Extra motivation and help

Walking with friends and family

     A few days ago my wife decided that we would start exercising together as a family.  This morning was the first attempt at this.  The kids were all for it, so we started by turning on some good music, doing a few stretches, and decided to go on a walk.  

     Walks are much more entertaining when you have others to join you.  It was a lot of fun being able to walk with my kids and wife and enjoy each others company.  I would highly recommend finding someone to go with you when you take your walks, it really makes it more desirable.   

     Now instead of fighting with myself on whether or not I will be going for a walk, I would have to fight with my kids and wife too.  That is not something I plan on doing, I've learned.  It is nice to have that extra motivation and drive from others who are excited to exercise.  I think this will help me get over the hump that I have been stuck on for the past few weeks.  I still have more goals to meet.  

June 1st weight loss update!

Unit	May 1st, 2011	June 1st, 2011
Weight	203	198
Waist	39.5	39 in
Hips	38	37 in
Waist to Hip	1.04	1.05
Body Fat %	28.3	27.6

My heart

One thing I've noticed...

     These past few weeks there has been one change I have noticed while losing weight.  This change has been settle but non the less, has occurred.  It is the most exciting thing that has occurred during my diet.  It's not the weight I've loss, the energy I've gained, or the muscles that have been built.  It has to do with my heart.

     I have always had trouble with my heart.  From not allowing me to do sports, to the palpitations I would often get, and even the weird feelings I would get and would stop my life for a few minutes until it felt back to normal.  It has been a struggle and one that I at times was not willing to battle out.  Now that I am losing a lot of weight, I have notice the best change out of everything!

     No longer do I seem to have the palpitations.  I feel like a new man.  My heart does not act up getting out of the shower like it often did for some reason.  No longer does it bog me down when going for walks, or exercising.  This has been my greatest accomplishment to date.  I feel like a new person and have at times even felt like jogging.  Sure it's only a few feet, but I have never had that feeling before in my life and it is a new experience.    

     The question that has started up in my mind is how far do I push it?  I have had my ICD go off on four different occasions on me, and that is not a feeling I wish to have happen again.  But yet there is this yearning inside of me to jog, to play basketball again, or even just to power-walk for a few minutes. 

      So for now I sit here wondering what would happen if I Did try these?  I have a watch that monitors my heart, but would that be enough?  I guess I just keep on at what I'm doing and wait and see, but yet those desires to do the things I haven't been able to in years pull at my heart.  We'll see what happens, for now, one more step at a time.

Break The Walls Down

Breaking down a wall...

     Breaking down a wall can be very tough when it comes to your weight loss adventure. When starting, I set up many goals on the way to my main objective.  The biggest one was the passing of the 200 mark.  This wall, once miles away, is now at my doorstep.


     For years I have been over 200 pounds.  Honestly, I can't tell you how long it has been. I would have to say that the last time I was under the 200 mark would be sometime right before going into high school.  For years I just didn't care about my weight or what I was eating.  Looking back I wish I could take back what I was doing and change my behavior.  Of course this applies to many different situations in my life.  


     The main reason I didn't care about my weight was because I couldn't be an athlete.  So why not just eat the way I wanted to?  Food was good and I didn't want to miss out.  I didn't even think about the fact that the medium pizza I just ate was 2600 calories.  It was good and that was all that mattered.  It may be a little late in life, but I have realized that there is more to eating than, "It tastes good."


     Back to the point, 200 is huge to get under.  I didn't think it was even possible.  I figured I may just have to stay at 220 and call it good.  I have now proven that wrong.  For a week or two I have been close to going under 200.  The see-saw battle I was in finally unveiled a victor.  This morning I stepped onto the scale and on the screen popped 199.  Excited I called Katie into the room just to show her.  This has been one of my goals from the beginning.  Once unachievable, it is now life altering and a new motivation to keep going. My sledgehammer hungers for more walls to break down, and I'm ready for them!

Slipping sucks

 It happens...

     Last week Kate and I decided that we would go out on a date and enjoy some personal one on one time.  That morning I weighed myself in at 201.  This was going to be a great day, lost weight, get some alone time with my wife, what could go wrong? 

     We went out to a Thai restaurant and had some really good food.  I decided that hey, I was close to being under 200, I could go one day without worrying about what I am eating and just enjoy the day.  Not saying that you shouldn't do this, because it is important to once in a while enjoy yourself and take off the burden of measuring just about everything.  However, this has come back to bite me hard, I think I went overboard. 

