Posts Tagged ‘lose weight’

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Staying Accountable with Exercise

April 29th, 2010

Okay – so since my 5K on Saturday, I’ve been slack with my cardio/running.  I don’t know if it was the idea that I’d achieved the goal I’d put before myself, and felt like I was finished, or if it’s just the craziness that is my life of late keeping me busy and not planning well, but either way, I haven’t been up to snuff with running this week.

So why mention it here?  Because I need to get in a run on both Thursday and Friday.  I run my weeks Saturday to Friday, and including my 5K on Saturday, I need to get in at least two more runs to be happy with myself (four a week is what I shoot for, but I’ll settle for three).  So I’m here to ask you » Read more: Staying Accountable with Exercise

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My First 5K: Been There, Done That, Got the T-Shirt!

April 24th, 2010

Me at the finish - and no that's not sweat or my typical hairstyle - it poured rain through most of the race!

I DID IT!!! This morning I ran my first real 5K race, and I posted my best time for 5K yet!

The race: the 5K Water for The World Run in Johns Creek, Georgia – just north of Atlanta. The contender: me, Chad, a thirty year old who weighed in this morning at 248.5 (broke 250 this week!) and is down almost exactly 60 pounds from an all time highest weight of 308 on my 30th birthday in October of 2009. The weather: sixty degrees, THUNDERSTORMS and driving wind and rain (this is NOT what I meant when I signed up for the Water for the World Run).

My day started with the alarm going off at 6:00 am, and as soon as it woke me up, I heard the thunder, followed by the pouring rain. Unfazed, but a little concerned about whether the race would be canceled, I got dressed and drove over to the office building where the start/finish line and staging area was at 7:00 am. By the time I arrived, the rain had let up a little, but it was still lightning, so they held the start of the race for 10 minutes. We ended up starting at 7:40 instead of 7:30. And I have to say, that extra 10 minutes of roaming around the staging area and vendor tents was intimidating. All the little fit people (and I mean little literally, not as a diminutive) were prancing around, stretching, wearing sleeveless shirts, laughing, and seeming way to chipper for 7:00 in the morning on a Saturday.

At the start - that's me in the royal blue t-shirt in the middle of the frame - thinking I'd lost my ever-lovin' mind at this point.

But then I realized that noticing them first was my own insecurity kicking in, because there were plenty of other people there who were a bit out of shape, didn’t have form fitting clothes, and were standing around like normal people waiting on something to start. As I started chatting with some of them as we lined up at the starting line, I found out it was quite a few of our first 5K, even for some of the runners whom I would have assumed had done this before!

At 7:30 am they
» Read more: My First 5K: Been There, Done That, Got the T-Shirt!

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My First 5K: Three Days and Counting!

April 21st, 2010

Water for the World Run 2010 from Don Felice on Vimeo.

Yowzahs!!!  My first 5K is just three days away!  It’s still amazing that I’m starting to become, dare I say it, a runner!  That just boggles my mind.  I am by my very nature, sedentary, and I have to force myself to exercise – you know, in the same way you have to force yourself to do your taxes.  I still look at runners and think, what the hell is wrong with you?  But I guess I gotta change that mindset, because I’m joining their “running-for-the-heck-of-it-without-even-having-just-been-mugged” club!  This is really insane.

This week has been busy, and tonight was my first run since Saturday (!) – but I did really well, so I’m still confident that Saturday will come and go with me finishing the race and not checking myself into the hospital across the street from the finish line (good strategy by the race planners, by the way).  This reconstruction thing is really starting to show results, I’ve lost over » Read more: My First 5K: Three Days and Counting!

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Hello 240’s!!!

April 20th, 2010

Okay, so I know all the experts in my life, whom I respect hugely, tell me I should only weigh once a week, but I just can’t do that.  Weighing every morning is just part of my makeup.  And this morning, I had a great surprise…  I left the 250’s behind and hit the 240’s!!!!!!  249.3 this morning – hell to the yeah!!!!  After my weekend at MaMa’s, I wasn’t expecting the loss to come this early in the week, but I’ll certainly take it.  Alright – that’s it – just a short post tonight.  I’m getting nervous about my first 5K on Saturday because I have a ton going on both at work and personally, and I have plenty to do tonight in addition to trying to get in a run.  Ugh.  But 240’s – that feels good regardless!!!

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Weekly Weigh In: Eff You, 250’s…

April 17th, 2010

A while back, I was celebrating being out of the 250’s and into the 240’s.  Then my scales broke, and I had to buy new ones – new scales that weigh about 7.5 pounds heavier than my old ones.  So, my 240’s became 256.5 when I got the new scales a few weeks ago, and I’ve been battling to get out of the 250’s again ever since.

Yeah – I know.  My total loss hasn’t changed, but that doesn’t make my desire any less to see the 240’s on the scale again.  Last week, when I weighed in at 251.8, I thought this week may be the week to leave the dreaded Two-Five-Oh’s once again.  But this morning, I was at » Read more: Weekly Weigh In: Eff You, 250’s…

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A Busy Week

April 14th, 2010

Wow – it’s been a really busy week.  So many things coming together, coming to an end, and new beginnings all right at once!  I’m doing my best to stay on top of my nutrition and exercise in the midst of this craziness, but I’ve been fresh out of time to blog in detail, read your amazing blogs, and keep up with all of you on twitter!  I should have some time to catch up this weekend, but until then – how do you manage with nutrition and exercise when life gets busy beyond normal levels?

