Exploring the meaning of LOST (10m)

Sunday, January 4, 2009 - 1st Post

Breakfast: Stonyfield Strawberry Yogurt

Lunch: Two hard-boiled eggs, 2-3 handfuls raisins

Drinks: Two hot coffees

Posting this around 12:30PM so I'll add dinner and total steps for day later. Took dog for a 6-mile walk on Groton bike trail this morning. During the walk, I thought I'd start posting last year's steps to this year's total steps in an effort to outdo myself this year. We'll see how time consuming this ends up being and if it is worth it to continue. Anyway, I won't count the 12,000+ steps I've already done today yet as I'm still going. The following are 2008 vs 2009 steps as of January 3:

2007 - 49,000
2008 - 48,600

I'm surprised how close this is to last year at this time! Obviously I've been in the same routine for quite some time. But I'm going to attempt to push the envelope this year with my walking and try to significantly outdo last year. The only thing working against me is time. It takes about an hour and a half to walk 10,000 steps so trying to get to 20,000 steps a day will require three solid hours each day of walking - very tough to fit that amount of time in my busy schedule. So I'll try to get as close to the 20,000 step a day benchmark as I can.

Also, with the pedometer I'm using, it's getting old and seems to be missing a lot of steps so I'm going to get a new one today. So in reality, I think I'm ahead of last year with regard to steps walked.

Too bad I have an office job. If I could do life over again, maybe I'd be a park ranger or a mailman! As I love to walk, just don't always have enough time for it.

The iPod is crucial to my being able to tolerate this amount of walking. After my walk this morning, I updated the Podcasts and may start supplementing it with some audiobooks. After all, you can only listen to so much music! Even though I do have over 11,000 songs on it right now.

If I can increase my walking while decreasing my calorie intake over last year, I'll definitely be able to achieve my ideal weight this calendar year. However, it is way too complicated to calculate calories consumed each day in any kind of accurate manner that would satisfy my need for being precise, so all I'll do is post the foods and drinks I consume and compare them to last year at this time. SO far, the foods I have consumed this year are similar in quality to last year. But as last year went on, I gradually started getting more and more junk into my diet. I've got to maintain the healthy eating too.

In the news this morning, more swarms of earthquakes in the Yellowstone National Park area. Some alarmists on the Internet are predicting the end of the world as we know it! I don't believe them but if they end up being right, I won't be able to post here that they were right anyhow!

AU 2008 = 15
AU 2009 = 13

Sunday, January 4, 2009 - Part 2

5:11PM, just caught up on email after walking about 4 more miles with dog. This dog will be getting very tired with all the walking I plan to do this month!

Went to Barnes & Noble this afternoon to spend my gift certificate. Very weird thing happened. I had exactly $100 in gift certificates and I picked out six books to buy. When my discount was factored in, the price came to exactly $99.99 and I got a penny in change. I had no intention of hitting it on the money like that. I was expecting to either have some money left on the cards or spend a certain amount over. But had I set out to do that, it would have been almost impossible to spend exactly $99.99 on book!

The books I got were:

60 Hikes within 60 miles of Boston
This Is Your Brain On Music - Daniel Levitin
Don't Eat This Book (Fast Food and the Supersizing of America) - Morgan Spurlock
The World Is Fat - Barry Popkin
The iPod Book - Scott Kelby
Google-pedia - The Ultimate Google Resource

Obviously there is a theme here. A lot of music, reading and hiking in the days ahead as well as eating better.

With the four library books I took out yesterday, I have a lot of reading to get done.


Sunday, January 5, 2009 (Final)

Dinner: Spicy Chicken Fajita Soup (Whole Foods), water crackers, two handfuls cashews, two handfuls almonds.

Drinks: Two hot coffees, one Propel, two Pilsner Urquells, two glasses red wine

Walked 23,500+ steps

2008 - 11,500 (60,500) AU=5 (20)
2009 - 23,500 (72,100) AU=4 (17)

Blew ahead of 2008 on walking today as I took three very decent walks. Spent the evening reading and listening to Sirius. Most of what I read was book on TV show Lost.