     We had some really good food, and afterwords we went out bowling.  We had a great time and really enjoyed ourselves.  Of course I'm not going to tell you how bad I did bowling.  It's been almost two years since I had bowled haha.  Also I'm almost positive those lanes were smaller than most, but anyways. 

     I woke up that morning and stepped on the scale, 208.  I rubbed my eyes, made sure I was awake and then checked the scale to make sure no one had messed with any of the settings.  I sat the scale back down and tried again, and sure enough it was still 208.  That was back breaking.  How did I gain 7 pounds in just one day? 

     That day I decided what is the point and decided again to eat whatever I want without calculating it.  I did exercise however and was pleased when I didn't gain any more.  Quickly I put myself back into the right state of mind and started back on my long trek.  It is six days later and I'm back down to 204.  Just comes to show that there will always be bumps in the road, it's all about what you do when those bumps get in your way.  Sometimes it's hard, but remember why you started your diet.  I quickly remembered the importance of being healthy.  I realized I am going to slip, it's alright too, but don't let it drag me under.

Weight Loss Update!!!

May 1st Weight in and Measurements

     Another good month, kinda hit a plateau but still managed some weight loss and cut inches. 

Unit	April 1st , 2011	May 1st, 2011
Weight	209	203
Waist	40.5 in	39.5 in
Hips	38 in	38 in
Waist to Hip	1.07	1.04
Body Fat %	29.1 (overweight)	28.3 (overweight)

To stumble is to learn...

Stumbling Blocks shouldn't block you...

     Many times I have fallen during my diets.  I would get to a certain point or a certain weight and be excited with what I had accomplished.  However, it would only take one stumbling block to make me feel like I couldn't maintain it and would give up, reverting to my old ways.  It was one stumble after another after another.  I would allow anything to give me the excuse to quit and not worry about it anymore.  In recent years, since getting married to Kate and having kids, I tried a few times to lose weight.

     The first time I was able to get down to 245 pounds from my 287 weight.  I was going to the gym, working out, and eating better.  Then in April 2008, everything changed.  I was working at my job as a delivery driver and was hit by another driver.  My back received some compression fractures and my knee was injured (resulting in knee surgery).  I decided that losing weight was no longer important, since I wasn't physically able to do much for many months.  I know that is a good reason, but there was no reason for me to start eating the way I did.  I gained back the 40 pounds I had lost.  

     I know that it was hard to exercise while being in a turtle shell and that I was not able to do much, but I didn't track my calories anymore and was eating like I shouldn't have been.  It took me a long time to recover and give losing weight another chance.  You can look at my earlier blog and see my picture from October 2009, I still had all the weight back on me.  

     Between 2009 and up until a few months ago, I was up and down on my weight.  I would go for a few weeks while working out and eating right, just to give up or let one bad day ruin all the progress I had made.  I don't know why but I just could not keep it up.

      In December I knew that my diets would never lead to anywhere and that I was going to stay unhealthy if I didn't make a change.  I needed to lose weight, get healthy, and stop allowing one little hiccup stop me.  I became determined to instead of letting those stumbling blocks get in my way, to instead use them as motivation and create a deeper desire inside of me.  

     I prayed and I broke myself down.  When I was building up my new foundation I prayed and thought about how I can use those stumbling blocks to my advantage.  One thing I found was when I would stumble I needed to see what caused that stumble and how to get around it.  Once I would find the root of the problem, whether it be depression, anger, boredom, or just laziness, I would look at how to use that to my advantage. 

     It's finding that opportunity that seems to be the hardest part about stumbling.  In times of depression or anger, I noticed that yoga would greatly help me with those issues.  Yoga allows me to collect my thoughts and be able to just think about what it is that is bothering me.  On top of that, I would get the exercise I needed by the stretching yoga provides.  

     In times of boredom, I knew that I couldn't just sit around and eat.  I needed to occupy my mind.  Whether I read my scriptures, worked out, or went for a walk, I would find something to do.  It is very important to not let those stumbles get in your way.  I have learned that gaining knowledge and learning from those stumbles makes you stronger and healthier.  

 

Why did I not exercise?

Am I really that busy???

