RoggenEats.com

“Roggen, you are such a Geek!”

As all of you who know me know, I am a geek and I do and like geeky things! What does being a geek have to do with eating better and getting healthy? Well let me answer that question with a question, what doesn’t it have to do with getting healthy? I guess that really doesn’t answer the question, but it makes me feel better.

Okay, time for some geek examples:

Fitbit – a fitbit is a pedometer on “Geek”, it will track the steps that you take throughout the day, how many flights of stairs you go up, how far you walk while taking steps and walking up stairs. At night you can put it on your non dominant arm with the included arm band and it will track how well you sleep.  If you toss and turn it knows, if you lay there peacefully it knows.  It does this by keeping track of how much you move. If you are really asleep you should not move, so don’t and you will get a better nights sleep!  One of the cooler motivational parts of the fitbit is that you can challenge your friends that have them and it keeps a tally of who does more of what. Not a bad motivation to try and get more steps than your co-workers or friends. It is a friendly challenge but motivates the lot of you.

I have to give a major shout out to @fitbit for the awesome customer service and support.  My fitbit turned up missing a few weeks ago and after searching the house and checking the lost and found at the gym for a number of days, it was no where to be found.  Since the fitbit is not exactly cheap at $99 I was not really ready to shell out the cash again.  So I contacted their support department and explained my conundrum.  The next day I received an email informing me that they were going to send me a new fitbit at no cost!  Now that is how to keep a satisfied customer.  I have recommended the fitbit to a number of my friends and family and a few of they have bought them, will you?

Next up is my iPhone, the ultimate geek stick!  It can do many things!  And many of the things it can do are trivial and others are not.  Making phone calls….trivial.  Getting email…..trivial.  Being able to track all of the food and exercise that I do in a day…..not so trivial.  Since I have been on my health kick I have been tracking everything that I eat in an app called loseit.  It does a great job at tracking my daily doings.  I use it to track how much I eat, how much I am exercising and my weight loss goals.  It has been a huge help in keeping me motivated in another way.  So far I have used it to track my food and exercise over the last 30 lbs and will keep tracking for the next 30!

I have also used my iPhone to track how far I have ridden on my bike or run and which routes I have taken.  The tools on the iPhone work well but they tend to eat a lot of battery and since I have a number of longer rides planned this year, I decided that I would need a dedicated device to track my distance workouts.

So I purchased  the Garmin Edge 500 gps device, with the heart rate monitor and cadence sensor.  These have helped my to track my distances and how hard I have been working on the bike.  I know that I could train without them and probably would learn how well I am doing, but being the data guy that I am, I want to know the numbers!  And the garmin will track the numbers.  It keeps many many datapoints.  Distance, speed, cadence, heart rate, temperature, elapsed time, grade…..and the list goes on.  It is simple to use, you strap it on your bike, hit start and ride.  It does the rest.  Once you have finished your ride you plug it into a computer and transfer the data to the garmin website and now you have your many points of light!  Cool, eh?  I know that by the end of this year, I will have a great look into what I have done on the bike.  It has already helped me to know that I am improving.  I shaved a minute off of one of the hills that I ride in just the last few weeks.

So do these geek items make me fit?  No, but they sure help along the way.  They help to keep track of how often I am working out, how hard and how long.  All great things to know when you are trying to change your life style.  I for one could not live without my geekness.  I hope that some of you will find some value in the things I have found helpful in my quest to fitness.  Thanks for reading and enjoy.

Roggen……out!

Last Saturday was definitely a day to remember, or at least that is what my muscles are telling me! The day started off must the same way most Saturdays start off, with me rolling out of bed. But then things went wildly different. I found my in the Lifetime Fitness Gymnasium with 299 other people chatarangaing to the soothing sounds of Micha’s voice and the DJ’s spins! Being surrounded by a mass of like minded fitness freaks makes you realize what you have!

After a long session of yoga and a relaxing time in Savasana, the yoga session ended and I quickly changed into my “Kit” for the club ride.  I met up with 35 or so other cyclists and hit the road.  We headed south.  Over the river and through the roads, but not to grandmother’s house!  Up and over the rising hills ahead of us.  With every turn there seemed to be another hill to climb.  So what did I do, I climbed them with every last bit of energy that I had.  We rode from South Jordan to Saratoga Springs and then turned west to the Ranches.  We continued to wind around until we reached the Clubhouse at the Golf Course where we stopped for a bite to eat and a bit of a rest to regain our legs.  Then it was off again.  Heading back the way we came.

