50 pounds in.....

344

Yay another picture of a fat guy and later a picture of a skinny guy or maybe a chubby guy in between.

I was going to call this blog 50 pounds in but that was taken, not like i didnt think of journaling yet another salvo at losing weight...again... but i figured, who the hell cares, we all do this, I only want to share when i feel like hey! i'm on to something.  I am, and what i'm really on to is how to shed all that crap about try THIS diet do this exercise blah blah blah and your doc will tell you well if you stick to this you will get that and so when you dont its your fault feel guilty have another sheet of brownies rah rah rah.

first can we all agree to stop taking advice from skinny people? i mean really stfu, ok if you used to be massive maybe i will listen but even then i'm sorry but 'i dont work have independent wealth and lost weight eating gourmet food and hiking in my tropical back yard, good for you, that is great but how the hell does that help me?

294

I'm 44, I've got 3 boys and an amazing wife.  new years i clocked in at 344lbs sure i'm 6'5" but dayum, i've got a doctors scale and it was 6lbs from telling me to piss off.  Its june, i'm 294 now, have been for a month.

my life is very challenging, with my commute my normal work day is 12 hours, I do the shopping, cooking, cleaning, tech support at home, car repairs you name it, I have no time and even less money.  I live paycheck to eh, bout monday after payday.

I'm not bitching, I love my kids and my wife and are are still nuts about each other after 14 years, I'll take all this stress over the hollow lives that so many people suffer.  I only tell you how hard it is because its essential to you being able to say "i can do this". every person I've ever seen succeed has had major advantages over me, time and money are huge, access to tools etc... every time, i feel like oh, yea, well, not me. damn.

then there's the reality of what stress does to you, it makes you "go. off. the. diet." ugh. or "i cheated" or "i had a cheat day..." stop that. stop, don't even start working on your body til you can shed some major mindsets that we've all been programmed to think.

130lbs to freedom.  its not about that number, i put that there because that's what you will connect with only to tear you away from it.

When i was a teenager i was a ski instructor and extreme skier, I was an athlete.  I could ski 12 hours a day for 17 days straight, i could wrestle 5 tiny kids and a rope tow for 5 hours a day and consume 9000 calories a day without gaining an ounce except to add even more muscle to my already massive thighs.

in my 20s i worked in a furniture warehouse for years, got pretty buff, added big arms and big shoulders to those legs.  then i moved to sales, on my feet but less lifting and sweating. then a major bout with depression over a blind siding cheating break up with my fiance (+30lbs in a month) but the doozy was when i got paid to think, i'm a geek, I hack shit, my index finger moves more than the rest of my body all day long.

I added kids to my life, money, poof, gone.  out the window with that? eating well.  I was never great about eating lite, i was used to eating like a jock but i was focused on quality but with kids, screw yourself, grab the top ramen, eat taco bell hot sauce packets for lunch before you let them go hungry (there should be a daddy scout badge for that one) and on the pounds came.

so, a couple times we did the atkins diet, its awesome, amazing, it does really really work and very fast and its not nearly as hard to stick to as any other.

but.

oh, wedding, we'll go off for that, wait bbq at so-n-sos after that ok lets take 'off' the whole month.... same old exact boring stupid story as every one else, lost 50lbs in only six months, yay, gained it all back + a buttload more in another 6 months booooooo!

so why bother trying?

keep making new mistakes.  this is true for most things in life. so the mindset of i need to go back 'on' the diet and just try harder is bullshit, it doesnt work. and this is really key, its not about what the docs say and its not about the detailed plan that gets broken its about what can you personally realllly stick to?

and thats where the numbers come in, 130lbs lost puts me at something like 214, thats roughly what i probably weighed the last time i skied and it didn't kick my ass, i haven't skied in years.

this is what you need to think about, what is your "I just want to ski again" ? screw i want to be a size ... or weigh x c'mon! really? dont know about you but middle age is a time of freedom where you can stop worrying about that crap ok? you want to go dancing, you want to take the kids to the beach, you want to go shopping at the mall and not think about people staring at you you want that hug where their arms fit around you. you want to RUN!

let that be your guide.

THE SCALE

my scale is in my garage downstairs, its very very rare that i can actually do a pure full up underwear only in the morning after i peed weigh in. remove the scale from your bathroom, seriously throw it away if you have to DO NOT weigh yourself daily, at the very most weekly but far better is monthly.  I haven't lost a pound in a month but i don't care, i went to pennys the other day and grabbed a suit coat of the rack in the 'normal' people section and just put it on, just threw it over slid it down and buttoned it. it felt fabulous. i cannot tell you how many times i've gotten stuck because everything was too fat or gotten sticker shock at the big and tall store or had those extenders put in to get a tux rental for a wedding, humiliating! but i just put it on and it felt sooo nice. man did that make me smile. NOT some number on some machine, the feel of a suit, the sprint up the stairs, thats what matters. trust me.

so in this blog I will try to share what i've learned and more along the way, what i do when i'm broke, when i have no time and just how far off the map i can go to put one thing ahead of another: staying on my lifestyle change way over thinking "i'm on a diet" when you feel deprived its not long before you 'cheat' like, you shouldnt have regular peanut butter or an insane amount of alcohol but, those vs a snickers?

best example so far: my birthday, 3 months in, dreg, what a downer! I cant have anything herumph! nope, I had cheesecake and avoided the crust because it was very little wheat, less carbs, less sugar but really reallly good and rewarding, I didnt feel cheated and THAT is what made a week of 'good' stuff easy to stick to thereafter.

I'm also a great freestyle cook, I'll share some ideas, probably not 'recipes' those are instructions and I hate instructions, i'm an artist dammit :)  but you square folks i'm sure can codify these as you go and nail them down to that pretty bullet pointed stuff.

happy living!