The Trials and Tribulations of the not-so-New Bear Icon

Thankfully I seem to be a little smaller than Comic Book Guy.

Over the last month or so I've been walking up the stairs at work. This is a big change for the usually elevator taking guy. I work on the third floor, but our floors are all overly tall, with ducts and wires in a raised flooring, then ceilings that allow our indirect lighting system to bounce off of them.

I'm also using the stairs in the parking garage. I usually have to park on the fourth floor, and that seems to be about the same amount of steps as the office building. It's around 50 steps.

Needless to say, when I get up to the top, I'm winded, and usually sweaty. It's getting better, now I'm not panting all the way to my desk (about a football field down the way, it's a large building), but at least to the coffee and water bar.

With the greater emphasis on exercise I've put in for the last year and a half, I would have thought I'd have a little more stamina. I can do 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer with ease, and I've gone from 60 pounds to doing flys and rows with 120 pounds. Still, stairs kill me.

I need to get some variety into my workout. I use the same couple of machines everyday, working on my back and my chest. Lord knows I'd love to have a huge, powerlifter type chest, but I think I'm going to need to figure out some other exercises to actually get some results on that.

I've stalled out on losing weight for some time. I would like to hope it would kick in again, but I don't really know. The gym's scale isn't very accurate, and seems to be wildly different from one weigh-in to the next - like 40 pounds different.

I'm sort of obsessed about working out, since my normal days are monday, Wednesday and Friday, and I didn't drive out to the gym yesterday, I went today after work. I may go on saturday, just to get my three days in. I'm proud of myself for making the commitment for as long as I have. In most things I would have given up months ago.

Now if I was closer to looking like a linebacker than Comic Book Guy, that would be really great...one step at a time.