An Introduction

First of all, I would like to thank John for inviting me to this wonderful site.  I really appreciate it.

My name is Wes.  My weight loss blog is called Pick on the Fat Kid.  I’m 31 years old and have lived in Southern WV all my life.  I think my story is a little different than some of the others on this site, but on a broad spectrum it’s still the same.  I have been overweight all my life.  I used to be an active kid all the way up through my teen years. I never really gave “dieting” a shot until 5 or 6 years ago.  I joined Weight Watchers because I was tired of being fat.

I did very well with Weight Watchers.  I remember the first day, I thought I had a pretty good idea of my weight.  I had been weighing at home and was staying around the 300 lbs mark.  However, when I stepped on the Weight Watchers scales, it read 396 lbs.  I thought they did something wrong and had them weigh me again.  Yep 396 lbs.  You see, the scales I had been using at home only went to 300 and I wasn’t aware of that until after my first Weight Watchers meeting.  After several months on the program, I lost around 100 lbs.  I felt great!  I was doing cardio and weight training at the gym.  I was even playing racquetball.  What a fun sport!

Something happened along the way though.  I lost my way and fell into the path of drug abuse.  My drug of choice was marijuana.  I loved it.  No hangovers, no real side effects.  Well, no side effects but one.  The munchies.  When I was stoned, I could never get full.  When I moved out into the real world, I spiraled downward even more.  I was smoking on a daily basis and poisoning my body with fast food.  Whoppers, Double Quarter Pounders, Chicken McNuggets, lots of fries, and tons of soda were my main diet.  

After several years of this pattern, I had gained back the 100lbs I lost plus another 65 for good measure.  I was a miserable person with a dismal outlook on life.  One day, I just had enough.  I came to terms with reality.  If I continued down this path, I figured I would have maybe 2 to 3 years left in my life.  I was so depressed one day at work, I banged out a post on 2+2, an online poker forum.  Originally I expected the majority of the people to start cracking fat jokes at me.  I thought this would cheer me up.  What I got, though, was support.  These anonymous poker players pushed me into taking the path that I am taking now.

I decided that very day to change my ways.  I flushed the bag of marijuana I had in my house down the crapper and started researching healthy eating.  What I found was what I would call “Information Overload”.  There is so much info out there and a lot of it is contradicting.  I needed help, but I wasn’t happy with the way my local Weight Watchers handled a few things previously.  I didn’t want to go that route again, but I needed something to hold me accountable for my actions.  So I started a blog.  That would help with the accountability.  But I still didn’t have a good game plan beyond that.  Enter Adam Gilbert.  His services were suggested to me by another fellow poker player.  Adam lives to help people lose weight.  His whole program focused on accountability and not allowing yourself to make excuses.  He set out an exercise and diet plan for me that would be easy to stick with.

Basically, my diet consists of a lot of lean proteins (chicken, fish, turkey, egg whites) and complex carbs in the form of veggies, fruits, and whole wheat/whole grain foods.  I usually eat 6 meals a day.  Every evening I send Adam my food journal and every morning he sends me feedback on what I ate and also includes an inspirational post along with it.  He is great at keeping me motivated.  In fact, I’m just as motivated today as I was a month and half ago when I decided to make this change in my life.

At my last weigh in, I had lost 27.5 lbs in 42 days.  I don’t think of it as a “diet”, but just a way of life.  Things were difficult in the beginning, but planning for the bumps in the road that life throws at you is half the fun now.  My outlook on life has completely changed.  I’m no longer a miserable person.  In fact I’m happy.  I jump out of bed and I’m ready to sieze the day.  Nothing seems out of reach.

I hope you follow along as I embark on this journey.  I have a long road ahead of me.  My overall goal is to lose 261 lbs.  For me, writing is therapeutic.  Writing about my weight loss journey helps me stay accountable for my actions.  The more people that pull for me to succeed, the less chance of me losing focus.  I don’t want to let myself down and I’ll be damned if I let down the people that are cheering for me!