Finance and Fat » Fat

Super Fatty Fat Fat — or Why it’s Time to Get Serious

Eden — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:25:21 +0000

I don’t know what’s going on lately, but every time I get on the scale I’m heavier than the last time. Today I looked on in horror as I saw 278.6 pounds displayed on the screen (and lovingly tweeted by my scale for me).

Once I recovered from the shock, I sat down and spent a little time looking over my recent weight loss efforts. Just last year, as of March 30, I was down to 248 pounds. That was a loss of 20 pounds from the start of 2011. Not record-breaking, but certainly very respectable progress by any standards. Looking back at what I was doing then, my success was all about eating a (mostly) Paleo diet and walking. I wasn’t doing any weight lifting and I didn’t stop drinking alcohol. If I had kept it up, and even if I had only lost another 20 pounds the rest of the year (that would have given me another nine months to lose 20 pounds when I had already lost 20 in three months), I’d only weigh 228 pounds today — 50 pounds less than I do right now! Sure, we can play what-if games all day long, but it’s pretty amazing to me what a huge difference a few bad choices where I let myself get derailed from doing what was working changed my life so drastically.

I guess the lesson I’m taking away from all this is diligence — I have to keep working the plan every day and not let one failure turn into another and another and snowball into nine months of failures and regrets. I have a plan. I’ve demonstrated that this plan can work. I have the resources to carry out the plan. As far as I can tell, the only thing stopping me is me. And maybe I don’t know how to fix that problem yet, but I have to try. At least I’m aware of it now, or not in denial about it anymore, and that’s where I have to start.

So that’s how I got here. Learning from the past is important, but I can’t dwell on it too long. So what are my next steps?

I put two week’s worth of my workout schedule in my calendar. Taking the time to do this really helps. I have to be realistic about my schedule and work around meetings and whatnot. I like knowing from the start of the day that I have this thing to do and I can work through the day with that in mind. It’s not magic, but it’s certainly better than just letting the day happen and thinking how I should throw in some exercise somewhere.

I’m going to purify the refrigerator and pantry today and make sure I have the ingredients on hand to eat Paleo approved meals for the next few days.

I’m going to re-read all my highlights from The Primal Blueprint, the awesome book by Mark Sisson from Mark’s Daily Apple. I highlighted a lot, so that’s no small task.

I think that’s enough for today.

Super Fatty Fat Fat — or Why it’s Time to Get Serious

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Trying Again

Eden — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:56:58 +0000

Here we are again, almost a year since the last post — Back to Blogging and Goin’ Paleo. It’s funny to read that post now. A lot has happened since I wrote it, but not much has changed — at least as far as this blog is concerned. I’m fatter today and I have roughly the same amount of debt. To be honest, I don’t care much about the debt right now — debt is a much easier problem for me to solve than fat.

The scale told me a horrifying story this morning — 273.3 pounds. That’s the most I’ve ever weighed. Even though it’s not that much more than I weighed a year ago, seeing a number over 270 is kind of shocking.

I really was on the right track last year. I briefly dropped under 240 pounds — thanks to a mostly-Paleo diet and somewhat regular walking. However, I had given it all up by the middle of 2011. We had some big things happen in our lives last year. The biggest being that I’m now a father (which is awesome), but I don’t want to hide behind excuses. I chose to do something else when I could have exercised and I chose to eat the foods I knew I should avoid. Understanding the problem isn’t difficult. It’s actually putting what I know into practice when I fail to succeed.

I don’t remember when I last exercised, other than a round of golf this year, it must have been sometime before Christmas. My diet is bad — I mostly just eat what I want, particularly lots of carbohydrates neatly packaged in the form of delicious bread. Oh, how I love bread — giving up bread is definitely the hardest part about going Paleo, but obviously a big reason why it works. I’m going to try again. I haven’t cleared out the cabinets yet, but I’m getting closer.

One of my plans for 2012 is to get back into writing this blog regularly. I think the focused effort and accountability it creates makes a big difference. Of course, looking at my past efforts to start blogging again, the odds of me following through aren’t very good. Other than that, I’m going to get started by going for a walk today.

Trying Again

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Back to Blogging and Goin’ Paleo

Eden — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 04:55:59 +0000

I’m still here. I’ve been tempted to kill the site and forget about it, but funnily enough traffic continues to increase even as I leave the site mostly abandoned. Not that I’m in it for the money (hey that $2 the site earned last month could buy me half a latte), but I enjoy writing and I want to do more of it this year.

Not much has happened since the last post I wrote back in August, 2010. I guess I was about 259 pounds then. I finished 2010 at 265 pounds. I think I hit 267 before Christmas. Amazingly, I actually started exercising and trying to do better the week after Christmas and I’ve been on a nice trend since then—weighing in around 252 pounds today and the last couple of days. That’s a solid loss of 13 pounds so far this year and 15 since Christmas. Not too shabby, and if I’m honest about it, I haven’t really even worked very hard at it.

