The Goal

I've got a goal, a tool by which measure whether I'm moving in the right direction or not, and that is to lose a pound a week.  I know that this goal may not seem very lofty, or like I'm taking weight loss seriously, but I think that assumption is probably influenced a lot by reality TV.  I've seen several different shows and I think the most I've seen for that initial week weight loss was almost thirty pounds.  So, why am I not going for something like that too?  I've got several reasons.

First, I don't think it's very healthy to lose that much weight so quickly.  I will say that there are circumstances where it is called for, like when someone is in imminent danger of death because they have a weight related medical condition, but these situations are the exception, not the rule.  Consider the flip side for a minute.  Let's say a man had been starved in captivity and after being rescued he ate so much food that he gained thirty pounds in his first week of freedom. I don't think anyone would see this situation as healthy, even if the man had been thirty pounds underweight.  I'm sure that instead doctors would oversee a gradual return to a healthy weight.  I have a hard time seeing such a large fluctuation in weight as anything but extreme and potentially a shock to the body.


Second, I'm not dieting, I'm changing my entire lifestyle.  I've actually had success dieting in the past, losing up to sixty pounds in just five months.  However, the diets I've tried have not really been good choices for a lifestyle.  I'm looking for healthy living, not dieting, to take care of my weight.  I'm concerned with nutrition, body function and how I feel, not just calories.  Actually, I'm not really even conscious of calories at this time.  Not every food choice is nutrition based, for instance I'm drinking a coffee right now and I know that's not the healthiest choice there is, but overall I'm concerning myself much more with nutrition in my diet, and that is not something I've done before.  I'm eating better foods, something I'll get into in a later post, and I'm cutting way back on certain things, again, something I'll get into in a later post, but I'm not counting calories.  I'm not planning on packing the pounds back on at a later date which is a problem I have with the whole concept of dieting.  My new lifestyle just doesn't support a 300+ pound me, that's all.

Finally, I'm patient.  I realize that I did not just wake up fat one day.  Every pound crept onto my frame slowly, not all at once.  The method I'm using requires time, in which I plan on learning the lessons I need to learn to maintain my new healthy lifestyle.  I'm not looking for a quick fix, I'm looking for a permanent one.

The Method

People are always looking for "the secret of weight loss".  The secret is that there is no secret.  If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight.  If you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.  This is just simple math. 

Why I started with diet instead of exercise is that it is easier to not consume calories than it is to burn them off.  For instance, I looked up the calories in a popular cookie, and found that I would have to walk approximately a mile to burn them off.  I could do that, eat the cookie, walk a mile and it would have no impact, or I could just not eat the cookie. 

Aside from being blitheringly simple, there are two problems with the "I'll burn this off in the gym" method.  First, the miles you have to walk stack up quick.  Eat three cookies, and we're talking a 5K to burn them off.  Add a large soda to that and you can double that.  I looked up the calories for a fast food combo meal that I used to eat for lunch, and to burn off those calories, I would almost have to walk a half-marathon.

The second problem with this method is that after I eat these things, I never feel like going to the gym.  These foods not only do not give me the energy to complete a workout, they rob me of any motivation I have to exercise.

The Pareto principle states that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your effort, and 20% of your results will come from 80% of your effort.  Since I know that most of my results are going to come from diet, I'm focusing about 90% of what my effort on what I eat, and 10% on exercise.

The Motivation

Why am I doing this?  The simple answer to that question is that I hate being as heavy as I am.  There is more to this though, and I'm going to briefly list each of the reasons I'm changing.

First, as I've gotten older, much to my dismay it seems that every December 31st, I weight at least a couple pounds more than I did on January 1st.  I know that if I don't change my lifestyle, one day my weight will be flirting with 350 instead of 300, and that number will keep increasing as the years go by.  I don't want to just keep packing on the pounds into my old age when I will have less ability to deal with them.

