small successes
Weight: 330.6 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (216 days): 85.4 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 93.0 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 42.70%
Caloric limit: 2040 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: December 30, 2015 (290 more days)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
First, the fast… day one I did real well… difficult at first then pretty easy… day 2 I woke up weighing 329.2.. one day loss of 2.8 pounds… but not feeling great and I just got more tired and feeling in a haze as the day went on… I think it may have been in my head but I decided to have a late dinner with the family at Souplantation. I started out good.. BIG salad.. lots of lettuce, mushrooms, celery.. a little black olives… and a lot of dressing… I know that is bad but I figured that I as going to be good with everything else so I could use some calories there… I also got a bunch of pickles and pepperonchinis on the side and a 1/4 cup Joan’s Broccoli Madness… so far, so good.. diet coke… okay… then I had a bowl of tomato soup to dip the Grilled Cheese Focaccia Bread into… this is one of our favorite combinations at Souplantation and we try to go when they have it… well I should have checked the calories BEFORE going… I figured they were high but I had no idea… I later found that each small piece (about 3/4 inch by 3 inches) is 190 calories! So that was a BAD choice… I had 8 pieces… so just the bread and tomato soup was 1805 calories! From there it fell apart… I had 2 corn bread muffins with honey whipped butter, a blueberry muffin, clam chowder, Albondigas Soup, Chicken Orecchiette Soup and for desert I had a bowl with 2 chocolate chip peanut butter bars, 1 brownie bite, vanilla soft serve and butterscotch syrup… basically I lost my mind… all in all I ate… 4708 calories…
Let me say that again… 4708 calories… 230% of my total daily caloric limit… this ‘healthy’ choice was possible the worst caloric catastrophe since I started this diet.. (at first when writing this I thought it was the second worse.. the first being the Fogo De Chao dinner, but after checking that dinner was 1330 calories less than the Souplantation dinner).. The scary thing was that I left there knowing I went a little crazy, but I assumed I had been right around my 2040 daily total… still a huge amount for one meal… but really had no idea I had good SUPER crazy… very sobering experience… lesson to be learned.. go back to per researching choices when we are going to eat out… other lesson learned.. all you can eat places are dangerous.
So the next morning I woke up and surprisingly had still lost weight.. 226.6, matching my low so far on 2/24/15… it was Saturday and we went to visit the daughter… I did well at home.. preparing for dinner out I was careful with my calories.. only eating 330 calories all day until diner… we went to Johnny Carinos, an Italian place we have been to before… so I planned ahead.. or I tried to… the online pdf I found for Carino’s is 24 pages long… I also see now that it is dated 7/12/13.. so I go over it and we go to the restaurant and I start looking at the menu… and nothing matches.. there are many items on the menu I can’t find on the 24 page guide… and vise versa… so I ask for a printed nutritional guide and the waitress brings one.. it’s much smaller in scope.. and now I see things that were lower in calories on the monster guide are higher on the printed one and again there are many things on the menu not on the guide and vise versa… so I go with something I feel is a valid choice, Johnny Carino’s – Angel Hair Pasta With Articokes and Grilled Shrimp for 794 calories (via MyFitnessPal… 752 on the big guide)… and it was good.. not great… also a bowl of minestrone soup for 159 (146 on the big guide)… we got italian nachos (we got sausage) and we love these… I had a small amount that ended up being 210 calories and I had bread… I overindulged and had about a half a small loaf.. 210 calories… so after that and some diet sodas we went back to the daughters and had a desert that she had made… Betty Crocker Reese’s Peanut Butter & Chocolate Dessert Bar… I was under my daily limit by 19 calories… went home and all was well.. and then I went to pick up Jake at his girlfriends… and we went through McDonalds and I got a filet of fish… 390 calories… bad end to a decent day (diet-wise)
Yesterday, Sunday was good.. I weighed 329.6 (up 3 pounds)… didn’t eat until we had lunch at a local place called Fire Island Grill… it’s really good and I was pleased to see they had calories on the menu even though they only have 2 locations… so I had a Char-steak plate with veggies, rice and fire teriyaki sauce… about 900 calories… and a reasonable dinner at home of a chicken leg quarter, corn, rice and gray… only 2 meals and was still over by 64 calories
And then there is today… up another pound… almost back to the pre-fast weight… I need to exercise.. I need to want to exercise… even just a little bit of exercise will help…
Meatloaf tonight.. I am cooking so I will be trying to make it as diet friendly as I can.
Weight: 329.2 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (213 days): 86.8 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 94.4 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 43.40%
Caloric limit: 2040 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: December 15, 2015 (276 more days)
Yesterdays food log is NON EXISTENT
Well I have been struggling now for well over a month… not tracking all my calories (sometimes not tracking at all)… eating large portions and rationalizing it to myself.. same old same old.. so rather than go binging and gain all this weight back I decided to take a drastic measure to get my mind back in it… so I decided to to a 2 day water fast… mainly to take a breath and refocus and to prove to myself that I can… and if I can do that then I can track and stay under my calorie limit like I was in the beginning.
