My Weight Loss Blog

As you can easily see by my graphs I was doing well until the beginning of this year at which point I took a bit of a slide until a month ago, when I weighed in at my highest for some time, 279. I’m now a month in and had an unofficial weigh-in today of 274, which means I have dropped 5 pounds in the month since I re-energized my weight lost plans.

The genesis of this post was that I was going to research what I was doing the last time I was at 279 and why the weight came off so easily then, as opposed to now which feels like slow death.

But interestingly enough, what I found was that the last time I clocked in at 279 was at the end of last September, and a month later I weighed in at 274, happy with the result. So while it feels like things are taking longer now the data says otherwise. I need to be more patient!

Since I was looking at the posts anyway, I thought I would highlight the weekly updates for that period of time:

Weekly Update - 10/7/07 - Lost 1 pound, only thing I did well was cardio, but even at that it was not to plan.

Weekly Update - 10/14/2007 - Lost 5 pounds. Woa, where did that come from? Major change was cutting out bread, although I also logged 10+ miles in cardio and stuck to my drinking water plan.

Weekly Update - 10/21/2007 - Gained 2 pounds. Not surprising given the previous weeks results, however I didn’t put in the effort needed to break past that. Small pass given because I was traveling.

Weekly Update - 10/28/2007 - Lost 1 pound. Seemed like a hit and miss week on the goals.

About a month after this I weighed in at 267, well on my way to a low official recording of 263 (I saw a 262 midweek).

Being able to see this is hugely important to keeping me on track and I have moved from being bummed at my new pace to being happy with it.

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[CONTEST CLOSED - Winners Announced!]

As a reminder, my Soap & Water Giveaway Contest ends tomorrow night - I’m not exactly sure when I’ll have the time to close it off so get your entries in early if you can. So far I think I have about 20 contestants each with a varying amount of entries.

In this contest I am giving away 3 bottles of GymSoap each valued at $11.99 retail and a grand prize of a combo pack from Aquasana, valued at $199.99 retail! While the grand prize is limited to U.S. contestants only, I will ship the GymSoap anywhere in the world.

As a reminder, here is how you can earn entries:

1. Comment on the contest post for 1 entry.
2. Stumble the contest post for 2 entries.
3. Link to the contest post for 3 entries.
4. Write a blog post about this contest for 5 entries.

As an added bonus, enter a comment on my GymSoap post to enter a drawing to win a 25% off certificate.

Good luck to everyone!

Since we are leaving for Boston this morning and not getting back until Sunday night I thought I would post an update today on my goals for the week since I won’t be posting my normal Sunday update (and unless I have the time and a computer in the hotel I probably won’t be posting at all).

For this week I had established four goals: Complete Week 4 of the One Hundred Pushups Challenge, run Tuesday night when I was staying over for work, run in Boston and replace 4 meals throughout the week with protein shakes.

I am happy to say that I have completed #1 and #2 and I will complete #4 a little later this morning. I’ve packed my heart rate monitor, running shoes and gym clothes for Boston so I am on pace for achieving that goal as well. That’s a good week! Writing down my specific goals for the week has really helped.

In regards to the protein shakes, while I am planning to have one for breakfast this morning I have found that I prefer to use them as meal replacements for dinner rather than breakfast and going forward after today that is how I plan to use them exclusively. For me they don’t give me quite the energy I need in the morning to get through to lunch without being hungry in the same way they can get me to bedtime at night. In addition part of the benefit of having the shakes for dinner is that the satisfy the sweet tooth in me that wants to have some sort of a dessert - and I don’t have those same sort of feelings in the morning.

In addition to my run on Tuesday (which was 3.48 miles) I also put in a 2.19 mile run yesterday. I have not done any strength training beyond the pushups, however.

The challenge this weekend is going to be staying away from a tendency to overeat while vacationing. If I can manage that effectively it will be a great week.

