SteveAx
Food Diary 01/20/15
Weight: 342.8 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (150 days): 73.2 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 80.8 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 36.60%
Caloric limit: 2140 per day (reduced)
✓ Next Milestone: Lose 76 pounds (making it the biggest weight loss I have had in my life)
Next Milestone: 100 pounds lost (50% of goal)
Target Date: August 25, 2015 (260 days)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
So it has been 23 days since my last blog update (and we know that is never good as I usually avoid posting when I am not doing well)… and a lot has happened…
First HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hope we all have a very healthy and prosperous 2015!
Okay… so in my last post I had hit my first milestone of losing 76 pounds… and that was on December 17th… after that I got down to 336.2 on 12/22/14…. I got sick on the 22nd also… cold symptoms and just really tired… then on 12/24 I went on vacation…I didn’t go anywhere, but I was off, sick and at home during the holidays… bad combination… With the holidays and being at home able to eat whenever and whatever was not a good idea… my calorie counting became sporadic… I even broke my 140+ day string on myfitnesspal.com 🙁 I was out of control and it was scary to me… by 12/26 I had gained 10.2 pounds.. that’s in 4 days… on 12/27 I weighed 350.4.. gained 14.2 pounds… that’s a backtrack to 11/28/14… almost a month of hard work gone in only 6 days!!!
About cheat days and backtracking from LessofLes.com
I also had scheduled time off so that I was home starting 12/24/14 and returning to work 1/5/15… 12 days off… my longest break from work I can remember… I was really looking forward to it… not a great idea… I was home, sick, with all the holiday leftovers.. the sweets and deserts… all there for me to eat… I found it very difficult… it is much easier to pack a limited calorie lunch and not have other options at hand… had I of been well it may have been different… I had a lot of things on my To-Do-List around the house, but none of it was getting done… so I wasn’t keeping busy and I was not happy that my list was growing instead of shrinking (much like my waist)… had I of been up and active I think I would have done better.
Since my break I have calmed down and tried to get back into the swing but have not been very successful… while I have been able to creep back down to 342.8 that is still 6.8 pounds over where I was before Christmas… I am finding it difficult to track everything like I was… I am consistently going over my daily calorie limit where that used to be rare… I just haven’t had that fire… but…
People have been noticing my weight loss… people have been telling me that I have motivated them. I have never had anyone tell me that before… and that has helped me focus more. I am losing this weight for me… for my family and now for others… friends… some close and some new. One of my hopes when starting this blog 4 1/2 years ago was that it (I) would motivate others, mainly my kids, to get healthier… so the fact that people are saying that I am an inspiration has been a huge thing for me and I am trying to use that to get me re-motivated and move forward successfully .
And finally this week I dug out a box of clothes in the garage that I packed when I couldn’t wear them because I was too big (or they were too small)… this is a large moving box full of clothes… It is great to have some ‘new’ clothes that fit me well… I took about 1/3 of them out and tried them on… some are still too small but that’s okay… I plan to go through the rest of the box and repack those that are small.. then go through my ‘big’ clothes and donate them… I am not keeping them because I never want to fit them again. So happy I kept these… there was a point when I thought I would never fit them again… but I am 😉
I took a recipe we had been using for Zuppa Toscana and checked the calories.. it was 327 calorie per cup.. I need at least 3 cups so it was just too high for me to eat that much. I went through the recipe and made changes.. the main changes are the use of Lean Turkey Italian Sausage and fat-free half and half instead of heavy cream… the result is really good… it isn’t quite as creamy, but it’s really good.. I changed the recipe now to whole milk instead of the FF Half and half so that should help… Got it down to 192 calories per cup!
DISCLAIMER: I did not take the photo above. I forgot to take a picture, so for now that is a picture I found that closely resembles the soup. Next time I make it I will replace this picture.
Makes about 18 one cup servings
Ingredients:
1 Yellow onion – Diced
3 Cups Kale – Cut into smaller pieces
2 ½ Pounds Jenno-O Lean Turkey Italian Sausage (I used 1 package Sweet Italian and 1 package Spicey Italian)
3 Pounds Potatoes – Russet – Peeled, cut in half lengthwise then sliced into ¼ inch or less slices (keep in cool water to keep them from turning brown)
7 1/2 Tablespoons Knorr Chicken Flavor Bouillon (Caldo Con Sabor De Pollo)
2 Cups Whole Milk
15 Cups Water
Crushed Red Pepper Flakes (to taste)
Remove casing from sausages and in larger pot brown sausage while smashing to make small pieces. remove sausages to a bowl and in the same pot add onions… cook for about 5 minutes until translucent. Add water mixed with bouillon. Bring to boil. Add sliced potatoes. Bring to boil then reduce heat to simmer for about 30 minutes or until potatoes are soft. return sausage to pot. Add whole milk. Bring to simmer. Add Kale and let cook for 5-10 minutes or until the kale is soft. Add pepper flakes and salt to taste
Each cup has approximately 192 calories and it’s AWESOME!
