MikeIsLosingIt.com

After over three months I am FINALLY out of the 260s. Whew! That was a long one. Granted, during that time I spent a couple of months eating an increased calorie diet and making significant muscle gains (my squats went up 60 lbs) but it was still a long time coming to see “259.8” on the scale this morning. Wednesday my weight was 260.8, which in itself was a new low, but this morning’s 259.8 was an even greater relief and motivator for me. That puts me at having lost 61.8 lbs on the scale, but it is realistically more like 75 or 80+ lbs of fat I’ve lost, considering the amount of muscle I’ve gained in the last 10 months of weight-training.

Thanksgiving was last week, and now I wonder if I should celebrate Thanksgiving every week, because I ate a lot of sweets last weekend…a LOT…and yet dropped weight like crazy this week. I’ve lost 4.2 lbs since Thanksgiving morning. Okay, okay, maybe I shouldn’t eat that stuff every weekend…but wouldn’t it be grand?

I’ve lost over 6.2 lbs this week, with still one day to go before my official Wednesday Weigh-in! That’s incredible considering last week’s disappointing 1.6 lbs.  Surprisingly I lost 1.6 yesterday alone, which puts me at exactly 40 pounds lost since I started. I’m 3.4 lbs below where I need to be for my physical tomorrow, so no worries now. Even with a little fluctuation or scale difference I’d be amazed if the difference was THAT much. After my physical tomorrow I’ll be bumping my calories back up to the 2000 or so I was eating before…and we are going out for Italian on Thurday for our 15th Wedding Anniversary. Cause for a cheat if there ever was one.

300.0 lbs this morning. I’m almost three months into my program and it has been almost three weeks since I started the diet portion of it. As of this morning that is 21.6 pounds lost.

Near the beginning of my weight loss program at 306.4 lbs. 

321.6. That’s how much I weighed three months ago on February 15, 2010. It was the heaviest I’d ever been, and at 5’11” that meant I was fat…fatty fat fat…fatty-boombalatty even, and it’s nothing new. I’m 44 years old and started down that road around 6th or 7th grade and have been overweight ever since. Except for two very brief times in my life when I slimmed down to near where I should be, being overweight has been a constant struggle. Like most people in my position I’ve yo yo’d up and down countless times. I’ve tried low carb, high carb, Zone, Protein Power, exercise at home, starvation, liquid-diet, exercise at a gym, and every other thing I could think of to lose weight. Despite all of that, the results have always been temporary–I’ve been unable to keep it off, just like 90-95 percent of all those who attempt to lose weight.

At the beginning of the year I found myself on the verge of getting a Lap-Band, thinking maybe that could finally solve the problem. It is a surgical procedure where an adjustable band is placed around the top of your stomach, preventing you from eating large portions of food. It’s nowhere near as invasive as a gastric bypass, which essentially reroutes your digestive system, and it is completely reversible, but it is still surgery nonetheless. Consequently it is expensive and has significant risks. Further, the more I examined the success rate the more I began to doubt it as a true solution. In all the research I did I found that regardless of which procedure is chosen, the average person can expect to have lost and kept off about 50% of their excess weight after five years.

Losing 50% of your excess weight and keeping it off is a much better statistic than just about any other weight-loss program, but in my view it wasn’t anywhere near good enough. In fact, I thought that actually sounded pretty lousy. From my perspective that meant I could expect to still be about 75 lbs overweight…after five years and $10,000! And I wouldn’t be the slightest bit more physically fit than when I started. My heart would be no stronger and I would have no more muscle than when I started (actually I’d probably have much less). I’d simply be 75 lbs overweight instead of 150. How could that be viewed as a good thing? At best, I could view that as not quite as abysmal as not having the surgery at all.

So, what was the alternative? I reasoned that if I were willing to spend $10,000 on surgery that would likely result in a mediocre outcome at best, I might as well put that money toward a personal fitness trainer instead. After all, that same $10,000 could pay for a personal trainer three times per week for two years, and at the end of that time I should theoretically be in excellent physical condition. Even if I lost only a pound per week I’d have still lost more weight in that two years than I could expect to have lost and kept off after five with surgery. Yes, unlike surgery it would require me to have enough discipline to go to the gym at least three times per week, but considering I would have an appointment, which I had paid for in advance, my guess was that it wouldn’t be a problem. I would not miss my paid-for appointment without a truly valid reason like sickness or a definite work commitment. If I just had a gym membership and tried to do it on my own (which I have tried many times in the past), before long I’d miss it once, then again, and in no time I wouldn’t be going at all. The personal trainer would make the difference.

I’m happy to say that so far my assumptions have been correct. In the three months since I started training I haven’t missed at all, except for twice in one week when the whole family was down with a virus…and even then I immediately rescheduled and made up the days the following week. I started off the regime with only weight-training–I didn’t make any diet changes at all. I thought that sticking to the exercise would be stressful enough at first without adding a diet to the mix as well. I figured that as I got used to the routine I’d add in a diet change later.

Doing exercise alone I lost about a pound-and-a-half per week for the first couple of months. As I expected, the first few weeks were brutal. I was stressed and in pain most of the time, and I HATED going to the gym…every…single…time. But, I kept going anyway because I knew I needed to, I had an appointment, and I had paid a lot of money for it. So, misery be damned, I went every time. Now, after three months I still can’t say that I actually like going, but at least I dislike it much less than I used to, and sometimes I don’t actually mind going at all. Also, I frequently have a definite burst of energy a couple of hours after I workout, which is a very good thing to experience.

About three weeks ago I took the next step and had my trainer give me a diet program to follow. I’m following a very standard body-building, weight-loss diet: very high protein, low carbs, a lot of water, and eating about five times per day. I feel like I’m eating a ton of food, all day long, but it is still only about 1700-2000 calories on any given day. Since I added the diet to my regime I’ve been losing about a half a pound per day. So, in all I’ve lost about 22 pounds since I started with the trainer back in February, with 10 of it being in the last three weeks alone. I haven’t been the slightest bit discouraged and have had no significant problems.

I believe I’ve finally found my solution! I’m in it for the long haul and fully intend to workout at least three times per week for the rest of my life. Even when the two years are finished I intend to continue with a trainer at least a few times per month and workout on my own the rest of the time…since by then it should be so ingrained in me that motivation won’t be a problem. My goal? I want to be down to a single-digit body fat percentage within about a year, and I fully expect to make it there.

I’ll be posting regularly on this blog from now on, and I hope that some of you might find inspiration and encouragement from it. I’ll also post pictures from time to time to document my progress.

Cheers!