Not to imply I’ve been sitting around playing World of Warcraft (that game really killed me with the expansion in early December), because I haven’t; I’ve quit that again, something I seem to do about twice a year or so. I’ve done a fair amount of walking in 2011. That’s been my primary source of exercise. I walked 39 miles in January and 36 in February. I tried mixing in some jogging too, but decided to stick with walking until I lose more weight. I really want to take it slow and avoid injuries. And I actually have avoided injuries thus far and I don’t want that to change. I’ve considered 230 pounds to be the starting point for adding some jogging to my routine. I’d still like to run a 5K some day. I don’t know if I really do, but I still tell myself that.

Other than walking, the other major change I’ve made is switching to a Paleo diet. I was learning about Paleo in January and so not really following it until the end of the month. Just about all of February was Paleo compliant (I’d say I’m 80-90% Paleo) and that’s when my weight really started dropping. I can only describe it as effortless weight loss. No doubt that the walking helps, but I had months in 2010 where I logged the same kind of miles I do now and didn’t have nearly the same weight loss.

I’ll share more about Paleo in the future. If you’re curious, here’s a couple of great getting started resources:

Primal Blueprint 101 from Mark’s Daily Apple
Paleo FAQ from Robb Wolf

Back to Blogging and Goin’ Paleo

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Fitness Reset and Weight Loss Update

Eden — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:36:23 +0000

Back on September 12, 2007 I started writing about my weight loss efforts on this site. That was more than a year and a half ago and I weighed 266 pounds. I mentioned in that post that it was “the heaviest weight of my life”. On January 6, 2009 I weighed 267.6 pounds. How’s that for progress?

The sad part is that I was down as low as 245.8 pounds back on March 11, 2008 (see my complete weight loss chart here). That was pretty nice progress, losing just over 20 pounds in about six months. However, I remember thinking then that my progress was too slow. Needless to say, I’d give up a lot of things today to get those 20 pounds back.

As of today, I weigh 260.4 pounds. My goal for 2009 is to weigh 217.6 pounds (50 pounds lower than I started the year). I have a lot of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it, but I’m committing myself to the fitness routine again and I’m going to try to get back to what I was doing right a year ago. Look for regular, more frequent fitness and weight loss updates here in the future.

Fitness Reset and Weight Loss Update

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Removing Barriers to Success: New Exercise Clothes

Eden — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:20:52 +0000

In the past month or so, I started playing basketball again. I say again because I grew up playing basketball, played it all the way through high school, and continued to play for fun for several years after that. Of course, I was in great shape back then. Sadly, for the past three-and-a-half years, I’ve lived an almost entirely sedentary lifestyle where playing basketball is almost as crazy for me as running a marathon.

Fortunately, I have a friend who lives about a mile away and we have a school nearby with two basketball courts. We decided to start playing to get back in shape. Even though it’s only the two of us playing 1-on-1, the amount of exercise in one hour of playing is tremendous. I felt like I was going to die the first day we played. I was completely winded after a few minutes and I was sore for days afterward. I’ve continued to play though, and I feel more energetic every time we go. I think it’s making a huge difference for me.

So, while all of that sounds great, I did have one small obstacle to clear in order to play more frequently and to enjoy it more. When I started playing again, I only had one good pair of basketball shorts and only two t-shirts that were comfortable and fit me well. That may not sound like much of a problem, but when you’re busy working and trying to fit in a game of basketball at the end of the day, you don’t really have time to manage your laundry. Wearing clothes that are too tight or a little old and worn out, even just for exercise, doesn’t make you feel very good about what you’re doing and can make skipping a day a bit easier than it should be.

To solve this problem, I went out and bought three new pairs of basketball shorts and five new t-shirts. I made sure they all fit me well, looked good, and made me feel good wearing them. I spent about $90 for my new basketball wardrobe. I know this probably sounds trivial, but it really makes a big difference. I look forward to playing more now because I can put on the clothes that make me feel like an athlete again. Sure, I’m still fat, but at least I’m dressed for getting fit.

I value saving money and being frugal, but you’ve got to be prepared to spend some money to set yourself up for success and remove the little barriers that may not be obvious at first. So think about what you’re trying to accomplish and look for the little things that get in your way and don’t be afraid to spend some money to eliminate those barriers.

Removing Barriers to Success: New Exercise Clothes

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Twittering the Pounds Away

Eden — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:23:09 +0000

Since The Oprah is now on Twitter, I imagine it should be safe to write a post about Twitter and figure that most of you will know what the heck I’m talking about. If you’re not sure, just click over to Twitter and give it a try.

I already have a personal Twitter account, where I write about anything and everything- follow at your own risk. So I thought it would be a good idea to create an account just for the Finance and Fat blog.

Finance and Fat on Twitter will be used to keep an exercise journal, keep track of my weight every time I hit the scale, and hopefully it can work as an accountability tool too. I’d love it if you followed me and felt free to yell at me if you don’t see me posting about my exercise regularly, or if you see too many posts related to In ‘N Out Burger…Speaking of food, I’ll try to write a bit about my diet, maybe just the really good and really bad so it doesn’t become too tedious. I’ll be sure to write about anything new I’m trying and whether I find promising results or not.

