Weight: 359.2 pounds Loss since 1/8/16 (92 days): 40.4 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 64.4 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 28.40%
Caloric limit: 2080 per day
✓ Next Milestone: Lose 76 pounds (making it the biggest weight loss I have had in my life)
Next Milestone (Goal): Repeat past milestone of losing 76 pounds (target date: 6/27/16 – 81 days)

Well I have been floundering in the 360’s for 7 weeks (with a really brief dip into the high 350’s here and there)… the reason… not measuring… not staying under the calorie limit.. I have been taking a very lackadaisical  approach for most of that time.. then I decided (again) to refocus… that was on 4/4/16.

Then the next day my son wrote me a great letter and he told me he was at the point where he is ready to change his life and get healthy… what a great motivation.. so we have been chatting everyday and I think, at least for me, it is helpful.. I want to succeed so that may help him stay focused and succeed.  I have been passing on tips on foods and ways to prepare them to him and I think he appreciates that.. He dropped a ton of weight the first few days so that is a great motivation to keep going… since 4/4/16 I have lost 7.0 pounds and I am back to counting everything and planning in advance… I have my dinner out at Outback for tonight planned out and it leaves me with enough for desert and some to spare (as long as that desert is a Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwich)

I made a GREAT dinner last night.. I will post the recipe HERE.. it’s baked boneless/skinless chicken thighs with a feta cheese spread and baby kale lemon sauce… Delicious and 2 pieces is only 417 calories.. I also had baby broccoli which I steamed and seared.. it was REALLY good also..

My activity is still non existent… I hurt my right hip.. I’m not sure how although I did have a trip and hit the wall incident and the pain started about a week later… Urgent Care said maybe Bursitis… it’s getting better and feels more like it’s muscle related… so I am taking a muscle relaxant… but like every other time I am injured and unable to do much, all I think about is walking, running, etc. Crazy how that works.

Finally, I am still waiting for my Hydrate Spark Water Bottle… They shipped the first orders from their first run on bottles and I wasn’t in that group.. hard to believe that I wasn’t one of the first ones to buy.. I posted this back on 5/18/15… almost 1 year ago.. got an email today that my order is going through final quality review and will be shipped shortly!  Rest assured I will be doing an honest review of it on here!  I downloaded the app and linked it to MyFitnessPal and the app would then open and crash.. then open and crash.. the app has updated since then and appears to be working… hope it links to my bottle and works well.. I am drinking more water, but still not enough!

My current goals:

• Weight myself daily and log into the chart
• Count every calorie, EVERY day on MyFitnessPal.com
• Work out in some way daily (walking, exercise bike, elliptical, working with weights will be the approved workouts)
• Drink at least 56 oz of plain water daily
• Write here at least once a day (small, quick posts are okay)
• Work on being less depressed

My planned short term goals and rewards:

• Goal: Exercise 30+ days and lose over 75 pounds
  • Reward: Buy Season 2 of Bates Motel DVD’s
• Goal #2: Track calories for 90+ days and 100 pounds lost
  • Reward: Buy myself some sort of fitbit type device to wear that will monitor my activity and sleep patterns (one that will integrate with MyFitnessPal.com)
• Goal #3: Drink water for 120+ days and lose 125 pounds
  • Reward: As much as I hate using food as a reward, I will go to Fogo de Chão

 

 

Weight: 367.6 pounds Loss since 1/8/16 (39 days): 32.0 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 56.0 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 24.20%
Caloric limit: 2080 per day
✓ Next Milestone: Lose 76 pounds (making it the biggest weight loss I have had in my life)
Next Milestone (Goal): Repeat past milestone of losing 76 pounds (target date: 4/9/16 – 54 days)

So in the past a gap in my posting has coincided with a lack of focus and of progress on my diet… but not so this time.. I have been busy.. and have remained focused and on the right track!

I have been tracking limiting my calories (and being under my daily almost every day.. with the only big failure being Valentines Day eve which I will address below)  My weight loss stagnated as it will do for a time.. I was stuck in the 370’s for 13 days.. which isn’t that bad I guess…

I bought a really nice food dehydrator… I got this one and it is a beast!  I love it and have made raisins, bananas, oranges, grapefruit, kale chips, pineapple, watermelon and cantaloupe… but by far the best is the Beef Jerky… I have been doing little bits of everything and have been careful counting calories as I am still learning on these…

I set-up the juicing station again and actually juiced some stuff… I made carrot/celery juice and a beet/kale/onion juice… I drank 1 bottle (18 oz) of the carrot/celery juice but couldn’t get into it still… I am going to try again soon and maybe just do a carrot/apple/ginger one… I need to get into it!

