59 Total Pounds Lost – WOW.

Needless to say I was extremely surprised to see the scale read out at 186 before my workout this morning. Here is why I was surprised;

1. I have not worked out since Last Thursday
2. I had lots of fried food on my vacation, smores at campfire time, Fudge, One and I repeat only ONE Big Mac from McDonalds, and for my final reward for reaching my goals… PIZZA ROLLS FROM PIZZA HUT. Everything was a bit of a letdown except of course the PIZZA ROLLS FROM PIZZA HUT!!!
3. Every night I had a late night snack for the past 6 days.

So again I was shocked and had to calibrate the scale with an 85 pound weight. Yup it weighed 85. WOW.
So considering this I am going to change my sustained weight target window to 185-190.
So what's next for Misunderstoodandadmired…? Well here is the next 90 day Journey that I will embark upon soon. I will have three main goals that I will track over the next 90 days.

1. Per week I will spend 3 hours working on business opportunities. I will make this flexible in that if I come up with an idea for a business it will count as ½ hour of time. The goal here is really to spend 30 minutes a day for 6 days out of the week. I want to come up with a list of things to pursue and spend time pursuing them.
2. Per week I will spend 3 hours looking at companies to invest in. That's right people the stock market. I am going to get an Ameritrade account and subscriptions to the wall street journal and USA today. I am going to spend time researching companies for a while and eventually get in the trading game.
3. Finally I will have 3 boxes set aside in my house to place money in everyday. 1-saving, 2-investing, 3-charity. I am planning the same amount in each box every day for 90 days. At the end of those 90 days I will place the savings in an actual savings account, invest the money saved for investing, and go out and give to charity out of the charity box. It will not be a big amount to start out with but the point here is to change my thinking on what I am doing with my money.

I have attached a sample tracker when I start on 9/6/10. The word multiplier means the number of times I put my "X" amount of money in. The amount (which will be the same) is not critical at this point. The action of doing this every day is!!!

This Journey will start 9/6/10 and Judgment day will be 12/5/10. The reason for starting on 9/6 and not today is because I will need to get my subscriptions coming, get the Ameritrade account, and prepare myself mentally for this new effort.

ONWARD PEOPLE ONWARD!

8/24/2010 – 57 Total Pounds Lost.

Back from vacation. It was a much needed escape. I rested on the beach, had tons of fun with my kids and family, and created some pretty good memories. I had one blow-up though… I yelled at the wife because she snuck away and bought some things for the step daughter. We were TONS of money over budget and going deeper and deeper... Most of the time she sees my money as ours and hers as hers – I know this is typical but we were running through money like Niagara Falls runs through water!!! I apologized. Now we have to recover from the sand infested in EVERYTHING, smoke filled cloths from the camp fires, and a really small bottom line on the budget sheet. We took tons of pictures and video. I am going to put together a family vacation movie for the family it will be amazing. I will share some of my photos with all my blog people - but it will be a few days. As a side note, I started noticing a lot of staring while I was there. I had on muscle shirts and for the first time in a log time I was being watched – the world noticed my goals too!
Now to get down to business! After reaching my goal of 55 pounds lost I now have to set a few new goals. One that comes to mind right away is maintaining a 4 pound window around my goal weight 188-192. Another goal is setting a financial strategy for retirement. And the final goal will be to continue growing the strength of my family.
The next three months should be very interesting as well. Stay tuned – should be a fun ride.

Headed Out.

Headed out for the vacation.
I hope all of you have a great weekend and I will be back to talk again Tuesday.
Wish me luck and thanks again for tuning into my life.
Peace.

A New Life Indeed. Harmony!

There is a Press Conference scheduled for 8:00pm Central Time. Tune in then for the latest breaking news.

8/18/2010 – 54 Pounds Lost – 1 Pound to Go – 3 Days Left

In a word... One…

ONE!

8/17/2010 – 53 Pounds Lost – 2 Pounds to Go – 4 Days Left

I usually do not write this much – but today I have some things I must get out! I do believe that Friday morning when I weigh myself I will be at 190. This dream of mine is about to be reality. It has been one very hard road but I am finally here. Someone said to me recently, "Wow you did this in such a short period of time". I said to that person, "Hold on a second. If there was some miracle pill you could take and only have to workout one time a month then yes three months would be a short period of time. But for me, I woke up every morning and rededicated myself to this effort and my goals. EVERYDAY. That is extremely difficult to do and it has been a long road for me" (FYI, she agreed and took her original statement back and added a sincere apology).


