FatBloggers.net A little push to lose the tush.

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.

I finally feel like I’m getting my mind going in the right direction. In reference to the quote from last week, the Vice President of Finance told me that the quote (which I had also written up on my marker board in my cubicle at work) reminded him of another common quote from the President of our division, “It takes both thrust and vector”. To get to your goal requires both motivation and proper steering. I think I’ve got the right vector and the thrust is improving.

Naturally, you can probably guess that my weigh-in concluded with a positive result. I had lost more than I anticipated. In the last week, I ate even more fruit and veggies than I had the previous few weeks combined. With a couple of pieces of fruit, celery and carrot sticks and some other assorted veggies and salads, I got real results.

We celebrated by going to Boston Market where I proceeded to order the whole (not half) Rotisserie Chicken Carver Sandwich and the large Market Chopped salad. Before you start telling me that it doesn’t sound like the right direction, it does when you consider the following: I did not get any fountain drink and only had water, I consumed half of the sandwich and the salad. I did not consume the bleu cheese and I did not pour the dressing on the salad (I dipped my fork in the dressing and speared said veggies). I left the restaurant carrying the half sandwich and the half salad (and half dressing) to be consumed at lunch tomorrow.

In a related note, I went forward with what I had read in an article I also blogged about on here. I completed step one, which was to “commit your resolution to writing” or, in my case, a short term goal to reach on my way to long-term success.

As shown in the picture above, I’ve decided on the phrase “Make 50 a Reality By Summer”. To me, this is to be at a goal of 50 pounds lost before June. At one pound a week, this is completely do-able. With my loss today, I’m already a few weeks ahead of the game, but I have to keep those reminders up. Now I’ve got to work on the second step which is to visualize your successful results (in Weight-Watchers, this is known as “Winning Outcomes”).

The whole process actually involves several different methods taught by Weight-Watchers which can obviously be applied to any goal, not just weight loss. Of course, I will focus on this use because this is the most critical to my health and future. Hrm.. already sounds like I’ve got a start on step 2.

Starting weight: 319.0 lb
Previous weight: 287.8 lb
Current weight: 284.2 lb
Current loss/gain: -3.6 lb
Total loss/gain: -34.8 lb
Distance to 50: 15.2 lb
Distance to WW Goal: 34.2 lb

Cross-posted to WebCudgel.com

Loss This  Week - +.2 lbs.

Total Loss - 6.2 lbs.

It appears that I’ve almost got the bleeding stopped, however, there is a positive this day.  My attitude and mood are as good as they’ve been in weeks.

 Here are some potential reasons for my mood, in no particular order:

1.  My 5th grade students are on a field trip this morning, so I have no lessons until noon.  3 1/2 hours to myself (and progress reports).

2.  Great weekend of worship @ The Orchard.

3.  I’ve taken my “happy pills” everyday for the last 10 days, without interruption.

Whatever it is, I’ll do my best to hang onto it.

In one way or another all of us have posted our goals for 2008, and my mantra has been to make it work, you gotta have a plan.

1. Pick your battles. 1 or 2 attainable goals are better than several impossible resolutions. Go for quality, not quantity. When you look back at the past year, what would you have done differently? Regret going back for 2nds at every social function? Make a resolution to limit yourself to one serving of your favorites.
2. Keep your goal ‘top of mind’. Despite the computer revolution, wall calendars aren’t going away anytime soon. Put yours to good use. Every month, write your goal below the picture. As each month passes, mark your milestones on the way to reaching your goal. You’ll not only keep your goal top of mind, but also reaffirm it every month.
3. Be prepared. A goal without a plan is guaranteed to fail. How will you go about losing those extra pounds you gained over the holidays? Exercise? Diet? Both? Will you join a gym or buy a treadmill? Cook at home more? Enroll in a weight loss program like Weight Watchers? Write down the details to make your goal real. Now it’s just time to get started!
4. Mark your progress. You’ve set your goal and created a plan. Along with marking your milestones on the calendar, record your feelings in a journal or… share your experiences with others through FatBloggers! I am always interested in adding new authors to our ranks. 100% of the active FatBloggers will agree; they owe a part of thier success to to this blog.

There are many challenges to losing weight, but I have some unique obstacles on my road to success that make this much harder than for others.  Most of these obstacles deal with what I cannot or choose not to eat or drink.  I’m not the only one faced with these issues, because the need to eat healthy crosses all sorts of ideological borders.

First of all, based on my religious beliefs, I will not consume the following foods:

• Any pork product (ham, lard, bacon, prosciutto, and other products containing pork by-products which can include most cheeses).  This means, for replacements, I have turkey bacon/ham, sausage from chicken/turkey/beef, cheeses made from vegetarian products, etc.  I have to usually avoid many Italian sauces, pizzas, etc.

