My entry talked about the unexpected gift that I've received through my journey to zero credit card debt. If you haven't read it, here's a taste of I'm currently sitting at the halfway point through a 5 year debt management program to eliminate nearly 110K of credit card debt. It's been almost one year since I first logged onto Twitter, which I did in an attempt to increase visibility to my blog posts. Additionally, I thought, if I could find some other blogs to read, and learn some financial tips to help me in my own life, that wouldn't be a bad thing either. However, somewhere along the way through my interactions on Twitter I've gained something very unexpected...... You can read the full article here, and then click on the link at the top of the article to vote for it. Or, if you've read the article already, you can just click here to vote! I really appreciate all your support, now go and exercise your right to vote and rock that clicker! Fitness Accountability - 11/19 11/19/2011
The Weigh In:
Goal check in: Work out every day: Worked out 6 days
I accomplished this 5 days! Keep Food Journal and adhere to Weight Watchers Points: Still couldn't get this going. Fail. Analysis: I'm happy to see that my weight is down a little bit, however looking at the last 3 weeks, I think what it's telling me is that my weight is staying relatively the same. Fluctuations of under a pound up or down doesn't really mean much unless it it consistently goes in the same direction. I've found that it's very difficult to motivate myself to keep a food journal by myself. The times where I've successfully done this was when my wife and I have done it together. Fortunately, out of the blue Vonnie said that after this week she wants to really get back on the fitness train as well – including keeping a food journal. So, I'm suspending that goal for a week, and will re-evaluate next week when Vonnie and I are planning on doing it together! That being said, I did pay much more attention to what I ate this week, and I think between that and my high level of exercise my body finally reached a state where it had no choice but to lose weight. This next week is going to be very hard. Between Thanksgiving, and the fact that our good friends that moved to Kentucky are coming to visit this week, staying motivated to eat right and maintain my exercise routine is going to be extremely difficult. Goals for next week: Maintain exercise routine of working out every day (this is going to be tough) Increase chest press ending set max to 245lbs. I can't even come up with a tangible goal for keeping my eating under control. I'm going to be very mindful of portion sizes, and not going back for seconds. Do you have any suggestions on how to ensure you eat well when you're thrown off your routine? Live How You Cook 11/16/2011
Preface: The following article is another repost from Hanuiloa, a blog geared towards slow living. I recently heard Jeff and Gena, my friends from Hawaii, who are expecting the arrival of their baby boy any day! This was my very first guest post, and is still one of my favorite posts that I've ever written. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.  Pajamas on, teeth brushed, prayers said and out goes the light. Kids are finally in bed. As soon as his wife retires for the evening a man grabs some papers he had hurriedly stashed in a rarely used kitchen drawer earlier in the day and heads downstairs to his computer desk to study them more closely. Each letter, five in all, was from the same source, each exactly the same except for the account number. A change in policy was increasing the monthly payment of this account from 1% of the balance to 2.5% said each letter. Calculations are made to determine what the new monthly payments will be. The family's budget is checked, and rechecked. The man cradles his head with his hands and closes his eyes. Falling tears begin to wet the papers on the desk. The man in the story is me, and this is the exact moment in June of 2009 that I realized that fourteen years of irresponsible financial living had finally caught up with my wife and I. Almost a full decade and a half of living far beyond our means by supplementing our income with credit cards had brought us to the edge of financial ruin. The next two weeks were a whirlwind of bank (dis)appointments, extremely honest discussions with my wife, and varying states of terror. When it was all said and done, we were enrolled in a debt management program and hopeful that we were on the right path. In order to hold together what we had, we knew that we had to seriously downsize our lives. No more buying things to make us feel better, or as rewards for the kids for doing something well. We needed to de-emphasize material things, and start simply enjoying spending time together and really connecting as a family. I am the household cook and absolutely love to prepare food. As a former short order cook when I was in high school, an aspiring BBQer and an avid van of cooking reality shows, I know there there are many different techniques and environments in which to cook. Two of which I am