April 2008 Archives

I haven't update my block in a few days now since I've been really busy with work and my personal life. I can assure you things are going great, and I'm keeping the pounds off - even to this day.

I'd like to take a few minutes to write to you some weight loss tips that I picked up while trying to lose some weight. Some I heard worked for other people, but didn't work for me, and other tips I tried didn't really work well for many other people, but they worked really well for me.

1.                    Drink plenty of water
When you drink lots of water, you help to speed up your body's natural metabolism, as well as keep your stomach some-what full with something healthy, rather than with something bad for you. The typical human should drink around 64 fluid ounces per day. Athletes should drink upwards of a gallon a day to stay properly hydrated!

2.                    Eat three meals a day, with healthy snacks in between
When you teach your body that food will always be coming to feed it, it will no longer have a tendency to keep any as fat since it knows that more is coming shortly. Also, eating three meals a day will help to minimize the amount of food that you will eat at night. Say for instance you don't eat at work and when you go home you want to "pig out" and then go to bed an hour or so later. That food will be stored as fat since you're going to sleep with it still in your stomach, undigested.

3.                    Watch out for soda and soft drinks
Soda and other such beverages are loaded with carbs and sugar. They don't do anything for you. They may taste good, but in the end they will do nothing but make you gain weight and rot your teeth.

4.                    Keep an eye out for food high in sodium
Watch the amount of sodium that you take in on a daily basis. Sodium can be hidden in many foods, even those that you think are healthy. Take for instance the Smart Ones microwavable platters - those are loaded with sodium since it's a natural preservative. Sodium also makes your body retain more water, thus making you heavier and more bloated-looking.

5.                    Use common sense
One of the most effective things I did when I lost weight was when I used my common sense. I did my research; I kept track of what I was eating at what time, and how much I was losing on a daily basis - not just once a week or once a month. Keeping an accurate and honest diary / blog is a good idea since it is likely to motivate you into losing weight. When I look back at some of my journal entries (I have a Microsoft Word document that contains all of my journal entries) I can't believe how stupid I used to be when it came to my own health. Common sense should have told me, "Hey, this isn't healthy for you" had I been listening.

Those are just a few tips to help you lose weight. They might now all work for you, but if you take them and tweak them, they may just come in handy.

Looking back, this made for an interesting journal entry. I didn't realize until re-reading my entires how much I was addicted to eating large amounts of food. This goes to show you that I was indeed an addict:

 

It's been nearly two weeks now since I started this diet, and each day it seems to have gotten harder and harder to cut back on what I am used to eating. I sit here knowing that I should be doing something, but don't know what to do since I would usually use any and all extra time to eat whatever I could get my hands on.

This morning's breakfast went really well for a change. I finally got the courage to throw away all of the left overs that were in the fridge from last night this way in the morning I would not be been tempted to eat them along with whatever else I was going to have. I have cut the cheese out of my diet, so I only had about a dozen eggs along with some biscuits, toast, 8 strips of bacon, about 6 sausage links, and a glass of orange juice to wash it all down.

After breakfast I went for my usual walk. I've only got a week or so to go before I hit my 21st day. They say something about it taking 21 days to break an old habit and form a new one. Hopefully what they say is true. The walk went alright, I suppose. My ankles still hurt from the tremendous amount of stress that they take when I walk on them. I was able to walk about a quarter of a mile this morning before I had to sit and rest for a few minutes. Afterwards I made my way back home to where I took a long nap and woke up a little after noon.

For lunch I treated myself to pizza since I had not had it for nearly three weeks. Instead of ordering my usual two large pies, I only went with one large pie, no toppings, and no soda. I came to the realization several days ago that soda contains empty calories... I also did a little research online and started to read about just what our bodies are made of, what they need, what they don't need, and some diet tips. Turns out the internet is a great resource when it comes to diet information. After having my pizza I tried to do a little house work off and on, but my ankles began hurting too much, so I decided to do some more research online.

Inbetween lunch and dinner I made my self a mid-afternoon snack in which I had a bag of chips, a roast beef sandwhich, a left over slice of pizza from lunch, two biscuits, and a Hungry Man TV dinner.

Dinner came around and I made myself 3 12-ounce steaks on the George Foreman grill - it was a great buy. It really helps cut down on some of the fat on the things that I cook. I made some mashed potatoes and gravy to go along with it, a can of corn, three biscuits, and some V8 Splash.

After dinner I did some laundry and watched some Law and Order on NBC before bed at 11:30pm. Before bed I had half a bag of pretzles along with some more V8 Splash since I was thirsty. I remembered to go through the fridge and throw away any left overs that I may be tempted to eat come tomorrow morning.

This morning's weigh in was 672 pounds. In just about two week's time I've lost about 5 pounds.

Chris from The Geekery was nice enough to set me up with this blog so I could share my accomplishments with the rest of the world. After submitting one of my diary entires to Chris he liked it so much that he decided to set up this site for me. Needless to say he said the Movable Type installation was fairly easy, even a 676 pound man could do it!

From here on out, I'm going to write about how I went from being a 676 pound fat man who couldn't get up to go to the bathroom on his own to being the 200 pound-averaged-sized man that I am nowadays.

I'm going to give you guys all of the details on how I lost nearly 400 pounds. I'm going to share some of the diary entries that I wrote over the years, and most importantly, I hope I'm going to give some of you lard asses enough motivation to lose some of that extra fat that you're carrying around with you.

P.S., I'm still learning how to do this whole blog thing, so if any of you have any tips or hints, just go ahead and leave me a comment by clicking "Comments" above this post.