If you find a real-time exercise and weight loss journal to be compelling content, please follow Finance and Fat on Twitter and help keep me accountable and help me to reach my weight loss goal in 2009 (I’ve got a long way to go!).

Twittering the Pounds Away

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February 2009 Fat Update

Eden — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:03:03 +0000

At the end of February I weighed 265.4 pounds. That’s a gain of 2.6 pounds for the month, an increase of .97%.

I didn’t do as well as I did in January with keeping my diet under control, but more importantly I only exercised about two times. Obviously, that isn’t going to cut it.

The good news is, over the past couple of weeks, I started playing basketball with a friend who lives nearby for a few hours a week. I also bought an elliptical trainer from Nordic Trac (the AudioStrider 800 Elliptical). I’m going to try to use that two to three times a week, in addition to the basketball. The built-in weight loss program on the Nordic Trac is a really great workout for me so I’m excited and hopeful that I’ll see some better results in March.

February 2009 Fat Update

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January 2009 Fat Loss

Eden — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:24:20 +0000

As I wrote at the start of the year, one of my big goals for 2009 is to lose 50 pounds.

One of my keys to achieving this goal is accountability. I’m doing a monthly weight loss contest with about 10 people in my family and this has really helped me to stay on track and make better choices with the type and quantities of foods I eat.

That being said, I did very little exercise in the month of January. I focused more on my diet and portion control, which obviously helped, but I desperately need to add exercise if I’m going to have a real chance of losing 50 pounds this year.

I started the year at 267.6 pounds and finished January at 262.8 pounds. That’s a loss of 4.8 pounds, for a change of 1.79%.

January 2009 Fat Loss

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Update On My Battle With the Fat

Eden — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:05:59 +0000

It has been a really long time since I wrote about my weight. My last update was August 29, 2008. As usual, that is bad news. I weighed 257 pounds at my last weigh-in and I thought that was bad. Well, two days ago I was 264 pounds. Yikes!

What when wrong?

I’m clearly not fit to offer advice about how to lose weight, but I can definitely give you a good idea of what not to do. The first mistake I seem to make when my weight starts to get out of control is failing to pay attention. I stop getting on the scale and I don’t really think about my weight at all. Or maybe I tell myself that I’m probably just holding steady and I can afford to take a little time off. Of course this isn’t the case at all. It’s just a sorry attempt to make an excuse for my laziness.

Honestly, I think my problems come down to just being lazy. Not that I’m completely lazy, but it’s easy for me to get lazy about my weight and diet. I’ve been busy working a lot lately and when I start to get busy with work, the first thing I cut from my schedule is exercise. I also start making excuses for drinking an extra latte or maybe throwing in a pumpkin scone with that latte. These bad behaviors snowball and, before I know it, I’ve gained 7 pounds.

The sad thing is, I’ve been as low as 246 pounds this year and now I’m up almost to the weight (266) I was at when I started this blog back in September 2007. This got me thinking about what has gone wrong and about what I was doing right when I lost 20 pounds. I was doing best when I was having a little friendly competition with my family and we were all holding each other accountable. I was roughly following the Eating For Life plan and I was doing some walking, jogging, and occasional weight lifting.

I think my biggest struggle is with my diet. I tend to get lazy and eat too much and allow too much junk food into my diet. I think that regular walking should be enough to maintain a healthy weight if I could just cut down on the number of calories I consume and find some better sources of those calories.

I talked to my wife about this and we decided that we both want to lose some weight and we are going to work at holding each other accountable to exercise regularly and eat right. Look for more frequent updates for the rest of the year. My goal is to lose 20 pounds by the end of the year. I know that is a lot, but I think I have enough to lose and I’ve put on so much weight from empty calories and laziness lately that I should be able to quickly knock off some pounds.

Update On My Battle With the Fat

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Monthly Weight Loss Report and a Wii Fit

Eden — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:15:59 +0000

I decided to drop the weekly weight loss reports since it was hard to keep up with them and I don’t really think the weekly weight fluctuations are worth reporting anyway. From now on I’ll post my weight loss progress approximately once a month.

During my previous weigh-in on August 4th, I was 259.2 pounds (my heaviest weight of the year) and at my last weigh-in on August 26th I was 257 pounds.

Most of those 3 1/2 weeks were spent eating too much food and not doing much exercise. On a positive note, I gave up hydrogenated oils around the end of July so that has likely helped my weight move down a little bit.

Just this week we bought a Wii Fit and we’re really having a lot of fun with it. It is by no means a replacement for intense exercise like weightlifting or running, but it is perfect if you need help getting off the couch and simply adding more activity to your life (exactly where I’m at right now). I will write more about the Wii Fit in the future after I’ve had more time to evaluate it. My early impressions are very positive and if you can afford the rather high cost ($90) I think it is a worthwhile fitness investment.

I will continue to update my weight loss charts each week when I weigh in, so if you’re interested feel free to visit that page and see more details about my weight loss progress.

Monthly Weight Loss Report and a Wii Fit

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