Catching Up

Hello! It has been more than a month since my last blog post. At some point after the post that precedes this one I lost focus for a time. On April 23rd I regained my focus and put into place a new kind of motivation for myself. This post is being written on May 5th and at least to this point it has worked well for me. More on that in a moment. For now, let me catch everyone up on what has happened since the 23rd of April.

On the 23rd of April, I weighed in at 388.8 pounds. I was just sick of it. My body was never meant to carry that kind of weight and it has been making me painfully aware of that recently. This brought on my idea of what I could do to keep myself motivated throughout the year that I will discuss later on. I weighed again on the 25th of April and then everyday since. The 25th of April is when I began to count calories. Below I will detail my weight on each of those days.

April 25th: 385 (lost 3.8)
April 26th: 385 (lost 0)
April 27th: 383.6 (lost 1.4)
April 28th: 385.6 (gained 2)
April 29th: 383.6 (lost 2)
April 30th: 383.4 (lost 0.2)
May 1st: 383.4 (lost 0)
May 2nd: 383.2 (lost 0.2)
May 3rd: 382 (lost 1.2)
May 4th: 380.8 (lost 1.2)
May 5th: 380.6 (lost 0.2)

This means that I have lost 8.2 pounds since the 23rd of April. That is not necessarily incredible but it is a system that I can keep doing. So what is this motivation that I had mentioned? Well, I was thinking about how I need all kinds of different goals to keep myself motivated. When I lost close to 100 pounds the first time it was because I kept goals that were small and then the overall big goal. An example of a small goal for me right now will be to break below the 380 pound mark. I should be able to do that very soon. It is within reach and attainable. My big goal would be to break below 200 pounds and perhaps someday even attain my high school weight of 175.

What is the common theme between both the small term goal and the long term goal? They are just numbers! There are also no intermediate goals. Once you chew through (pun intended) a few of those short term goals it can get redundant. There is always a new number that is within reach but if I am not careful I can lose sight of the why.

What I have decided to do is to add an intermediate goal that has meaning to me besides just being another number. Numbers do eventually get a little boring to me. There is significance to the time frame of me starting this and what turned me on to this idea. When I was in California in March helping my folks out with some work my father expressed that he was very concerned about my weight and the impact that will have on my life. In some ways I suspect that most guys want to make their father proud. It took me some time after the fact to collect myself and take action.

April 25th is my father's birthday and it just so happens that I have someone important to me with a birthday spread across the entire calendar year within a few months of each other. Mom's is in July. One daughter is September, the other daughter is November. My birthday is in February. Then it repeats. While I am losing the weight for myself, it does help me put down that last slice of pizza when I consider that my mom just might treasure me dropping 25 pounds by her birthday more than any other gift I could give her.

Now I always have someone to think about whenever I am tempted. Not like in a judgmental way at all. I just focus on how I want to have an amazing weight loss number for them by their birthday. Then we will both have something to celebrate on their special day!

Not Easy

Welcome to another weigh in post! Today is March 10th and I have some good news to report. I have to be honest. I was very tempted to have a late night snack last night. That is not a good thing before a weigh in the next morning. Instead, I turned off the lights and went to bed. Losing weight is not easy but it feels good to do the right thing.

I nearly lost 4 pounds (3.8) since my prior weigh in which was March 5th. My current weight is 376.2 pounds. This puts my total weight loss at more than 5 pounds (5.6) and my total weight loss from my heaviest weigh in at exactly 7 pounds.

I have been very good about following my calorie budget. This is a lifestyle change for sure. It cannot be something that you do for a little while and then go back to your old habits. A friend of mine mentioned his uncle having successfully dropped a lot of weight and then gaining it back but then losing it again. In a way, that is kind of what happened to me. Although I never reached my target weight the first time, I did drop close to 100 pounds only to gain it back again plus some. This time needs to be different. This time will be different. I am done with this!

I am excited to see more progress at my next weigh in which will be March 15th. I love the energy that I am getting back already. I mentioned before that I have a little more spring in my step and in addition, I think my attitude is better. I think that sometimes in life we feel that we are not steering the ship so to speak. That we are kind of just along for the ride. Friends, weight is something that we can exert our control over. It does take discipline and restraint, but the rewards are going to be so worth it! Goodbye for now!

Moving Forward

Today was so exhausting. Being out of shape and overweight is a bad combination. Does that make me captain obvious? Ha! I sometimes think that people that have never been overweight can't really relate. See, in my current condition it is like I am carrying another 200 pound man around on my back for every single thing that I do. People sometimes say, well, you just need to go out and start working out. While that is true, it certainly limits your activities to those that are not high impact because the knees and ankles can only take so much. Anyway, my point being that it almost takes a careful balancing act between eating healthy to drop some pounds in order to be able to increase activity. I know that from my previous weight loss journey that it gets so much easier once the pounds start to drop a bit.

I have already noticed a little more bounce in my step. That probably has more to do with counting my calories and eating less than any substantial weight loss at this point. It is welcome either way. Today I needed it. I did manage to lose some weight though so here are the numbers.

I lost a little more than 3 pounds (3.2) since my prior weigh in which was March 1st. My current weight is back to 380.0 pounds. This puts my total weight loss at nearly 2 pounds (1.8) and my total weight loss from my heaviest weigh in at a little more than 3 pounds (3.2).

I am pleased with this progress even though I am really just back down to my February 25th weight. I have been diligent in managing my calories and have been trying to be more active. I was under my calorie budget every day except for one and that over budget day was nominal. I am confident that I will be able to continue to make progress now that I am logging all of my calories.