Weight: 339.2 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (127 days): 76.8 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 84.4 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 38.40%
Caloric limit: 2140 per day (reduced)
✓ Next Milestone: Lose 76 pounds (making it the biggest weight loss I have had in my life)
Next Milestone: 100 pounds lost (50% of goal)
Target Date: July 15, 2015 (204 days)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
Today I have accomplished the largest weight loss I have ever had in my life… beating a 75 loss that took me a year and working out everyday back when I was 18-19…
76 pounds in 127 days done by diet only! Just straight, hardcore calorie counting and limiting… and at age 50 (now 51)… I weight the lowest I have since August 19th, 2008… that over 6 years ago… I must say I am very proud of myself right now!
Now.. just for kicks… If someone gave me 76 pounds of:
- Gold (at today’s price) it would be worth $1,327,675.40
- Silver (at today’s price) it would be worth $19,395.20
- Gasoline at the $2.505 (at the national average) it would be worth $30.22
- Dollar bills, they would be worth $34,504
- Quarters, they would be worth $8618.25
- Pennies, they would be worth $13789.20
I am not going to lie.. it has been a difficult process… in the process of losing 76 pounds I have gained (backtracked) 49.8 pounds.. so in actuality I have lost 125.8 pounds. In the last 127 days my motivations have waned and priorities changed… plus you are trying to control and in some cases reverse what you know.. what you have done for many years or even your entire life…
I got my old home movies converted to DVD and picket them up last week… I haven’t been able to watch them you (no time at all really) but I skimmed through them and one thing I saw really made me think about what I was brought up with as normal… it was a scene from one Easter… probably around 1969.. I was around 6… it’s me and my sister, obviously excited that the Easter bunny had come… the dining room table, which was about 5 feet by 4 feet was COVERED in candy… all kinds of different sugary treats.. it was a massive pile of candy just for the two of us… that is my normal… I am told as a young child that I would eat sticks of butter.. just butter… and they let me do this?!?!?
This is an uphill, life long fight, and I have succeeded to this point.. but I can’t stop… now the focus has to be on the remaining 123.2 pounds to my goal.
Food Diary 12/16/14
Food Diary 12/15/14
Weight: 340.3 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (126 days): 75.4 pounds (1 pound lost every 1.644 days)
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 83.0 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 38.08%
Next Milestone: 76 pounds (0.6 to go)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
Long time since my last post.. usually that signals that I have not been doing well and can’t face the music… but this time the reason was just lack of time and focus. While I haven’t done as well as I could have and there have definitely been some backtracking.. but in the last 24 days (the last time I posted) I have lost 8.5 pounds… a pound every 2.8 days… well above my goal loss rate… small victories are still victories. What is amazing to me is what I have done in that last 24 days and have still lost 8.5 pounds which puts me at just 0.6 pounds away from my first huge milestone… at 76 pounds this will be the largest single weight loss I have ever made… beating the 75 loss in a year back when I was 18-19 years old, going from 273 to 198 pounds…
November 27th was Thanksgiving. I did pretty well with it, going only about 60 calories over my limit… I only had about 5 calories all day before dinner. I wouldn’t do that in a normal day but this seemed to work pretty well.
On December 7th we went to my favorite place to eat Fogo De Chao (we went to the Beverly Hills, CA location)… we had been planning on doing this for a few months… nowbefore this post becomes just a glowing praise for Fogo, I must show you the menu…
Fogo is an authentic, all you can eat, Brazilian steakhouse.. let me emphasise ‘ALL YOU CAN EAT”… Meats like Filet Mignon, rib eye and my favorite.. the house special.. Picanha…
Picanha is a prime cut of top sirloin, lightly seasoned with sea salt and garlic… AMAZING!
