A fresh start…

Reading this blog kind of depresses me.  Especially the entries when I was losing weight.  I lost almost 50 pounds a few years ago.  The last entry in this blog was from October 6, 2011 and I had lost 43 pounds at that point.  I lost a little more after that.  And then I stopped doing all the little things that I had done to get me to that point.  I dropped below 200 pounds for the first time in over a decade.  Probably closer to 15 years.  I got down to 197 pounds.  Not light, but much better than where I had started.

Today, I weigh 250 pounds.  I regained it all.  Slowly and surely I put back on all that weight and a little more for good measure.  And I feel horrible.  Not only emotionally and psychologically, but physically.  I just feel like crap most of the time.  I haven’t exercised in months.  I don’t walk any more.  I don’t jog.  I don’t lift weights.  I do nothing.  I sit on my butt and I eat.

I have this weird desire to eat all the time – and a lot of it, and I’ve never really had this problem before.  It’s awful.  I sort of hate myself as soon as I finish my meal, but I go right back as soon as the next meal time rolls around.

I’m going to try to change.  I hope I can do it because if I keep going down this road for too much longer, I am going to be in really bad shape.  I am sure that I doing all sorts of permanent damage to my body right now.  And that is flat out sinful, selfish, and horribly irresponsible.  I have a family.  I have to make sure I take care of myself for their sake.

I am going to post more often in an attempt to stay more accountable.  Encourage me as you see fit.  Pray for me if you think about it.  I’m not joking about that either.  I need prayer.  I can’t do this in my own power.  I’ve learned that the hard way.  I have a serious problem with food and gluttony.  I am repenting and doing my best to turn my back on it.  Pray that God grants me the strength to do what I need to do to be successful.

Weight Loss Update (The really late version)

It’s been almost two months since I last updated this blog.  My bad!  I have now lost almost 43 pounds.  Pretty cool.  I did my first 5K this past Saturday with my wife and oldest son – he is 8.  We had a great time and I feel proud of all three of us. 

That’s it.  I am going to be below 200 pounds very soon.  It will be the first time I am below 200 pounds in over a decade.  I’m very excited about that.  Hopefully it will happen sometime next week.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Weight loss update.

As you can see by the handy weight loss tracker, I have now lost 36 pounds.  I am very close to being below 200 pounds for the first time in over a decade.  That’s pretty exciting to me. 

Also, I have completed the Couch 2 5K program.  That doesn’t meant that I have stopped jogging though.  It just means that I have done all 9 weeks in the program and completed the entire course.  I didn’t think it was possible but somehow I did it. 

Other than those two items, I don’t really have anything new to report.  I will try to be a bit more regular with my updates here in the future.  Take care.

Weight Loss Update

It’s been a frustrating 10 days since my last post.  I have lost another 1.2 pounds, but I honestly feel like it should have been more.  I went for almost an entire week without losing any weight and I was very annoyed.  If I could point to what I was doing wrong I don’t think I would be frustrated, but I was doing everything the way I have been doing them the past two months.  Still, over a pound lost is nothing to sneer at I guess.

In other news, I ran for 20 straight minutes yesterday.  The longest time I have run since starting this training was 8 minutes a few days ago.  I someone had told me five weeks ago that I would have run 20 minutes yesterday I would have laughed.  So even though my weight has not dropped as much as I had hoped it would this past few days, at least I can point at this as an accomplishment to be proud of.

Weight Loss Update

I have now lost 20.8 pounds.  The ticker on the side rounds up.  This is the most weight I have ever lost at one time.  None of this would be possible without My Fitness Pal.  I can’t stress that enough.  I actually feel in control of things now.  Even when I was “dieting” in the past, I never truly felt like I had control.  Some weeks I would gain weight and not be able to figure out why.  I tried to count calories, but it was so hard to keep track of everything on my own.  Plus, I did not do a good job of cutting out sodium in the past.  Even when I first started on MFP, my sodium intake was way too high.  So even when I did lose some weight, I still didn’t feel that much better.  I was still only treating the symptoms and not the cause.  I am confident that now I am taking care of the root problem. 

I have been doing this for 2 and 1/2 months, and things are starting to become very routine for me.  And the cool thing is, I don’t feel like I am depriving myself.  For example:  This week I have eaten Qdoba, had ice cream two different nights, and had some popcorn and a soda at a movie.  Even with that, I have still lost over 2 pounds this week.  I see other people on MFP that are losing 3 to 5 pounds a week and sometimes I get a little envious.  But then I look at what they are doing to lose that weight.  They are eating diet shakes for two meals, and then a tiny little dinner.  Or they are working out for hours every day and burning over 1,000 calories a day with exercise.  I don’t want to live that way – not now and not later.  I could live that way for a short amount of time, but I promise you that I would not be able to maintain that lifestyle.  I have my doubts that those people will be able to maintain it either.  That is why I decided to take things slow – to make minor, gradual changes.  Nothing drastic.  Nothing extreme.  It seems to be working for me, and that is all that matters right now.  As I get more acclimated to this lifestyle and healthier living, perhaps I will be able to implement more changes.  I have no problem with that.  But I am never going to stop enjoying my life by cutting out anything and everything that is considered unhealthy.  Moderation is the key to life and I plan on living that out.

Two Month Update

I have been using My Fitness Pal.com for two months now.  (Two months and 2 two days, but who’s counting?  Oh yeah!  Me.)  So far, I have lost 18.4 lbs.  That averages out to a little over 9 lbs a month.  Not too shaby! 

