Tuesday, March 9, 2010

And The Winner is...

331.6 lbs – 1.8 lbs lost this week - 18.4 lbs total lost

Last week I took the lead in the competition, and this week I held on for the victory. I have lost over 5% of my starting body weight. I have also lost 2 inches off my waist, it is almost time to get a new Belt. I only lost 1.8 lbs this past week, but after throwing down a 6.6 last week, I expected a plateau. This week I have stepped up the level of my cardio, and continued with my diet.

Friday I am going on a road trip to Tennessee and on to Florida on Saturday, so preparation and sticking to a meal plan will be my key to success this week and next. I plan not to eat out on the road. I will take a cooler that will hold my water and food. The greatest challenge will be timing the food, and avoiding the desire to snack constantly while driving. It will take some discipline, but I think I am up to the task.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Weight Loss Competition

333.4 lbs - 6.6 lbs lost this week - 16.6 lbs total lost

Four weeks ago some friends and I started a friendly weight loss competition, and after the first three weeks I was in last place. For some reason I thought that a half-hearted diet without exercise would win it all. With those hopes dashed, I realized it was time to get serious about shrinking once again.

Losing weight is not something new to me. In February of 2006 I weighed in at 342 pounds, and I felt horrible at that weight. Some friends at that time bought in to the idea of a competition, like the show The Biggest Loser, with the winner winning $100. I started journaling my food, and counting calories. I found a simple formula from the Biggest Loser Diet, and began limiting myself to seven times my body weight in calories. I also tried to maximize my protein intake while limiting my fat and bad carbohydrate consumption. This was difficult at first, so I tried to find a tool online that would help me track what I wanted. I didn't like any of the tools available, so I created a database in Microsoft Access that tracked what I wanted it to. It tracked my nutritional information, weight, measurements, and cardio workouts. I won the competition then, and continued beyond that to lose 90 pounds by October 2006.

A perfect storm of personal tragedy and life altering decisions put me on the path to destruction again. When my Brother passed, the thing he was most proud of me for was loosing that weight. The whole time I was gaining I thought about doing something to reverse that trend, but I never had the strength.

Four years after that initial competition, a couple friends in a far away land (Tennessee) and I decided to do it all again. Law School and lackadaisical attitude put me in last place early. I had dug a hole of well over 1% of weight loss. After realizing that I need to do something about my weight, and that it was time to give up the excuses, I started clawing my way back. Today I jumped into the lead with a 6.6 lb loss this past week.

This past week I focused on getting up to speed on my cardio. The previous week I had worked my way up to 45 minutes on the Elliptical Machine, and this past week I worked back up to 1 hour. This week I will try to go 1 hour every day.

My diet is humming along, and I have started to add more balance. With my meals I will try to have each meal composed of 1/4 protein, 1/4 whole grain complex carbohydrate, and 1/2 vegetables.

The race does not go to the swift, but those that endure to the end.