Tag: diet

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One Year Ago Today

47

On Thanksgiving exactly 1 year ago today, I began a journey that has changed my life, hopefully forever. It took a lot of pain and sickness to begin this journey, but now as I look back, I can say I am glad I endured it.

Since last year I have lost 47lbs. I was 193 lbs the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and as of Monday (the day I am scheduling this post) I am 146 lbs. I told my wife I was going to try and lose 3 more pounds so I could round it up to 50, but no luck so far! 🙂

For those who do not know the story, I was extremely sick and in a lot of pain the Wednesday before Thanksgiving last year. I drove myself to the Emergency prompt care where I was diagnosed with an ulcer. I was given some medicine and sent home. The pain increased the next day and moved to the lower right side of my abdomen and eventually let me dad talk me into going to the ER. Once I arrived and saw a doctor, I was almost sent home without even being checked. The doctor read the chart and the diagnosis from the prompt care doctor and didn’t even walk in the door, before he turned to leave, I asked him a couple of questions that prompted him to do his job, and he skeptically decided to do a CT Scan on my Abdomen, he still stated he doubted I had anything wrong other than an ulcer. When the test results came back, they decided they needed to do an Emergency Appendectomy, and the rest is history…except the fact that the surgeon said my Appendix looked very sick, so I could have been sent home and it burst giving me gangrene or killing me. So, in my week of recovery I lost 6 lbs and determined to keep it up, I worked hard to lose the additional 41 lbs. My original goal was 165 lbs and I have overshot that by 19!

The positives: I feel great! I don’t dislike looking at myself in the mirror or having my picture taken. I’m in a whole lot better shape, I’m healthier, and I can encourage and empathize with people who are on a journey to lose weight and have a healthier lifestyle. Looking at old photos and seeing success!

The negatives: I’ve been criticized more since I lost weight than when I was 40 + lbs overweight. I guess some people don’t like to see others actually be successful at something they set out to accomplish. Along with losing 7 years of weight I lost as many years worth of clothes, so it has been challenging to replace them, especially with the changing season. Looking at old photos and regretting I let myself get so overweight.

The humorous side: Having people ask me, “So what did you do to lose all of your weight?” and then upon hearing my answer having them reply, “Oh, I could never do that!” – I guess some people want it the easy way!?

By the way…I missed Thanksgiving dinner last year and will be making up for it this year! 🙂

The Journey – Starts HERE – 6 lbsHERE – 10 lbs HERE – 179 lbs HERE – 172 HERE (Changing my Goal) – 167 HERE – A Meal of Pills & 159 lbs – I feel like Amway – 2 months finally lost 1 pound – 3-D Plan to eating healthy part 1 – 3-D plan to eating healthy part 2

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The 3-D Plan to Eating Healthy (Part 2)

Yesterday I posted my first principle to what I believe is important to developing a lifestyle of healthier living and a healthier diet. Today, I would like to go beyond the desire that is needed to the second principle to developing a healthier lifestyle:

Determination: I don’t say this to pat myself on the back, but losing weight is hard! I believe I had to discipline myself more than I ever have for any one area of my life. I believe the desire that I spoke about yesterday is the kindling to starting the fire and determination is the logs that keep the flame burning.

There are days that the desires will cease, you will be tired and not want to put forth the extra effort that is required to see your desired results. There have been many days that I was worn out and had no energy after sitting at a desk all day. Now you may say, “You should be full of energy after sitting around all day!” However, it is more the opposite, when you sit around all day and your legs get stiff in the same position, it actually makes you want to go home and do the same, not stretch and get your body moving. However, even when the desires were not there, the determination to lose weight and to get healthier kept the flame within me going. There were days I wanted to skip my lunch meal of soup and go eat pizza or BBQ or Chinese food, however I knew those things would set me back, so as my desires weakened my determination kept me strong!

The picture above is a great example of how determination works. I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted to achieve (Yes Chuck it was to achieve your body as pictured on the massive Christmas Ornament I won at our Community Group Ornament Exchange 🙂 ). My goal when I started this journey 2 years earlier was to get to 165 pounds. As I posted in March of this year, once I got to that goal, I realized that it was really not where I wanted to be, so I kept going, in that post you can see where I was seriously losing desire…I was tired, but my determination got me where I am today and that is at 152 pounds. From the time I started losing desire, my determination (and Chuck’s picture) pushed me to lose 15 additional pounds!

