We've moved.

The Countdown blog is moving; it will now be a part of the new HottJava blog and include my other 3 blogs:


Our new address: www.hottjava.com

170 - and St. Pattys day

Right,
So my posting has been a touch infrequent to say the least, but I have no real excuses. Business as usual here. Spoke to the DJ the other night for the wedding, he sounds really cool. Figured we'll get out and get some corned beef this evening and get prepped for all the wedding stuff we need to do this weekend. I've had the good fortune to hit my goal (with minor fluctuation) so I'm in a maintenance mode; just continuing to run and get ready for the pig.

Cheers, Happy Irish New Year.

182 kids

So I've not been quite as regular in my posting as I might have liked with this blog, so I'd like to apologize for that. That said; we're 182 days away (6 months as of yesterday) and I was .2 lbs away from my goal weight after my run yesterday. Odd, because my run times aren't getting better yet, they're getting worse. I guess you'll have that as you add distance, but I was hoping for better. Guess it will come in time. Anyhow; I guess the name of the game now should be to add a little more in the way of definition. Might be nice to have some of that when we hit the beaches on the honeymoon, eh? All I can say that I did differently from what I've done every other time I've incorporated an exercise regimen into my life is to keep all the indicators in front of me; kept constant watch on food impact through livestrong, kept running goals up with nike plus, I still drank but not as much and we got a scale in the bathroom. Those were really the only changes I've made. Now I might be an exception, Julie tells me I have a "Miraculous metabolism" and I guess I'm in no position to argue. I started this little project 51 days ago according to my math, and here I've hit the goal. Not too shabby.

You don't have to cook it all yourself.

Last night Julie and I went out to celebrate her birthday; to do this, we went to the Sanford near downtown, the menu was the same as they have online (listed as a sample menu). I had the Scottish salmon, and Julie had the scallops & lobster. Incredible food, absolutely remarkable. And while perhaps a tad pricey, it was really nice for a special occasion; just the thing really. And the nice thing was that the food we got wasn't horrible for us. I guess my point is that we often get into this routine where we feel like we always have to eat at home, but there are responsible choices that you can make even away from the house. It's easy to get caught up in the routines and forget that.

Have a nice weekend.

mmmm, salmon.

So here we sit at 192 and Julie and I sampled one of Tom Douglas' rubs last night; this particular rub is specific to salmon and we have tried it before, just not with the fresh salmon we used last night. It's great, a little sweet and a little savory, we simple coated the salmon filets and pan fried them; served with steamed rice and steamed asparagus.
I'm telling you, you need to get a steamer. Julie and I got one last year and it's been one of the greatest aides to making nearly any meal. It handles both rice and veggies with ease, and it's nearly impossible to mess up. Last night it did the Asparagus perfectly as well as the rice. Sticky and perfect. Yum.

192 and still training

So, not that I get asked about all this a lot, but I think it's always good to be accountable for both failures and successes. The purple line shows my weight progress since I started this little experiments, and the green line shows my net caloric intake (apprx).

The thing I take away from this chart is that progress will ebb and flow, and I can't speak for anyone else but for me at least, success is not a straight line. It takes constant work and the ability to deal with setbacks handily and keep driving for your goal. I'm nowhere near finished running, but I do believe that due to muscle weight, I may not hit the 195 mark (which is my goal). I'm ok with that, but I still want to keep driving for it, keep eating healthy because I believe that there are additional benefits (which I won't detail here) that come with the increased health.

Heyoo - 197 to go.

So, maybe this fits in nicely with my other blog (bjgreviews) but I'm trying to come up with an appropriate song for our first dance; and to me this is a big deal right because I love music. What sends the right message? What's meaningful? What's going to make people go "awe"? So we've probably had a list of a dozen of them that we've just suggested, but eventually we want to narrow that down and maybe even set up a poll. Who knows. Anyhow; the training is coming along. We both did three miles yesterday which wasn't too bad, but I do feel like I need to get faster. What's more, Julie made a good point last night that treadmill training doesn't exactly allow you to understand how to set your own pace, so now we're on a hunt for ways to do that.

any suggestions out there?

