About Andrew Riley

He is irascible and surly.

How I Lost 35 Pounds

My family moved from Arizona to the Denver area a couple of years ago. We were energized by the beautiful weather and beautiful mountains and took advantage of the paved trail near our house. My wife, Anita, and I would take our son out and go for walks almost every evening. Because of the elevation here, we had to get used to living with a little less oxygen in the air Continue reading

Halfway There…

Today marks a huge milestone for me. On April 1, 2011 I stepped on the scale it rolled around to 266 pounds. That was the day I was really beginning my trek towards health. My target weight is 200. As of today I’ve dropped 33 pounds, which is 50% of my goal.

The first 33 pounds wasn’t easy to lose. And the difficulty was all in my head. I fell off the wagon and had a couple of false re-starts before jumping back up on the wagon, taking the reins and Continue reading

Long And Short Term Motivation

On Sunday, I ran for 15 minutes. The previous Sunday I was only able to run for 6 minutes. More than doubling the length of time I could run is a pretty big victory in my life right now. It wasn’t easy, and I’m not ashamed to say that after about ten minutes I wanted to stop. My brain was telling my body to stop and my body didn’t want to stop. Continue reading

Get Your Own Pants

I sit down at my desk five or six times a week to write a blog post about whatever I’m thinking about that day. Usually it’s got something to do with something I’ve read or heard that I’m using for inspiration. The reason I write these blog posts isn’t because I know something that you don’t know, or because I think I’ve found the answer to anything. I write just to share my thoughts because I know that writing them down will help me flesh them out for myself. Also I hope something I write will cause you to think about things in a slightly different way and maybe hopefully improve your life in some way. Continue reading

What You Think, You Become

For the past 17 days, I’ve been obsessive about exercising every day and eating better. I think about getting healthy, and I think about it many times during the day. It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and I go to sleep thinking about it. I write blog posts about it and share my accomplishments on Facebook. I talk about it with my friends and my family every chance I get and I have no plans to stop talking about it any time soon. Continue reading