Trying to hold up 15 pounds lost in two months next to 123 pounds needed to hit my goal makes it seem impossible to get there. I need a way to succeed within 2-3 months. How do I do that? I lower the bar. So rather than looking at it as "I need to 123 pounds someday" I see it as "I need to lose 5-10% of my starting body weight within a 2-3 month period." That's something attainable. Even if it takes five months, it's still something I can do. It's a reason to celebrate. What happens after I hit that goal? I set another goal equally as achievable. The small battles add up to win the war. It also keeps the morale high. The only enemy here is the excess weight. Don't let yourself get caught up in the crossfire.
The road to success is rough and rocky but always leads up. The way that I keep myself going is setting up realistic goals. Losing weight can be a daunting task, especially when there's more than just 10-20 pounds to lose. Before starting this blog and committing to losing weight I did a lot of research. I took a few days and read as much as I could, then I borrowed from what I liked to create the program I'm using now. The biggest key to success is starting small and staying small. What I mean by that is breaking everything I do into chunks. Yes I want to lose 123 pounds to hit my first target weight. Yes I want to master Portion Control. Yes I want to run in races and be semi- athletic. The only problem is that there is no instant way to do any of those things. And if I set myself up to try all at once, I'd most likely end up failing again. In a year I could be down to my target weight. In two months I could conquer portion control. In a year I could be running races. The only problem is that there's no fast forward button. I have to take things one step at a time.
Trying to hold up 15 pounds lost in two months next to 123 pounds needed to hit my goal makes it seem impossible to get there. I need a way to succeed within 2-3 months. How do I do that? I lower the bar. So rather than looking at it as "I need to 123 pounds someday" I see it as "I need to lose 5-10% of my starting body weight within a 2-3 month period." That's something attainable. Even if it takes five months, it's still something I can do. It's a reason to celebrate. What happens after I hit that goal? I set another goal equally as achievable. The small battles add up to win the war. It also keeps the morale high. The only enemy here is the excess weight. Don't let yourself get caught up in the crossfire.
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I was so excited that I looked like I peed myself quite badly! Well not yet. But soon. I've been thinking a lot about perception vs truth. I still am not at the end of this part of the journey. I'm only about 20 pounds in. I was talking to someone the other day about this and I realized I have never seen myself as being fat. I've never seen myself as being skinny either. I see me as me. Through my eyes I have never changed when it came to weight. When I gained weight, I didn't see me as heavier. I just, for some reason, needed to buy bigger clothes. At the end of the day I've always seen myself as me. Sometimes my back would hurt. My brain wondered why but only on the surface. I didn't really want to know and I didn't want to find out the truth buried deep down in the fog of denial. When I looked down at my stomach and my legs, they've always looked the same as they have since I was six. Just legs and my belly. At the first alumni band performance at my high school I had the option to drive to the stadium or march with the band to the stadium. I used to march all the time six years previously to then. Hell, not only would I march, I'd twirl, twist, hop, and jog with my sousaphone on while we were clowning around. At this time I was tipping the scales at my worst weight ever of 425. And I was shocked that after a quarter mile I couldn't play my instrument because I was so winded. Then I started slowing down. The sousaphones marched in the middle of the parade formation. Pacing wise I slipped till I was with the woodwinds. Then the percussion section. Then the flags. By the time the flags passed me I was wheezing and puffing. I wasn't marching in pace at all. I was just staggering in hopes of not collapsing in the road by myself. I was humiliated. I had no plans on sharing this when I sat down to write but I think this ties in well with what I'm saying. I'm also going to add redemption to the Frankbox Achievements page. I will march again with the alumni band and I will keep pace and play well while doing so! Anyhow, the reason I bring all of this up is that as I lose this weight, I'm doing the same thing. Some days I wake up and look in the mirror and I'm shocked that I can see some subtle differences in my appearance. Most days I look the same. When I look down I see the same big legs as when I was 425. They look similar to the legs from when I was six. The same goes when I'm standing in front of the mirror with no shirt on. I don't see the difference from last year when I was pretty hefty. This isn't really a bad thing, but it's definitely not a good thing. I do have days when I look at myself and I feel no different. I look the same as I did when I was 425 and six years old. My clothes still have some fit on me so I feel like I make no progress. I never feel like I'm going to quit. There is not a bone in my body that has the word quit in it. Yet if I let this feeling run unchecked whenever it feels like striking, then it may occur more and more often. This is what I realized. This is why I'm writing. I'm outing myself so that I can address and adjust to the situation. This is where the power of pictures comes to play. I need to remember to take more picture of myself as I continue down this path. That's the key to salvation. When I compare the picture above to the first one I took to start this blog, I can see some differences. If I compare it to the pictures from last year leading up to now I can definitely see a difference. This blog works so well for me and my cause because it allows easy access to compare and contrast. I can jog 7 miles per hour. I can sit at booths at restaurants without feeling like the biggest guy in the world. I can button up my shirts and still wear them as I sit down. I need a belt for everything. There's a lot of power in these things. Plus I get so much love from everyone who's joining me on this journey. Using these sources I'm going