Debt and Weight

Once again I have fallen off the wagon with regards to my weight loss. I was off the grid for two months. During that time, I moved to a new house and was busy with all that entails. My mother came out to visit and was a huge help to me. I hate moving so it was so nice to have her here. I have decided to take the blog in a little bit of a different direction with regard to my weight loss journey. Let me explain.

I have noticed that for me at least, there is a direct correlation between my finances and my weight loss journey. In addition to my weight loss goals, I also have a goal to get completely out of debt. I recently looked at what I am paying in interest per month on credit cards and my auto loan and I will just say that it makes me sick to my stomach. Going forward, my blog posts will focus both on my weight loss and my debt reduction. I have already made a YouTube video about this. Check it out in the link below.

My Debt & Weight Loss Journey 3/15/2017 Vlog 1

As I discuss in the video, the challenge for me with regard to debt or just finances in general and weight loss is in how they can interact with each other. When I was growing up I was taught to respect the value of money. I was also taught that wasting anything is bad. If you put a lot of food on your plate, you better eat it all because wasting food was not an option. Since money is not unlimited, you should always try to get a good deal with your money. If I go to a buffet for example, I should eat a lot to get my "money's worth". If I have a buy one get one free coupon on something, I am doubling the value of those dollars. This leads to eating two of something when one probably would have been enough.

For the debt side of things, I intend to pay off one card at a time until they are all paid off and then I will focus on my auto loan. Since finances can be a little bit of a private thing, I am not going to share my overall indebtedness at this time and instead choose to hyper focus on each card at a time. To that end, card #1 is the first to get paid off. I tend to chip away at my debt slowly so there should always some progress made on each card by the next time that I post a blog update. We will see if that holds true. At any rate, the details about card #1 are below. I have been working on this card for awhile already as it was close to the credit limit before I started paying it down.

Card #1: Current balance as of 3/15 = $237.57

The weight loss side of things has been disappointing. I weighed in at the highest weight that I think I have ever recorded. I currently weight 360.0 pounds. I desperately need to change my lifestyle. I made a commitment today to my two daughters that they can and should call me out on anything that they see me do that they feel is not in line with my commitment to losing weight.

I would not blame anyone for having given up on me at this point. I have started and restarted this weight loss journey so many times that I am sure it would be easy to doubt my follow through. I am not going to offer any assurances on that front as I feel like I have done that in the past only to fall on my face. Instead, I will just let my actions speak for me. The next weigh in and debt update will be on March 20th, 2017. I hope that you check back and follow me on this adventure despite my prior challenges in following through. I am not ashamed to have fallen down, but I hope that I always find the strength to get back up. Goodbye for now!