Weight Loss
Day by Day #001, April 23rd
It took me a while, but I’m on track.
Not gonna lie. I’ve been struggling. I always feel the need to say, “with my eating” and “not my life,” because my life is awesome. Great wife, awesome kid, good house, wonderful job. Life is great.
My eating plan… Meh. It comes and goes.
On a bad day, this is what my day looks like.
Breakfast is healthy! Off to a great start!
Lunch is also healthy (because I packed it at home)! Still doing good.
Long day of teaching. Tired.
Forgot to thaw out something for dinner. Eh, let’s hit the drive-thru. Tomorrow will be better.
I have to stop this, for so many reasons. One, my wife is trying to lose weight, too, and I am clearly her stumbling block. Two, I want to be a personal trainer. No one is hiring a fat personal trainer. And three… this little guy. I don’t want him to have a fat daddy.
But words are cheap. I’ve spun them before, and I’ve continued making slow progress.
My weight yesterday? 362.0.
Up a bit. Still down from the first of the year, but up from my lowest in the 350s.
I tracked my food yesterday. I only ate four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a small after-work pre-workout snack). I exercised, albeit lightly. (Just a walk – I’m doing more tonight.)
All of this was clean. No chemicals, just real food.
Breakfast – lean sausage, 1 slice of bacon, 2 eggs, homemade hash browns
Lunch – ground turkey taco meat, quinoa, cheese, sour cream, salsa, baked potato, 3 clementines, baby carrots & zima tomatoes with hummus
After-work snack – cereal with milk
Dinner – ground turkey meatloaf, sweet potato fries, 1 clean cookie with raw milk
I also drank a crap ton of water. Seriously. Plant Nanny says I need to drink 233 ounces a day. So I did. I will be lowering my Plant Nanny requirements. That was so much water, I felt like crap. I’m going to drink for thirst and shoot for roughly a gallon a day. Ish. Ugh, I was too bloated last night. And I peed roughly eighteen times between ten p.m. and six a.m.
For the next week, I am posting every day, my food, weight, and exercise.
After all, I can’t look like Ryan Reynolds if I don’t put in the work.
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The Next Week…
Long time, no write.
I’m still vlogging. I’m just slow about it.
But I’m blogging today because my weight loss is going much slower than it should be.
I weigh over 350 pounds. I should be able to lose two to three pounds a week, no problem.
I am not. I am losing roughly two to three pounds a month.
I know why. This isn’t a blog post where I lament my slow weight loss and tear at my hair in frustration.
No, I’m losing weight slowly because I eat too much and don’t move enough.
The end.
In an attempt to stop this, I have done/am doing two things.
The thing I am doing – for the next week, I will post a photo of everything I eat, report my weight daily, AND say what I did for exercise, here on the blog. I don’t want to say I’ll do it forever, but I am certainly planning to do it for more than a week. I just don’t want to say I’ll do it for a month (or three months… or a year…) right off the bat. So for now… I’m going to do it for a week.
I’m going to take photos of my food and post an Instagram mosaic of my food. I’m going to be completely honest – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I feel like my diet is extremely clean (mostly), but I still do eat the occasional candy bar or drink the rare Sprite. Still, feel free to comment, constructively criticize, or whatever else on my food choices.
Overall, we eat an extremely clean diet, but we do have our indulgences. I may be eating too many indulgences – I’m hoping this photographic food log will help.
The thing I have already done…
My family recommitted to a healthy lifestyle this weekend. On Saturday, we took part in the first of 49 athletic events.
I’ll blog about the event tomorrow.
So, the 49 things…
If you’ve been watching my vlogs, you know that I am a HUGE fan of dork t-shirts, and that I initially planned to wear a different shirt for every 10 pounds until I got to goal weight.
However, I have recently decided to slightly modify that.
Have you ever heard of a t-shirt quilt?
Basically, it’s just what it sounds like – a quilt made out of t-shirts. And it just so happens that my wife is incredibly crafty and knows how to quilt.
