FatBloggers.net A little push to lose the tush.

I want to thank you guys for including me in this venture. I am at a point in my life where I truly believe that being overweight is the #1 thing that is keeping me from being as successful as I could be. I am working on making my health a focus in as many ways as possible and you guys are helping me do this and I am very thankful. Breaking patterns has been a focus in my life in many areas and the patterns that have caused me to be unhealthy seem to be among the most difficult to break. I have been trying to be committed to weight loss since August of last year and I lost 20 pounds fairly easily. It always seems that after those first 10 - 20 pounds is when I begin to fail. I only gained a portion of that back in the meantime and I really want to keep this commitment going before I get back to where I was. I’m at 256.5 pounds now and I started at 270. I recently joined Weight Watchers and as long as I can be disciplined in that, I think it can work. I am treating it like an AA program because to me, an unhealthy lifestyle can be just as much of an addiction as anything else.

So… speaking of patterns, I’m running into one right now. Many times when I begin to workout after not working out in  a while, I get sick. I never know how much to do when I get sick and I usually don’t do anything except try to get better. I get behind in work and things in that time and then it is a while before I get back in the gym again. This kind of thing happens quite a bit. So my question to all of you is: Should you work out when you are getting sick or are sick? Does it make it harder to get better, or does it speed the recovery process by getting your body going? When I don’t feel well, it is easier than ever to make excuses why I shouldn’t work out. I really want to do what will work the best so if any of you have any advice, I’d love to hear it!

I was talking to a friend of mine about my weigh-in yesterday (312.9 lbs.) with Weight Warriors. Something we were talking about forced me to realize something… I’ve lost 100 pounds!

That is my ‘disgusting before’ picture, at my known maximum of 412 lbs. Me, at Safeco Field eclipsing my best friend, thats his white sleeved arm. I was uncomfortable squeezing into that seat. It looks painful (in more ways than physical) too!

Oh My God! I’ve LOST 100 pounds!

This whole time I have been basing my success at getting healthy on what the scale says and how far I can run.

As you can imagine I am pretty happy with both those indicators.

Last week I finally got around to taking some measurements and figuring out my body fat.

Now I am wishing I had been taking measurements all along. I had really good intentions of keeping track, honestly I did. But when you come home every night to two smiling balls of energy yelling “Daddy’s home, daddy’s home”, you tend to forget those less important things until it’s too late.

So according to this website, I have 24% body fat.

They say the average American male is at 22% body fat, top athletes are at 3 to 10% body fat and the healthy normal range for me should be 15%.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised that I am so far above the healthy percentage, but I still am.

Having watched the numbers on the scale go down overtime, I have context for that success. This number is still arbitrary to me and because of that it feels really high.

It makes me wonder what my body fat would have been at my heaviest.

Just for a little clarification, I am posting results for 3 fitness/weightloss programs that I am following.

• Weight Watchers - Tuesday nights
• Total Transformation - Sundays
• Weight Warriors - Monday

So if you see differing numbers, it is only because I am using the numbers from a specific scale in each circumstance. Consistency, people! That will get you through any challenge. Just like the tortoise… slow and steady wins the race!

When I entered this challenge, the #1 thing I needed was a swift kick in the pants. So far, it has been. My Personal Trainer is great; she’s challenging, she’s encouraging and best of all she is good at pushing me hard enough to make me sore the next day, but not too much.

One of the things that you read in some of the good fitness magazines is that if you go out and kill yourself in the gym, the chances of being successful is slim. All those people you saw at the gym the first 2 weeks of the year… they jumped in too hard and it hurt, they could barely get out of bed or lift their arms. So they decided that it wasn’t worth it. If it’s done right, it is very much worth it. And the pain feels GOOD!

My PT says… Pain is weakness leaving the body. 

OK… Anton, a drum roll please…

Week 0 - 317.2 lbs.

Week 1 - 312.9 lbs.

TOTAL LOST - 4.3 lbs!

For my entire adult life I have believed that Catholics were required to fast on Fridays during Lent. I found out this weekend that I was wrong. As you can imagine this was quite a shock.

In my mid 20’s when I was really eating bad, I used to go out at midnight on Fridays during lent so I could eat, because I had such bad cravings during the day. Turns out all that self-sacrifice was for nothing.

This revelation brought up an interesting discussion between my mother and I this weekend.

My mom is a grazer. She eats a little something pretty much every 2 hours all day long.

I am a faster. I eat three meals a day with very few snacks in between.

My mom feels, as do many experts, that eating small meals all day long is a great way to keep your appetite and cravings in check, along with keeping your metabolism up.

I used to be a grazer. Problem was I couldn’t limit myself to a few small snacks. Every time I ate I had to over do it. Instead of a fun size snickers or a handful of grapes, I needed two king size candy bars and an ice cream sandwich.

