February 3, 2012
Weight: 373.0
Change from Last Week: -0.2 pounds
Change from Highest: -29.8 pounds

Zero point two pounds.

I’ve watched my food. I’ve eaten well. I’ve counted my points. I’ve exercised HARD.

I have earned more than 0.2 pounds this week. At this rate… I will lose ten pounds this year.

*sigh* Something has to give.

It is not me. I am not giving up. I do not give up.

I tried eating more early in the week, and that made a big fat zero’s worth of difference.

This week, I will alternate days of higher food and significantly lower food. Let’s see if that will do it.

One change I am going to make this week is to significantly UP my veggie content via our new cold press mastication juicer (woo hoo!) and make some raw crackers with the pulp. When I look back through my journal, I see plenty of fruits, lean proteins, and whole grains, but I see remarkably few vegetables.

In fact, there are days at a time where I eat none.

I just don’t like vegetables.

Time to put on my big boy pants and make it happen, and veggie juice (which I can surprisingly tolerate) sounds like a good way to do it.

I’ll blog later about the February updates for my New Year’s Resolutions.

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Okay, let’s do this fast.

You weigh every day. There’s nothing wrong with that, if you can keep the number from getting in your head.

You lost 0.4 pounds over the weekend. You’ve stagnated for two mornings. And this morning, your weight was up 0.6 pounds.

Did you do anything wrong yesterday?

No.

Would you be doing something wrong if you decide to go ahead and take a “diet break” and just restart Friday.

Yes! That would be a terrible, terrible decision.

You can undo a week of dieting with one meal. Unfortunately, losing weight requires a ridiculous amount of diligence. Don’t let it beat you down. Just know that it does require continual hard work, and it always will. No use sugar coating it.

You say you are in this for the long haul, so there it is. Laid out on the table.

You may do everything right and still gain weight some weeks. It’s not the end of the world if you do.

It might be the end of your world if you stay obese. Keep plugging along, no matter how slow it goes. If you gain for three weeks in a row while doing everything right, then we’ll re-examine.

For now, just stay the course.

Things are fine.

Chill the heck out. You got this.

Regards,
Mason

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Stellar Path, in addition to being a document of my rather slow weight loss journey, is also a personal blog for the happenings in my life. I don’t share as much of myself on here as I’d like to, truthfully

If you read my blog solely for weight loss/fitness stuff, well… some of that will still seep its way in. Our date nights usually revolve around some form of meal, and even though I don’t necessarily plan to be a buzz kill, I’ll still share my eats and give a rough estimate for the points.

Tina and I decided we needed to take more date nights. Far too often, we hang around on Saturday afternoon, make grand plans, and then end up crashing on the couch and watching Harry Potter on blu-ray.

Now don’t get me wrong; there is nothing I love more than spending down time with my lovely wife. However, we still feel a need to get out of the house more often, and we’re pledging to take a LOT more date nights this year.

A few weekends ago, we went to the 5th annual Warren County Humane Society Fur Ball. The Fur Ball holds a special place in our relationship, because it was our very second date.

I remember the day I met Tina very well. It was January 11th. The Fur Ball was January 19th. I already had two tickets to the Fur Ball, because ever the optimist, I had purchased two, hoping to find a date. Well… I was in the midst of a dry spell, and I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would be going solo.

While browsing Barnes and Noble on January 11, 2008, I met the woman who would someday become the love of my life. We struck up a conversation, I offered to buy her a coffee, we kept talking, I realized this was a pretty cool chick, and I asked if she’d like to go see Sweeney Todd.

Now you might be asking, really? Offering to take a girl you JUST met to see a horror musical?

Well, I like horror movies.

I also like musicals.

Casual dating or not, if this girl and I were going to have any chance of successfully dating, we were going to have to share some key interests.

She likes musicals and horror movies.

We went to see Sweeney Todd.

I fell hard. We exchanged numbers in the parking lot after the movie, I kissed her hand (because I’m a gentleman like that), and I asked her if she would be willing to come with me to a black tie optional gala in a week. She said yes.

We went to the first Fur Ball, and we continued dating. A year later, we went to the 2nd Annual Fur Ball. And the third, and the fourth.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Including the fact that we had some of our wedding pictures taken at Barnes and Noble over three years later, as that was where we met.

