Fat Loss

#rebirthday

10 years…

10 long years ago, to this very day, I was morbidly obese, depressed. I was a college dropout. I was up to my neck in debt. And on this day, 10 years ago, I found out I was going to be a father.

10 long year ago, to this very day, I stood in front of the scale. I knew that I had to change. But I was frozen in place, unable to move. That single step was a vast distance to cross. One small step but yet the largest step I’ve ever taken. Neil Armstrong ain’t got shit on me.

10 long years ago, to this very day, I took that terrifying step. The number on the scale read 410lbs. I was horrified. It shook me to my core, to my soul. At 410lbs, I could not be the father that my daughter deserved. I was not being the husband that my wife deserved. But that at the moment when I took the second step off of the scale, I felt like I was struck by lightning. Losing weight, and LIVING wasn’t something that I felt I ought to do or should do, but something I MUST do. I realized that there was nothing on this earth that would stop me from becoming the father that my daughter deserved. The old me died that day, and I was reborn.

The old me was an anchor; the old me needed to die for me to move forward. That moment defines my life. It is the line where I can definitely know where “before” ended, and “after” began. From ashes gray, a phoenix arose.

The person I am now was born that day. Happy rebirthday to me.

10 short years ago to this very day, I chose to seek the life of my dreams.

Today, I barely remember the person who I was. It’s like the first 28 years of my life were a dream, but now I am awake.

If you had told me that I’d be a dad of two wonderful kids, a college graduate with a 4.0 GPA, a business owner, entirely debt free, and in the best shape of my life, I would have never believed you.  

Every day, I feel blessed. I am grateful for my family and friends who support me on my continued journey.  I am grateful for the mentors, and teachers that I’ve had along the way. I am also grateful for those who doubted me or still doubt me.

I have maintained my 200lb weight loss. I became filled with a sense of purpose that I had never known before, which was to help others become the best version of themselves.

If you don’t like the situation you are currently facing, whatever it may be, you have the power of change within you.  If I could do this, so can you.

Draw your line in the sand. Take that first, terrifying step across it. But for every step that follows, you aren’t alone.  You are never alone.

“I’ve gotten off track. Was working out 6 days a week…here I am 4 months later and I don’t even know how to get back on track. How do I get back on track?”.

I’m overwhelmed with the number of times I’ve seen that question asked. Go to any Facebook group that’s fitness oriented, and it’s a theme.

Why do people go off track, and then struggle with getting back on track with their fitness, be it nutrition, exercise, or both?

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Two Types of Goals

You have a goal, right? This is a fitness related blog, so if you are reading it you might have goals like lose X lbs, fit in your clothes better, have more energy, get stronger, all of those, etc. You probably have other goals that are unrelated to fitness. Pay off school loans or other debt, save up for something, etc.

When you have goals, they can be subjective goals or objective goals:

Subjective Goals

• “I want to feel better and lose weight!”
• “I want to save up for a vacation!”
• “I want to pay off my school loans!”
• “I want to learn to play guitar!”

These types of goals rarely lead to taking action.

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Does this sound familiar?

You are doing great with your new lifestyle changes, you are seeing progress (in whichever way you are measuring it), and you have things down to a routine. And then comes a spontaneous invite to go out to eat a meal with friends/family, and then panic sets in.

I’ve been there. I still sometimes feel that way when being pulled in two different directions of the pressure (social and otherwise) and to continue moving toward my goals.

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The question “how to increase one’s metabolism” came up in the context of a discussion with someone who felt that their calorie goal was far too low to consistently lose weight.  That’s something that that many people (me included) often face. It’s more of an issue for women and shorter men, and unfortunately, shorter women have the worst of it. And it sucks. If you work a desk job and don’t get in much activity during the day, you may need to hit a calorie goal as low as bodyweight x 8. Having faced this myself, I know how badly that sucks. It’s terrible and it feels like suffering, and because of that, it’s not sustainable. Heck, I’ve seen cases where someone needs to go even lower, toward 6-7 x bodyweight. Please never do that on your own without guidance from a professional. So….what do we do about that?

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(And What I Intend To Do About It)

My Biggest Weakness. What a catchy title eh? In truth, my biggest weakness is probably my inconsistency with writing because I want everything to perfect, which is ironic as I know an all or nothing mentality doesn’t work for fitness, so why would it work for writing? Hint: it doesn’t work, obviously.

So, here is me trying to break that habit, by examining my fitness habits for weaknesses by writing about it. I’m all about efficiency so let’s work on two problems at the same time.

I’m not perfect, and while weight loss is simple, it’s not easy. You know what else isn’t easy and is harder than weight loss? Maintaining the weight you’ve lost. I’m pretty good at this, but I could be better.

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October?!

Crap. I am so sorry. October almost passed us by without an article from me. I apologize. Life has been crazy recently with the transition to both kids in grade school and doing kung fu 3 days a week. I’ve also started going through the process to become Precision Nutrition certified, and I’ve also added sword fighting training to my personal fitness development.

Anyways, thanks to a Facebook friend’s post about eating healthy on the cheap, I wanted to share my thoughts about how eating “healthy” doesn’t have to mean eating expensive. I put healthy in quotation marks because that’s a loaded word. Single foods in isolation are generally not healthy or unhealthy alone, but it’s your overall diet/summary of choices that are healthy or unhealthy. If being able to drink a craft beer and/or having some pizza once a week with your family allows you to be consistent with dietary choices that align with your fitness/health goals the rest of the time, that pizza and/or beer exists within what is a healthy diet for YOU. Just something to keep in mind. With that said, if that’s something you want to discuss, I’m *always* willing to do so. =)

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One of the key factors in my 200lb weight loss, and my lifestyle/mindset/habits changes need to maintain that level of weight loss was being able to control my calorie intake. I am an analytically-minded person, enjoy creating spreadsheets, and crunching numbers. When I found out that there was an underlying math, I remember thinking “Um, why didn’t I know about this before? I was doing exercise I hated while eating foods that I hated, and all along I could simply be weighing/tracking/spreadsheet guru’ing my way to weight loss!”

The real truth is that while calorie tracking via weighing your food on a food scale is the means to an end, it is not the end itself. That end IS NOT weight loss. Rather, that end is an awareness of portions and foods that are in balance with our goals.

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The Deal

After our last vacation ordeal, we had another trip planned for the 4th of July planned to Ocean City, MD, and Wildwood, NJ. However, due to a family/personal issue we had to cancel that trip, and instead travel to Richmond, VA to be with family.

I’ll be putting a pause on blog posts for awhile as I’m not going to be able to prioritize writing. However, I did want to get this issue out before that.

I am hoping to pick things back up next month as I have a bunch of ideas beyond this series.

The good news is that since we haven’t had any luck with actually taking a vacation this year, we are going to try one last time and head to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in August.

Anyways, on to the food!

For Richmond, since we were able to pack our own groceries, my intention was to stick to “normal” as much as possible even though there would be some restaurant meals. Let’s do this!

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