Now I know fasting is not a healthy way to drop weight, and I do have a little experience with it.. back in 1982 when I went on a huge crash diet and lost 73 pounds in a year I had a graph almost exactly the same as the one I am using now.. but on paper… if I went over the red line I fasted until I got under it again.. and at time it was until I got under the yellow line… so at one point within the first 30 days of the diet I was over the red line.. so I fasted.. water only.. for 9 days.. that’s right NINE MOTHER F’IN days.. after nine days on just water I learned a few things… first, you get over being hungry,,, at some point the hunger pangs just are there.. not a focus after awhile… second, I got real weak… and when I started getting dizzy I broke the fast… it was too long and I felt like crap at the end of it… third, nine days is too long… and if I ever fasted again I would listen closely to my body and end it if I felt it was harming me.
So yesterday I started the fast (so actually it started with the last thing I ate the day before yesterday but we will start it as of 8am yesterday… so right now it has been 30 1/2 hours of water only… some observations:
- It was really hard last night… I had told Cece that it was okay for her to cook and to eat around me (she asked)… my mistake… ground beef patties with cheese and fries was killing me!!! But I did it!
- It got easier later in the night
- Today has been pretty easy… not a lot of cravings.. might be hard not driving past all the fast food places on the way home but I think I’m okay
I may break it early and have a reasonable dinner tonight… but probably not.. just depends on how I feel later.
So I can do this… I can do the calorie counting.. I can hit my next milestone… I can lose 200 pounds!
Weight: 326.6 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (196 days): 89.4 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 97.0 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 44.70%
Caloric limit: 2040 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: October 24, 2015 (242 more days)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
My son Matthew has been dieting and working out like a mad man for some time now… he has lost 63 pounds!
I am so proud of his accomplishment and dedication…It makes me happy to see that he is taking this seriously and seeing some fantastic results!
I have been struggling with my diet since 2/1/15… basically 3 weeks and I was still hovering around 328… many times my motivation to stick with this has been because of his dedication and results… I want to do this.. I want him to do this.. to get to wherever he wants to get health-wise… we can hopefully be both inspirational and motivational to each other 😉
I have kicked the diet back into a more severe mode and today am at the lowest weight I have been so far… 326.6… that is 89.4 pounds since August 12th and 97.0 pounds since my all-time high back in August 2010… I am at the lowest weight I have been since before July 2008 (when my records go back to).. here is the chart going back to July 4, 2008…
I never want to be like this again… July 4, 2009 (375ish pounds)
I am feeling good… not great but better… at my current average weight loss rate I will hit my next milestone on March 20th.. 24 days from now… I will be happy and celebrating when that happens… the second half will be harder to lose, but I will do it… I will be able to say I have lost 200 pounds!
Weight: 328.2 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (174 days): 87.8 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 95.4 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 43.90%
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 19, 2015 (222 more days)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
Yesterday was Super Bowl XLIX (49)… Good game.. went to some friends house and had a really good time…
I knew it would be rough since there would be lots of food and I would have no real control over it other than what and how much I ate… over the course of the game I had little bits of a lot of stuff.. Hot wings, chips with cheese sauce, deconstructed potato skins, carne asada taco, cod taco… even a chocolate chip cookie and a brownie! When we left I didn’t feel good about what I ate… I felt like I went overboard… I should have eaten less hot wings (I had 8).. I should have had either a cod or beef taco, not one of each… shouldn’t have had the brownie…
When we got home I added everything to my calorie counter (myfitnesspal.com) and realized I did okay… while I was over my calories for the day (by 283 calories and only because I had popcorn with butter after we got home) it could have been (and usually would be) so much worse… I started entering it and realized I ate really small amounts of most of it… a little nachos.. a little deconstructed potato skins.. I ate veggies too… normally it would have been 3+ cookies.. a big brownie (what I had was literally one bite)… not a plate full of wings but a couple at a time spread out over the whole game… sure I could have eaten less but I realized I did pretty good… I didn’t eat much before we went… I didn’t have a Rumchatta even though I did serve a couple… all in all I would score myself a B-… could have been an A if I hadn’t had the popcorn and the sweets…
Got on the scale this morning expecting a sizable gain… and had a small loss instead… Very happy about that.. inching closer (12.2 pounds) to the next milestone of 100 pounds lost…
One other issue I wanted to mention is the increase of energy I have felt recently… instead of coming home from work and crashing on the bed watching TV I have been doing stuff… I have made a list and have been checking stuff off.. cleaning the garage… organizing… just staying busier… it’s been a good feeling being able to do stuff…
Weight: 334.6 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (150 days): 81.4 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 89.0 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 40.70%
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 28, 2015 (245 days)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
And so it goes on… little up.. little down… overall down…
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 😉
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.
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!
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.
Weight: 352.8 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (101 days): 63.2 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 70.8 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 31.92%
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 9/13/10The 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.