Week 19 Results

It doesn't feel like I have been at this for 19 Weeks, but it has been a struggle to get this weight off.

After taking a week off from blogging, I am finally below where I was before my travels and diet cheating ways . .  188.4.

Let's hope this weight continues to come off and for the 1st time in 4 months, I have NOT hit my monthly target. To be honest, its extremely disappointing, but I have lost over 40 pounds from where I was almost a year ago and well over 30 from when I started this crazy diet experiment.

Thank you for keeping up with me and keeping me honest. To another 19 weeks and hopefully 30 pounds!

Have a great couple days! Let's hope George Clooney walks away with Oscar Gold tonight.

Week 11 - Results

Happy 2012!

At the end of Week 10, I pulled a muscle in my calf. With the sore muscle, I decided not to go to the gym this week.

With the holiday festivities and not going to the gym, I gained a little weight this week. My weight is up to 198.8 LBS. This is a slight gain this week, but I am still under my December end goal of 200.0 LBS.

My Motivation

I know that I have mentioned this a few times, but I am getting married in August 2012. I fiancee is a wonderful woman who has been by my side in good times and bad, prosperous and times when I didn't have a job, and no matter how big I was, she has loved me and I her.

In early October, we went out with a few friends and as friends with fancy smart phones will do, they took a picture of us. When I looked at this picture, it was the final straw. I needed to lose weight. Not for myself, but for Ashley. Ashley who has done everything she could to make our wedding wonderful. I know that wedding pictures last lifetimes and I wanted to look back on our wedding photos with pride, not "Oh my God!! Ashley is beautiful and I am a blob in a tux next to her."

I wanted to post the picture that finally got my butt off the couch and into the gym.

My face was rounder than I have ever seen it and a shirt I had just purchased and wore one time prior, no longer fit.

This weekend, we went out and got smart fancy phones of our own. With it, my fiancee took a picture of me. While I still need to lose weight, the 20 + lbs that I have lost is evident.

While not looking directly at the camera, you can see that my face has lost some weight and believe me, clothes are definitely fitting better.

Exercise VS Stress

Going to the gym about 5 times a week for seven weeks teaches you a few things about yourself. It shows you how can make yourself disciplined enough to spend hours at the gym, rather than on the couch eating. One thing I learned is that going to the gym takes my mind off of stress.

Much better than smoking, over drinking, shopping, and my previous problem, eating; going to the gym relieves most of my day-to-day stress. Focusing on the routine and to a smaller account, the blog has helped keep me motivated to lose the weight.

If you ask anyone that knows me, I stress out over things too much. I mean WAAAYYYYY too MUCH!

I worry about things outside of my control: "What is going on in politics?" "What is happening in the economy?" And I worry too much about things I can barely control: "Are we going over on our Wedding budget?" "How Can I be better at my job?"

Money, job, family concerns all stress me out. In the past I would turn to food (sweets, greasy food, carbs galore) to combat these stresses, and maintaining my sanity.

While never being completely overwhelmed or consumed by stress, I do stress about things both big and small more than I should. I'm still the same 'worry wart' that I was when I was a kid.

What I found out about myself is that exercise is a great stress reliever. Spending an hour on the treadmill and focusing on the workout takes my mind off all the troubles in the world. It is a great feeling to come out of a work out burning 700 calories and all the stress from the day. Burning calories, losing weight and stress all at the same time, sounds pretty good to me.

So I will continue to go out there and hit that treadmill hard so I can shed these 30 last pounds and the everyday stress that bogs us all down!

Week 5 Results

I've been told countless times that I don't look my weight: 'You weigh how much?'; 'I don't see you weighing 230'; 'You just don't look THAT big . . .', etc.

This being said, here is a copy of one of the engagement photos taken some time between the 230 weigh in and the 222 diet start:

As you can see, my fiancee is in shape and my shape was very round.
Even the brand new shirt I bought for the engagement photos was tight. This is a primary example of why I want to lose weight for our wedding. Ashley is stunning and I just know that she will indescribable at our wedding. The photos that will last lifetimes and I want to look my best for her.

Here we are five weeks into the workout and diet and I am happy to report the results from this week, which more than make up for last week's gain.

As of Sunday, November 20, 2011, my weight is at 205.8 LBS. This is almost a loss of five pounds from last week and over 24 LBS from where I was almost a year ago when I weighed 230 LBS.

If I can maintain this weight through my next weigh in and TWO thanksgiving dinners, I will call that a big Win!

Holidays- Turkey with carbs, carbs and oh no carby pie!!!