So, every year, we go to the Fur Ball. It is a very real dating tradition for us.

That aside, we are both HUGE animal lovers, and I love giving to any charity that benefits animals. We’ve got four rescued pets, and if not for finances and the fact that we don’t have room for more than four, we’d definitely have more.

Okay, on to Date Night, the 5th Annual Fur Ball! It was held at the Sloane Convention Center in Bowling Green, and it always features an amazing meal.

We started off with this incredibly tasty salad…

There was a buffet line, and I’m pretty pleased with my choices. I would have liked to get more roasted veggies, but the tray was extremely low when I got these, and I didn’t want to be rude and empty it.

We also had these amazing slices of chocolate cake. I ate it. It was good. No regrets, including writing a high estimation of 30 points in my food journal.

This is a nice photo of the crowd. This year’s turnout was their biggest yet.

There was also a band (I think called Familiar Faces?) and dancing.

And this is us with our friends Patti and Dana. If you were reading my blog back when Tina and I got married in October 2010, you may recognize them from our wedding party.

It was an amazing, wonderful date night.

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This morning, I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of my weigh-in. However, I DID weigh-in, and the results, in this Changing Things Up Weigh-In, are…

January 27, 2012
Weight: 373.2
Change from Last Week: -0.4 pounds
Change from All-Time Highest: -29.6 pounds

It is a loss, albeit a small one.

How is this loss different than the last year? Well, I’ve lost pretty consistently for several weeks now. Last year, I would get exasperated, have a mini-binge (or even just a hearty splurge), and completely eliminate any minor loss.

I’m not quitting. But I am going to change things up to attempt to speed up my weight loss. I’ve got three ideas for how I can do this, and I’m going to try each for three weeks before I go on to a different one. (And obviously, if Idea #1 works, then I will stop there.)

Idea #1 – I’m currently on Weight Watchers, which gives me 49 flex points a week, in addition to my daily points. (I know they aren’t really called flex, but they used to be flex, and old habits die hard.) I tend to eat about 7 extra points a day. As a result, my point intake is pretty much the same, every day.

I have recently read research that shows that variable calories over the course of a week can make a significant impact on weight loss. Rather than eat equal calories over the entire week, I’m going to eat all of my flex on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and eat JUST my daily points Monday thru Thursday.

Idea #2 – If this doesn’t work, then I’ll give up the weekly points altogether and ONLY eat my daily points.

Idea #3 – The old Weight Watchers plan (where I had 34 daily points and 35 weekly points) worked great for me the first time I lost weight. If Idea #1 doesn’t work, then I’m going back to the old Weight Watchers plan with the old point system.

I’ll be honest – I’m a little nervous about trying, but I owe it to myself. Yes, I am losing, but I am losing SO slowly, and a guy my size (370+ pounds) and my age (early 30s) should be able to lose much faster than this. A little experimentation shouldn’t hurt me. I’ll continue to weigh daily and monitor myself.

And ultimately, if I can only continue to lose a pound or less per day, then so what? I’m not going to stop. I figure I need to lose about 190 more pounds. At a pound a week, that can be done in four years. Do I want to be an obese 37 year old or a thin 37 year old? The answer is as simple as that.

Stick with me. I’m staying with it.

And now, two pieces of giveaway news. Last week, I gave away the Eat Smart Scales, and I announced the winner on this page. I heard nothing from the winner, emailed the winner and still heard nothing, so I redid the drawing. If you were the winner, I’m sorry – I made good efforts for a week and unfortunately heard nothing. As a result, the new winner of the EatSmart Scale is Molly Nitka!

And now, the next giveaway! Last Saturday, I held a drawing for MyBlogSpark and General Mills for five boxes of cereal. The entries ended last night at 10 p.m. CST, and I had nine eligible comments. Using random.org, the lucky winner was comment #4!

Congratulations Karin! Please email me your mailing address to jeremy@stellarpath.net.

Tomorrow is date night. See you Sunday!

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The pounds are slowly coming off. That’s awesome. Keep it up. But there’s something else I want to talk to you about today.

On these electronic pages, you’ve shared many, many times your desire to be a runner.