extremely familiar. First, there's the life of a short order cook at a local diner. As church services let out on Sunday morning you could see the steady stream of cars coming down main street and pulling into the parking lot. Suddenly, the kitchen would erupt into a frenzy of frying bacon, cracking eggshells and clanking plates. The three cooks on duty would be frantically running around trying to keep up with the flood of orders coming in. When the rush had ended, the kitchen would be wiped down and mopped. We would collapse in the break room; our heads still spinning. On the other hand, you can cook like a backyard BBQer. I'm not talking about firing up the grill and throwing on some burgers and hot dogs. I'm talking about a hickory wood burnin', slow roastin', pork shoulder cookin' smoker. There's nothing “hurry up” about this process. The smoker gets fired up mid morning, and cooking a pork shoulder takes all day. The BBQer sits reclined in a lawn chair next to his smoker just soaking up the sun and the view off his backyard. On one side of his chair sits a pile of charcoal and wood, on the other a cooler filled with his favorite beer. A good smoker will hold it's temperature for a long time without having to feed it more fuel. He doesn't have to sit there, but he'll never admit it. Where would he rather be than basking in the smell of smouldering wood and roasting pork? There's no timetable as to when the mass of meat will be done. Each piece of meat is different. If you ask a seasoned BBQer how long the process will take, he'll shrug his shoulders and answer, “It's done when it's done.” Cook by temperature, not by time. The clock doesn't dictate meal time, the meat does.  As the chef of your own life, which environment would you prefer? Would you rather hurry through life in such a frenzied state that you eventually collapse in exhaustion wondering where the time went? Or would you rather be soaking up the experience in your lawn chair enjoying the view? We used to live like the short order cook. Many weekends we would have plans out of town. If we weren't going somewhere we were inviting our group of friends and neighbors over for a party. If we weren't driving somewhere on Saturday afternoon, we were in the kitchen for hours prepping for a huge dinner party. I remember a particular Sunday afternoon when one our closest friends was over and my daughter was being rather rude. When asked what was the matter, my (at the time) seven-year-old daughter told our guest in a quite matter-of-fact tone that she was sick of her being at our house all the time. Not a shining example of good behavior, but it was an experience that was raised and discussed again as we were making changes in our lives. That our normally very well behaved daughter could act out in such a manner was certainly a cry for more quality family time. As we looked back, our kids were telling us in many ways, for a long time that they were unhappy with this fast paced, activity packed lifestyle. We still get together with our friends, but not nearly as often. Just as frequently we have family movie night on the weekend. The kids pick out a movie, we make some popcorn and all sit on the couch and watch the show just the four of us. Instead of hurriedly packing the van to go somewhere on Saturday morning, we all sleep in. Even though my son is only a year away from being a teenager, he hasn't became too cool to run into our room with his sister and jump in bed with mom and dad for a “family snuggle.” My son and I play catch with a baseball or football when it's nice out, and dig snow tunnels when it's winter. My daughter and I curl up and read every night as I tuck her in, and again every morning when she wakes up. She has taken an interest in this blogging thing that I do, and asked if she could make her own website. I gave her one of those “Sure, we'll do that sometime,” kind of answers thinking eventually she'd forget about it. I completely misjudged that, as she badgered me until I caved in (she got her persistence from her mother). We're having the time of our lives putting together her website using a free of charge web building site. Note that the most expensive activity in the proceeding paragraph is the renting of a movie from redbox for $1. Over the last 19 months I've learned that there is absolutely nobody that I would rather spend time with than my family. I have re-learned why I fell in love with my wife. My son has my love for video games, science fiction, and sports. My daughter has a sense of humor and a creative side that convinces me that she will almost certainly end up on TV, or a stage somewhere. I genuinely look forward to the weekends now. I can't wait to have two full days to spend with my family. I'm finally sitting in that lawn chair, enjoying the view. Pull up a chair, join me, and grab a beverage from the cooler – this is going to take all day. I don't mind, there's nowhere I'd rather be. Last Monday's post described how I ROCKED my finances the previous weekend. The weekend is where the bulk of our entertainment spending occurs, thus it's very important that my wife