In related, weight loss news, I am now trying to take up jogging.  I am using a program called Couch 2 5K – or C25K for the cool kids.  It is supposed to get you from the couch to running a 5K in about 2 months or a little longer.  I am on week 3.  It’s been fun so far and last night’s run was pretty difficult.  I was really having to push myself at the end.  I decided to take up jogging because it’s such a quick way to get a good cardio workout.  Once I have this thing down, I can jog for a little over 30 minutes and burn a good amount of calories.  I would have to walk for over an hour to burn the same amount of calories and I just don’t have that kind of time or devotion.  This works much better for me.

In other news, I ate at one of my favorite pizza places – Sal’s in Nashville – over the weekend and I still ended up losing weight this weekend.  I cut back a little on my meal, but not so much that I felt let down.  It was still a great meal and I got to eat two pieces of pizza – big, floppy, New York style pizza – and some pasta and one of their delicious meatballs.  I also ate a salad and drank water, but I drink water everywhere I go now so that’s nothing new.  I was very full by the end of the meal and it didn’t mess my day up at all.  Rad!

That’s it for now.  As I have stated before, I am not setting goals for myself any more.  I am taking it one day at a time.  My biggest goal – and it’s not a specific weight – is to have lost as much weight as possible by the time my parents come to visit us at the end of July.  My Dad is the best dad in the world, and he struggled with his weight when he was in his 20’s and early 30’s.  He did something about it in his early thirties and has been in good shape since.  I know that he wants his three boys to be healthy and I am sure that seeing me with 20 less pounds on my frame will be something that makes him very happy.  He has never been critical of me and my weight, and he has never made me feel bad about being fat, so don’t think that this has anything to do with that.  I just like to make my dad happy, so I hope this weight loss will do just that.

Food: It’s what’s for dinner.

I love food. I love eating it. I love smelling it. I love looking at it. I love talking about it. I love all the ingredients that make up whatever final form it has taken. In some ways, I am addicted to food. I would literally die if I didn’t get any more food. Die I tell you! (I’m an idiot. I’ll stop now and try to be a little more serious.)

Since I have started this lifestyle change…and I feel pretentious just writing that…I have come to learn a few things about myself. (Fancy list ahead!)

1. I love food a lot.  I know I already explained that but sometimes the truth bear repeating.  Over and over.  Food is just the best.
2. In the past, I have allowed myself to indulge too often in food that is very bad for me.  And to be honest, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.  Since I have started using My Fitness Pal I have come to a painful realization: Left to my own devices, I eat way too much.  I never really thought that was the case.  But it is and now I am dealing with it. 
3. In the past, my mindset was that every single meal needed to be something that I really wanted to eat.  I am slowly training myself to understand how wrong that mindset is.  I don’t have to love every meal I eat.  In fact, many of the meals that I eat need to be simply energy providers.  I eat breakfast and lunch alone at work.  I have no reason to make every single one of those meals some sort of food party.  I just need to eat food that is good for me and filling.  (This mindset shift has given me a greater appreciation for the meals that I do get to eat with my family and friends.  I look forward to those meals more.)
4. I eat when I am bored.  I’m not an emotional eater – at least not often – but I do tend to go for food when I want to sit around and do nothing.  That’s a bad combination.  I am learning to change that destructive pattern.

I love food but I am learning to love food differently and for different reasons.  I’m not there yet, but I am making progress.

Quick Update

As you can see by my Weight Tracker, I have lost 5 pounds. I have been using My Fitness Pal for 12 days and I’ve lost 5 pounds. I don’t know if I have ever seen results this quickly…it’s very gratifying. Clearly, I was eating way too much food in the past and I didn’t realize it. The cool thing is, I am not hungry all day. I do have days where I get a little hunger at night – usually around 10:00 PM – but most days I feel satisfied all day. I am eating better and I am getting exercise at least 4 days a week – usually 5 or 6 days.

In the past I have been very big on setting goals and inevitably I would fail. This time around I am doing my best to not set any goals. Perhaps that is counterintuitive. I don’t know. I think what I want to do, what I am trying to do, is to just take it one day at a time. I want to make good decision today. Tomorrow I will do the same thing. The day after that……. Will it work this time? I hope. It seems to be working right now.

The dangers of eating out.

I love eating out. I love going to a restaurant and hanging out with friends and family. I love the food I get at those places. Problem is, most of the food at most of the restaurants is not very good for me. In fact, most of it is very bad for me. I’ve known this for some time, but it’s really starting to sink in now that I am keeping a close check on my nutritional intake with My Fitness Pal. I am sort of scared to go out to eat now. What in the world am I supposed to eat there? Most of the food is very high in calories, fat, and sodium. Even when the food is low-calorie and fat, the sodium content is usually very high. There are a few times you can find food that is low in all the bad stuff, but it’s either not very good, or it is insanely small and not very filling.

So, give me suggestions from your experience. What are some places that offer good, healthy, and filling options? I need some ideas because it hit me last night that with my eating habits changing, this was one area that I really need to focus on.

Starting Over….again.

I’m not going to dwell on my past failures, of which there are many. I’m not going to wallow in self-pity and talk about all the times that I have tried to lose weight and not followed through. Instead, I am going to focus on what I am doing right now. I have joined the website My Fitness Pal in an effort to keep better track of what I am eating and to assist me in my weight loss journey. I joined yesterday, in case you were wondering. I have not lost any weight yet, but I didn’t expect to lose any in one day. I did keep my calorie intake down and I was able to get a little exercise in last night. Overall, I had a good first day. I hope I can repeat that 24 hour period over and over from here on out. I’m sure I will have bad days and good days, but I need to do everything I can to make sure the good days severely outnumber the bad. I’ve added a weight loss tracker on the sidebar of this blog to update my progress. If it doesn’t move every now and then, feel free to point it out to me. I need the reminders.