April Monthly Update
Posted by moonimus on May 7, 2008
I know the April update is a week late but I did track all the changes as of May 1.
Our overall wealth increased 4%. We did see an increase in our investment accounts which was a nice change in direction from the past few months and our debts also decreased. We used some of our tax refund to pay off debts and we consciously kept the credit cards down to a minimum.
Even though my weight increased, my body fat % decreased which is a good trend. Everyone in my family is trying to lose weight so we are having contest that will last until July. My goal is to lose 30 lbs which is extremely aggressive. This will require a lot of planning and execution. Stay tuned.
March Monthly Update
Posted by moonimus on Apr 2, 2008
As promised, I am including our change in wealth in the monthly updates. There is one major assumption that I’m making in terms of our apartment. I’m keeping the value of our place at our purchase price though I’m certain the value has increased 35% even in this awful housing market. Other than that, most of the numbers will be coming off statements. I’m using Excel to keep track of all the numbers and to make the tracking easier, I’ve used hyperlinks in the cells to direct me to each respective login page. I’ll probably show how I did that in a future post.
So our wealth increased .91% mostly due to the receipt of our federal tax refund. We’re still waiting for our state tax refund. I’ll set a goal of a .4% increase for next month though with Baby Moonimus’ first birthday approaching, I don’t think we’ll get there.
Our credit card balance increased again this month and a big reason is due to timing. Since I’m collecting information on the first of the month, there will always be a balance for the credit cards. I’m going to make a big push to see if we can decrease the use of the card just to see if I’m not kidding myself.
As far as my weight and body fat % is concerned, I’m back to where I started. I don’t know what’s happening to me this year but I got hurt last week because of a cough. It wasn’t a particularly violent cough but it was strong enough to tweak my back left shoulder. I went to the doctor and he prescribed me steroids to take for a week. So I’ll be blasting some home runs at a ballpark near you.
Once I’m off the medication and everything feels tip top, I will yet again slowly establish an exercise routine. Also, I’m going to weigh myself every month. I won’t step on a scale until May 1. I’m thinking that I’m putting too much stress on myself during the weekly weigh ins and the informal daily weigh ins. We’ll see if this works out better.
The setbacks are getting frustrating.
February Monthly Update
Posted by moonimus on Mar 4, 2008
Now that my birthday is behind me, it will be another four years until I can proudly say that my birthday is on February 29th. I wonder where we will be financially…
As you can see in February, our Personal Loans have decreased significantly while our credit cards have ticked up again. Credit cards have increased as baby Moonimus is in need of some new stuff. She’s growing out of clothes and I’ve promised Mrs. Moonimus a stroller for months. Also, some of these charges will be reimbursed and we returned some items for refunds that haven’t hit the bank yet so the increase is again attributable to timing. At the rate of our payoff coupled with our tax refund windfall (not including the tax rebate in the summer), we will be out of credit card debt in no time.
I’ve also finally set up a spreadsheet to track our wealth and will report on changes in wealth next month.
As far as weight loss is concerned, I know this isn’t what you call progress. I still can’t shake the cold from two months ago but I just purchased some Mucinex so hopefully my cough and phlegm in my throat will be history. I’ll take any progress I can get, even if it’s .05% body fat reduction!
Weighty Matters
Posted by moonimus on Feb 21, 2008
I haven’t posted my last two weigh ins because I’m depressed about them. The last two weeks I’ve weighed in at 232 lbs. That’s 2 lbs above my starting weight! What gives? I know I’ve been sick but I’m feeling the best I’ve felt in a while. My diet hasn’t really changed since I started. I can only conclude that I am not exercising enough.
Remember, I’m trying to work my weight off first through physical exertion before I make adjustments in my diet. I will keep working at it. I’ll have to go to bed earlier, and wake earlier. Commit to at least 5 days of exercise, even if it’s 15 minutes of walking. That 15 minutes is better than nothing. Also, I got replacement clips for my Caltrac
On the advice of Mr. Lowfat, I’m giving this little routine a try. I always wondered how gymnasts were able to sculpt their bodies. It’s going to be pretty insane once I can do Straddle Planche Pushups and Straddle Front Lever Pullups. You can ask most of my friends if I could ever do those and most of them would say, “Heck no!” Well they probably wouldn’t use the word “heck.”
Patient
Posted by moonimus on Feb 11, 2008
“bearing provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship, pain, etc., with fortitude and calm and without complaint, anger, or the like.” - dictionary.com
“I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.” - Yoda
I’ve blogged before about my motivation and how I usually burn out due to settling for quick bouts of progress. I was updating our financial data into Open Office and though it’s only been two months, I’m proud of the decision and progress we have made. I smiled from the fact that we have $1,000 in our emergency fund. For the first time, we are allocating money for other purposes such as a Christmas fund or other mini financial goals.
Sometimes, I wish I could complete all our financial goals with one mighty stroke. But I’m sure that it was this kind of “get rich quick” mentality that has probably gotten me into financial trouble. When I was younger, results seemed to be so concrete, so easily attained. But the world was also black and white then. Somehow with the passage of time, focus was lost and the shades of gray blended into a content mediocrity.
Now, I’m just trying to be patient with the process. This goes for my weight loss too. I need to take the thirty year view, not the thirty second one. I have to learn how to forgive myself for falling off the path. This post at 43 Folders taught me that forgiveness is a powerful, liberating force. Mistakes will be made, lessons will be learned and I just have to deal with myself and move forward. I should be happy in making any progress, no matter how small. Eventually when those small changes compound, I’ll probably notice how far we’ve come.
A good friend of mine once wrote that, “Genius is in the details.” I’m striving to learn that lesson everyday.