I want to make a gigantic King-sized quilt that will represent everything about my weight loss. When I get to goal weight, I want to hold this quilt up and say, “This quilt is a pictorial and nostalgic representation of me and the journey I took to today.”
I am going to have a collection of 49 dork shirts, representing (more or less) every five pounds (or so) of my weight from its highest (402.8) to my ultimate goal (currently set at 180, but we’ll see). I’m still in the process of collecting and making those shirts, but so far, they are primarily concerned with nostalgic things from my childhood, such as Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, classic Nickelodeon, and some old-school Nintendo games.
Oh, and why 49? Because seven rows of seven quilt blocks (cut from the front of each t-shirt) is the size you need to make a nice big King quilt. I know my wife won’t let me put it on our bed, but it’ll be awesome to cuddle up under on the couch on a cold winter night.
That’ll be the front of the quilt.
The back of the quilt will be 49 patches from race t-shirts.
I’m not a runner. Right now, I’m just a walker. But Tina and I were talking about it, and we want Moon Pie to grow up in an athletic household. I want going to a 5K early one Saturday morning to be the norm for him. And for that to be the norm, we have to get started now, when he’s not quite seven months old.
I have no delusions of being a runner just yet. I currently weigh over 350 pounds. That’s too heavy for me to start running right now. I don’t want my knees or back to blow out. However, I can start walking events (a lot of races around here also contain a walking component), and I am.
At each event, I’ll wear a different dork shirt.
And when I am at goal, I’ll have my amazing quilt, one side dork and nostalgic and the other side t-shirts from races and other athletic events that helped make me a fit, healthy athlete.
So, to sum up…
I am going to start photographing my food and posting it, along with my daily weight, on this blog. I am pledging to do it for a week straight.
I am going to collect dork shirts AND complete 49 different athletic events as I progress to goal weight. Just an FYI – Tina has told me that one of the events MUST be the half-marathon (or marathon – dare I dream?) at Disney World. Frankly, I hope at least one of them is a Tough Mudder.
I once lost weight down to 250 pounds. I’m past being ashamed of gaining so much back. Now, I just have to get there and go farther.
I’ve done it once. I’ll do it again.
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First Weigh-In of 2013
Hmm… I need to kick it into a higher gear if I have any chance of winning Roni’s Diet Bet!
January 5, 2013
Weight: 376.2
Change from Last Week: -1.0
Change from Highest: -26.6 pounds
Still rocking the Green Ranger shirt. I have 6.2 pounds to go before I get a new dork shirt to wear to weigh-in, and I’ve already bought it from ShirtPunch.
So, I lost a pound. Down, admittedly, but not as much as I’d want.
I definitely need to up my exercise. That will help. I’ve now doing Jillian’s 30 Day Shred, and I feel confident that will help me lose a bit more. Tina is doing C25K, and even though I’m not comfortable hitting the pavement at my weight, I’m doing my own modified version in the house. (Rather than jog, I’m basically doing stairs for the jogging portion. It’s definitely getting my heart rate up, which is going to increase my leg strength and my cardio endurance for when I am light enough to be able to run.)
One thing I am doing differently this week is pre-tracking my food. Every night, I go to WeightWatchers.com and enter what I suspect I’ll eat the next day. (I’m a little OCD about planning dinner, so that’s already decided. I just have to decide what I’ll have for lunch and dinner.) I purposefully leave some of my points unaccounted for, because I know I may not eat exactly what I’ve got planned. I’m obviously allowed to deviate. In fact, I did that today. I was supposed to eat oatmeal, but instead, I chose to eat a ham and cheese sandwich.
Right now, it is helping me because I know how much food I planned to eat, and if I’m eating off of my meals, I know how much of a cushion I have. That also helps me decide if I need to eat it or not.