• Any shellfish or bottom-dwelling sea creatures (thus, no shrimp, crab, lobster, catfish, shark, etc.).  It’s funny how many low-fat recipes contain these sources.  It also continues to surprise me what other products contain these (some flavors of ramen noodle packages, certain sauces, etc.).  This severely limits what I can eat at an Asian restaurant.

By choice (not religious belief), I avoid artificial sweeteners and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  Both of these make their way into so many things these days that it is almost impossible not to consume them.  If it says reduced sugar, it most likely has sucralose or some other chemical.   I recently found sucralose in a light version of mayonnaise (though the regular one contained no sweeteners). HFCS can be found in a ton of things now and so I’m very careful.  Naturally, cutting back on HFCS is good for weight loss.  Some people can lose pounds just by taking out sodas.

To top off all of this, I’m now on Weight-Watchers’ Core plan, which means no oils (except the good ones in limited portions), no sugars (except what naturally occurs in fruit), no dairy products (unless fat-free and sugar-free), no fatty meats (everything must be lean), no alcohol, and no breads (only whole-grain sugar-free products and in a limited portion per day).

Now you have a clear picture of what my meals entail now that I’ve laid out all of the items I avoid eating for one reason or another.  Thus, I now present an idea of what my last three meals contained:

• Dinner last night:  Roast Beef, carrots, onions, potatoes (potatoes are part of my limited whole-grain/starch intake), and brown rice.
• Breakfast this morning:  1 cup of oatmeal with a small container of diced pears (just a little sugar in the oatmeal since I’m not quite ready for unsweetened oatmeal and won’t eat it with splenda or something).
• Lunch right now (just finished before I typed this post):  1/2 cup of ham salad (made from turkey ham, light mayonnaise, dill relish and onion), a handful of broccoli spears (raw), a handful of carrot sticks (raw), one banana and 1 small WW snack bar (1pt)

I’m working on ideas to expand my choices and make it less boring, but as of right now, I’m now setting a short-term goal.  I found that this is the one thing I’m missing from my plan.  I’ve lost over 30 pounds so far and if I push myself and lose one pound a week, I can get my 50 pounds lost magnet from WW by the end of June.  Thus, my goal is to lose another 20 pound before summer really kicks into gear.

As for how I will do this, I recommend following the plan that’s outlined in this Unclutterer.com article, “Making Your Resolutions a Reality“.  I’ve already started with step one, though I intend on making a small sign for my work computer and a small sticker on my MacBook so that I see it every time I look at the monitor/screen.  I may post later what I’ve done to complete the other steps of the article.

Well, in spite of my best intentions, I did manage to have a gain this week. However, though I had mentioned before that I don’t keep Christmas (thus, meaning that it would not have a negative impact on my weight like most people), I had two parties to deal with this past weekend.

The first was the reason for the extra housework over the last two weeks. It was a 50th birthday party for one of my wife’s sisters. We had a total of 22 guests and a ton of food since we had decided on a potluck style which allowed for a lot of variety.

There was one bright side of this party. I had not eaten as much as I might have had I not been conscious of my choices. I loaded up my plate first with garden salad, pasta salad, one fried chicken wing (the smallest in the pan) and one strip of brisket. Thus, I was already filling up on healthier choices before getting something else. In the end, my second plate had a small bowl of chili and a variety from the veggie tray and some potato salad. All in all, I avoided the heftier items. My drinks, on the other hand, could have been better, but also were not as bad. I had one soda, a small glass of wine and a glass of champagne & cranberry juice. After that it was water the rest of the night.

The second party was on Sunday evening which was thrown by a friend of mine who was celebrating his 40th (minus 1) birthday by having a poker party. I had never played Texas Holdem before so I “crammed” by playing some free games on Pokerstars.net to bone up on the general play action. It was only after we started a practice round for real that I learned what big-blind and small-blind meant. I ended up coming in 2nd place on the first “real” game (with a $2 buy-in, that meant the winner won $12 in the first game and $14 in the second game when my friend’s wife joined in after delivering the food).

He and his wife provided fajitas from a local Mexican restaurant. Again, my choices could have been much worse than in the past. I got a few chicken fajitas in the flour tortillas with a lot of the onions and bell peppers, a little sour cream and pico de gallo. No cheese, no refried beans, very few tortilla chips and a little rice to round out the meal. I’d had one Smirnoff Ice and then water the rest of the evening (there might have been one soda, but I cannot remember exactly).

All in all, I did make better choices, but not the best choices and I paid for it on the scales. Thankfully, that should be the last major event/celebration for a few months.

I do want to leave you with this quote from a member at our meeting tonight (it applies to a lot of things in life, not just weight-loss):

Slow in the right direction is better than any speed in the wrong direction.

Starting weight: 319.0 lb
Previous weight: 285.8 lb
Current weight: 287.8 lb
Current loss/gain: +2.0 lb
Total loss/gain: -31.2 lb

Cross-posted to WebCudgel.com

Loss (not) since last weigh-in: +26.2 lbs (wow!  That’s some serious emotional eating folks!!)