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Nutrition Monday: Top Five Tips to Deal with Cravings

April 12th, 2010

This morning, I read the blog of a good blogger friend of mine, and it had to do with cravings and emotional eating.  Well, I’m an emotional eater, and while I have no scientific evidence for what I’m about to say, I’m willing to bet the vast majority of overweight/obese people also struggle with their emotional relationship to food.  For some it’s worse than others, I imagine, but I’m perfectly willing to admit I was a complete junkie when I began my reconstruction.  If I had a bad day at work, I had no interest in downing a bottle of wine or having a few stiff martinis.  Nope – an alkie, I’m not.  But if I had a stressful day, I would sure eat the hell out of a box of Fudge Stripe cookies, or a pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream, or most of a pizza, or…well…you get the ugly, way too honest picture.

This past week in fact, I was under a good bit of stress, and I ended up having a few snacks late at night that I normally wouldn’t now that I’ve seen the light, yelled hallelujah, and changed my ways.  The snacks were fairly healthy, portion controlled, and nowhere in the same zip code of a binge, but they were a few more calories than I normally would have eaten that late at night.  And they usually consisted of a craving of one sort of another.

Cravings are a fact of life.  We all have foods that we love that aren’t the greatest thing in the world for our health or our weight loss efforts, and it’s just a given that we’re going to crave those foods from time to time.  In the beginning of my journey – the cravings were intense and frequent.  Now they’re fairly rare, with varying levels of intensity.  The most recent was for a Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuit, a craving I tried to blame on my dog.  I’m a firm believer that as soon as you make a food forbidden, you’re going to crave it even more, so one of my little rules for myself before I even went to my nutritionist for the first time was that nothing would be totally off limits.  Over time, I’ve come up with my Top Five Tips to Deal with Cravings – which I’m sure are heavily influenced by tidbits of advice I’ve gotten from my nutritionist, as well as some of my readers, and I’ve put all that advice together with some of my own common sense: » Read more: Nutrition Monday: Top Five Tips to Deal with Cravings

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Weekly Weigh In – Buffet be Damned!!!

April 10th, 2010

This morning marked my first weekly weigh in since the mind-blowing Easter buffet that left me full for two days after.  I was a little concerned that it might have thrown off my weight loss efforts for the week, but I guess my stepped up training efforts for my 5K saved me, because I had dropped 2.4 pounds!!!  This Saturday, I was down to 251.8 (on my new scales – which weigh about 7.5 pounds heavier than the old ones) for a total loss since I began of 56.2 pounds!  I’m feeling really good about where I am with both nutrition and exercise recently, so things are going really well.

I did go for a session with my trainer this morning, and in a total 180 from my exercise mindset of three months ago, I decided to get up early so I could go for a run/walk in the park before I went to her office for the strength training session.  I was running late, so I only got in a mile and a half, but it felt great to get out this morning and do that.  And I got to test out my new toy, a Nike + SportBand, along with a new pair of Nike + running shoes!  If you’re not familiar with Nike +, it’s a system Nike and Apple have developed that consists of » Read more: Weekly Weigh In – Buffet be Damned!!!

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Having Fun with Seven Things

April 6th, 2010

A little while back my buddy Jess over at Half of Jess gave me a blog award called the Beautiful Blogger Award.  I think I can safely say I’ve never been called beautiful (ruggedly handsome maybe) ;-) but not beautiful.  However, I’ll take any award I can get!

This award comes with a few conditions, in that I’m supposed to:

1.   Thank and link to the person that presented me the award.
2.   Pass this award on to 15 fantastic bloggers.
3.   Contact said bloggers and let them know they’ve won.
4.   State 7 things about myself.

Number one – check.  Number four – the fun part, and the reason I’m finally getting around to this – see the next paragraph.  Numbers two and three – well, they’re hard.  I read way more than 15 blogs – and if I take the time to subscribe to and read a blog, I think it’s fantastic.  So I really am not going to try to choose.  Just check out anyone listed in my Health and Wellness Blogs over to the right, and you’ll have a good read.  I think they’re all pretty amazing.

So back to the 7 things about myself.  I love reading these about other people, and I always feel like mine are probably terribly boring, but who knows?  Maybe you’ll learn something about me that’s fun, funny, or shocking!  Here they are: » Read more: Having Fun with Seven Things

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Weekly Weigh In, and Blaming Breakfast on the Dog

April 3rd, 2010

The Culprit

Yep – that’s her on the left.  The culprit for my not so healthy breakfast.  Back to that in a few, but first, this is a pretty important weekend.  It’s Easter weekend (and I’m not one of the bloggers giving up chocolate bunnies; more power to you guys, but if I don’t eat at least an ear, that little bastard will taunt me well into next week and I’ll end up taking down him and three of his friends on sale at the drugstore).  It’s also the weekend that marks five months of my reconstruction that started on my thirtieth birthday, and it marks almost three months of this blog!  If you’re new to the blog, you might want to start here, here, here, here, and here.

First things first, Saturdays are my weekly weigh in days, and this morning I weighed in at 254.2 (damn new scales.  I so liked being below 250!).  All in all, that’s a 53.8 pound loss since I began this journey, and 1.8 pounds down from last week!  As I type this, I realize that one huge piece of this reconstruction is taking away the power these numbers have had over me for most of my life.  The first time I divulged my weight on this blog, I really wasn’t feeling it.  I thought about deleting that post many times, but I thought it was important to take away the power I was giving those numbers, so I did share them.  Now I’ll share my weight and my journey with any poor person who asks.  That in and of itself has helped tremendously.

Last night, I watched Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (a show and concept I absolutely love), and there was a teenager named Brittany who shared about her struggle with obesity so openly and courageously.  I was in awe.  She’s 16 or 17 years old, and she’s dealing with this challenge incredibly.  It’s taken me thirty years to get comfortable talking about my weight!  I always kind of hoped » Read more: Weekly Weigh In, and Blaming Breakfast on the Dog

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