Rampid Byter

  Those of you who know me, know that I'm a bigger guy. I was a big kid, tall and chunky, then I lost a lot of weight and was a tall string bean, and that brings me to the current shape. I'm tall but I'm definitely not a slender guy. I've lost weight here and there to the point where I needed knee surgery thanks in part to my treadmill, which I'll give it's fair credit for having caused my meniscus tear. I went to a fitness club with a friend here and there for a period of a close to half a year before conflicting schedules caused that to deteriorate, and being one to not keep up with things unless held accountable did not pick up the slack.

That brings me to the recent Christmas gift' that I gave to my wife and I. It was a bit pricey (in and around $500) but the Schwinn 230 exercise bike has been a great gift, to me, and I am using it everyday for 60 minutes a pop. In 60 minutes I've been burning off 630 calories and getting a really good burn in my legs. Unfortunately, this has brought attention to the fact that my knee surgery has definitely not fixed my problem. I say it was a great gift to me because when I told my wife I was giving her the present earlier she was excited, up until the point where she helped me carry it off the back of the truck inside, and then her enthusiasm dimmed quicker than a light in a power outage. That coupled with the fact that when asked by family about the bike and the sudden appearance was shortly answered by her "he thinks i'm fat" I had to give her another gift. A Nintendo DS with the Brain Age game. Its hard to win with women, she probably thinks I'm eluding to her being dumb now.

Anyway, the bike has been great. The seat is comfortable even after an hour of using one of the three handy bike programs on level 10. It goes to level 16, which for most people is more than enough unless you're training for the Olympics or biking across America or something. The console on the bike is relatively easy to use, offers a menu to see how many calories have been burned, calculate your BMI, and to keep up on progress being made while biking. It has a built in heart rate monitor so you can know with a reasonable assurance whether you're in the target heart rate for your body to burn calories the best.

There are of course your standard pros and cons associated with any product. I'll try to list them off as best as i can below.

Pros

1. Built with stability in mind with adjustable screws for platform legs to stabilize the bike.
   
2. Many programmed programs to choose from to exercise with from 'riding in the park' to 'endurance' resistance settings.
   
3. Built-in heart rate monitor
   
4. Displays speed, distance, timing, and calories burned during workout.
   
5. Manually adjustable resistance settings to make any workout more difficult.
   
6. Sliding seat to target different areas of the leg.

Cons

1. The turn screw on the sliding seat isn't easily adjusted while actually using the bike.
   
2. Seat squeaks a bit when really getting into the riding.
   
3. On the console is a small metal hooked front to hold things in. I hit my knee on it and left a good cut on my knee. I mean really what is this for? You can't rest a book on it, that'd be a nice addition, and it's just kind of there so if your knee comes way up it can hit it.
   
4. The bike has a water bottle holder that is completely horizontal and under the front left side of the seat. Utterly and completely useless for all purposes.
   
5. When assembling the bike connecting the circuitry in the neck of the machine is a pain. The display panel circuitry/power cord is long and taunt so it makes it overly difficult to shove back into the tube. Also the assembly instructions neglect to mention that some parts of the bike are already assembled and must be disassembled to assemble the bike.

Overall I'd give the bike a B+. It's worth the purchase, a little pricey, but the ride is comfortable without being too excessively bogged down with programs/components that aren't necessary. A fan would be nice on this model, and a real cup holder would be nice. They may have added that on newer machines, but if you're looking for a good workout on something that will burn calories without tearing cartilage this is a good investment.

Well, I was thinking about it recently that I’d been doing a lot of physical therapy lately, and I had the weird feeling that my pants were starting to get less tight. I went into the bathroom to find the scale. Started it up, waited for it to zero out, and then stood on it. I’m now down to 246 from 258 on March 16. Not much of a weight loss if you ask me, only 12 pounds, but It’s a start I suppose. Anyway, working out three days a week, weight lifting, doing my leg stretches, and I’m starting to eat more smaller sized portions. I’ve cut back to diet drinks, and I really need to cut beer out completely. Dang stuff weighs heavily on the stomach. Anyway, that’s an update for myself to show progress. Here is to another thirty pounds.

I’ve still been kind of haphazardly going about my diet routine. I’ve started weight lifting again, not to extremes, but on the diet front I’ve decided to moderate it as little as possible. I have surgery soon, and I thought the ramifications of throwing my body into new patterns wouldn’t be a great idea. So I’ve tried to mitigate eating too much food and have concentrated on just eating enough to make due. So I’ve actually managed to lose five pounds in the last week as a result. The high cholesterol still weighs on my mind as I only eat meats, cheeses, and variations of potatoes.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that I need to cut back on the quantity of food I consume. If you’re a person that knows me well you’ll know that I usually eat just once a day. I’ll work a nine to ten hour day, not touching an ounce of food, with the exception of a minimum of three diet drinks, and I’ll go home and pig out. It’s not the healthiest way to live in the slightest.

A long time ago in high school I hit my peak weight at 268. I was a junior in high school at that, and wore a size 40 pants. I was 6’6” so it was easier to disguise a little bit of gut when you’re always wearing an over-shirt, jacket, and in general hide away from people. I ended up getting so self conscious that I went on a mini eating strike. I’d eat crackers to curve the horrible stomach pain, and went about a month and a half doing this. That was until I started to pass out randomly, had fainting spells, or genuinely lost motor control that resulted in a couple hospital trips. I dropped somewhere around 70 pounds within about a two, close to three month period of time. I unfortunately also had a few memorable moments passing out (nearly stabbing my eye out with a pencil) during senior proficiencies at my high school, and another where I wound up getting a cat scan as a result. Smacking my head on a desk, and then having my semi-conscious body wheeled out from an auditorium filled with 300 quite students taking a very important test tends to lead to some lasting memories. That month also happened to be my now ex-step brothers wedding that I took part in, and let’s just say right at the “I do”, I managed to hit the floor with my face. Not the greatest time in my life.

Anyway, I say this because I went on an extreme weight loss turned eating problem I’ve previously managed to keep the weight off for over four years. I held a steady body weight within 190-220 for the four years, and recently have started to balloon up. It started when my senior year of college, and continued soon after during a job transition until now where I’ve recently gone to the doctor for a pre-surgery health evaluation. I got a little bit of a smack in the face of my reality as I know I’ve gained weight, but didn’t realize how much. I now weight a whopping 258, and have a cholesterol level of 205. I was told nicely by my doctor to eat healthier, get my diet under control, and see him again in six months.

So after this weekend of disregard to diet for the last time I’m embarking on another diet crusade. This time, smarter, not stricter, and I’ll have to be careful to not do anything extreme to jeopardize my health for my surgery in two weeks. I’m going to commit to go back to the gym after the surgery as part of my physical therapy, I’m going to eat healthier, and try to start a life trend. It takes a short time to start habits, and a long time to break them. I’m going to start with a committed attitude, and thankfully I’ve always had the patience, and fortitude to keep what I’ve sworn to do going. So this shouldn’t prove any exception. Just need to commit to exercise, not rely on others to do that for me, which was the mistake I made previously with my work out partner. I’d use their absence as an excuse to not continue going. That was weakness on my part, and will be curbed.

Starting today I’m going to on a diet. No more fast food, no more high fat munchies, I’ve already switched to drinking only diet drinks, but I need to start eating healthy too. So today I wrote at a weight of 258, high cholesterol, and I make this known to my blog. This is a promise to me made public, and I’ll keep everyone abreast of the progress.