~Brian

200 Days Kids!

So yeah, I guess 200 days out is more symbolism than anything, but I figured it warranted a blog post; I've been a little lazy. The 1/2 marathon training is coming along, but I think now that I have Julie as a running partner (she's running the 1/2 pig too) we're going to switch up to her training schedule even though I did 6 miles yesterday on the old schedule. That was tough, but I did it.


We did get a ton more stuff on our registry this weekend and I've seen some ambitious people out there already picking things up, so I want to thank everyone ahead of time.

That's all for now!
~Bri

Registries and Marathons

Last evening Jules and I went on the first of what I suppose will be many trips to add items to our registry. I guess they make this as painless as possible, but I have a few ideas about how to transform this process into one that would be a little more ubiquitous and a more positive experience for all involved.

First I'm thinking that there should be an item purgatory. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I should be able to walk into the store and put items I know I'm going to want on a "hold" list, so that I can remember to go research the difference between say this wine fridge and another brand that I might want, or this juicer and other models that might be available. I realize there is no money in doing this for the stores, but I believe it would be insanely helpful to the process for couples. Really, it's the "I think I want this, but I want to do more research on this category of items" phase, and frankly, there is so much going on that I can't remember every little thing I wanted to research.

I'll leave the rest of that gripe for another time, but suffice to say it is a process that could be improved upon, greatly.

And now, with regards to the marathon. Well the 1/2 marathon; today I'm to run three miles according to Nike Plus, and I want to try and train for the Cincinnati Flying Pig 1/2. I'm going to start today and we'll see how it goes, with any luck, in May I will be 13 miles closer to my ultimate goal. Below is a picture that I actually took that inspired me. Julie's cousins running the New York Marathon in October. I'd like to think that if those guys can do a full, I can surely do a 1/2. Time will tell. Send good vibes my way.

~Brian

12 inches of snow, and 207 to go

No, I don't mean the "rapper" from the mid 90's, snow

Wisconsin is experiencing the snow equivalent of a renaissance today. It is estimated that we'll see between 10 and 14 inches between now and 3am tomorrow morning. You get a slight sense of the progression from my photos here:

The good thing is that it means I have a workout partner at lunch today; Julie is home for the day. 

so on to other topics; the Superbowl. I would say that the other day on livestrong I read an article that talked 

7 months to the wedding

7 months, or 212 days to go.
So far I'm feeling pretty good about this diet change and all the work we've been doing. Official count seems to be 22 days at it, so I would say though that two of those weeks have really been a concerted effort on our parts.

The weight loss is there and I may be on a plateau as my weight has been steady-ish for the last two days or so. I feel like the exercise could begin to yield some muscle definition if I keep at it, which would be really cool. My run results yesterday seem to have resulted in showing a little bit quicker pace, a little bit more stamina; so that's encouraging.

oh well, back to the grind.

214 and change

So you get a double topic today. Special.

Last night we made Stir Fried Honey Ginger Chicken with Peppers, and yum! It was very good, but I was thinking you could really use anything, don't have to just do chicken. It really was very easy to put together, but in my experience just prepping everything took a little longer than 20 minutes (as indicated on the recipe).

Very very good though. Check that out.

Also, I'm posting about workout tracks:

This is my workout #6, I can't seem to get enough of "Mr. Brightside" when I want to run, it's just the perfect speed for when my feet hit the treadmill. Do you have any suggestions for tracks that you use? Hit me up in the comments section. 

215 Days and going strong

Julie and I continue to work out on the weekends, and this weekend was no exception. Got in my longest run in months this weekend with 2.25 and I felt really good! (surprisingly). I would have gone for 2.5 but there was someone hovering in the gym for the treadmill. Will be interesting to see how the exercise regimen changes once the weather gets warm here again (you know, in may). Anyhow, we try to continue to eat well whenever we can on the weekends, even if we do ease off the rules just a bit. Last night we actually had red meat (can't remember the last time we made this at home) in the form of "Superstuffed Steak Tacos".

Wow.

