Richard Lee Thomason

It's easy to get overly concerned with "losing weight" or just seeing the number on the scale go down, but that's not necessarily a good thing if that lost weight isn't fat. About two years ago, in January of 2004, I decided I would join a gym, hire a personal trainer, and set out to lose weight. Unfortunately, I lost weight. Huh? Yes, I did go down from 212 lbs to 188 lbs in just three months, but I never got my body fat levels below 20%. So, I ended up Losing Weight, But Not Fat, with actually serves to lower basal metabolism. All bad.

Posted by Rick at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A good website for buying your own customized computer is Jinglehorse (www.jinglehorse.net). One of the members of my old gaming guild, The Cabal, is a partner of this company. They build custom computers that you can configure online, they sell every type of computer component you could need for your system, and their site provides some very helpful computer buying guides. I think they offer solid systems at a good price.

Posted by Rick at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One new one from A-ha, Analogue, and one old "Best Of" collection, Van Halen's The Best Of Both Worlds. I was never a big Van Halen fan when I was younger, but I used to own 5150 and enjoyed it alot. I kept hearing all these good old VH songs on the radio and realized I needed to get this CD. Haven't even heard a single song from the new A-ha disc, but since they are one of my favorite bands, I'll always buy their new stuff.

Posted by Rick at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To be honest, I don't have much ego when it comes to How Much Weight I Lift. I've seen far too many people in the gym who are way stronger than I am to think I'm anything special. I'm "above-average" when it comes to strength; that's all. Still, in order to know if I'm improving, I have to record how much I can currently lift to see if I'm getting anywhere. For that reason, I'm using this week before Christmas to write down how much I do of each exercise. I don't have any old numbers to compare them to, so this is where I'll be starting from.

Posted by Rick at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Was pondering my diet after taking a break from fat burning and losing weight, so I wrote up this quick summary of My Old Lifestyle Diet. It's basically about what I'm used to eating through my childhood and my early adult years. I can only imagine that most people raised in the American culture must have a similar struggle when it comes to changing the way they eat because most of us have become addicted to certain types of foods from a very early age. That's not to say we can't successfully change our eating habits, but I do find it difficult to simply ignore the cravings for soda, candy, and fast food. I certainly know where the feelings come from.

Posted by Rick at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I typically use my personal websites to test out new shared web hosting providers since I don't like to recommend hosts that aren't even good enough to trust with my own sites. The latest one is HostGator (www.hostgator.com). So far, they have been a very good host. The data center they use is located right here in Dallas, and they offer both very affordable shared hosting plans and low cost dedicated servers. In the past, I had avoided even trying them for the longest time due to the silly name and stupid-looking "gator" logo. However, after reading enough good things about them, I finally gave them a shot and I'm glad I did. They are actually competing in my mind for my favorite web hosting provider against Lunarpages (www.lunarpages.com).

Posted by Rick at 07:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Recently finished reading through The Power Of Intention, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. He's a rather popular writer and speaker on the subject of "self-empowerment". This was the first of his books that I've ever read, and its full of suggestions on how to attune yourself with the "Field of Intention", as Wayne calls.

Posted by Rick at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning, I weighed in at 208.5 lbs, down from 223.5 only six weeks ago. Originally, I was aiming at 2000 to 2100 calories; but Chris Aceto's book made me realize that was too low for my size, so I did eat more and averaged from 2500 to 2600 per day for these past Six Weeks Of Burning Fat. Actually, I've had my basal metabolism measured twice in the past two years and that showed I burn around 2200 calories per day just for being Rick. Also, when I did the heart rate calculations in Aceto's book, they pointed me towards 135 to 140 BPM as my best heart rate range for fat loss at my age. So, I didn't cut my calories so much (at all?), I didn't have to do exhaustive levels of cardio (staying near 155 BPM required me to peddle like a madman), and I was able to lose 15 lbs in six weeks.

Posted by Rick at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pretty much crashed and burned when it came to meditating. All I ever did for those 15 to 20 minutes every day was sit around and think about stuff. The point was to "quiet the mind", to not think, but my thoughts just wouldn't shut up. I did feel like I got somewhere during a couple of the times that I meditated, but during the majority of them, I would finally just get up and go back to whatever I was doing because I would get irritated by the constant thoughts about trivial matters. The books I read keep saying that "it's easy" and "relaxing", but so far, I've found it to be very difficult to truly quiet my mind, and the process has left me more frustrated than relaxed. I'll give meditation another try sometime in the future, but for now, I can't stop thinking.

Posted by Rick at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally finished going through Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Funny thing was that I finished this one up while sitting in the dentist's chair today. I pulled out quite a few good quotes from the old stoic Emperor. Most of them are about life in general, but there were a couple about oneness and inner reflection, as well.

Posted by Rick at 08:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had been using WordPress (www.wordpress.org) on this site as my personal publishing platform, and I was also going to use it on my old online gaming guild's website, The Cabal (www.thecabal.net), to allow other folks to make news posts. Unfortunately, within 10 days of installing that program, someone came along and hacked into it, rendering it inoperable.

I reinstalled real quick, but they just did it again that same day (The Cabal seems to have made a few enemies over the years, go figure). No one in TC seemed to care for WordPress anyhow, so I went ahead and ditched it, then proceeded to stop using it for this site, as well. I don't want to get too far along with my blog only to have it messed with.

WordPress is a very popular blogging program and it's great for RSS feeds, but if you use it, be aware that is exploitable in a number of ways and read up on how to protect yourself from abuse. I chose not to bother with it since I have absolutely no plans to ever setup my blog for RSS feeds. I'll keep it simple, and safe.

Posted by Rick at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)