Next week is Thanksgiving, which means a Thursday and Saturday (Saturday is Thanksgiving Day for the fiancee's family) Dinner full of Turkey, sides, desserts and carbs carbs carbs. Looking at the typical Thanksgiving at my mother's we have: Turkey, rolls (Carbs), mashed potatoes or potato salad (carbs), Green Beans, stuffing (carbs), pumpkin pie (carbs), deviled eggs and cranberries. Two days later, I get to do it all again.

In preparation for Thanksgiving, I am going to go to the gym a full five or six days, maybe even on Thanksgiving night.

For Christmas, we have two Christmas Eves and Christmas Day which makes things even more difficult for the diet and going to the gym. Luckily, I have a full week off work between Christmas and New Years. To maintain this routine and reach my goals, I will have to hit the gym as much as possible between now and New Years Day.

I know that I will go over my carb amounts on both Thanksgivings and on Christmas. This should be okay as long as I monitor portions, sugar and keep up the exercise.

Exercise Update

I thought I would update on how exercise and diet are coming along as well as go into my routine this week.

It is important to remember that I am 26 and in relatively good health.

The diet is going well. Eating out and daily lunches make low carb diet difficult. While I have enjoyed salads and yogurt and fruit and veggies, I miss bread and bagels and english muffins and pasta!

This week, I have begun the 8 weeks to run that I spoke about earlier :8 weeks to run
I have also added a 30 minute walk at a steep incline. With combining these two, I have been able to knock of at least 600 calories, 3 of the 4 days I have gone to the gym this week.

I am also switching out the bike, leg and back equipment daily to focus on other trouble areas. One obvious area that I have not tackled is my stomach. While some of the fat has poofed away from this routine, I have not done any ab crunches.

Now I am not one to shy away from tests or challenges, but I just don't know how to use the ab machines at the gym. I do need to start working on this, my most troubled 'trouble area' and will plan to do this in the near future.

Right now I am most concerned with making that number go down and hit my goals. Because I have given myself January to keep the weight off, I will try to work on the ab crunch machine come the New Year.

Week 4 Results- Complete

This week, I accidentally tested 'natural' exercise versus the gym and the results speak for themselves . . .
With work and other obligations, I was only able to go to the gym twice this week. I did go hiking at a local state park on Saturday and walked around New York City twice. While five days of great activity and mobility sound great, the results were less than one would hope for.

With Four Weeks in and this being my first week with less than spectacular gym attendance, I had my first (though ever slight) weight gain.

This week my weigh in weight was: 210.6 LBS this is a .2 pound increase from last week, but definitely in the opposite direction.

I plan on hitting the gym a full five days this upcoming week, if not more and reversing this trend.

Let's hope this is the last of the weight gain shifts.

Week 3- Wrap up

Another week of dieting and exercise and much smaller than expected results. I keep hearing that 'muscle weighs more than fat'  and I have always thought this was something skinny people say to fat people so they feel better about themselves.

Here is the truth about muscle and fat and life in general. one pounds of anything is one pound, this doesn't change. Muscle does not weigh more than fat. Similar to saying one pound of meat weighs more than one pound of butter. Its still a pound.

Fact: Exercising regularly will transform fat into muscle and often times people who work out regularly will have muscle gain and fat loss and see no change in overall weight loss.

This blog/ website explains this much better than I can

Here are my results after Week 3 and going to the gym 5 days this week:

Current Weight: 210.4 LBS
Loss of 1 LB this week. While disappointed with the weight loss, I am happy to report that I am building the muscles in my legs.

Ultimately my goal is to look good for my fiancee at our wedding and in our photos.

This next week:
I am traveling to New York for work this week. I hope my hotel will have a good fitness center and I can find low carb friendly food in NYC.

Cravings and Advancements

I have gone longer on this diet (over three weeks at this point) than I have ever dieted in my life. During the first week, the everyday mass-carb consumption was missed. Pasta and rice are easy and quick to whip up, cooking veggies and a full dinner take time. Lucky for me, my wonderful fiancee filled the first two weeks with carb alternative meals that kept me from thinking about carbs until around much later in the evening.

I am a snacker. Yogurt and granola, a bowl of oatmeal or cereal, left over dinner, or ice cream have been my go to snacks at around 9:30 every night for years. This seems to be a habit I have not been able to quit and is next on my list. Before you accuse me of cheating on the diet, given my list of snack items, I have been turning to yogurt sans granola or fruit, and the occasional second helping of dinner.

This makes me believe that I need to reverse this and eat breakfast more often. maybe starting the day with a piece of fruit or yogurt will help me from this late night hunger. Let's hope anyway.