All I can say is that they are awesome, and as Julie was quick to point out, we could fill these guys with shrimp or turkey or whatever and they would probably still be awesome. We were able to find the low carb wraps which I think were like 70 cals apiece. Delicious....so actually there were no leftovers. I'm ok with this though.

More as the week progresses.

T - 220

Last night we did Stuffed Turkey Burgers from Ellie Krieger; Yum!

I have to say that it's getting cold again here in Wisconsin, and I thought it would be fun to pull out the grill to remind us that spring and summer are coming. Turns out it's not the greatest idea in the world to grill when it's cold out. Mostly because the grill has to work that much harder to heat and cook the food, as a result, you the grill-master have to crank up the heat to compensate. While the burgers still turned out delicious, there may still be remnants of them on the grill because of a little sticking problem. (guess I should oil it up better next time). Anyhow, these Turkey burgers were stuffed with reduced fat Mozz & roasted red peppers. Wow. Very good. Personally, I wanted a little something salty on it, but it's certainly a great recipe that we'll likely use again in the near future.

Also I want to thank Bart for the daily regimen advice, run and weight lift on alternating days (this was news to me). Also, do the elliptical after lifting for maximum effect. This corroborates a Men's Health article from this month that talks about a study showing the effectiveness of cardio after lifting. The lifting can be as little as 30 a week (10 mins/day over 3 days) to be effective. It also gives me new inspiration to do something, in otherwords be active every day. I like it, let's see if I can make it work with everything else.

~B

Conflicts of Interest

222 Days out. So, some of you realize that I run a beer blog in addition to a couple other blogs. The beer blog happens to hold a conflict to the real purpose of this blog, which is of course to get fit etc before the big day. I'm not saying that I don't drink beer anymore, it's just in moderation.

In fact, this weekend was the first weekend since I started this blog that I picked up a six of new beers for the purposes of review. The other beers I had this weekend were really about having a relaxing beverage with dinner or just relaxing in general. So I guess my point, is that unless you're very lucky, nearly anytime you're driving for something goal-wise, you're going to run into conflicts between multiple things you want or need. Like anything, if you can find a balance or a happy medium you will be best served, but that is not always possible. So, some days it's going to come down to hard choices and unfortunately in this case, I think the beer blog has to suffer. I'd like to be on a track where I was posting 8 new beers a week, especially since that blog gets much better traffic than this blog, but at least for the next several months, I'll have to be sure that I keep that to one or two posts/reviews per month and hope that will be enough to keep some level of readership.

The benefit here of course, is that this blog can continue to grow, and you all can continue to see how I progress towards this goal of being fit by September. So far, so good. I'm down about 7lbs, which I'm pretty excited about, we'll have to see how that continues to go.

~Brian

Invites? Oh yeah.

So we did much of the work around our invites last night. Whew.

We had to pick out the verse and the script and the reply cards. Glad that's done. Hopefully we'll have enough, and this weekend we can get the rest of the save the date stuff done and out the door. Not much of an update I realize, but things are going steady at the moment. Not much to report.

A little over 32 weeks to go

As of tomorrow, I will have been tracking eating habits for a week, and I wanted to see what effect that amount of tracking has had on how I've been eating. I've felt for some time now, that unless you're adamant about nutrition info, you really have no idea about what kind of impact you're having on yourself with each meal.

228 and counting

So last night we tried a recipe from the Martha Stewart Food magazine, I love that magazine BTW. You can find the instructions here.

So we weren't able to find the boston bibb lettuce that it calls for, and I think I grabbed a small onion rather than the shallot it calls for, but the whole thing was delicious. I think next time, rather than trying to approximate lettuce cups, maybe we'll just add shredded lettuce and make it a kind of salad. It was delicious however, and I've been surprised at how once I started eating better and less, how I haven't been as hungry as I thought I would. I feel like I'm making progress towards my goals and that's inspiring me to go farther.

We served it with a side of snow peas and brown rice steamed. Very very good.

Cheers!

229 to go, how's it coming?

So, the first thing you should know when looking at the graph below is that I adjusted my calorie goal down, because a) I'm excited by the progress I'm seeing, and b) 2700+ seemed like a lot. So as of Saturday I'm just under 2500. And while I would have been above the line anyway on Friday and Sat, it wouldn't have been so egregious.