That is why I have settled into my fasting. By avoiding most snacking, I have eliminated the “over doing it” impulse…for the most part.

I’m curious about the rest of you. Are you Fasters or Grazers or somewhere in between?

And does anybody have a personal strategy that works for cutting down on the “over doing it” with snacks?

This post has nothing to do with calories, Weight Watchers, confessions, etc… but I did want to let my Fatblogging Brethren know that the lovely and gracious Susan and I were married on Saturday, Feb. 8, in a simple but meaningful ceremony in our home.  We just had our kids there on hand to be with us.  We both work at the same school, so it seemed only fitting that the school janitor officiate.  He’s actually a Baptist preacher who’s between church gigs, and he’s a good friend of ours besides.  Not many people can say they got married by their school janitor.  Afterward, we had a “family honeymoon”, where all six of us checked in to a Red Lion, got a couple of rooms, and stayed up and partied with games, movies, etc… It was a ton of fun.  We’ll do a honeymoon just the two of us during spring break. 

So, hopefully I can get back to Weight Watchers this week and start this weight loss thing up all over again.  In the mean time…life is very very good.

I believe that our core audience is made up of other guys who are either on the journey, or looking to begin, and they are searching for others of like mind, REAL guys, not the Jared’s of the world who go on to get fame for their success, but guys who lead real lives and are facing the same issues they encounter every day.

If anything, my fellow FatBloggers, we need to be more transparent in our successes and failures.  We need to really get detailed on what works and what doesn’t.  That may mean spending more time really paying attention to what we eat and what we do that gets us closer or takes us farther from our goal.  We can appear to be “superheroes”, because we post successes without showing the stumbling blocks and pitfalls that clearly define us to be just ordinary men who succeed because we don’t let those failures get in the way of our goal.

I’m preaching to myself too.  I’ve been lazy in my food choices lately and have taken my eyes off the goal.  I can’t succeed when I defeat myself.  I can’t be the example and encouragement my wife needs when I become an enabler allowing both of us to make bad decisions.

Finally, let’s just get out there on the ‘net (the tubes) and show the nay-sayers we can win and not give them the satisfaction of being right.

(cue “Rocky” theme song and credits)

Let’s give a round of applause to Rev. Todd!

When Todd contacted me about joining FatBloggers, I surfed over to his blog and found some pretty wide gaps in his posts. When I mentioned this to him, I was convinced by his response to let him into our group.

Here is a portion of his response:

The funny thing is that having gaps in my progress is what troubles me as well. What I am seriously trying to do is to make it more comfortable and less of a pain to succeed than it is to fail and the more that I can do to cause discomfort in failure, the better chance I have. I think this community will be a huge help in that effort.

Go to the Meet Us tab to find out more about Rev. Todd.

I got an email from a representative of an organization that is seeking to cut down on the number of water bottles that are piling up in our nations’ landfills. They have already partnered with NBC’s The Biggest Loser to cut down on the bottles that the folks in that competition were using. The author of the email asked if FatBloggers would be interested in being a part of that effort. As a bit of an incentive, they sent me 4 Brita Water Filters and Nalgene Water Bottles.

Filter for Good would like you to use a reusable water bottle and a Brita Water Filter to reduce the number of bottles that you are tossing away every day. You have heard about your Carbon Footprint, this is your plastic footprint. Those water bottles take thousands of years to biodegrade and Americans are putting millions of them into landfills every year. We all need to do our part.

Here is how you can get your very own filter and reusable water bottle. The ***FIRST FOUR*** FatBloggers to refer a NEW FatBlogger that is dedicated to our cause, gets a prize package. I will even pick up the shipping. Have them email me (see the Join Us tab above) or you can point me in their direction. The first FOUR that I can get on board wins you the prize. Generally I am looking for a blogger that already has an active blog. I wanna see their dedication; to transformation and to blogging.

*** The FOUR will be determined by the timestamp on the email that points me in their direction.

When Rick first told me of his vision for FatBloggers, I was eager to jump on board. It was about a year ago and I had been hit with the motivation to get serious about my own body transformation. I searched and searched the internets for guys like me, guys that were in various stages of their own transformation. Since I was going to a Weight Watchers meeting where I was the only guy, I needed brotherly encouragement and accountability. In my Googling, I found pages and pages of diet blogs written by ladies and precious few written by guys.

This week I made a hard decision, but a decision that I stand by as site administrator. FatBloggers needs to be distinct and have a solid mission. Otherwise we are just another hit amongst the myriads of diet blogs.

Guys, I want to encourage you to recruit bloggers to be contributors here. There are  a few that have drifted in and out of our midst over the last year, and others that are valued members of the team. If you have someone in mind; let me know about them OR encourage them to contact me.

When you are selling them on coming on board, please have them look at the About page. I have updated it to clarify just what we are doing here and why.