Overall my moods have been good… my pain level of my feet has been a little better… my back has been bad.. getting slowly better over the last couple days… so there has been no attempt to exercise at all as even daily chores are tough.

My meal planning is still a struggle but the spare fridge that I took over has helped a lot… I keep stuff to snack on in there and some meal stuff… so even if plans change or I need a meal I can find something in there that will work.. I also am not losing as much food either as I can more easily see what I have… I do need to work through the fruit and veggies better.

Had a wonderful Valentine’s Day eve with Cece… we celebrated 21 valentines days together a night early and went to dinner and a movie, Delmonico’s Steak and Lobster in Encino.. it’s been their 50+ years and we had never been… it was amazing!  Old school decor.. like you walked into a 1950’s steak house/bar.. piano player and singer… and the food.. oh the food… SO good… I planned ahead and only ate an omelet for brunch… and I knew I would go over so it was a ‘cheat’ meal.. which I hate doing.. but this was really worth it… I had a Caesar salad to start.. then fresh garlic bread… the entree was a 20 oz rib-eye… that is a boneless, 20 oz rib-eye… cooked to a perfect medium rare… with a pepper corn butter sauce on top… grilled asparagus and a baked potato… sour cream and chives… it was wonderful.. Cece had the same plus a lobster tail 😉  I posted the website I made for Cece (www.ILoveMySweetie.com)at dinner and she really liked it.  I even had desert… Pecan-Whiskey Pie with whipped cream… it was really good… Cece had the cheesecake which was real good as well… so dinner alone was 2,672 calories… for the day was 3,396 calories… so I was 1,316 calories over for the day… trippy part was that I actually LOST 3 pounds… so weird… got right back on the calorie limit the next day!  Saw Deapool.. GREAT movie… very graphic and definitely NOT FOR KIDS! 

Okay.. that’s all for now..

My current goals:

• Weight myself daily and log into the chart
• Count every calorie, EVERY day on MyFitnessPal.com
• Work out in some way daily (walking, exercise bike, elliptical, working with weights will be the approved workouts)
• Drink at least 56 oz of plain water daily
• Write here at least once a day (small, quick posts are okay)
• Work on being less depressed

My planned short term goals and rewards:

• Goal: Exercise 30+ days and lose over 75 pounds
  • Reward: Buy Season 2 of Bates Motel DVD’s
• Goal #2: Track calories for 90+ days and 100 pounds lost
  • Reward: Buy myself some sort of fitbit type device to wear that will monitor my activity and sleep patterns (one that will integrate with MyFitnessPal.com)
• Goal #3: Drink water for 120+ days and lose 125 pounds
  • Reward: As much as I hate using food as a reward, I will go to Fogo de Chão

 

 

Weight: 375.4 pounds Loss since 1/8/16 (17 days): 24.2 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 48.1 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 20.30%
Caloric limit: 2080 per day
✓ Next Milestone: Lose 76 pounds (making it the biggest weight loss I have had in my life)
Next Milestone (Goal): Repeat past milestone of losing 76 pounds (target date: 3/3/16 – 38 days)

So here we are again… I haven’t posted since 9/4/15 and we all know what that means when I don’t post.. it means I am out of control again… no focus… (I just realized that if you were reading that, and probably most of my posts, it sounds like I am at an A meeting) Back then I was 361.8… well I went all the way up to 399.6 (possibly higher as I wasn’t weighing myself for a long period of time)…

A lot of things happened and none of it really matters.  Fact is that I had lost a bunch of weight, then gained a bunch, lost some, gained more.. to the point of feeling horrible physically, worrying about my health. upset with myself for gaining almost all of it back… depressed.

I knew exactly what I was doing… I thought about it every time I was eating huge portions.. eating foods that I knew were a bad choice… yet I continued… I would call it a binge but I always thing of a short period of time with a binge.. this was a marathon binge.  I purposely avoided the scale.  My clothes didn’t fit like they had.  People were kind and didn’t say a word when they saw me… no more ‘you look great’ comments…

So why am I trying again? Many things happened… Back in December my friend kristin invited me into her juicing group on Facebook… I have been reading posts and interacting a little in there.. then I had a Cardiogram done… it’s a great story but basically I was supposed to have an ultrasound done under my arm because I have pain and swelling there… the order got mixed up so they did a cardiogram instead… any way that test came back pretty good… I do have some thickening of the heart walls and slight Diastolic Dysfunction… my heart doesn’t relax as much as it should.. both are not a major issue.. yet.. and both and weight related… so my doctor, who always just kind of mentions my weight every appointment, gave me a little lecture.. he said that I need to make the decision to lose the weight because I am at the age now where it will really continue to affect my health… He was really stern about it… so that was the day I started counting calories again… since then I have had my ex-father-in-law (even better story) approach my wife and I and express his concerns with our eating habits and out health which only further emphasized to me how important this is.

