FatBloggers.net A little push to lose the tush.

Bleah.

I gained 1.8 pounds and I was disappointed. In the last few days, I had made some choices I would not have made the prior week. My war on sugar had a small cease-fire declared allowing for a relaxation of the sugar embargo.

However, my wife pointed out that it may also be affected by my workout routine. I had missed yesterday (choosing to go to Texadelphia cheesesteaks for lunch instead). However, I had also been keeping a rigorous pace otherwise. This will be the first week I won’t be getting in four workouts at the gym at work.

The other affect I’m seeing in the mirror. For the first time, I can flex in the mirror and see muscles instead of a shifting of body fat. In fact, I’ve had muscles popping up in unexpected places on my arms. So she mentioned that part of my weight gain may be muscle mass too.

It was still disappointing, but not as disappointing as it was before she reminded me. I love her.

So I’m renewing military conflict with sugar in the hopes to force it to accept a much smaller territory of occupation in the country called “Onmymenu”.

Starting weight: 319.0 lb
Previous weight: 278.6 lb
Current weight: 280.4 lb
Current loss/gain: +1.8 lb
Total loss/gain: -38.6 lb
Distance to 50: 11.4 lb
Distance to WW Goal: 30.4 lb

Cross-posted to WebCudgel.com

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Sometimes, what you eat catches up with you. I went to work yesterday with a twinge of a gout attack; I still managed to get in my workout. Today, I went to work and, after one hour, returned home. The pain was such that I could barely think; I couldn’t concentrate and was just wasting my time there.

This has been one issue I’ve had many times in the past.  I would get a workout routine going and then have a gout attack that would take me out for a week.  Then I’m having to start all over.  Of course, most of the time, that was due to not drinking enough water.  I know now that this is not the case.  I need to eliminate sweets for a while.

What caught up with me started with Friday night’s happy hour (Cinnabon cheesecake), Saturday night’s card game with an elderly friend (Peppridge Farms cookies, banana bread, and other cookies at church), Sunday (sweet cereal and pancakes), and a few servings of soda, resulting in the aforementioned gout attack.  Ironically, today’s meeting was discussing good health habits and one of them was cutting back or eliminating sugars and alcohol. Since those are obviously big contributors to my gout (there are different primary triggers from different sufferers), I made a personal promise to cut back on the processed sugars for the next week. This means I can still have fresh fruit. The only exception will be my protein bars that I sometimes use to replace lunch after a workout.

So today was the first time I missed my workout. My exercise partner took advantage of today’s schedule to go vote at lunch. I guess I’ll be working out the rest of the week (if my gout improves tonight).

I obviously have issues with control on the weekends and I really need to work on that. It is so much easier on weekdays when I have a routine.

Still, in spite of my weekend, I extended my loss streak to four weeks. I can do better and I will.

Starting weight: 319.0 lb
Previous weight: 282.8 lb
Current weight: 282.4 lb
Current loss/gain: -0.4 lb
Total loss/gain: -36.6 lb
Distance to 50: 13.4 lb
Distance to WW Goal: 32.4 lb

Cross-posted to WebCudgel.com

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Yes! This has been one heck of a week with many struggles, but many positive experiences as well.

Food: I only had one drink that was not on the core plan (a couple of glasses of wine last night). I managed to cut back on sweets and increasing fruit and vegetable intake. I took my lunch three days out of the five. I did not have any food at the movies Saturday night (Fool’s Gold was a fun movie).

Exercise: I did one more day of walking 2.2 miles during lunch on Wednesday. Yesterday and today, I finally got to exercise with my workout buddy, Jason. Both days involved 20 minutes on the elliptical (aka the torture rack for my quadriceps), 20 situps, 15 leg lefts, and then 30 minutes on free weights, machines and bench press (Monday and Wednesday on one group of muscles, a different group on Tuesday and Thursday). My legs and arms were Jello yesterday. Today, they were just plain sore.

I mentioned in my last weigh-in that I would post my menu. I’ll list it below after the “more” link.

Although one weigh-in months ago took me to the 40 pounds lost mark, I consider it a fluke as it dropped back down almost 9 pounds the following week. So, in my books, today’s weight loss of 36 pounds is my personal lowest.

Starting weight: 319.0 lb
Previous weight: 285.2 lb
Current weight: 283.0 lb
Current loss/gain: -2.2 lb
Total loss/gain: -36.0 lb
Distance to 50: 14.0 lb
Distance to WW Goal: 33.0 lb

Cross-posted to WebCudgel.com

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Please rise and give a warm round of applause for the newest FatBlogger… Paul!

Paul is from the Chicago area, take a moment to look at Paul’s blog and encourage him to jump in with both feet!

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?

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.

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.

I’ve been reticent to post until I knew more, but I’m not sure that time will ever come, so here it goes…

I attended an interesting meeting last night at my gym to get a number of us on the same page for a competition that will be both a means to help 6 (3 guys, 3 girls) people get on the road to health and fitness and a publicity ’stunt’ for the gym and the local paper. Beginning with the Sunday edition (Superbowl Sunday no less) I, along with 5 other people will be featured as we personal train, diet and blog ourselves through 12-weeks, February - April. Next week, I meet with a personal trainer to get measured in every possible way as well as have a new routine done. I believe that I will be meeting with her 2x/week for the duration. There is also a meeting with the hospital dietitian, I am curious there due to my success with the Weight Watchers plan.

Cut back 2 weeks to when Neal asked me to be a part of this. He wanted me to think about it because of the newspaper/blog aspect. I told him that I had been blogging my journey for over a year. He thought that was great, The Wife asked, “Yeah, but how many people that you actually know look at your blogs?” She had a good point. There is a BIG difference between you and the people I see at my daughters’ basketball games or at the grocery store. The ones that will see my picture in the paper with my progress stats printed there in black and white. This is, after all, a small town.

Yes, and the blog itself, I will be adding a 3d blog to my life. There will be one on the EO website where all of the competiters and trainers will be posting.  I’ll post a direct link there, once one is set up.

Stay tuned…

Would you please join me in welcoming Michael to the FatBlogger family.

Michael and I go back to 1990. He is the first friend I made after I became a Christian at the age of 21. We were involved in Youth Staff together at Kings Circle AG in Corvallis, OR before going to Northwest College (now University) together to enter into the world of ministry. That choice didn’t work out too well for either of us. He was also the Best Man at my wedding. We’ve been there for each other through alot of ups and downs. His entire family holds a special place in my heart, and life.

Mike and I were talking the other day and he mentioned that he is a regular reader of this blog that, like many others, gains inspiration from our posts. I invited him to join, but he told me that he wasn’t ready to ‘go public’ with his weightloss journey (so, I guess this is a kind of ‘outing’). I told him that I would register him as a FatBlogger, and when he was ready, he would be able to post without asking again.

I am looking forward to having Mike aboard, he’s funny and genuine.