You’ve tried it, many times, but frankly, at your current weight, it hurts your joints. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just a fact.

I can already hear what you are thinking.

“I hate that my cardio endurance is strong enough that I can run, but my joints won’t let me.”

“I hate that I have the desire to run, but the last time I tried, I literally ended up at the doctor’s office, getting a prescription for severe inflammation in my feet.”

“And to be honest… I hate that I am jealous getting to read others’ blogs as they progress from weight loser to runner.”

I want you to stop living in the realm of “I want to but…”

Screw that. There are things that you CAN do now.

You can’t run. Big freaking deal.

You can walk. Your legs are strong. Your joints may not be able to take 370 pounds of running, but they can sure take walking.

I know how much time you spend at the Bowling Green Road Runners website, looking at their calendar of upcoming races and fantasizing about joining their ranks.

So stop fantasizing and do it. There are going to be a lot of 5Ks this year that are also open to walkers.

Sign up, give your money to a worthwhile cause, walk the 3.1 miles, collect your t-shirt, and every step, every ounce lost, will put you closer to joining the ranks of runners you so desperately want to join.

You can do this. You will do this. You owe it to yourself.

Regards,
Mason

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As an active member of MyBlogSpark, I periodically get invited to various campaigns to try out healthy foods. In addition to trying out said foods in my home, I also get to host a giveaway and offer one reader the chance to also try those foods.

This time, MyBlogSpark and General Mills provided me with five boxes of cereal!

For a while now, General Mills has been promoting more whole grains in their cereal.

To be quite honest… I don’t eat a great deal of cereal, and when I do, I usually make it myself (recipe coming soon!). However, there have been many busy mornings where I haven’t had time to make myself breakfast or I’m out of my regular cereal, and it would be nice to have something to fall back on.

As a result, when I was given the chance to review (and giveaway) these five boxes of cereal, I was happy to give them a whirl!

I’ll start with the taste. They tasted exactly as I remembered them. No change at all, so that’s a plus.

As far as the ingredient list, I was simultaneously pleased, surprised, and disappointed.

I was pleased that Cheerios are surprisingly clean! I was surprised that Cinnamon Toast Crunch, while admittedly being high in sugar (although whole grains were still the #1 ingredient), did NOT have high fructose corn syrup. And I was disappointed (and surprised again) that Total does! Total cereal, the cereal I would have bet to be the cleanest in the box, had high fructose corn syrup as the third ingredient.

I still advocate a clean diet, but if you read my blog regularly, you may know that I follow a 90% clean/10% don’t-sweat-it diet. I place cereals like these in that 10%. I fully believe that the occasional indulgence is acceptable and appropriate in a healthy diet.

Want the chance to try these five cereal out for yourself? (Full boxes, too. Not the little scrawny single serving ones.)

Giveaway is only open to US residents. (Sorry everyone else!) Entries will be taken until 10 p.m. Central time, January 26th. Winner will be announced at next Friday’s weigh in.

This is going to be a nice and simple giveaway. One shot per person. To enter, just leave a comment here answering this question: “Which of these five General Mills cereals (Lucky Charms, Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Total, Honey Nut Cheerios) are you most excited to try?”

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This is most definitely a drop at a time weigh-in. This weight is slowly but surely falling off, one drop at a time. I feel like I’m doing everything right, so as long as this weight keeps coming off, I shall not complain. One pound a week is still 52 pounds a year.

January 20, 2012
Weight: 373.6
Change from Last Week: -1.0 pounds
Change from Highest: -29.2 pounds

Yes, it’s slow, and I continue to try and figure out why my weight loss is so slow. I’m a big dude. I should be able to lose faster.

But at the same time, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

In the past, I’ve hit 370 and stalled. I do not want to do that again. Let’s keep going ahead!

Short post today, but I do want to announce the winner of the EatSmart Scale! Using random.org, the lucky winner was Entry #4, Sabrina Smith!

Congratulations Sabrina! Come back tomorrow for another (non-scale) giveaway!

And to show a little Link Love… including to myself…

At my food blog, Stellar Eats, I just posted my second pizza of 52 weeks of pizza, a Turkey Taco Pizza!