to create a strong positive reinforcement chart or page or something that I can look at whenever I get the feeling of spinning wheels. Finally, I came across this clip below and I loved it for many reasons. Mostly because I feel like Eddie Murphy at the gym. Energetic and happy. Not so much on the womanizing... When I feel like I lost weight I get excited and I prance around and sing and dance. I feel like one day I'll wake up and have my moment of revelation that I am thin. As I progress I look at the numbers in shock. I've already had moments like in the clip and I just feel like I will be that guy in spandex jogging around everywhere! Me and the Couchsurfers at School Night in Hollywood. Last night Chris and I were bored and looking at pictures on Facebook. It was a pretty fun time until I started looking at myself in these pictures. It's amazing to see how I've changed. Not just in the past month, but in the past several years. My vegan and vegetarian kick helped me shed some weight. I wish I would have kept track of my weight back then so I knew for sure what the tally was. I didn't though. But a picture is worth a thousand words and I've got some that show me at my worst and the path I took to get there. In July of 2011 I started a vegetarian lifestyle followed the next month by veganism. I stayed hardcore vegan until November. In that time I saw a huge difference in how my clothes fit. Coming back to Ohio and seeing friends and family took me off the path of healthy living. Now I'm back and I'm not stopping until I hit every goal that I set for myself. It's a shock to see how bad things were but it also makes me appreciate what I'm doing know, how I look and feel, and road ahead of me. *Disclaimer* The photo above is very inaccurate to the progress I'm making. I have lost weight and you can tell visibly but above I am leaning forward which negates the stomach overhang I still have and hides my double chin quite well. Nonetheless I like this picture cause I can better imagine what I will be looking like soon! :-D A recent picture of me in the car. Sorry for the delays, I've been very busy this past week trying to find a job. I'm getting tired of having to mooch so I've really stepped things up and I'm making work my top priority. Hopefully I'll have something positive to report in regards to that soon! A thought occurred to me the other night. Actually it was a sudden revelation that occurred to me Monday night. I need to work on my social skills. I am starting to be able to see some results of my altered lifestyle, and I'm feeling better about myself, but I'm still battling with my self image in the public eye. I've always been a shy guy when it comes to meeting strangers. I am also a pretty weak conversationalist. If you know me then you know that in the right environment with the right people I am an entertainer and social butterfly. If I'm in a new environment with a lot of people I don't know, I often need to adjust to my surroundings before I try to open up. I've realized that over the last five years I've slowly shied away from social interaction with new people in general. The only exception is if it's a group of people I'm familiar with, with a few new people added in. Recently I don't even try to talk to people anymore. Mmmmmm. I could eat this for days! This post was very difficult to write. I had to dig deep to the exact point in my life when eating became an issue. The point of this blog is not only to follow the journey I take, but to also look at how I came to be how I am. By knowing that, I can better prevent myself from relapsing from similar situations. What you're about to read is one of the most personal stories I have as to how I struggled with myself.No matter how strong you are or you feel that you are, sometimes you need support from others. It also stands to show that no matter how bad you feel about yourself or your life that things will get better. This story is why I feel confident that I will succeed in my goals because I feel that of all the times in my life, this is when I was weakest. Research. Research. Research. My brain hurts right now. But I can feel it passing. So what in the world was I looking for? Just a few answers to better understand myself. I need to learn a little bit more about me before I just start shooting in the dark. What I found was a little surprising. My weight combined with the sedentary lifestyle- working an office job, not exercising very much- means that on a rough daily basis I burn around 4,000 calories! I used two different sites to compare results. They have BMR calculators where you enter your activity level, age, gender, height, and weight and it calculates roughly what your daily calorie output is. According to nutritiondata.self.com I burn 4073 calories, while walking.about.com says I need 4078 calories daily to maintain my weight. Those two numbers are very close, and pretty shocking. I get that my body has to work much harder to support itself and accomplish daily tasks but I had no idea that it was that high. One- if this is even close to being true, then I'm kinda disgusted at myself and how I've been living for so long that 4k calories was the limit and I managed to only sustain myself at that rate... That's a lot of calories to take in on a daily basis. Two- my road to healthy is going to have to really focus on nutrition and eating just as much as physical fitness. Three- writing this seems pretty easy, right? Execution is going to to be the real challenge.
Wow! So here we are! My first blog post. I welcome you to my site as I prepare to go on an epic journey through space and time! If you've already browsed through my other sections, you'll know what is going on and why I'm doing this. If not then here's a quick summary.
I'm 27 years old and I am morbidly obese. From a young age I started emotionally eating and I still haven't kicked the habit. I can say that only once I have noted and documented weight loss in my life, that was last year while eating a vegan diet I lost 30 pounds in a four month period coupled with light walking. My goal of this blog is to keep myself motivated as well as motivate others to get into shape because there's more to life than food, and if you want to truly enjoy what the world has to offer then why not do it in a body that is not limited by weight/size/girth. |
Weight loss timeline:Starting weight: 446 lbs Archives
September 2016
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