I am excited to report again on March 10th, the next weigh in date. I am getting encouragement from friends and that always helps. I really want to thank all of you again. I do it in person or when we chat but I want you to know that it really does help and motivate me. Thank you to those of you that follow along and hold me accountable as well. Sometimes I need a kick in the butt. I look forward to breaking through this 380 pound mark and charting some new territory. Check back on the 10th to see if I succeed in that endeavor. Until then, bye!

February 2018 Wrap Up

Hello and welcome to the wrap up post for the month of February 2018. This the month that I started my weight loss journey again in earnest. Unfortunately, it ended with a whimper. I had one really bad day since the last weigh in and it had a shockingly dramatic effect on my weight loss numbers. It is disappointing but I am not going to let it derail my goals. Instead, I have taken steps to address that issue. More on that later. Here are the numbers.

I gained a little more than 3 pounds (3.2) since my prior weigh in which was February 25th. My current weight is 383.2 pounds. I am surprised because while I know I had a bad day, that is a fairly big change. It almost makes me question the consistency of my scale.

So here is the wrap up for February 2018:

• Total weight gain to date: 1.4 pounds
• Total weight gain this year: 1.4 pounds
• Total weight gain February 2018: 1.4 pounds
• Total weight still to lose: 208.2 pounds

I was overly confident about how easy it would be to lose weight. It is typically easier to lose weight when you first get started. So what steps have I taken to address this? The biggest thing is going back to logging calories. Logging calories always seems like such a pain. However, this is beneficial for me because it is very easy for me to lose track of about how many calories I may have consumed without this tool. I am using the app Lose It. I like the app. I have also used MyFitnessPal. Both are great. The other tool I will be using is my Apple Watch to track my steps and calorie burn. I will ramp up my calorie goal as I go along to move me toward being more active. Lastly, I am going to make "one" my theme. One as in, one serving is enough. I may be hungry but no one said losing weight would be easy.

The next weigh in will be March 5th. I started logging my calories on the 28th. I actually weighed on the 27th and was heavier than I am now. That was the impetus to start logging calories. I am confident that I can drop some weight by the next weigh in if I stay consistent with logging my calories. Thanks for joining me on this adventure. Check back soon! Goodbye.

P.S. Check out my YouTube video by clicking the link below.

My Weight Loss Journey 3/1/2018 Vlog 2

Getting Started

Welcome back! In case you missed my last blog post, I am back on my weight loss journey. Today is the first weigh in since I started on my birthday just three days ago. I typically weigh every fifth day. Usually that would be the 5th, 10, 15th, 20th, 25th, and 30th on those months that have 30 days. My plan right now is to do a video blog update on the 1st of every month. I like this idea because then I would be able to see my transformation captured in video format. What do you think?

I was able to make some progress in these three short days. Getting started is always difficult because it is hard to break patterns of behavior and start new ones. If I had to rate myself on how well I accomplished this it would probably only be a C+. I had one day where I went a little overboard and that is always disappointing. Still, as long as I have more positive days than negative, I should lose weight. That was the case for this weigh in.

I was able to drop a little more than 1 pound (1.2) since February 22nd. My current weight is 380.0 pounds. At this weight I know that I can do better. On the other hand, three days is not a very long time frame to do it in.

The next weigh in will be on February 1st. I will have a write up here summarizing my monthly progress and will also have an accompanying video blog post as well. Keep your eyes out for that and thanks for following along. Time to get busy. Goodbye for now!

Happy Birthday!

Hello and welcome to the resistance. Today is my birthday! Woohoo! I am 44 years old today. While it is a happy day it is also a day to reflect on some things. One of those things is the elephant in the room. Pun intended. I need to start up the weight loss blog again. I am always torn on trying to do this because there is a side of me that says, "You have said this before." People don't want to hear how you are going to start this up again. Maybe there is some truth to that but I need to do this anyway so hopefully some of you are still in my corner.

So, for quite some time now my weight has been right around 380 pounds. I weighed yesterday because I knew that I was going to use my birthday to put a stake in the ground on this journey. Yesterday I weighed in at 382.4 pounds. I also weighed today and that came in at 381.8. So I have gotten just a little bit of a head start.

Birthday's are probably not the best time to start a weight loss journey but here is the thing, life is full of reasons and opportunities to not manage what you eat well. It is easy to say after the holidays I am going to get serious. But the holidays are going to roll around again a year from now and how will you manage then? I am saying this for myself as much as anything because I am guilty of having done that in the past as well.

That being said, we are going out to eat tonight. The mistake that I make sometimes is trying to be so restrictive that I lose my desire to continue. I will admit, that hasn't happened in quite some time, obviously. I keep thinking it was "just a few years ago" as I said in a YouTube video I uploaded to accompany this post (Find the link below) and in looking into it, my previous journey where I lost close to 100 pounds was back in 2012.

My next weigh in will be on February 25th. Even though we will celebrate my birthday tonight, I am going to do my best to have progress to report by then. Thanks for following along and not giving up on me! Until next time, goodbye!

P.S. Check out my YouTube video by clicking the link below.

My Weight Loss Journey 2/22/2018 Vlog 1

How To Manage Wireless Settings On A Mac

I have created a short video that demonstrates how to manage wireless settings on a Mac. Please feel free to view the video on my YouTube channel. You can access the video by clicking the link below.

How To Manage Wireless Settings On A Mac