Okay so that dinner was the first real cheat dinner of my diet.. I went in knowing that I was going to throw caution to the wind and just eat and enjoy myself… and that is exactly what I did… I didn’t think once about counting anything… HUGE shrimp cocktail, every meat you can think of… salad bar, more meat, rolls and more meat (seriously I ate a lot of meat).. drank a lot of Brazilian Lemonade… the Lemonade, which is really Limeade, is delicious and it is endless refills (as is the Iced Tea.. the sodas are served out of a can/bottle and are not free refills)… it is about 152 calories per 8 oz glass… and here is a recipe that sounds pretty close… I finished off the meal with their incredible Crème Brule…
The aftermath wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.. I gained 3.8 pounds.. I was at my lowest weight so far, so it helped it not be such a big issue for me.. that and I was expecting more than that… That night I did try to calculate a rough caloric intake for the day… I got 3378 calories or 1038 calories over my limit (really hard to calculate since nothing was weighed. I think it is close but it realistically could be higher or lower by quite a bit)… I was back down below the pre-Fogo weight by the 11th… this was one backtrack that was planned for and handled really well. If you can ever go to a Fogo De Chao I say do it! It’s expensive, around $60 per person plus drinks (Brazilian Limeade is endless refills as is the iced tea… sodas are served from cans/bottles and are not free refills), seafood selections and desert, but in my opinion it is worth every penny!
Back to reality now…
After that, we had Jake’s birthday and my birthday… there was pizza and hot wings and other foods that I have been trying to stay clear of… so I did eat some of it and I did go over a few times on my calorie goal, but I didn’t go crazy…
And a huge thing for me.. I bowled!! I didn’t bowl well, but I bowled… I think it has been over 6 years ago since I bowled last… I stopped because when I would bowl I would have horrible pain in my left knew for a few days.. I mean bone deep pain… and then a while back I had a protruding disk in my back so I have been babying it a lot.. Not bowling was huge for me.. I love it.. at one point when I was in middle school I was in 4 leagues a week.. As part of his birthday, we had a group of kids surprise Jake at the bowling ally and I decided to bowl too… and it felt great… my back was fine.. my left knee was fine.. my right knee started hurting for some reason, but I bowled 3 1/2 games (the time ran out) and lived to tell about it… the next day I felt like I had been hit by a truck… even my butt muscles felt like I had done 1000 squats… then the day after that all of my muscles hurt.. and now still today, 3 days later my forearms feel like someone pounded on the muscles… sad that I am so out of shape.. or as Dr. lee would say “deconditioned”… but I bowled.. and I hope to do it again soon!
Food Diary 11/27/14
Food Diary 11/24/14
Weight: 348.8 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (105 days): 67.2 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 74.8 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 33.94%
Next Milestone: 76 pounds
Yesterdays food log is HERE
100 days of calorie counting… Results have been good… could have been better but overall results are good.
This chart show my loss and trend line for the last 100 days: 
As you can tell the rate of loss has slowed especially in the last 30 days or so.
This shows my loss since my all time high on 9/13/10
The previous big loss on this chart is when I was on Weight Watchers… It was about as dramatic but not as long, getting down to 354 pounds before gaining again…
So it looks like where I am at now is where I failed during Weight Watchers and I think that is mainly because my lack of staying power… my waning motivation… this is where I have to succeed where I didn’t that time.
It is difficult to stick to.. period… when you have lived with horrible eating habits for a long time sticking to relatively normal ones gets hard… there are no tricks to it… no magic pill… it comes down to mind over matter.. sheer willpower… ans this is where I am at now.
I have ‘backtracked’ a lot recently… over the last 100 days I have actually lost 101.1 pounds… which means I have gained back 37.9 pounds in that same period of time. It is impossible to lose weight everyday without ever gaining anything back, but this shocked me. Going back to one of my Top 10 Diet Motivators, this video talks about ‘backtracking‘… Les says “Why do you want to go on that same journey again?” I have lost focus on this and I need to get that back today!
Going back through my Food Diaries, specifically the ones from the first month, I was eating much simpler, much more often and I had a lot of treats… ice cream cones, salt water taffy, Italian ice, etc… I was also eating more frozen prepared low calorie meals and almost no diet soda… based on all that I need to reevaluate how I am eating as well as what I am eating.
My goal for the next 100 days is to reduce my weight by another 63 pounds (total weight goal of 289.8). I will meet this goal by focusing on what and when I eat, remaining committed to this journey, trying my best to no ‘backtrack’ and adding exercise to my daily routine.