     My biggest excuse for not exercising or even going for a walk was, "  Well, I worked today and I'm really busy so I'm just going to sit here in front of my computer and relax."   Which would lead to," Hmm now I am bored... I need something to eat."   This was a vicious cycle.  Instead of working out and getting fit, I was stagnant and eating.  How does that work?!?

     Now, yes, I am still in front of the computer.  However, I also have Sparkpeople open on the web browser and in between typing paragraphs I am stopping to do my strength exercises.   I have found that it is not enough to just diet.  I need to exercise and exercise often.  I found out that every time I told myself I was too busy, in actuality I had at least 20 minutes to become healthier.  Just another example of the crap I had to cut out of my life- the excuses.  

     No longer do I let the excuses control my life.  How many times was I going to deny the healthy person inside of me the freedom it so called for?  We all have our personal demons.  I sat there and looked at my life.  Do you know how often I gave in to the temptation of just doing nothing?  Too often.  I was letting my life slip away from me because of my lack of time management skills and lack of motivation.   How in the world could I have such a lack of motivation?  

     Instead I was pulling the plug on my life.  I prayed for God to get me healthy.  He would only give me the tools, but I was the one not using them.  He gave me so much to motivate me; a wonderful wife, a heart defect, and most of all, my children.  Does a person need more motivation than that?  

     It is never too late to start and so I have.  I try to exercise 6 days a week now.  I do at least 3 days of cardio and 3 days of strength training.  Sometimes I do more than just 3 days of cardio.  With that, I try to do at least 3 days of Yoga.  I have never felt better and the weight keeps slipping off my bones.  I cut the crap and stopped giving myself excuses.  I took the bull by the horns and now I'm in control.  God bless.

Look at what is truly important

Be blessed

Exercise is extremely important.

     

Eating Right

The first step to success

     Now that I have given you a little bit of a background on me, I'm now going to tell you what it was that I did to lose the weight I have and continue to drop the pounds.  I have tried many different diets, none of them worked long term.  Many of them would work for a week or two, but it would fail, or I would lose weight for two weeks but quickly gain them back.  I gave up on trying to find the next "big" diet.  I instead decided to do it the right way, learning how to eat right, exercising, and watching my numbers.

     The first thing I did was join Sparkpeople.  This would allow me to not only join a community that helps encourage you, but also allow you to track your numbers from the amount of calories you ate, to fat, to carbs, to just about anything else you can think of.  How is it the most successful people in business make it?  They don't just go into something without a plan.  They set an objective and they take that objective and create goals.  What is your objective?

     My objective has been to become 180 pounds.  After that I will re-evaluate what I have done and see what is left to be done.  But at 287 pounds, that 180 just seemed like a number that was unreachable.  It is hard to have such a far fetched objective when you don't have the goals (milestones) to reach that objective.  It would be like saying I want to be a millionaire.  Okay, great, you want to be a millionaire, now what?  To reach that objective of becoming a millionaire you need to set goals to get there.  Your own personal road map, get education, find a job, save, invest, ect...  

     My first goal was to start tracking my food.  Track what I ate and set the goals I needed to be able to lose weight.  I set up my account with sparkpeople, and then I did some research to find out what it was I needed to do to start losing weight.  I found caloriecount's calculator to be the best to not only set my goal weight, but set when I wanted to reach that weight.

     Now I knew how many calories I should be eating.  I took that number and subtracted 300 calories from it to create a daily calorie range.  For example; at 287 lbs, I needed to eat 2382 to lose 1.5 pounds a week.  So I would take that number and on sparkpeople create a calorie allowance between 2082-2382.  Now I knew what I should be eating each day.  I also had to realize the importance of consuming enough calories and healthy calories. 

     It is a difficult process.  I needed to stop letting excuses get in my way.  Instead of allowing the crap to beat me, I decided it was time for me to win.   I started to exercise.  I started to count the nutritional value of the food I was eating.  It can be hard, but if you want to lose weight (without using a fad diet, pills, or the magical drink), this is where it starts.  It is up to you to sit down and pick out your objective.  From there I set my goals.  First one was to track the food I ate, then exercise.  One step at a time, one goal completion at a time, that is all it takes.  I am so happy and feel so good now that I started this journey.  

Count the calories

Keep track of what you are eating

Set Objectives and goals, without a map, you'll be lost.