Monthly Update
Posted by moonimus on Feb 4, 2008
I can’t express how I felt when the Giants won the Superbowl yesterday! It was great to see them step up and beat the Patriots. I’ve been a Giants fan for a long time and for them to win this when no one expected anything out from them, made the whole thing sweeter. I even wore my Giants jersey into work today!
As you can see from the Debt Scale on the right sidebar, we kind of had a financial hiccup. Most of it was due to timing from when I first started the Debt Scale. Certain charges hadn’t cleared the bank but ended up on the Scale this month. I’m not too worried as most of the credit card debt is on two 0% credit cards (until November and September). We should be paying off all interest bearing debt this month. I’m going to sock away any potential payments for the 0% cards into my One United savings account. I’ll pay then off when they come due. Hopefully, we can also start paying off the personal loans. I actually have the cash to pay back some of it but just need to send it out. I was hoping to pay those off with cash but it looks like I’ll have to use the good ol checkbook.
Also, you’ll notice on the Weight Scale I gained a pound from when I started. This was mostly due to battling a nagging cold for about 5 weeks. I’m back to good health and I predict that I will see some serious progress on this goal this month. The body fat% should follow.
Big expectations this month so it’s time to step it up, just like the Giants!
Weekly Weigh in January 28, 2008
Posted by moonimus on Jan 28, 2008
232.2 lbs. Ugh. That’s as bad as it gets. The good news is that I believe my cold is 99% gone now and I have been feeling much better physically in the last week than I have for more than a month. Also, my business trips are winding down. I only have one more place to go and then I won’t be traveling for a while.
I will slowly start working out again. During the hiatus, my xvest
Weigh in
Posted by moonimus on Jan 15, 2008
I weighed in at 231 lbs yesterday. I had a couple of business trips since New Year’s and I still haven’t shaken this cold I got before Christmas. Once I’m well, I’ll be attacking the weight loss goals. I have such high aspirations, I know this is a small setback in the scheme of things but it sucks having any setbacks at all.
Motivation
Posted by moonimus on Jan 4, 2008
One of the biggest problems I have in my life is throwing myself at things with reckless abandon and then burning out very quickly. For some reason, I get satisfied with the small amount of progress and then stop everything that made me successful or I get distracted by some other shiny new project/goal. I have never learned to appreciate the process, the struggle, the journey. I’ve often asked myself why I do this and the best answer seems to be that I want to be good at everything. All my life, I think the effort to get from good to great was never worth it. Now that I’m getting older and more mature (maybe?), I srealize that being great at a few things is much more gratifying than being a jack of all trades.
In the book Mastery
The #1 principle in personal finance is spend less than you earn. This is absolutely the most fundamental concept of getting your financial house in order. The #1 principle in losing weight is burn more calories than you consume. Now you can rephrase that anyway you want (like consume less than you burn) but I intentionally phrased it with “burn” first. In his book, Ultimate Diet Secrets
Because of my former, glorious, athletic high school days, I often would kickoff a weight loss plan with extreme dieting, punishing workouts in the gym and thoughts of running 400 miles in 3 days. Then about 2 weeks later, I’m pigging out on ice cream, lying on my couch because I tweaked my back and realized on day 1 of running that I should have scaled back to 400 inches in 3 days. I think you get my point.
So I will be working out in the gym 2 - 3 days a week focusing by using a modified 5×5 plan (provided by Mehdi at stronglifts.com) and then embarking on a walking program and tracking my “active” calories burned by using a Caltrac
This time I’m motivated to be a Master.
Weight Loss Background
Posted by moonimus on Jan 3, 2008
Ever since I started elementary school, it seems as if I have been in a back and forth struggle with my weight. I was a pudgy kid when I was little but I was always one of the taller kids so my length probably hid some of my weight problems. Currently, my height is 5′ 10″ and my weight is approximately 230 lbs. I’m a fairly broad guy but most people would consider me borderline or fully obese.
I started becoming very active in high school. I wrestled in the 215 lbs weight class even though I used to hover between 185 and 200 lbs at any point in the season. The next lowest weight class at the time was 177. I wasn’t much of a wrestler but I was quicker and more agile than most. I trained very hard during the offseason by lifting 4 days a week and running 5 days a week. The route I ran was a vicious 3 mile hill infested run and absolutely grueling in the summer. Not that I’m proud of it now, but I once lost 14 lbs in one week during my senior year. After that, my season was completely lost and I was a shadow of myself on the wrestling mat.
In college, I continued to keep up with the workouts but they became increasingly difficult to maintain the effort without the motivation of competition. I entered college at 185 lbs. I gained 15 lbs as a freshman, 15 lbs as a sophmore, and 10 more lbs as a junior. I was at 225 lbs for a while until one day in grad school, the scale said 245 lbs! I was 5 lbs away from 250!! I couldn’t believe it and I took it upon myself to turn it around. Three years from that point, I had become 196 lbs. It took a lot of hard work but I slowly lost my progress after a business trip soon after. Since then, I’ve crept back up to 230 lbs.
During the time of my gaining and losing and regaining, I was using different training regimens. I got into something called High Intensity Training, then Superslow, then variations on Superslow. I also went on the low carb diet during the losing period but went back to carbs not long after I hit 196. So I haven’t been a model of consistency.
Last year, I read a book called Ultimate Diet Secrets by Dr. Gregory Ellis. It was an eye opening read and I hope to share the knowledge I learned from that book into CalorieCents. I highly recommend this book! I am currently reading a book called Starting Strength
You can see in the right sidebar my goals for weight loss and decrease in body fat percentage. June 1 is 21 full weeks away so I’d have to lose about 1.4 lbs a week. It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?