If you take a look at the timing of it all – I will reach my goal one day before judgment day. That fact is actually interesting because I will not be weighing myself on judgment day. Judgment day I will be on a beach enjoying my vacation with my family. When I set my goal date of 8/21/10 I had no idea that I would be on vacation on that very day. It is funny how life works out sometimes because it is almost as if it was a cosmic alignment of fate for me to reach my goals on the very day I will be on vacation on a beach with my wife and kids. I won! I don’t need to actually weigh myself on that day and have to worry about my weight because I have already won. The icing on the cake is that I actually got down to the weight I wanted to get to.


I do have a new life and I feel like a completely different person.


Case in Point:
I was at best buy yesterday checking my wife's computer into the geek squad. She and the daughters downloaded a virus that fried her lap top. The geek told me that the virus is an extremely common one downloaded from facebook. If you have read my blog you will know that I believe facebook is the devil (thanks for the quote Kathy Bates). I have been saying over and over again facebook has no real purpose but to keep people from the past in your life and waste your time. I digress… So the geek was telling me some other things that are wrong with it. They will need to send it out for repair as well as charge me 200 bucks to remove the virus and reinstall my operating system. On top of all that I had the three youngest kids with me. They all were on some sort of sugar rush being very demanding while I was in line and while I was speaking with the geek. So right before we were done he said to me, "I can't believe how well you are handling all this. I have seen so many people in your position dealing with kids and horrible news about their computer and they get red in the face and begin yelling and being rude with us." Most likely that would have been me 4 months ago but now I see a bigger picture with life. My energy needs to go to positive causes and building a long fruitful life for me and my family. I do not have the time, energy, or emotions to waste on geek-squad folks. Who by the way, have nothing to do with why I am in front of them at that particular point in time. I do feel different. My actions show it.


I have had two signature lines in my e-mails over the past few years. One is from a movie and the other is an original saying that I authored.


1st – "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path"
– Laurence Fishburne, the Matrix.


2nd – "If you have the desire to change your thinking followed by the motivation to act achieving is inevitable"
– misunderstood and admired.


For the first quote, I honestly believe there are billions of people walking the earth who think they know what life is about and are very good at telling other people what they should/need to do. However, walking that path is rarely seen. Some start down the right path but don’t remain on it for long. It boils down to actions - not talk.


For the second quote – I was sitting in my bed on Sunday 5-2-2010 and I realized that my life was going nowhere fast. I had a couple choices; one, get away from my wife and family so they can have a chance to grow and prosper in life or two, make a change. Make several changes actually. I chose the latter. As I sat in my bed looking up at the ceiling I had no idea how I was going to make all the changes I wanted to make. Lose weight, stop eating fast food, slow down on drinking, repair my marriage, and fix the family dynamics that were tearing my family apart. This was a huge undertaking and the weight of it all seemed unbearable and unrealistic. My thoughts soon turned motivational. I understood that the mind is a powerful tool and I needed to use it for positive growth. I said to myself that I do really desire to make these changes. I really didn't have a choice. I was failing and soon would not be able to repair what I was destroying. I also knew that I have been extremely motivated in the past – my degree from the University of Michigan is a perfect example. I dropped out twice and still managed to pull myself up and get my Engineering Degree from a very prestigious engineering school. It dawned on me that as long as you have those two things working for you – Achieving… Just… Happens!!!

8/16/2010 – 52 Pounds Lost – 3 Pounds to Go – 5 Days Left

After this long weird weekend with my eating one pound gained is about where I thought it would be. Really – I have been drinking a ton of water but have not been working out so maybe it is the water. At any rate – my after work out weight today was 190 so I think it is feasible that by Friday morning I will be right at 190. That would be amazing - especially considering that my family camping vacation start Friday afternoon. Knowing that I reached my goals while on vacation would be a great feeling. This week will be a great week!ONWARD!!!

8/15/2010 – 6 Days Left

At lunch again – last day of my seminar. My food is snacking on trial/chex mixes with turkey sandwich and chicken Caesar wraps. I use light wheat bread, zero fat tortillas, and zero fat Caesar dressing. You cannot really taste any difference with the bread and tortillas – it's great. The Caesar dressing however is a different story – its ok but certainly not the real thing. Its strange not weighting myself for so long but as you know I do not have a scale. Tomorrow morning will be interesting.
ONWARD!

8/14/2010 – 7 Days Left

Conference - Day two. Lots and lots of info being shoved my way. I am on the brink of overload and think I would have already if I had not done the study material before hand. Good feeling right now…