Eric Holen

I don’t know if I am allowed the leak the cover this early, but what a surprise that Yvette made the list of best Texas spouses AND made the cover! I love her, she’s beautiful, and she is the best spouse.

It has been a while since I took the time to send an update on our weight loss progress; however,  we are still going strong, except for this morning.  I previously wrote how Yvette and I had joined Anytime Fitness in April.  Here it is June, and with just a few exceptions, we have been going 4 or 5 times a week since then.

This morning was one of those exceptions, which gave me the time to write this entry.  We have the dogs to blame for this morning.  They were up last night with stomach problems.  Most weeks we are at the gym at 4:45 AM Monday through Thursday and later on Saturday.  Friday and Sundays are our days off.

Our efforts, including watching our diet, have really started to show.  While I call it a “diet” it really is nothing more than portion control.  We still eat a lot of our favorite foods, we are just very careful about how much.

When I first started blogging about my weight on March 30, I was 192.0 pounds.  In my last entry on May 4 I was 179.4 pounds.  Yesterday, I weighed 168.2 pounds.  That is just 8 pounds shy of my goal weight!  I am rethinking my goal weight for two reasons.  First, it is still heavier then the recommended weight.  I had originally picked that goal because it would have meant a loss of 30 pounds, a big accomplishment.  Second, while I am working out and still losing weight, I still have a problem around my midsection.

I had planned to have a big margarita as a mini celebration when I dropped below 170 pounds, but then I started figuring out how many calories I would be putting in my mouth.  So my celebration was limited to pulling my size 33 slacks out of storage and sending them to the cleaners.  I have been wearing size 34.  At my heaviest, in 2003, I had weighed 232 pounds and wore a size 38/40.

In brief, how have I been accomplishing my weight loss?  First, I followed the very simple “Eat Less, Move More” plan that my friend Rafael Marquez tweeted about.  Second, I have the support of my loving wife of 12 years.

Note: I am trying out Windows Live Writer to post this blog entry.

• Weight: 179.4 lbs | Goal: 160.0 lbs
• I lost 1.4 pounds last week. It wasn’t as much as I had hoped for, but the weekend hurt my numbers a little. On the bright side, it’s the first time that I have weighed less than 180 pounds in almost two years.
• Three weeks now and we still love the early morning workouts, it’s just the alarm going off so early that we could do without.
• Yvette and I had a busy weekend. I spent very little time in front of the television or computer. Saturday started with working out, yard work, the Pecan Street Festival and then the UT/A&M softball game, which they lost.
• We babysit Payton on Saturday evening and into Sunday. We had a blast. The last time we had her she was just beginning to stand on her own, now she is walking all over the place.
• Larissa and Justin, Payton’s parents, invited us over for an incredible dinner on Sunday. We had some small steaks and ribs that Justin cooked on the grill along with baked potatoes and asparagus. We finished it off with some make it yourself strawberry shortcake. Just one day off the diet, but it showed.
• Yvette and I skipped our big anniversary vacation this year due to the economy; however, I am getting the serious itch to take a 4-day cruise out of Galveston. We don’t know if we’ll be able to scratch it, but it is sure fun trying by just planning a possible trip.
• Jesse is doing much better. We were able to pick up a playpen at a garage sale so know he is out of his cage during the day. We’re still slowly working on his weight.
• I am so looking forward to seeing the new Star Trek movie this weekend.

A couple of weeks ago I tweeted about my frustration with my Motorola Q9c smartphone. I have had my phone for over a year and thoroughly enjoy using it for accessing email, the Internet and of course handling telephone calls.

Over the last several weeks, I noticed that my phone was locking up more often. Sometimes the problems even delayed me from placing a telephone call because I was locked out. After much research (e.g. Google) and thought, I finally hit upon the cause. I had overloaded my phone.

Note: At this point, start inserting “life” for phone and keep reading.

I had loaded up my phone with every possible application, tool and toy that I get my hands own. My phone was stressed. I was trying to make it do too much and I wasn’t listening to it complain to me until its problems finally frustrated me into action.

So a little over a week ago, I sat down and took stock of my phone. I made a list of the applications that were most important to me. Out of the 53 applications that I had installed, I only regularly used 6 of them. So, after some self convinceing, I performed a master reset to restore my phone back to its original, fresh out of the box state. Even after installing the six applications that I needed, my phone was back to its perky self. No more lockups or frustration.

Now, performing a master reset on a phone is one thing. But this process brought me a minor revelation. How many of us load our lives down until we get to the point that we stress ourselves to the point that we lock ourselves out? Sometimes we don’t even notice it because we are trying to do so much for others that we do not take care of ourselves. Those are the times that we need to take stock of our lives. What’s do I truly need? What’s important? If we, including me, can be honest, we might find that we could do with a lot less, and performing our own “master reset” to clean out our lives would lead to less frustration and lockups.