So, I really can't say enough good things about this Livestrong/MyPlate app. The iPhone app is like $3, but it's really nice to be able to track things while you're out and about. In this case, it needs a little updating because it sometimes has a bad sync or something (adds stuff I didn't eat), but it's like 95% of the way there.

Like I said to my bosses at SearchDaddy...

This thing isn't going to work if we don't start tracking with some analytics:

so it's 232 days to the wedding, and I'm pretty excited to have discovered the Livestrong/MyPlate app; what I realized from that website is that a guy my age, weight and size ought to be eating calorie-wise, and I've been able to record then all the things I eat in there (they have a handy little iphone app), or drink. Then I can get a sense of what I'm doing to myself. So far, I have a lot of sugar and salt. I should have figured.

Yum! Great recipe..

234 days to the wedding...

So last night was Julie's night to cook. We did a chicken with Ginger and Miso paste in the broiler, but I think the real star of the show (and I think she would agree with me) was the roasted corn and edamame salad. Wow. Very tasty, and if you're looking for a nice summery side to go with a sizable protein, this is a good bet.

So coble that with the discovery of the myplate/livestrong app Bart told me about today, and I'm a happy camper today apart from the fact that I discovered the shake I've been making in the mornings was like 1100 calories. It's mostly fruit, so I thought it was healthy. I guess it's like most things, even water in excess will kill you.

But I did run a mile today, and I did get in another mile on the elliptical, so I'm feeling pretty good. Surprised that my appetite is actually smaller. Now I'm not saying this has anything to do with the health conscious attitude we've been focused on, but perhaps more to do with the illness I was experiencing on Friday which sapped my appetite for much of the weekend. All I know is I'm eating less, feeling pretty good and my size 34's don't feel as tight as they did. :-D

~Brian

Eating healthy is part of it too

So last night we tried a new recipe, and as often happens, we switch off nights cooking and so last night I made Salmon BLT's,

HOLY CRAP.

Wow, they're really just what they sound like, but damn they were surprisingly tasty. So I should mention that we got some healthy wheat bread, substituted turkey bacon for the real deal, and left out the mayo. So the mixture that goes on the bread with the lemon and cayenne is kinda hot if you made it like I did, and pretty zippy with all the lemon, but it really doesn't spread due to the lack of mayo and I think that was a weakness of our meal, but with that, the lettuce and tomato the whole thing was really good, if not kinda dry. I sort of wanted another one as soon as we were done, but it was still pretty filling. We did also use frozen salmon fillets, I'm sure this would be a million times better with fresh (isn't everything?) but respecting a wallet and a belly means frozen. No worries, it works.

On the side we did broccoli slaw with a low fat asian dressing. very good stuff, and it's a nice way to add simple veggies and crunch to any meal. In fact, I had the same side with my lunch today. Next time I might make the panini. Yum!

~B

So, it's January...

And I'm a little late in getting this blog started as referenced here, but hey, that happens.

The goal isn't going to move, so I need to pick up the pace, eh? You may or may not be able to see here what my current run status is, just in case you can't, it's here on the Nike site.

I'll admit that the nike plus thing doesn't track my time on the nautilus well, and since I did a mile on there for the first 8 minutes of my run, the times and averages are a little off, but that will happen, eh?

Right, so approximately 186 days to the bachelor party, and 236 to go till the main event. Today I proposed the idea of running the flying pig half marathon to Julie in an effort to get into shape, and put me in a good place to try and run Chicago in October. Going to see how training goes between now and then, but I bet a lot of people in Cincinnati who are avid runners are thinking about this race about now. I want to talk to a guy I work with about the pig, and Julie's cousin Pat about his training regimine in running the NYC marathon this past october. Glad I have good resources to reach out to.

So What's the point of this anyway....

Don't I already have three other completely useless, unread blogs out there?

Of course I do! But this one will help me track my progress (hopefully with people cheering me on) as I try to get fit for many goals this year, but most intentionally, my wedding. Hence, this is a countdown to September.