and I's communication is at it's best in order to stay on budget. The more I thought about it, that concept seemed like a great recurring post to have to help me stay accountable for our weekend spending. So, here we go with installment #2 of How I ROCKED My Finances Last Weekend: Straight Cash, Homey If you browse the personal finance blogs with any regularity, you've heard the advice, "Pay with cash" more times than you can count. I've never done it. My debit card had hypnotized me into thinking that using a debit card is the same as paying cash. The logic my debit card (or at least the voice in my head that I give to my debit card) throws at me is that purchases paid with a debit card come right out of my checking account, so when the checkbook is reconciled I'm forced to deal with how much was spent. Which is true, but the point is that too often I have the "I didn't think our spending would add up to be that much!" moment. So, this weekend my wife and I actually tried it paying for everything with cash. I withdrew our budgeted weekend entertainment money, and used cash for every single purchase. It worked spectacularly. We talked several times during the weekend about how much things would cost and made decisions based upon cash in hand. It felt so good to communicate openly, honestly, and frequently about our finances. BTW, leave a comment if you can identify the origin of the subtitle. Hint: I'm from Minnesota, and I'm a HUGE Vikings fan. First person to comment with the right answer will be my favorite person for the entire day. Half Of Fridays One of the weekend's expenses was a budgeted trip to the salon for my wife. Every Friday, a local radio station has a "Half off Friday" sale for gift certificates to a local business. A few weeks ago the certificates were for my wife's favorite salon. We were able to snag two $50 certificates.. So, not only did she have $100 worth of salon credit she could use that was already paid for (and thus didn't have to come out of this weekend's budget), but we only paid half price for them!  Tori Goes Shopping The award of the weekend for completely ROCKING our finances has to go to my 9 year old daughter, Tori. Last night, her friend down the street asked if she wanted to go with her family to the mall. There was a store that was putting their summer clothes on super clearance, and her family was going to see what kind of deals they could find. Due to the success of our cash only weekend, we had $20 left from the budgeted weekend entertainment money. I gave it to Tori, and off to the mall she went. She returned with the clothes pictured. The prices on the tags added up to $69.75. She paid $19.46.  Then, they went to a furniture store because her friend's family is the market for some new furniture. Apparently the store was having an open house, and was giving away Christmas ornaments. My daughter came home with with one of them and declared she had gotten our family's ornament for this year - we buy one ornament every year that has special meaning with respect to some event for that year. A family working their way out of debt getting their traditional yearly ornament for FREE at a furniture store open house. Appropriate, don't you think? Fitness Accountability - 11/12 11/12/2011
The Weigh In:
Work out every day: Worked out all 7 days!
No eating after 8pm: Accomplished 4 days. Keep Food Journal and adhere to Weight Watchers Points: Didn't do this at all. Just can't seem to get this going. Increase chest press ending set max to 240lbs: Easily, maybe could have done 245. Increase bicep curl repetition weight to 100lbs: Absolutely! Start doing pull ups: Did assisted pull ups on Monday and Thursday. For whatever reason I'm not strong enough yet to pull my full body weight. Analysis: So much for positive momentum. UGH. Again, not to sound like a broken record, but lack of exercise is not the issue. It's my food consumption. I need to get it back under control NOW, or my hard work is just going to continue slipping away. Goals for next week: Work out every day Continue NO eating after 8pm Journal Food Consumption, use Weight Watchers documentation and stay within “points” I'm a Secret Agent for Nielson 11/09/2011
 Secret Agent Gear About a month ago Julie from The Family CEO posted an article calling for people wanting to be secret agents for Nielsen in a home scanning opportunity in which, if selected, a scanner is sent to your home. Agents earn points, which can be exchanged for prizes through their online catalog, by scanning the family's purchased items Whether it be mystery shopping, or Swagbucks I'm always looking for a low effort side hustle to put a little something extra in my pocket. Thus, without much hesitation I put my name in to be considered for the program.  