Second, it just isn't healthy.  I'm getting old enough that I need to start considering my health more, and obesity related diseases are on the rise in America.  I do not want to cause more trouble for myself than is already coming my way in the future.

Third, I just don't feel good.  I'm going to go more in this later, but aside from purely health related concerns, I just feel "blah" most of the time.  This feeling awful isn't a switch that is just turned on one day, but it gradually builds until one day you realize that you feel pretty bad most of the time.

Finally, I'm a father, and I want to experience more with my wife and kids.  It isn't fair to me or them when I don't feel like doing much with them because I'm tired, or just not feeling well.  Also, I don't want them to have to deal with the same issues I have had to deal with during my life, so I want to be an example to them of making the right choices, and doing the right things.

There's more than just this too of course, but this is a good beginning, a good reason to make a change.

The First Few Steps

I started changing my diet on September sixth, about 40 days ago.  I specifically waited until after Labor day because I didn't want to have to start something on or around a holiday, and the sixth just called to me.  I changed my diet, cut way back on meat, starches and processed foods, and ramped way up on fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed foods.

I can remember stopping at the fruit market that first day, picking up several pieces of fruit and starting with more of a "raw foods" day, thinking that it was going to be difficult.  Surprisingly, it really didn't turn out that way.  I didn't focus on how much I was eating, only on what.  I ate only fruit at breakfast and lunch, and by the end of the day I was feeling pretty good physically.

I actually didn't get a chance to weigh in for the first time until almost 3 weeks in.  The reason for this is that my scale stops at 285, and wasn't very accurate anyway, so I pitched it.  My wife bought a digital scale that is accurate up to over 400 lbs and measures by the 1/5 of a pound.  I tested it out on the 22th, but didn't take my first official weigh until the 24th.  On my first official weigh in, I was 306 lbs.  I do assume that I had probably already lost weight, based on the weight I lost the next two weeks and the way my clothes were fitting, so I'm calling my starting weight 308 lbs. so I can judge the progress I've made.

The History

I'm going to go through my life up until now precisely once, and though I may have to circle back and touch on a particular aspect of it once in a while, I don't plan on dwelling on the past.

I've been overweight as long as I can remember.  In elementary school I work husky clothes.  In seventh grade I wore the same size clothes as my dad, and by eighth grade I was giving him hand-me-downs.  When I graduated high school I probably weighed about 250 lbs. and in the last 20 years have put on about 60 more.  My highest recorded weight was 308, back in January 2009, but I haven't always kept track, so I don't know exactly how heavy I really got.  I am sure that it wasn't much more than that though.

Still, 308 lbs. is no small number and even though I've had success losing weight in the past, I've never kept it off for more than a year or so.  In my adult life, my lowest weight was probably about 225 lbs., but that was back in college after losing 60 pounds in a semester away form home.  Even though I felt great at 225, unfortunately feeling great was not enough to keep me from putting all those pounds back on.

As I look back through my life I see that I am the one who's taken every step down the road that got me to where I am today, and I've taken responsibility for them.  No one else is to blame for me being overweight, only me.  Conversely I'm also the only one who can take the steps for me to lose weight and keep it off as well.  This new path includes major changes to my diet and lifestyle.  For the first time in my life though, I'm looking at making a change that is from here on out, not trying to apply a temporary fix to a permanent problem.  It is from this change in attitude that I hope to achieve long term success.

The Beginning

I've started a new journey, one that involves weight loss but is about much more than that really.  It's about being the healthiest me that I can be.  I've been on this journey for just over a month, and I've already had to confront many new ways of thinking and some unexpected resistance, and I wanted to express my experiences.  I'm writing this mostly for myself, but I'm also sharing it for anyone else who may find themselves on the same journey one day.

In this blog I intend to keep a history of what I'm doing and thinking so I can share what works and what doesn't and make any necessary adjustments.  In no way am I claiming to be an expert or giving advise to people.  What I am doing is an experiment, one that I hope will result in a new healthy me.