It seemed that the trip home went a bit faster than the path out, but both were so worth it.  We ended up with a round trip of just under 40 miles.

So after a long a grueling morning of Yoga and and afternoon of cycle I made it home with even a little bit of energy to spare!  And the metaphorical icing on the cake came when I stepped on the scale before taking a shower and it read, 227, I had finally broken that magical barrier between being Morbidly Obese and just Overweight!  I’ll take that as a win!

Roggen……out!

So I have been in the Washington DC area for the last week in a training class. But alas all good trips must come to and end and so did this one.

Just to give a bit of a rundown of the week I spent most of the time in the classroom. Learning the ins and outs of the software I am tasked to support. The more I learn about what the software does the more I am amazed. Also got to spend some time with my Right coast co workers.

For a work outing, went carting (pics to follow when I can get them uploaded) at an indoor cart track. What a blast that was. I think one of the best parts of the night was the briefing by the chubby French racing driver! “You vill hav to go in z zin bin!” after getting suited up and adorned with crash helmets it was off to the carts. The format for the race was two man team swapping drivers every 16 laps or so. I was paired with Sud, the corner turning machine. Needless to say, there were some much more experienced cart drivers in the house (Hao and Jeremy!), and so we were not able to clench first place or second or even third, but it was still a blast!

On Friday evening I popped over to the mall and got some gifts for the kids. Had to hit a couple of the stores that we don’t have locally. The American Girl Doll Store, which creeps me out a little bit, especially when I go in there all by my creepy middle aged man self! The other store is the Lego store, awesome! The Lego store makes up for the creepy of the AG store!

Hanging out in DC Saturday morning was a blast. Got to drive by some unbelievable houses that I would love to live in if I made a gazillion dollars! Ate Ethiopian Food for lunch. And rushed to the airport in order to catch my flight. It seems that I am always cutting it close when it is time to catch my flight home.

After getting through security and finding my gate I noticed that the sign said that the next stop would be Kansas City. Since I thought I had a direct flight, I just thought it was a glitch in the system. But when I got on the plane they made an announcement that we would need to stop in KC to top of the tank so we could make it to the SLC! This is an experience I have never had before. But I am told that that the jet stream from west to east can be so strong that there is sometimes cause for this kind of a stop. I am just glad they figured it out before it became more of an issue! Would not like to be the feature on the 10:00 news!

The above pic is of the isle gathering of passengers while we waited for the plane to be refueled. I am just glad they did not ask me to pay more for the flight to cover the cost of the extra fuel!

This pic is of the fuel truck fillin’ ‘er up! (Looks like I uploaded the wrong photo. Will fix it later as well.)

We are now hurling through the sky at 600 miles an hour towards home! Can’t wait to get home and see my family! I miss them and can’t wait to give them their “Surprises!” Plus sleeping in my own bed is a real plus.

A weekend of greatness has come and gone! It was sad to see it go, I was so amazed with what I was able to see and do. Sometimes I wish I could stop time and let it linger just a little while longer. That being said, I guess I had better get to the crux of this post, St. George or should I quote Creighton: “St. Geezy!” I had the luxury of heading south out of the cold and wind to the beautiful Southern Utah area for a weekend of “Road Heaven and Hell!”

It all started out on a brisk Friday morning, in February, before the sun was even up, a time that I have rarely seen in the last few years! The car was packed to the hilt with gear and bikes! And the open road was calling. We headed south on I-15 for a short time in order to arrive in the beautiful 60 degree weather of Washington, Utah, our home base for the next few days.

The gear and bikes were unloaded and the fun began, well kind of. I still had to work but it was a lot different working where the prospect of going biking in warm weather loomed on the horizon. The work day dragged on but it finally ended! As the rest of our group slowly trickled in throughout the rest of the day the party just kept getting bigger and bigger.

On Saturday we headed out for a 9:00 start time on a 50 mile ride!  You read that correctly, I did write 50 miles.  If you would have asked me a year ago if I were ready to ride 50 miles on a set of skinny tires I would have laughed in your face as I continued to stuff Big Mac’s into my Gullet!  What a slothful shlub I was.