Is it a Cell Phone? A few weeks later I got a notification that they were indeed looking for agents in my area, and that I had been selected for active duty. My scanner arrived late last week, and I spent some time reading my training manual, setting up the scanner, and doing a bit more research concerning the mission that I suddenly realized I signed up for without much contemplation or knowledge. Setup: I plugged in the scanner's home base, and connected the ethernet cable from the unit into my wireless router. My scanner started charging, and it seemed to be able connect to my network without any problems. It needs to be plugged in either to an internet router, or a phone jack in order to transmit your data. Note: You are sent the appropriate super secret agent equipment model based upon your answer to questions during the registration process  Disguised as a Calculator Scanning: The scanner can be put into a practice mode which allows the scanning of items and for secret agents to get used to using the device without transmitting that data back to HQ. I have to select the store shopped at AND enter the prices for the items. I didn't really expect this, and it adds a lot of time to the process. Points: From what I read, 150 points are earned for each week's worth of data transmitted. If this is true, it will take a LONG time to earn enough points to redeem for anything of any value as most of the products are thousand and thousands of points. The good news is that there are online surveys to participate in to earn extra points. As with any other points/reward programs, the more you put into it, the more you'll earn.  Rare Picture of Agent Gear Being Used In the Field Conclusion: Setup was easy, scanning is a bit more work than I had expected, but the number of points earned per week seems to produce a long road to redeeming them for anything of value. The surveys may help, but at this point I don't have a good feel for how often the surveys are available, or how many points you get on average for a survey. So, officially, the jury is still out. I'm still hopeful program will prove to be worth participating in, therefore I'll give it the old college try and see how it goes. I'll do an update post in a few weeks to let you know how it's going, just in case any of you are thinking of becoming a secret agent for Nielsen as well. How I Rocked My Finances Last Weekend 11/07/2011
 Clean stairs and hallway! I rocked my finances in so many ways this weekend, I just HAD to share! Carpet Cleaning - Continued! A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how the carpets in my home needed cleaning, and how I borrowed my neighbors carpet cleaner to save money. They allowed us to keep the cleaner (as they were not going to use it any time soon) and we have continued to clean other areas in our home. This weekend Vonnie did the upstairs hallway, and I did the stairs leading to our upstairs. I LOVE the look of freshly cleaned carpets...especially since it cost me an additional $0 out of pocket since we had all the supplies we needed.  The little engine that saved me $81 Winterizing the Sprinkler System: Having a service come out and do it would cost me $81 ($9 a zone x 9 zones). I'm not sure why I even started it up this year I as can count on my hand how many times I used it. I didn't want to spend the money to water my lawn this summer, so I sure didn't want to pay to have it winterized. So, I borrowed my neighbor's air compressor and blew out the lines myself. Mystery Shopping The main company I shop for announces new shops on the last day of the month, so I usually schedule the shops I want to do for the following weekend. I did three shops over the weekend, and have my reports all submitted. I won't hate getting a check for $47 right before Christmas next month at all. I may even pick up an extra shop from a new company that I registered with.  This will make for happy girl on Christmas morning Christmas Shopping My daughter's new addiction is the SIMS game she bought with her allowance a few weeks ago. There are a ton of these games available, and she's already starting to talk about saving up and buying some others. My wife looked on Craig's List and found someone in the area selling 6 SIMS games for $35. They're normally $20 a piece. We told our kids that a major part of their Christmas present haul this year would be our neighborhood trip to Wisconsin Dells in January, so there will likely be less presents under the actual tree. This gives us 6 individual presents to put under the tree for Tori for only $35!  I was ALL IN with my finances this weekend! Entertainment Friday night the family and I stayed in and did a family snuggle on the couch. Saturday night was men's poker night down the street at the crazy Australian's house. He's actually British, but he sounds like he's Australian due to the large amount of Australian soap operas he watched when he was a kid. In any case, we played two games of Texas Hold 'em tournament style, each one had a buy in of $10. We played from 7:00pm to 2:00am. I didn't win either game, but $20 for 7 hours of entertainment was well worth it. No Restaurant Challenge Did we eat out this weekend? Um, hellz no. Friday: Fish sandwiches and french fries Saturday: Sliced skirt steak, shrimp and fried rice Sunday: Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn I ROCKED my finances this weekend....how'd you do? |
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