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!).

By Eden, Sat 18 Apr 2009, Categories: Fat, Weight Loss

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.

By Eden, Tue 3 Mar 2009, 3 Comments, Categories: Fat

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%.

By Eden, Sun 1 Feb 2009, Categories: Fat

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.

By Eden, Wed 5 Nov 2008, Categories: Fat

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.

By Eden, Fri 29 Aug 2008, 1 Comment, Categories: Fat, Weekly Weigh-in