Skinny Emmie, who I had the pleasure to meet last year at the local Fitbloggin’ meetup in Nashville, posted this week about starting to exercise when you are an “ultra beginner.” I think many of us who started working out as the morbidly obese (or even super morbidly obese) can certainly relate!

And Brooke at Brooke Not on a Diet describes how she is once again finding herself on Weight Watchers, a sentiment to which I, too, can relate.

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A great deal of health and fitness bloggers are currently on the “Paula Deen Sucks” bandwagon, stating that she is nothing more than a hypocrite, selling both the cause (buttery, sweet dishes) and the cure (medication) for diabetes. Some of her fellow chefs and former fans are now condemning Paula.

Please note: the remainder of this article is nothing more than my opinions. You may agree or disagree, and I welcome a discussion in the comments section!

So, what are my thoughts about Paula Deen? Well, my wife is a huge fan. Me, not so much. I’m certainly not opposed to Paula Deen, but as someone who lives in the South, I’ve always found her over-the-top Southern accent a bit much. Don’t get me wrong; I know Southerners who talk that way, but Ms. Deen’s accent became much more pronounced as she got more popular. When she was just starting out, she talked the way most Southerners talk, with a bit of a twang and not so much y’alls.

Accent aside, I’ve never given her a great deal of thought one way or the other. I’ve certainly watched her show on a few occasions and wondered how on Earth she didn’t keel over from a heart attack before the cameras stopped rolling. Then again, I’ve thought the same thing about Emeril Lagasse. Ultimately, I came to what I believe is a sensible conclusion, based solely upon visual data.

They don’t eat every meal the way they cook on television. They couldn’t. Biggest Loser level workouts wouldn’t result in them weighing less than four or five hundred pounds.

Yet, now that she has announced herself as a diabetic, I find the hatred she is receiving unfair.

In my eyes, I see calling Paula Deen a hypocrite for having diabetes, continuing to cook with butter and sugar on her show, and then endorsing diabetic medication no different than blaming McDonald’s for obesity.

Now, if you think McDonald’s is at fault for obesity, then nothing else I am going to say is going to have any impact or weight.

Aside from the fact that there are still numerous studies showing that diet may not have an effect on diabetes, let’s go ahead and say, 100% conclusively, that it does. Eating the way Ms. Deen cooks will cause diabetes.

Whose fault is it? Hers or ours? If I choose to cook the way she does on her show and eat that way, it is my responsibility for my own health to be aware of the health risks.

More than that, I don’t blame her for now endorsing Victoza. I have Google Adsense on my blog. A LOT of bloggers do. I see diet programs advertised that I know I don’t support, but because I’m a healthy living blogger, those diet ads pop up. If you click on them, I get money. (Tiny, tiny amounts of money. Trust me – this blog is not going to let me retire. I haven’t even recouped my expenses yet, but that’s okay because I do this because I enjoy it.) Granted, Paula Deen makes more money farting than I probably see in a decade, but that is her right to do so.

More than that, the only way I could reconcile her as a hypocrite is if she had previously stated “Diabetes medication is harmful.” To the best of my knowledge, she has never done that.

I view her as a shrewd businesswoman who came up with a business model and is now using it and is continuing to use it in this new hand that life has dealt her.

As for the claim that she should have told us three years ago, bull crap! Being any type of public person, whether you have a show on Food network or write a blog that three people a week read does not require you to share all information about yourself.

It is certainly everyone else’s right to see her as a hypocrite. That’s the great thing about this country. I’m not even trying to change anyone’s opinion. If you think she is the devil, that’s fine by me. I’ll continue to read your blogs, comment, and think warm fuzzy thoughts about you. I just want to share my thoughts on the matter, because I feel she has been unjustly vilified.

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Sometimes, I just do walk aerobics in the living room while I watch television.

However, a few days ago, I remembered that I had a huge collection of workout videos somewhere in storage. Given how sadly disorganized I am, that could mean my huge stash of workout videos (seriously, probably 50 or more) is in one of three places:
a) The closet in my office that I crammed full when I moved in three years ago and pretty much haven’t touched since
b) In a tote somewhere in my garage that my car will not even fit in
c) In one of fifteen places at my parent’s house, because I never took them when I moved out

Well, after a quick search in the garage, it turns out that the answer is probably all three. However, I did find a tote with several videos in it (and a VCR, thank goodness), and I’ve decided that for the next little bit, I’m going to select one video a week for my cardio.