Total loss:  6.4 lbs.

At least I still weigh less than when I started.

Happy New Year.

Hey everybody, Happy New Year, and I hope your holidays have been good to you.  It’s hard to believe I started out this blog just about a year ago.  At the time, I thought I was just going to have a couple of contributors and maybe a few readers.  Little did I know what it would turn into just a year later!  Big kudos to John T. for taking this thing over and doing such good work with it the last few months.  Even though I haven’t been writing much lately, I read everything that comes across here and comment as I can.   Everybody has a great story on here.

I’m going to be starting Weight Watchers again soon, like in the next week or two, so I’ll be checking in on a regular basis.  I’m nowhere near my top weight of a year ago, but I have put on some extra pounds.  I just don’t want to let it get out of hand again.  Plus I have a little added motivation:  I managed to get myself engaged over Christmas, so I’d kinda like to look/feel good for that important event coming up.  I’ll let you know when it happens.

Oh, and if you haven’t already, be sure and upgrade your WordPress install to 2.3.2. Apparently, there was a fairly significant bug that needed to be fixed in 2.3.1.  WordPress proves time and time again how good they are as an open source community:  These things get taken care of before they become problems. 

Have a great 2008 everybody.

Right about now, the East Coast is gorging themselves on alcohol and fattening goodies all the while they are making promises to lose weight. The only way to eliminate that resolution is to do something about it.

If you make weight-loss a serious goal, you can work on eliminating the Fat Tax. The Fat Tax comes in many forms which you may recognize:

• Buy clothing and notice the sign at many of the retailers that says “Big/Plus Size Add $X”. That’s money you could be pocketing if you just lost the weight necessary to get into that smaller size (this won’t work for everyone since some like me have to wear the larger sizes due to shoulder width or chest size). Also, if your clothing no longer rubs together, it may last longer, too.
• No longer pay to “SuperSize” your meals when less food is enough (there will be a slight cost increase in choosing healthy stuff over cheap unhealthy items). You can also have more choices for restaurants when you no longer have to go to the buffet in order to eat enough to be full.
• Some insurance plans will reduce your premiums if you lose weight, stop smoking, etc.
• You may find it easier to get a better paying job when you look healthy.
• Some of you may be able to get a smaller, more inexpensive vehicle because you’ll be able to fit behind the wheel (not to mention the few cents you save because the car has less of a load).
• You no longer have to get first class airplane tickets to have the seats large enough to be comfortable.

I’m sure there are many other ways in which we pay the Fat Tax each day. What are you going to do this coming year to reduce your overall Fat Tax?

Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting to actually be in the group.  It’s been fun the last several months just reading and keeping up with the success of all these other bloggers.  Now I am actually on the team and hope to contribute, not just to the team, but to everyone else on the sidelines or in the stands cheering all of us as we strive for our goals.

Now for an introduction.

My name is Charles Martin, I’m 38 years old, live near Fort Worth, TX, married to a wonderful woman, Amy, own a cat and a dog (Koko and Jack, respectively).  I work as a database analyst and web-developer for a Time Warner Cable.  I also manage several websites and love the Internet and all it does for those who feel alone.

I’ve been posting about my successes and stumbles for the last 18 months on my personal blog, www.webcudgel.com.  I’ve made some headway, but I really need to push myself harder.  I think that this will contribute to my motivation (it’s one thing to be doing this with my wife and family and a few friends, it’s another to be doing this in front of all of you).

And now about my journey.

For starters, I had never really been one to watch what I eat and just continued to balloon over the years.  My wife had been in Weight-Watchers for a few years, but lacking the success she had hoped to have, we had a serious discussion and I asked her, “what do you want me to do?”  That fateful question was followed by the equally important answer, “go to the meetings with me”.  I had been tolerant of the change in our diet at home, but I still picked up stuff at the grocery store that would “wreck” her plans to stay on track.

So, because I love her and would do anything to make her happier (and, thus, keep me happy too), I agreed.  It was originally for her that I went to my first meeting.  However, I realized later that, deep down, it was for me.  I had recently passed the 300 lb barrier and I was having some internal concerns, but not actually doing anything about it.  We went together and have been going ever since (in fact, I sometimes have to push her to attend when she doesn’t feel like it and I have even attended by myself when she was sick).

That was 18 months ago when I was at 319 pounds (the photo shown was taken just a few months before I started WeightWatchers).  At week 35, I lost my first 10% (32 pounds).  I’ve been as low as 34 pounds (just a few weeks ago and the 42 pound loss must have been a fluke with the scale that week).  However, since the 10% loss, I’ve fluctuated back and forth.  We switched from Flex plan to the Core plan about 4 months ago and saw some improvements, but we’ve been slacking on our commitment to keep to the core plan. 

This is where I’m at right now and now you get to come along for the ride as I continue down the road to a healthier me.