After a few words of wisdom from the seasoned riders, we all saddled up and started spinning.  At first my legs were giving me a bit of a fight to say, what the He** are you doing to me?  But after a few stern words and some more mile they settled in for the ride ahead.

Oh, and what a ride it was.  We saw beautiful vistas with skys of blue!  And a lot of the “white” line!  Never knew I would learn to trust the white line on the road so much.

After a number of climbs and a lot of revolutions we finally made it most of the way up our elevation.  We stopped at a gas station to “refuel” before the rest of the ride.  I was actually convinced that I could have a soda.  I drank part of it, but I just could not bring my self to drink the whole thing.  After a short break we were back on the open road again.

We practiced a number of techniques the help us get more familiar at riding in a group and using the group to work less.  The most impressive one, in my opinion was the rotating echelon.  It helped me to understand the value of riding in a group and how to keep my mind off of what I was really doing!

Part of our ride was down Snow Canyon, that has to be one of my favorite parts of the weekend.  Riding fast through the beautiful red rock canyon, there are few things that are better.

We ended the ride at a Local BBQ place, and since I had not eaten BBQ in a while it was a real treat.  Hanging with the “Fam” made it that much better.  I was able to keep my self from falling back into my old ways of over eating.  It sure did taste good, especially after a long ride.

The next day we decided we couldn’t let the beautify weather go to waste so we headed out for a quick 22 mile ride around Sand Hollow.  There was a lovely head wind as we got started and again my legs started to revolt, and again I told them to shut up.  When I looked at the ride on the map and saw the elevations that we were going to go up, I was a little nervous, I even had it made up in my mind that, there was no way I was going to do the mid point climb.  Well the peer pressure got the best of me and I made the climb, it was actually easier than I thought it was going to be.  But having a good friend to talk to and keep my mind off of what I was doing made it so much easier.  Needles to say, I impressed my self with my willpower.

There are not many places that I have visited that have such beautiful landscapes to ride.  Utah is a fantastic cycle state!  I have many more roads to roll my skinny tires along, and a lot of those miles to solidify friendships!

Heres to riding the long road!

Roggen……out!

Yoga…..always thought it wasn’t for me. Thought only cute little petite girls, like my wife, were in to folding themselves into strange poses in dark Indian decor rooms! Well I couldn’t have been more wrong. A few weeks into my Cycle class I was convinced that I “needed” to go to Yoga to stretch out the overly tight joints in my body! First class that I went to was a Slow Flow Yoga taught by one of the great Yogi’s at LTF, Micha! I entered the room very timidly and was instantly told that shoes were not allow in the Yoga Studio, so back to the hall I went to nakedify my feet! With naked Feet, I went back into the the dimly lit room of twisting, turning, hand standing, down dogging and muscle burning! I was directed to the corner to procure a “mat” to practice on. I laid out my mat, claiming my own little piece of yoga real estate, and started prepping as best I could for what was coming next. All the prepping I did really didn’t do much to get me ready.

After a little over an hour of this mind and body twisting, clothes drenching class, it finally ended. Everyone in the class gave me many kind words of encouragement and helped to convince me that I could do it again…..so I did. The next week I went to a Hot Vinyāsa class and boy was it hot! This being my second yoga class ever, it seemed that there may have been a light at the end of the tunnel, and there was.

Now that I have been practicing 2-3 times a week it is getting much easier. I can even see a huge amount of improvement in my work out and strength. I am really enjoying it.

Since I have committed my self to continue on I went so far as to order my own Yoga Mat, so for Valentines I ordered both Kori and I the whole kit and caboodle from Manduka. What a great purchase. Kori and I have not really been the Valentine’s gift givers, but this was going above and beyond.

Until next time,

Roggen…….out!

Many people do not care for Brussel Sprouts, but I really enjoy them!  They are one of those foods that I remember as a kid, always thinking, I shouldn’t like these, but I do.  But then again I am also a fan of cabbage, the full size cousin to the Brussel Sprout.

There are many bennifits to eating these little buds of goodness!  And most interesting to me is the fact that they are better for you once they have been steamed!  Not a lot of veggies can make that claim, most are better for you in their raw form.

