Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

I’ve plateaued in my current fitness goal of losing 30 pounds. This happens, the body adjusts and in some cases begins building heavy, dense muscle while removing fat and you end up staying the same weight.

There are only two things you can do, eat less or increase your energy consumption, i.e. workout more. Since I’m only on 1700 kcals a day, I really don’t have much room to move the needle on the intake side, so I need to increase my activity.

So in addition to working out 3 days a week and scuba diving every Saturday, I’m walking the dogs two days a week before I go to work.

In addition, I scored a Nintendo Wii and will be playing Wii Sports for 30 mins a day. Since you need to use your whole body, like say in boxing, it raises your heart rate and gets you off the couch.

We will see how this goes, I might need to start running..ehhh…on the days where I’m not working out with my trainer.

As with any diet, you’ll only stick to it as long as you understand that you can’t be perfect every single day. I’m on 1700 kcals a day but my trick is that I only follow it 6 days a week which give me 1 day out of the week to include “cheat day”.

On my once a week cheat day, I’m allowed to splurge on my favorite foods and eat or drink whatever I want. The cheat day is important and a necessary pressure release, as long as your behave yourself the other 6 days.

Typically, my cheat day is Friday or Saturday, because that is when my wife and I want to go out to eat or indulge in some wine. I still try and pick healthy choices but I don’t restrict any food that I might want.

I’m approx 10 lbs, peak weight was 196, into my overall goal and hitting 170 by summer. I’m still on the 1700 kcals a day, spread over 3 meals and two snacks with tons of water. I work out 3 days a week and walk my dogs the other two days each morning. This way I’m doing something active every morning before work which is the only time of day I can control.

The hunger issue is slowly going away but it’s been really tough to give up just eating whatever I wanted.

Location: Vallecitos
Time: 9am
Depth 110 Max, approx 70 avg
Time: 48 mins
Mix: 32%
Team: Todd Preece & Bill Reals

Todd and I did a scooter run from Vallecitos to just pass Wheeler’s Point and back. We entered the water and encountered occasional 1 foot waves on “Lago Pacifico” and wadded out and leisurely put our fins on. We were impatient to start our run, so we just dropped into 8 feet of water and hit the trigger.

This dive was also the virgin run for my Ikelite housing for my Canon 20D; I planned on taking some pictures of the changes in the canyon since the storms passed through and whatever wildlife we might run across.

We had exceptional vis on this dive. I would guess in some places it was around 40 feet but a little milky at depth and was better vertically than horizontally. We had drysuits on, so it wasn’t too cold, maybe 58f degrees.

The ride south was uneventful, we ran across few fish and 1/2 a dozen sheep crabs. On our way back we were motoring along, just off the wall, at about about 75 feet and I was thinking about how nice it would be to see some gray whales one of these days.

Bam! I looked up and TWO GRAY WHALES were coming right at me, they altered course and passed within 5 feet of me. I dropped my scooter, light and fumbled to get my camera and just started shooting pictures.

I would guess that they were 15 to 20 feet in length and swimming right next to each other. Todd was looking at me like I was crazy, until he noticed TWO HUGE CETACEANS swimming right by him.

I was so excited that I was breathing like crazy and screaming thru my regulator. We only saw them for couple of seconds and then we were just floating there, high-fiving each other like two frat boys on Spring Break.

Here are is yet another link to the pictures.

A big Welcome to visitors coming here after news of Divester’s retirement.

What a long strange trip it’s been at Divester. I was there when it was a small, little, and private company and also through the transition to AOL. I’m sorry to see it retire but the old posts will still be around and you may see some of us on other blogs in the Weblogs family. Willy is posting on Gadling and is doing his usual bang up job.

There is no all in one dive blog and I’m still kicking around the idea of starting one.

In the meantime, my personal blog is primarily dive related, but also includes personal travel stories/pictures and other topics that I’m interested in. I plan on restarting my postings shortly.

If you just want to see the diving posts, then head on over to the “Scuba” category on the right side, or just click on this link: http://www.reals.net/category/scuba/