I weighed in at 259.8 pounds this week, good for a loss of 3.6 pounds since June 30th. That leaves 49.9 pounds to lose for my iPhone Weight Loss Challenge.

I didn’t do a lot of exercise this week, and didn’t remember to post my exercise on Twitter very regularly. I played some basketball, did some walking, and played some golf. I’m starting on a new diet too, which I will write about in more detail soon.

This is the first week that I feel really motivated and I’m getting a lot more serious about my weight loss efforts. Hopefully this will be another good week.

As always, you can see my all-time weight loss progress chart here.

By Eden, Tue 7 Jul 2009, 2 Comments, Categories: 54 Pound iPhone Challenge, 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

I’m late posting this update, but I want to make sure it’s here so I can look back at my weight loss posts later. On May 26, 2009 I weighed-in at 258.4 pounds (see my all-time weight loss chart here).

I’m participating in a weight loss contest with some of my family and we weigh-in once a month, so the May 26th weigh-in was my ‘official’ weight for the month. That was good for a loss of 1.6 pounds in May. I lost 4.6 pounds in April, so I suppose it’s reasonable to expect a bit of a drop-off, but I feel like I should have lost more weight in May.

I was on vacation for the past week and a half and I know I ate a lot of food so I’m not going to be getting on the scale again any time soon. My next contest weigh-in date is June 30th, so I’ll probably wait until the week before that to weigh-in again.

I attribute most of my success over the past 2 months to playing basketball. But it’s been about 2 weeks since I last played, so I need to get back on that as soon as possible. Not only is the basketball great exercise, but I have the desire to do exercise apart from playing basketball to help improve my game so that’s an extra bonus. It seems that having a sport to focus on is incredibly helpful with weight loss motivation.

I’ve also bought a few exercise gadgets lately and I’m trying some different workouts, which I will write about in further detail in the coming weeks as I have a chance to evaluate them.

By Eden, Mon 15 Jun 2009, Categories: Weekly Weigh-in, Weight Loss

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.

By Eden, Sat 16 May 2009, 1 Comment, Categories: Fat, Weight Loss

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