Vito: May 2008 Archives

Wow, I don't even remember writing the last entry that I made that's how busy I've been. The only thing I remember is dosing off at the end where it begins "the above information..." and the rest is history. I must have been working off of 4 hour's of sleep and been awake for about 20 hours at that point.

I remember writing that, hitting the pillow in bed and when I woke up I didn't even realize that I left my browser open. I could have sworn that someone had broken in and somehow managed to write that blog there as a joke.

The funny part is, it actually makes sense. Kind of. When you diet, remember that once you notice that you're not losing weight anymore, you have to begin to change things. Change the way you eat, the amount of fluids you drink, the amount you sleep, the way you work out.

Remember: The only thing that shouldn't change is change itself!

It's been awhile since my last entry to this blog. I wanted to take a few minutes to share some more information with you guys that I picked up on the way to becoming someone normal in size: The calorie.

It's important to understand what a calorie is in order to lose weight because they can either be your friend or your enemy, depending on how you use them.

Simply put, a calorie is a unit of energy, similar to a joule. A calorie is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 degree C. Basically, the more calories a food item contains, the more energy you're going to have to expend in order to "work off" the food you just ate. In food, we express calories in kilocalories (kcal) which means 1000 calories, or the amount of heat energy needed to heat one kilogram of water by one degree C.

Your body has something that is known as "basal metabolic rate" which means how many calories your body will go through while doing nothing - not even digesting food. Factors that influence your BMR include your age and body fat - as you lose weight, you will have to eat less to maintain your mass.

This brings me to my next thought: Many people begin to lose weight, and then all the sudden they stop! They don't realize that their current diet is allowing them to eat more calories than their BMR will allow them to expend. These people are faced several options, including eating less calories a day or increase your activity level to force your body to expend more calories than it is taking in on a daily basis.  

 The above information REALLY helped me to decide how I was going to lose more than a few pounds here and there. I onced heard this quote an  it's very true:

Think smarter, not harder.

Remember that each any everyday you wake up and begin how to think you're going to deal with today's ordeals.

Before I go on to say anything else, I'd like to take a minute to point out that someone left a comment to a blog post that I made on 4/28/08. Whoever you are, please check the comments. I replied to your question. I hope it helped.

Here's another journal entry back from 2004. I'm still amazed at the things that I used to do when I was that heavy. If you're like I used to be, you might do some of this same stuff.

Here I am several months into my diet and I must say that I've made some progress. I don't have an amazing story to write about like some people do. Some people manage to lose 50 pounds in two months, but I'm convinced now that that's just a gimmick to make money quick.

This morning for breakfast I had a fairly healthy meal. I made myself several pancakes, along with four sausage links, a biscuit, and an apple since I realized I needed some fruit and color in my diet in order to become healthy. I consider this to be a major acheivement on my part as I know breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I used to capitalize on that several months ago. I've gone from having a breakfast that used to contain over 3000 calories to one that contains right around 1000 calories.

When I first started on this diet, I made a promise to myself that I was going to make slow changes in order to avoid failure. I hope to get down to a lead 400 calorie breakfast by October or November of this year.

After breakfast I went out for my usual walk - I managed to walk just about a half a mile before having to sit down. My ankles still hurt but nowhere near like they used to. Hopefully by mid 2005 they will no longer hurt and the pain will be just a memory of the past. I think I'm going to begin to time myself when I take these walks this way I can see if my endurance is improving at all. If I had to estimate right now, my half mile is about a half of an hour, maybe a little less on good days.

After my morning walk I went home and I had a mid-morning snack of two biscuits, a cup of coffee (It's interesting to note that all of the sudden I have been having this craving for coffee, yet I used to never drink the stuff before), two pancakes that I had left over from earlier, and some peanuts. Afterwards I did some more research online on how to lose weight, and generally how to keep better care of myself since I know weight is not my only problem.

For lunch I had about 3/4 of a pie of pizza that I ordered, a half a bottle of soda since the pizza made me thirsty, two peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches, a bag of Doritos and some pop corn. Afterwards I dozzed off on the couch while watching Days of Out Lives. Everyone says that that soap opera is utter trash, but after getting into it, you really learn to appreciate it.

Dinner time came around real quick since I dozzed off for several hours more than I usually do.

I was tempted to order Chinese food - which happens to be one of my favorites, but then I realized that I had already had take out earlier today when I ordered pizza. I've been trying to limit the amount of times that I have some form of take out food per week to about 4 times a week. So far I've been pretty good with that. Instead for dinner I made a box of bagel bites that I had in the freezer, two hot pockets, four slices of bread (I was craving it for some reason) and six hot dogs.

March 20, 2004 (Morning):

Last night I don't know what happened. After eating dinner I went to lay in bed for a little bit and I didn't wake up until about 7am this morning. It's both a good and a bad thing. It was good since it prevented me from eating more, but it was also bad since I had just ate, and I know that it's bad to go to sleep right after you eat.

Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll be able to stop myself from eating right before I go to sleep.

It's been a while since I last updated this blog of mine. I just wanted to take a minute while I had some free time at work to let you all know that I'm still going to keep this blog updated.

I hope to update this blog in the next couple of days with some more journal entires form the past, as well as some more weight loss and powerful motivation tips that I picked up over the years.Things have just gotten so busy lately at work that I haven't had much time at work, or at home to update this page. Hopefully that will change within the next few days.

-Vito.