This week, I realized that it was time for me to give up latte's completely forgetting how sugary and bad for me they are, I usually hit Sbux during lunch for a coffee and the occasional latte. While Coffee has a number of health benefits for men and women (even more if guys throw cinnamon in their coffee over sugar), sugary, foamy lattes are not, in general good for you.

This got me thinking about my two weaknesses and what I miss most about not caring about what I ate.
1. Sweets- I overly enjoy pastries, donuts, cake, etc. Too much of these obviously helped lead to my weight ballooning. Regardless, I love sweets. While incorporating a brownie, or birthday cake into the '2 carbs a day' diet, I refuse to make this an everyday or every other day excuse. As the diet continues and holidays come closer, I am sure I will wish for more pumpkin pie, caramel apples, and those free Sbux pastry samples.

2. Soda- I like pop. or soda, or sodapop or Coke. What ever you call it, high fructose corn syrup, carbonate water, cola flavoring and the rest  . . . I enjoy these carbonated beverages much more than I should. It has been over a month since I have had an actual Coca-Cola (in the Red Can, with the fake real sugar). Luckily for me, there are the Zero and Max versions of name brand sodas, where I can get my non-coffee/ tea caffeine fix. These versions have 0 carbs, but also have 0 nutritional significance.


Despite these challenges and temptations, I have been able to make it the gym 3 of 5 nights this week and plan to close out the week strong with two more solid gym visits.

Until next time . . .

Week 1 - Complete

Today is October 23,2011 which marks the beginning of Week 2 of the full diet and exercise program that I have developed to drop weight for my wedding with my beautiful fiancee, Ashley, on August 11, 2012. I want to be around for a long time and I have never been 'in shape' in my life. The only shape I have been is round and I have a keg rather than a 6 pack.

Saying this is Week 2, may be a bit of a misnomer though. The truth is that we, my fiancee and I, started the diet about a week into October and I did sign up for and go to the gym one time before this week (Friday, October 14).

I feel that it is easier moving forward with the blog and the diet looking towards my goals and using Sunday, October 16, as the start day for the diet and exercise program, as that was the day of my first weigh in.

Here is a brief summary of the diet, routine, and goals, if you have missed any of my previous posts.

• My fiancee and I are on a low carb, high fresh fruit and vegetable diet. Weening down our carb intake. 
• Ideally, we would like to get to about 70 g of carbs a day, while shunning most simple carbs (candy, sugar, honey) all together. 
• Like many things I have found, there is no real answer to what is the ideal amount of carbs. The Atkins diet calls for 20 g of 'net carbs' (Carbs minus fiber) a day or less. Atkins Site Regarding Carbs
• A number of diets to maintain a health lifestyle recommend 120 total grams of carbohydrates a day Low Carbs on About.com 
• One concern that we both have is the negative responses to a high protein diet Negatives of a Low Carb Diet
• Our first challenge is limiting our simple and wheat related carbs (bread, wraps, pasta, oatmeal, cereal and granola) as well as potatoes to 2 a day.
• I am going to the gym, a minimum 4 times a week. Doing a combination the first 4 weeks of 70% cardio, 30% weight training. 
• For the Month of October, my goal was to get to 218 LBS by October 31 and 210 LBS by November 30.
• Starting Weight: 221 LBS
• Current weight: 214.2 LBS

Excercise

I don't know about you, but I have never been big on exercising, NEVER.

I used to go on walks a lot in college, but that was three years ago, rarely longer than 20 minutes and rarely, if ever, at an intense pace. Needless to say, jumping on a treadmill or doing cardio for 45 minutes straight is NOT something that I have ever done.

Going from couch potato, more like couch cushion (or mashed potato), given my increasing weight gain over the years to 50 pounds lighter and less cushion-y, maybe even less of a potato (no promises), will be a difficult journey. After spending some time on the internet (see couch potato) I have found several different and contradicting articles about eating and exercising to lose the weight and keep it off.

Here are some of the more useful articles I have found:
10 Strategies to Lose Weight - Mens Health
I love about.com, because there are always a number of useful tips and hints to many things. I have found the two following articles interesting.
Beginner's Guide to Running
After my first 4 weeks at the gym, I am going to attempt this as well:
8 weeks to learn to Run


I am giving myself 4 weeks of treadmill, because right now I am not able to jog more than 30 seconds.

