Weight Loss Success
Interesting article.. I think I will write one on this same subject when I hit 125 pounds lost 
Don’t get my wrong, I did a lot of stuff right on my weight loss journey. But in hindsight, there are a handful of things I would have changed to make my weight loss experience more pleasurable and less rigid.
Source: If I Started My Weight Loss Journey Over Again, Here’s What I Would Do Differently | Naomi Teeter
Weight: 368.2 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (304 days): 47.8 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 55.4 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 32.00%
Caloric limit: 2040 per day
✓
Next Milestone: Repeat past milestone of losing 76 pounds
Target Date: February 6, 2017 (966 more days)
Yesterdays food log is NON-EXISTENT
I’m back with my tail between my legs… I have been out of control with my eating for quite awhile now and it has just gotten worse and worse… I feel horrible and I have lost so much progress… officially I have ‘backtracked’ all the way back to 10/8/2014 or 247 days… I the work, limiting and logging calories… gone… so it’s time to look forward and not dwell and wallow in the past… officially today this is no longer the ‘(Not So) Stealth Diet Update’.. it is my “Lifestyle Update’… this has to be for the long term and no ‘diet’ succeeds long-term… it has to be a lifestyle change.
Before I get into this, first, new site design… was so unhappy with the old design that was just a ‘temporary’ design years ago… finally we have a design I like.. weight themed and bright… Let me know what you think in the comments. Second, the ads… I am an affiliate for the companies you see on the sidebar… clicking and/or buying from them earns me $$… I wanted to make it clear that I have not tried some of these products/services and am not necessarily endorsing them. Third, the weight graph at the top has changed… it now is a live copy of my current chart… this was mainly done to make the posting process quicker (which I am doing in an effort to blog much more frequently) Continue reading
Weight: 348.2 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (260 days): 67.8 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 75.4 pounds
Percentage of goal lost: 33.90%
Caloric limit: 2040 per day
✓ 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 16, 2016 (507 more days)
Yesterdays food log is NON-EXISTENT
Forgive me Blogsphere for I have sinned… it has been 41 days since my last confessi… post…
So I think we have established that when there is a big gap between my posts here it is because I am not doing well.. this time is no different… I completely lost focus and completely stopped trying to stick to any plan… That has caused a gain of 21.6 pounds and put me back to the weight I was at 12/20/14… that means the last 130 days have been for nothing… I can say that this is only a minor set-back.. I can say it isn’t a big deal… but it is. The biggest, scariest problem here is that I am not in the right mindset anymore… yes it bothers me when I am eating without abandon… but so far not enough to make me stop. A few months ago I wouldn’t eat anything without logging the calories… i wouldn’t eat if it was going to cause me to go over the calorie limit for the day… now I am not logging and know that I am far exceeding the limit every day… and that is obviously showing in my weight.
So now what? Well exercise has been a non-factor so far and I have been ‘thinking about doing it… but still not doing it… now (as of 3 days ago) my back is f’ed up (I had a protruding disk found by an MRI quite awhile ago and I have been babying it… gardening irritated it and then pushing clothes down in the hamper was the final straw) and I really can’t exercise… Without exercise as an option my only real choice is to control my diet and by control I mean strict counting and limiting of the calories again… and truthfully my back hurts a little most of the time and hurts a LOT some of the time… to the point where it is hard and painful to just stand… but most of the time I can walk okay with very little or no pain.. so I need to do that.. WALK.. walk as much as possible when I can with little pain.
Diet motivation… so what worked in the past? Well when this diet started I was fed up with feeling like shit. I was scared about the way my body felt and that I couldn’t even climb a single flight of stairs without being winded… I was tired of it all… now I don’t feel as bad as I did, so that is less of a motivation… but I can’t wait an do nothing until I gain everything back and feel like that again… I have to suck it up and just do it…
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.