According to the Big Fat Blog The Gap has decided to no longer carry XXL sizes for men.  As I don’t shop at the Gap this decision does no impact me (I still need to buy XXXL at speciality stores) but I find it fascinating that it can make this decision in light of the fact that people are getting bigger in general, at least if the news is to be believed.  Presumably their sales have shown that guys who need to wear XXL clothing don’t shop at the Gap. 

But really, this kind of news would not generally cause me to make a post - I wanted to just make a simple comment on BFB but I couldn’t because of the constraints Paul makes on his readership (which is certainly his right).  I subscribe to the blog because I like the writing and the topic.  But when I decided I wanted to comment on this post I found I needed to register, and when trying to do so was presented with the following rules:

Please don’t register if:

• You are on a diet;
• You are interested in losing weight now (or possibly in the future, maybe - like you’re actively planning on it);
• You are having, or are interested in having, weight loss surgery of any kind;
• You believe fat is a disease which must be cured;
• You want to post one comment and vanish forever;
• You like posting about your caloric intake, what you ate today, etc.;
• You run a diet blog;
• You think this is a dating site or want to pick up some “hot fat chicks”;
• You think this site has anything to do with Old Navy and/or Mo’Nique.

Despite my wanting to lose weight I have absolutely no problem with someone who follows fat acceptance.   But apparently the reverse can’t be said.  Talk about unwelcoming.

I am sure the genesis to taking this hard-line stand is the vitriol that those practicing fat acceptance receive, and I can appreciate that.  And obviously this post isn’t going to get me welcomed into the community, even though I will still be lurking about reading occasionally.

Anyway, I guess I just wanted to get that off my chest. 

Felt like I got slapped in the face.

Amy,

Do you remember back in January when we were talking about the weight I had lost and you asked me what was making the biggest difference in my success? What I told you was, to put it simply, eating less and exercising more.

But there was something I didn’t tell you.

Since August of last year, almost a year ago now, I started this weight loss blog as a way to document my Journey from Fat to Fit. I was pretty confident that being public and open about my struggles with weight loss would help me in being successful when I have failed so many times before. Remember a few years ago when I went on Atkins and lost about 40 pounds? Next thing you know it was all back and more. I really wanted this time to be different.

But I was afraid it wouldn’t work. And I was afraid that if I told people I knew “in the real world” about this blog, like you, that when it didn’t work out and when I didn’t lose the weight, that I would feel like an even bigger failure.

So what I expected to happened was that it either worked, or it didn’t. If it didn’t work then I would erase the blog, and just move forward as though nothing happened and just wait for my next effort. But if it worked, of course I would tell you so that we could celebrate my success together.

That night after we talked about what I was doing to be successful, I started writing this post. At the time I told myself that 259 would be a great milestone that would signal to me that my weight loss efforts were paying off, and that this blog, and being open and honest about everything, was a significant factor in why I was able to be successful. So, my plan was to hit 259 (just a few pounds more) and then celebrate by confirming this blog was going to be a permanent part of my life and than include you in that.

But then a funny thing happened, as it is happened before when I had weight loss success. It started to go the wrong way. I stopped eating less and I stopped exercising more, and in fact I stopped, or at least significantly decreased, my posting here.

But no more. I’m back on the plan and even though I haven’t hit that 259 milestone I had hoped to hit before I acknowledged this blog was working, I am now ready to tell you about it. I was prepared to do this back in March when I wrote a post called 9 Tips for Kick-Starting you Dormant Weight Loss Blog where I offered this tip:

Tell someone about your blog. Still blogging anonymously? Tell someone in the “real world” about your blog and your weight loss journey, and ask that they support you. It’s too easy to disappear off the face of the blogging planet if you nobody in your life knows about your weight loss blog.

But then days turned into weeks and into months, and here it is July and I am still nowhere near my low weight and I am only just getting around to telling you about this part of my life.

I’m sorry to have kept this from you, and I hope you will forgive me.

Let’s go on more walks.

Love, John