It’s been about two weeks since I started paying attention to my weight again, and about a week and a half since I wrote about getting started again, so I thought it was time to get the ball rolling with some progress reports. Unfortunately, there’s nothing good to report yet — my weight actually went up a bit from the first week of getting on the scale. Of course, weight fluctuates a lot and the first week I came back may have just been a ‘good’ week for my weight. But either way, the important part is to have a baseline and to get to work on reaching my first goal weight.

Goal #1 is to finish a week with an average weight under 260 pounds. That’s 12.7 pounds from my last single weigh-in and 13.82 pounds from my last week’s average. Not really that much weight to lose when you’re this heavy. Any decent amount of hard work and focus should make it happen. I don’t want to fail too soon though, so I’m going to give myself until the end of February, for which the last weekly average will fall on March 4th. So that gives me just under five weeks, or 34 days to lose about 14 pounds. That’s about 2.8 pounds per week — perhaps a little higher than conventional wisdom typically recommends, but not by much, and I think weight will come off more easily in the beginning as I go from nearly no effort to hopefully quite a lot more than that.

By Eden, Mon 30 Jan 2012, Categories: Goals, Weekly Weigh-in

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.

By Eden, Thu 19 Jan 2012, Categories: Fat, Goals, Life

And I’m back. August 4th seems like as good a day as any for the first progress update to my 2010 Weight Loss Goals, written way back on Saturday, January 16th, 2010. Boy, things sure were different back then. I had hope for the New Year! Now it’s just another New Year of Regret. I’m joking of course, I don’t regret things much—maybe I should? I see that I even created a fancy little Google Spreadsheet for tracking all of my amazing progress back then! Funny thing is, I forgot I had done that until today. I’ll see if I can update it, but I’m probably lacking most of the data points needed.

In case you can’t tell from the tone of the above paragraph, things haven’t gone well this year. In fact, as things stand today, I’m a big fat zero on the progress chart for 2010. Seven months later and I stand exactly where I did when I was full of optimism and hope for the New Year. Oh well, that’s pretty much standard operating procedure for me over the past few years (as you can see if you check any of the weight loss archives around here).

But it’s all in the past now. That’s the funny thing about me. I must be too dumb to give up because I’m always optimistic that I can turn things around and lose 50 pounds before the year is over. Well, 50 might be rough, but I’d be happy with 30. In fact, that is my new goal! Look, a shiny new goal! Surely everything will be better now.

Okay, so things probably won’t be better now, but I’m going to try. I really am. I learned a couple of things this year. Like when I was walking regularly and eating lots of vegetables my weight was going down. The one month I managed to do both at the same time, I had lost about nine pounds. So there is hope, and at least I have a simple way to get started. Just some vegetables and some walking…that shouldn’t be too hard, even for me. Only time will tell of course. Hopefully I’ll be back to update this in less than seven months.

By Eden, Wed 4 Aug 2010, Categories: Goals, Weight Loss

It’s that time of year again! The time of year I pretend to turn over a new leaf and fool myself into thinking I can be productive and fix all the mistakes of the previous year. Of course, I still believe that I can really do it so maybe one year things will come together as planned (I’m hoping it’s this year!).

I’m starting 2010 at about 259 pounds. That’s 8 pounds less than I started 2009. Certainly not good progress, but it beats gaining 8 pounds so I’ll take it. My goal for 2010 is to get down to 219 pounds. That seems to be a long way from 259, and especially considering my poor efforts in 2009, but I believe I can do it.

Here’s my approach for 2010. I’m breaking my annual goal into quarterly goals. So the first milestone is weighing in at (or below) 249 pounds by April 1st. This works out to 10 pounds per quarter, figure about 12 weeks per quarter and I can reach my goals while losing less than 1 pound per week (about .83 pounds per week if I used the calculator properly).

We’re already a couple of weeks into January and my weight is basically unchanged, fluctuating up and down by 1-2 pounds each week so far. Not the most promising start, but these pounds should be the easiest to lose so I’m still confident I can reach the April 1st deadline. There’s probably some irony in choosing April 1st as my first milestone, but that’s just how it worked out so I’m going to go with it.

Look for more regular updates on my progress this year and probably even more frequent updates on Twitter (follow @financeandfat if you’re into that Twitter thing). By the way, I’ll be tracking my progress on a publicly visible Google Spreadsheet.

By Eden, Sat 16 Jan 2010, 2 Comments, Categories: Goals, Weight Loss

I want an iPhone. I’ve had my eye on one since it was released back in June of 2007. However, I’ve resisted purchasing one because I don’t NEED an iPhone. It is purely a WANT, an indulgence, a waste of money. I could try to justify it, but it’s just an expensive toy.

While it’s true that the iPhone is just a toy, there are no rules in personal finance against buying toys. You just have to be smart about it and, for me, that means planning ahead, saving the money, and paying cash. I can do all of that, but I still haven’t made the purchase.

Yesterday, I decided that I am finally going to do it. However, there is one big caveat. I made a deal with my wife that I won’t buy an iPhone until I get my weight down to 210 pounds.

I think this is a great way to incentivize my weight-loss by adding a tangible reward. It’s something I really want and it’s also easy to put up pictures of the iPhone as motivation/reminders for me to stick with my exercise and diet routine. It also gives me plenty of time to save the money, decide for sure that I really want to buy one (of course I do, but it sounds good to say that), and hopefully enough time for Verizon to start selling the iPhone so I won’t be stuck with AT&T. 

To be clear, I’m not only losing weight for an iPhone. I want and need to lose weight and I’ve been working on it, unsuccessfully, for the past two years. This is just another tool in the motivational toolbox that I’m trying out. If weight loss was only about rational decisions, I would have lost the weight already. It’s obvious that I need more help on the emotional/mental side and that’s what I’m hoping this little game will do.

As of my last weigh-in, on June 30th, I was 263.4 pounds. Losing 54 pounds will put me just under 210. Obviously, this will take some time. Averaging 1 pound per week means this could take more than a year. However, I have a lot of weight to lose and I think I could get it done a lot faster if I really work at it. This will be an interesting test of the benefits of external motivation and whether I will do better than I have so far.

I’m going back to weekly weigh-ins and reports on this blog so please check back in to see my progress. Also, please let me know if you’ve tried a reward system when losing weight and how that worked for you and if you have any tips for success.

By Eden, Mon 6 Jul 2009, 3 Comments, Categories: 54 Pound iPhone Challenge, Goals, Weight Loss