Now, my determination has changed somewhat. I now want to maintain what I have achieved and tone up a little. My wife laugh’s at me, but my new picture is a reverse of what my former picture was. I have a little mini shrine of all my fat pictures set up in our multi-purpose room where I do sit-ups and push-ups. There is seriously a picture where I have 3 chins. Those pictures help motivate me to work hard, even when I am tired to achieve my desired results. Determination drives me to run 4 miles at midnight, if that is what I have to do (which I have done many times) to keep a regular scheduled workout. My desire is now to stay healthy, and my determination will keep me there.

Join the Conversation: What are you determined to accomplish? Is that determination motivating you beyond your desires?

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The 3-D plan to eating healthy (Part 1)

Total Transformation 40 pound weight loss

As many of my readers and friends know, I have recently taken a journey to change my life. For the purpose of this post, I am calling it the “3-D Diet plan to eating healthy,” and losing weight.

My story started about two years ago, but it has been less than a year that I actually started putting into action these 3 principles that I am laying out here. I love running across other success stories, as I did the other day with Rachel and her quest of losing 40 pounds in 1 summer! That’s quicker than my loss. As I have said before, I feel like I now am on the other side of the success story…the spokesman for Amway if you will (BTW I lost 7 pounds since that post), telling people that obtaining your dreams and goals is possible…here is how I believe you can do it:

Desire: Do you want things in your life to be different? I remember 7-8 years ago not caring what I ate, how much of it I ate, and most importantly what beverage I consumed. My favorite consumptions were Coca-Cola Classic, chinese food, and fried chicken. The truth is, two of the three still are my favorites, however my desires changed. My wife would comment how certain foods were high in calories, my response was, “At least if I die, I’ll die happy!” I knew I had gained approximately 40 pounds after I got married, but in the 7.5 years I had grown content with where I was. It was one December day, I finally renewed my gym membership and determined to start working out and losing some weight. I stepped on the scale and almost had a heart attack, not from over working and not from being over weight, but from shock at just how much more weight I had gained. I finally topped out at 53 pounds over my marriage weight. I was 5′ 10.5″ tall, but weighed 198…there was no way I was going to reach 200 pounds…no way!

It was that day that I finally quit Coke cold turkey! I had tried it before but I did not have enough desire to overcome my addiction. Trust me, I was literally a Coke-A-Holic. I never realized how bad they were for me, of course people told me, but I never did the math. I could go to a restaurant and allow the waitress to give me a few refills and consume over 1,000 calories in one sitting just with my beverage. That December day, my unhealthy desire died. I lost 14 pounds and felt good, but when my membership ran out I gained most of it back. I had another problem…my eating habits. As those who have followed my journey knows, it all started with an Apadectomy on Thanksgiving Day. I lost 10 pounds in my recovery week by cutting back mainly on my lunch calories. I changed my normal diet up a little since then, but it has mainly consisted of lowering calories and working out. Unless I know I am going to have a very strenuous workout later in the day or unless I am doing a lunch meeting, I only eat soup, a little bread, and un-sweet tea for lunch, this alone cut my lunch calories by more than half. I finally gained the desire that I needed to fuel my journey towards eating healthier, living healthier, and seeing results. I make myself eat breakfast, whereas I never ate breakfast before, and for dinner, unless it is the weekend and Nicki and I eat out, we typically eat a normal dinner, but Nicki has always cooked small portions with healthier ingredients. We have do not use a lot of butter and cooking oil and other items that needlessly add calories to our meals and truthfully we don’t know the difference. For example, Smuckers makes a sugar free syrup which is 25 calories per 1/4th cup versus 140 calories per 1/4th cup. It tastes just like regular syrup. The fact is, there are a lot of “diet” or “sugar free” items that are horrible, but you have to experiment.  As I saw results, my desires increased dramatically.

I try to reward myself one day a week. I’ll go to the chinese buffet (because I still love it!) or I will grab a double cheesburger from Wendys or hit my favorite BBQ joint, Carl’s Best. Part of keeping the desire to stay healthy is not squelching my natural desire for the things that taste good and that I crave, but are not healthy in excess.

Part 2 of the 3-D plan to eating healthy will focus on our need for Determination when trying to have a healthier lifestyle. Part 3 I will discuss the Dedication aspect of this plan. These 3 principles are really transferable in reaching any goal that you have in life. I’ll tell you this much. I may have thought I was fat and happy before I lost the weight, willing to die happy consuming those things I had grown addicted too, but I can truly say I am happy now and feel better than I ever have. Mostly because I am within the target weight for my build and height, but also because I achieved something great! Many people tell me I am too skinny for which I disagree, but I question, how do you quit eating healthier and being active and making sure you workout to maintain that which I have achieved? Do I simply become a couch potato? I can look at my pictures 40 pounds ago and say…I don’t have the desire to do that 🙂

Join the Conversation: Is there anything you need a change of desires to accomplish?