I’ll share in a blog post about my weight loss journey(s), but I have to say, one man has shown up in my weight loss efforts more than anyone else. This man is mocked, but I honestly believe he has people’s best interests at heart.

That man is Richard Simmons.

And for that reason, I am choosing to do Sweatin’ to the Oldies for my first week doing VHS cardio workouts!

Sweatin’ to the Oldies came out in 1988, and it was pretty revolutionary for its time. It actually had real music, played by an actual on-screen band. The music video was even set at a high school prom (so chosen because Richard Simmons never went to his own prom because he was embarrassed by his then-obesity.)

Even more than that, the people working out in this video covered the spectrum. There were thin people who had never had a weight problem, but even more significantly than that, there were obese people participating.

If you’ve never done a Sweatin’ video, you should probably know that Richard Simmons is always Richard Simmons. Some people are highly irritated by him. If you are one of those people, you will not enjoy this workout.

His first Sweatin’ video (there are five total) is also his shortest. It clocks in at about thirty-nine minutes. It consists of a cardio warm up, upper body and lower body stretching, five aerobic songs, cardio cool down, and a cool down stretch.

My rating: 8/10

I will definitely enjoy doing this video for the next week.

Oh, and my favorite part of Richard’s videos? At the end, all of the dancers get to dance into the camera and show off how much weight they’ve lost.

In other news, don’t forget about the Eat Smart Scales giveaway! It ends on Thursday night!

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Let’s talk for a minute, okay?

2012 has the potential to be the best year of your life. We need to make sure that happens.

I’ve basically been the equivalent of your grown-up imaginary friend since you first learned about the muse from literature in 6th grade. For whatever reason, you’ve always visualized me as a small blue dragon named Mason rather than the gorgeous women that most muses throughout literature have been, but whatever. That’s neither here nor there.

So, do you kind of feel like you are going through the motions?

A little bit? Yeah, I thought so.

How long have you been in the 370s? Several months. Longer than you can really remember for sure, right?

You are less than thirty pounds from your highest. At one point, you were almost 150 pound from your highest.

I’m not saying this to beat you up.

I’m saying this to remind you that you’ve already done it once, and you can do it again.

Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it is going to take a while.

But so freaking what? What else are you going to do? If you don’t lose this weight in 2012, you’ll start 2013 the same way, still overweight.

2013 is coming whether you lose weight or not.

And if you want to stay obese, that is totally fine. It won’t make you a bad person at all.

Just decide:

Would you rather have a year of eating too much food, spending literally hundreds (maybe thousands) on fast food that will cause an endorphin release that only lasts until the guilt kicks in, and sitting around on the couch watching tv, finishing up 2012 in the 370s? Or 390s? Or the 430s?

Or would you rather have a year of working out daily, eating clean, tasty food, indulging OCCASIONALLY, and finishing up 2012 weighing significantly less?

It doesn’t even freaking matter what significantly less IS! It can be twelve pounds. It can be one hundred and twenty pounds. Whatever. Be healthy.

So, that’s your choice.

Be obese.

Be healthy.

Either is fine. Just own it.

Are you really going to choose to be healthy, or are you just saying that because you find it shameful to select the obese option?

Here’s the thing, dude. I know you. Extremely well. (Remember the whole imaginary friend part? Yeah, I KNOW YOU.)

And because I know you, I know that you will say what is the socially, therapeutically correct answer to avoid the confrontation right now.

Actions speak louder than words.

I believe you can do it. Heck, I know you can do it.

I’m just not 100% sure you will do it. Being honest. It’s called tough love.

Right now, I’m going to take you at your word. You believe you can do this. You believe you want to do this.

Don’t worry about setbacks. They happen to everyone. If they happen, just keep going. And keep going immediately. Going to sleep is not a magical reset button. If you mess up at six p.m., then from 6:01 ‘til you go to sleep is still the potential to be awesome.

I’m going to keep checking in on you.

We’ll tackle this beast. 2012 is our year.

I’m not wishing you luck. You don’t need luck.

You got this.

Regards,
Mason

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