So in the past 17 days I have lost 24.2 pounds… the weight always just falls off the first month or so… I am very pleased with that especially since today is Monday… historically it is hard for me to be successful on the weekends.. so this one I stayed really busy on Saturday doing chores… and stayed under my caloric limit both days and lost 4.0 pounds! YEAH!

One big change I made was to take the spare refrigerator in the garage over and clean it out… then I took any of the foods that I frequently eat while counting calories and put them in that fridge.. then I went shopping and bought stuff to load it up with… spending a lot of time at Trader Joe’s and picking up a lot of GREAT items (I am a huge ‘Reduced Guilt’ product fan now!)  So I have a fridge full off lower calorie foods that I can pick from any time.

One Trader Joe’s item I MUST talk about here is the Trader Joe’s Soft Multigrain Rustico Bread… 70 calories per slice and it’s wonderful… the slices aren’t taht big but I have been using it for everything from toast for breakfast to sandwiches to using as a crustini for hummus…  I am really pleased with it!

I will be reviewing a lot of Trader Joe’s products in upcoming posts!  Perhaps a list of ‘Steve’s Top 10 Calorie Conscious Trader Joe’s Picks’?

And the other thing I did was to resurrect my old juice station.  Yep that’s right… the old Omega J8006 is cleaned up and back on the counter along with all my supplies 🙂  Saturday I tested some stuff to see what I could tolerate (I have never like the flavor of any of the juices except the fruit ones) I made plain carrot juice.. on a scale of 1 to 10 I rate it a 6… celery juice 5 out of 10… onion juice 1 out of 10… red kale juice 2 out of  10 and beat juice 5 out of 10… combinations were tested at various percentages and I settled with 50% carrot and 50% celery in honor of my late Grandfather Bruce Palmer who back in the 60’s swore by fresh vegetable juice and made me try it every time we came over.  Today I had 18 oz of carrot/celery juice for breakfast… I am officially a juicer again!

Okay I could go on and on but I wont.. these were my goals when I stopped posting last so they will be my NEW goals:

• Weight myself daily and log into the chart
• Count every calorie, EVERY day on MyFitnessPal.com
• Work out in some way daily (walking, exercise bike, elliptical, working with weights will be the approved workouts)
• Drink at least 56 oz of plain water daily
• Write here at least once a day (small, quick posts are okay)
• Work on being less depressed
• At the end of the week: Lose 8.2 pounds (4 more than right now)

My planned short term goals and rewards:

• Goal: Exercise 30+ days and lose over 75 pounds
  • Reward: Buy Season 2 of Bates Motel DVD’s
• Goal #2: Track calories for 90+ days and 100 pounds lost
  • Reward: Buy myself some sort of fitbit type device to wear that will monitor my activity and sleep patterns (one that will integrate with MyFitnessPal.com)
• Goal #3: Drink water for 120+ days and lose 125 pounds
  • Reward: As much as I hate using food as a reward, I will go to Fogo de Chão

 

Weight: 361.8 pounds Loss since 8/12/14 (366 days): 54.2 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 61.8 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 27.10%
Caloric limit: 2080 per day
✓ Next Milestone: Lose 76 pounds (making it the biggest weight loss I have had in my life)
Next Milestone (Goal): Repeat past milestone of losing 76 pounds (target date: 10/14/15)
Target Date Using Overall Daily Average: 7/18/2018 (1044 more days)
Target Date Using Daily Average Since 8/5/15: 2/5/2016 (154 more days)

Yesterdays food log is NON-EXISTENT

 

I have lost 20.8 pounds in the last 30 days… I can’t be upset, right? But my loss has been stagnant for the last 7 or 8 days.. so I can be upset, right?

I have been struggling a little with staying under my daily calorie limit… Yesterday for example I didn’t calculate my dinner calories until after dinner and the Hatch Chile, Bacon Quiche was higher than I expected so that caused me to go over.  I need to calculate before hand and then stick to it exactly!!