So what did I do, well from the pic above you can see that I had some Garam Masala seasoned Mahi Mahi and steamed brussels sprouts.

Take your piece of fish and throw it in a pan.  Add seasoning and cook on both sides.  Next I threw the B Sprouts in the steamer and steamed for 6 minutes.  Plate and eat.  Pretty simple way to eat healthy.

Nutritional value: Brussel Sprouts 1 3/4 cups 98 Calories, Mahi Mahi 4oz 97 Calories

Let the ride begin!

As many of you, even though there are few, may know, I have spent the majority of the last 13 years eating myself into the Jolly person I am. In so doing I definitely added to the “Jollyness” of my shape! Well I am here to say that a few things in my life have changed! I have a new goal in life and it is not to eat myself to death! Starting back in November of last year I took a good long look at myself and decided things needed to change.

I was in horrible shape and my heath stats were through the roof in a bad way.

I decided that there was no such thing as a “diet” for me, and that I needed to change just about everything I was doing! First off, kill that TV! I had been spending so much time watching the infernal tube that I didn’t really know what to do with myself when I got home from work. So I made the call to the satellite provider and told them I was no longer in need of their services! They were not a fan of this as they were losing the $85 a month I was paying them. They offered to lower my monthly costs……but I stood by my guns and shut’er down!

Next up was to get out and do something active, but where to start? It was getting a bit colder and I was less inclined to go outside to workout. So I headed back to the Lifetime Fitness Center in SoJo and re-upped my membership. I had been a member there a few times before but never really did anything more than a few days a month! All in all I think I gained weight the first couple of times! This time I am in it for the long haul! First up was not to run on a treadmill like a human hamster! So I decided that I should get back into riding bike. I had really enjoyed riding a bike through the Swiss countryside a few years ago, but who wouldn’t? So biking it was. I looked on the schedule, grabbed my shoes and headed to the Spin room. After having the trash kicked for roughly an hour, it ended! Whew I made it through! The instructor broke the news that he was going to be moving his class to another day of the week and that a “Performance Cycle” class we be in the Tuesday and Thursday slots. A little unsure of what that would mean I gave it a chance.

First night of the Performance Cycle class consisted of BP and CL setting up their bikes in the front of the room and proceeding to tell us that this would not be “Your mothers Spin Class!” and that it was designed for people who wanted to train for the coming race season in the off season. What did that mean? Lots of spinning to build up aerobic endurance. The first night we were challenged by BP and CL to set a goal for the coming year. A number of the goals that were set were to “Win X race, Finish Y race in this time!” What was my goal? To get off of my Couch!”

So I had the plan to exercise, now, the next question was how to eat better. How do you do that when it is so easy to eat unhealthily? Well as I am finding out, it was hard at first but has gotten much easier! I had to give up my “out to lunch” status and stay at my desk. I figure I was eating out at a fast food or unhealthy restaurant 6-8 times a week! It is no wonder that I have gotten so fat! I was starting to wonder what a vegetable was! So after a short attempt to just slow down my unhealthy eating I decided I would have to do it cold turkey! So that is what I did, starting January 1 2012! I have not been to a fast food place since! And boy do I feel so much better! I have been eating more leafy greens in the last two months that I think I have in my whole life! I feel great and love that the weight is coming off!

Here is it a few months later and I am down 30LBS! Can you believe it? Neither can I. I have so many people to thank for helping to keep me motivated! My wife has been the biggest motivator! The kids in the Cycle Club have been awesome!

I love the looks I get from people now who have not seen me for a while!

Now to keep with it and get ready for the “Race Season!” and stay off of my couch!

Roggen……out!

Went to San Diego for work this last week and had a chance to eat at Lucha Libre! They have one of the best tasteing creations I have ever had in a tortilla! Streak, shrimp, and French fries with awesome sauce and pico de Gallo! I may have to go back to San Diego just for another chance to eat another one!

Made the anual trip to veges with the mini club. Going to check out some new fooding digs and will post them up! Can’t wait.

So I am posting this with a new software for my laptop. Hopefully it works the way that I am expecting. If so it will make posting to my blog much easier!

Here goes nothing.

Pizza from Nuch’s