Based on what I have read and my own limitations, as mentioned I haven't exercised in excess EVER, the first few weeks I will follow the following routine at the gym:
Cardio:

• 2-3 miles on the treadmill on various inclines at speeds ranging between 2.5 and 4.5 MPH
• 4-5 miles on the stationary bike on various incline options
• Attempt other cardio equipment and get up to .5 miles on stairs. After a few attempts, I am lucky to make it .1 mile before having to give out

Weight Training:

I want to focus first on my back and legs and move into arms and chest as I move through the routine
I am going to start with different leg lifts at a minimal weight (10 lifts each leg separately and 20 together)
For my back, I am going to do 30 reps at 50 pounds and increase to 70 by Week 2 of Gym

After 4 weeks, I will re-evaluate and increase my routine.

My Goals

It's important to set goals for yourself when on a diet/ exercising. This first month, I am going to set the goal low and pick up the steam as my body get more used to going to the gym on a daily or near daily level.

After my first intense workout, I am exhausted, even 16 hours later.

After Month 1 (end of October 2011) My goal is to weigh under 218lbs. As of 10-16, I was at 221.2. This gives me a goal of losing 3 pounds in a little over 2 weeks. With the diet in full swing, the birthday cake gone, I hope that this is possible

These first few pounds will be difficult, but if I can continue the regimen, I will be able to set much higher goals. By the end of November, I want to weigh: 210 pounds. November's goal will be 8 pounds, assuming I reach my goal by the end of October.

Through the end of the year, my goal is to weigh 200 pounds on a scale for the first time in recent memory, no matter what my license may say :)

Through the holidays and into March (January and February), I would like to be at 185 pounds. While for a lot of people. The thought of weighing 185 may be still too big, I would like to go through March keeping the weight off. This has been my most difficult challenge in ever dieting. Keeping the weight off, always seems to be the problem.

Eventually going back to a more normal diet, but increasing portion control and exercising as much as possible.

To sum up thus far, I want to go from 221.2 pounds to 185 pounds by February 29, 2012. This will be a loss of over 35 pounds in 5 months.

During March, my goal is to keep the weight off and maintain 185 pounds. Throughout April and May, my goal is 5 lbs loss each month, resulting in a total weight of 175 lbs for me and 45 pounds lost.

While preparing for the wedding, I would like to tone up in June and July for the wedding August 11, 2012.

To wrap up:
Weight in May 2011: 230 LBS
Weight as of October 2011: 222.2LBS
GOAL as of May, 2012: 175 LBS

Total weight loss Goal with low carb diet and exercise from October 2011 to May 2012: 47 LBS
47 pounds in 8 months equals approx. 6 LBS a month.

One week in and then some

After one full week of the diet, I lost one pound. dropping to 221.2 pounds. After that week, I decided to join a gym- something I had never considered in my life.

The diet is not nearly as difficult as we would have thought and we are doing well. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Lots of squash.

We did have one issue entering into week 2, my 26th birthday. With all birthdays, there is a certain amount of sweets that come with it. At work, my wonderful colleagues got me all sorts of cupcakes and my wonderful Ashley made me a Harry Potter/ Hogwarts themed cake.

While the diet is in full swing, the awesome power of cake and cupcakes can be overwhelming. Ashley and I have done well thus far and I am looking forward to the gym membership.

The Gym:
Thus far, I have gone twice. My first experience was limited to cardio and after about 45 minutes of machines, and sweat I was done. My second adventure was over 90 minutes long and was much more involved.

As I continue to go, I am sure that I will talk more about the work outs, the weigh ins and the diet.

The beginning

For as long as I can remember, I have been overweight. I have horrible memories about gym class in grammar school and not being able to run long enough or far enough or fast enough.

Through high school and college, I gradually accepted my bigger than 'normal' status and my weight fluctuated throughout.

About 4 years ago, I fell in love with this wonderful girl, Ashley. In January, we became engaged and about since then, I had been saying that I need to lose weight. In May, I weighed myself and was at an astounding 230 pounds. This was the largest I had ever seen on a scale, though there is a good chance, I had weighed more in college and high school.

I began watching what I ate and some pounds fell off. I lost 12 pounds by limiting sugar/ sweets and only taking cream in my coffee. I thought I was doing good, until the beginning of October, 2011. By October, I began gaining some of the weight back. I didn't realize how much of the weight I had gained back until I went out with some friends, and as friends will do, pictures were taken.

After seeing a photo of myself from the previous night on facebook, I made the decision to make some serious life changes and look good for my fiancee in our wedding photos. She is always there for me and for her, our wedding and our future, I am determined to lose weight, get in shape, and hopefully adjust into a healthy lifestyle.