Thanks for reading and PLEASE comment so I know someone, anyone is reading… you don’t have to say much, just say ‘Hi’ and if you have a minute, click on an affiliate ad.. that helps me out too. My goals for the rest of the week are:

• Weight myself daily and log into the chart
• Count every calorie, EVERY day on MyFitnessPal.com
• Work out in some way daily (walking, exercise bike, elliptical, working with weights will be the approved workouts)
• Drink at least 56 oz of plain water daily
• Write here at least once a day (small, quick posts are okay)
• Work on being less depressed
• At the end of the week: Lose 7 pounds

My planned short term goals and rewards:

• Goal: Exercise 30+ days and lose over 75 pounds
  • Reward: Buy Season 2 of Bates Motel DVD’s
• Goal #2: Track calories for 90+ days and 100 pounds lost
  • Reward: Buy myself some sort of fitbit type device to wear that will monitor my activity and sleep patterns (one that will integrate with MyFitnessPal.com)
• Goal #3: Drink water for 120+ days and lose 125 pounds
  • Reward: As much as I hate using food as a reward, I will go to Fogo de Chão

 

Weight: 365.8 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (366 days): 50.2 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 57.8 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 25.10%
Caloric limit: 2080 per day
✓ Next Milestone: Lose 76 pounds (making it the biggest weight loss I have had in my life)
Next Milestone (Goal): Repeat past milestone of losing 76 pounds (target date: 10/14/15)
Target Date Using Overall Daily Average: 8/9/2018 (1092 more days)
Target Date Using Daily Average Since 8/5/15:10/5/2015 (53 more days)

Yesterdays food log is NON-EXISTENT

I marked the one year anniversary of this diet yesterday and it was bittersweet (like the chocolate)… I started so strong, losing 90 pounds in 196 days!!! and then the focus was lost.. I hung out at around 326 for about a month… then I lost it and as I gained pound after pound I started monitoring my weight less and less.. knowing what was happening, but trying to ignore it… I got more and more depressed about it.. which caused a spiral until I was eventually ‘power eating’ continuously.. resulting in gaining back 65 pounds in only 161 days!

So officially I lost 47.0 pounds in one year… now including the ups and downs in that year I know I lost more than 271.3 pounds in that year (since I stopped monitoring my weight I don’t know exactly, but it has to be well over that amount based on what I do have).. I noticed that people that saw me stopped asking how it was going since it was obvious that I wasn’t losing, but gaining weight…

On a side note… I really appreciate all my friends in trying to be so courteous and save my feeling… but if you are reading this, please feel free to ask, especially if it looks like I am not losing… it might make me feel bad but that will also help in the motivation… you don’t have to be mean.. “Damn you gained a lot of weight” wouldn’t be the optimal thing to say… “Well I guess you failed on your diet” also might not be the best… “How’s the weight loss going?”… “How much weight have you lost?”… something like that would be fine 😉

On 8/5/15 (last week) I was able to focus and get motivated again.. I believe it is as strong a motivation as I had in the past. We will call this Steve 2.0 diet… I have lost 25.3 pounds in 9 days… That in itself should prove how much I was eating prior to that.  To lose that much weight in that period of time while eating a substantial amount of calories each day (right around 2040 per day) is crazy.. not that I am happy about it.. it shows how lost I was… how much my body had just in the digestion process…

I am again adjusting to the changes in my diet and making sure I track and plan my calories every day.  I am struggling with water intake, am not exercising and my mood has been up and down.  I am trying to not beat myself up over the amount of backtracking I did… I literally fell all the way back to where I as on day 29 of the original diet.. 9/8/14.. I lost 11 months time… I have to forgive myself and just look forward to the next goals….

Speaking of goals, my next major goal is ‘Repeat past milestone of losing 76 pounds’… that means get to a weight of 340.0… 25.8 pounds away.  Using past numbers it took me 61 days to go from 365.0 to 339.2 (roughly what this goal is)

“A goal without a date is just a dream”  Milton H. Erickson quotes (American psychiatrist and Hypnotist, ) so I will set this goal target date as 10/14/15 (61 days from today)

I have other short term and long term goals and rewards set-up… all of these will be at the bottom of each daily update.

Thanks for reading and PLEASE comment so I know someone, anyone is reading… you don’t have to say much, just say ‘Hi’ and if you have a minute, click on an affiliate ad.. that helps me out too.

My goals for the rest of the week are:

• Weight myself daily and log into the chart
• Count every calorie, EVERY day on MyFitnessPal.com
• Work out in some way daily (walking, exercise bike, elliptical, working with weights will be the approved workouts)
• Drink at least 56 oz of plain water daily
• Write here at least once a day (small, quick posts are okay)
• Work on being less depressed
• At the end of the week: Lose 7 pounds

My planned short term goals and rewards:

• Goal: Exercise 30+ days and lose over 75 pounds
  • Reward: Buy Season 2 of Bates Motel DVD’s
• Goal #2: Track calories for 90+ days and 100 pounds lost
  • Reward: Buy myself some sort of fitbit type device to wear that will monitor my activity and sleep patterns (one that will integrate with MyFitnessPal.com)
• Goal #3: Drink water for 120+ days and lose 125 pounds
  • Reward: As much as I hate using food as a reward, I will go to Fogo de Chão