Just last night, I thought I would have a green smoothie before bed. This is obviously a healthy food, and I even had the points for it. However, before I started pulling the ingredients out, I objectively assessed my hunger. I wasn’t hungry; I’d rather not use those points than just eat them because they were there.
I want a bigger loss next week. A pound is nice. Two is better.
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A Successful Christmas Weigh-In
Before I brag on myself too much, let me say that I am still carrying extra weight from the move. When Tina and I bought a new house to move into over the holiday seasons AND caring for an infant, well… let’s just say that a LOT of meals consisted of running through the drive-thru. My eating and exercise habits went out the window.
So I’m still battling that.
But, I weighed in on Saturday, December 22nd, before Christmas, at 378 pounds.
I did take a few days off for Christmas. I won’t lie. I’ll do it probably every year. But after Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I got back on track. So how did I fare Saturday morning, December 29th, at Weight Watchers?
December 29, 2012
Weight: 377.2
Change from Last Week: -0.8 pounds
Change from Highest: -25.6 pounds
Woo hoo! I will happily take that! I lost 0.8 pounds OVER Christmas week. I can’t even tell you how excited I am about that!
I even rocked my new Power Ranger t-shirt to my weigh-in this morning. This shirt is going to be my weigh-in shirt for a few weeks. I have decided that I am going to wear this shirt until I am out of the 370s, and then, I’ll select a new dorky shirt to wear for the 360s. And again the same for the 350s, all the way down ’til goal weight.
And yes, it’s the Green Ranger, and I am definitely partial to the Blue Ranger, but this is the only design this shirt comes in. The second they make it in other Ranger colors is the second I own them all.
And as ordered by Josie , I am smiling this week!
My wife and I have an agreement. We’re going to use our weight loss efforts to motivate and reward each other. She’s ready to get rid of her pregnancy weight and get down to her ideal weight.
Every time I lose ten pounds, I get a reward. For my first ten pound loss, I’m choosing Hatchet and Hatchet II on Blu-Ray. (Remember, I’m a huge horror movie fan.)
Every time Tina loses eight pounds, she gets a reward. I think she’s planning on adding charms to her Pandora charm bracelet.
Here’s the catch. We must BOTH reach our goal. So if I lose ten but she only loses six, I don’t get my reward until she’s reached eight. If I lose six and she loses eight, she has to wait until I hit ten pounds lost.
This way, we plan to keep each other motivated, because her success is crucial to my reward, too.
Of course, the most important reward is that we get to be healthier and live longer, and now that we are parents, this little guy needs us.
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Afraid to Be Thin Weigh-In
Am I afraid to be thin?
This was a question that recently came up for me in a journaling exercise. I shared it on facebook, got some feedback from a few friends, and basically, the answer, of course, is going to lie somewhere within me, not externally.
So, am I?
I think the answer is obviously yes. I’ve still got some more things to work through.
In a very brief nutshell, this is one of the steps I am using to come to terms with my various issues relating to my body image and my issues with food. I write. It’s almost stream of consciousness. I just put pen to paper and write until I don’t have anything else to write.
Sometimes it’s creative. I create fictional characters and give them my voice.
Sometimes it’s pure internal thought. I start off with what I would say aloud if I were asked my question, and I just let my thought process take me where it will.
I’m still working on it. But I am afraid to be thin. Yet I want to be thin (but not really, if I’m afraid of it). I’ll share as I come to terms with my various issues.
Now, on to the good news…
Another successful weigh-in! (I did not have a weigh-in last week, as I had to miss Weight Watchers. So this one DOES cover two weeks, not one.)
I’d like the number to be higher. That’s another thing I’m working on – being content with my weight loss, whatever it is.
I’m also going to lose weight this week. Even with Thanksgiving around the corner. I plan to lose big. I’ll post on Saturday.
November 17, 2012
Weight: 362.2
Change from Last Two Weeks: -2.0 pounds
Change from Highest: -40.6 pounds
One pound a week. Slow but sustainable. I guess I shouldn’t complain.
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