Day #83 - End of Month Results and a New Challenge

It wasn't until I started putting my numbers into my spreadsheet that I realized this was the end of my first month of tracking my weight loss.  January and February were all about smoking and drinking; March was all about the weight (and no smoking and drinking too).

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to see another 2.5 pound loss for the week.  I started the month at 348 and finished at 337... A very respectable 11 pounds lost so far!

I also tallied up my second week of scores on my "healthy living index".  My first week I scored 6.4; this week I scored a 6.9.  A little improvement, but more importantly, consistent with the previous week's score.

This month I really have felt like I've turned a corner.  I feel like I'm heading into spring and summer firing on all cylinders and I'm starting to get excited about what I might be able to accomplish... I think I might be starting to believe!

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So now I need to turn to a new challenge for this week.  Unfortunately, Mrs. FogDog did not do so well this week posting a gain of 1 pound.  For the month she lost a respectable 3 pounds... a good pace for someone who only needs to lose about 40 pounds.  From the moment she got off the scale I could see she was discouraged.  She ate well all week, but last week she lost a bunch of weight and my belief is that her fluctuations are more about water.  Like I said she lost 3 pounds for the month.

Anyway, this event presents us with our first challenge... Staying the course.

This has been our pattern for as long as I can remember: We start eating healthier and we start losing weight.  Then one of us has a "bad" day and finds an excuse to do "bad" things (remember my trip to Chinese buffet this week?).  Usually we recover, but the from that one of us has a "bad" week and gets discouraged.  That person then proceeds to "drag down" the other person because misery loves company.  The other person joins in the spiral downward,  and a bad week for one then turns into a second bad week, but this time for two.  From there it just all falls apart and we end up back where we started and depressed.  Mind you, all of this happens on a subconscious level, it's not intentional sabotage.  One begins to sink and it becomes a convenient "excuse" for the other to follow behind.

So my new challenge for this week is to help Mrs. FogDog stay the course.  I need to not give her any excuses for having a second bad week.  I need to help her understand that the number from this week doesn't match the effort.  From a percentage-wise she's lost 2% of her weight where I have lost 3%.  She only weighs 160 and wants to get to 120.  that's less than a pound each week to hit her goal within a year.  My personal belief is that she should only weigh in once each month but you know how it is, especially when you have a husband dropping several pounds each week, you want to see results and it's hard to stay off the scale.

So this week we are going to break the cycle.  If I have to I'll be strong for the both of us and help her get past her discouraged feelings so that next Saturday she sees a better number.  We are both aware of the pattern which is the first step to beating it. 

Stay Strong!

Slight Change of Plans... Why Wait?

My last post was actually pretty emotional for me.  It got me really thinking hard about my future and my pending transformation.  To be honest, I woke up this morning wondering just what else I needed to wait for in order to get this process going. What else do I need, a sign from God?  You know how it is, we all need to draw that line in the sand and say (this is where it all starts… right here).  Until you reach that line nothing you do matters.  Whether you gain 5 pounds or lose 5 before that line it really makes no difference.  The line is drama, it’s the line you plan on pointing to 2 years from now when you are surrounded by people who want to know how you did it.

I continued to ponder as I read some other people’s blogs, and then sat down for breakfast.  As I was eating I asked my wife how many calories she thought I was eating.  She had made me two bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches; here’s my calorie total for breakfast:

• 1 Large cup of coffee with cream and sugar – 150 calories
• 3 Eggs – 210 calories
• 4 Pieces of Bacon – 120 calories
• ¾ Oz. Cheese – 75 calories
• 4 Pieces of Bread – 480 calories
• 2 Tbsp Butter – 200 calories

That’s a grand total of 1235 calories just for breakfast!  If I was on my plan right now I’d have about 300 calories left for the day.  This has to stop!  I couldn’t even remember anything about the 5 minutes (yes I said 5) where I sat there and wolfed those sandwiches down.  How’d they taste?  I couldn’t tell you because I ate them mindlessly.  No More!

I told my wife I’m ready to start now.  We’re doing this together so I needed her agreement; we compromised on starting tomorrow (which ironically will be our cheat day).  It doesn’t matter; in my opinion we really started today.  I went into the basement and setup an area for working out.  The new house we bought 2 months ago came with an elliptical machine and a treadmill plus we already had an elliptical and free weights.  I don’t like the elliptical that came with the house plus it only supports 325 lbs, so I’m giving that one to a friend.  I organized the room and now it’s ready to be used.

Later on we went out to the big and tall store.  All of my clothes are extremely tight and so I wanted to get just a couple things to hold me over until the pounds start coming off.  First I had to drive 45 minutes to get there.  When I arrived they didn’t have any jeans that were “regular fit”.  I know we fat guys need some room in the seat, but it’s always too much for me and it always looks like I have a big load in my pants.  Anyway, no jeans, but I found a nice pair of shorts.  I tried and tried to find a collar shirt to match but no luck.  Everytime I found a color I liked I couldn’t find it in my size (3XLT).  Finally, I got pissed, dropped the shorts, and left.  Nothing like a waste of a 45 minute drive!  All the way home I kept thinking about how mice it would be to not have to go to a special store to buy clothes anymore.  The time will come soon!

Tomorrow morning I will get on the scale.  Then My wife and I will go shopping to get the food we need for the rest of the week.  I am starting to get excited.  Even though tomorrow is a cheat day for us (In order to keep our schedule right), I still plan on eating reasonable.  Tomorrow I’ll post my plan… and my starting weight.  Wish me luck!

Letter To Myself - It's Time!

Dear FogDog-

Wow! Has it really been almost a year and a half since your last failed attempt at weight loss? So much has happened since then that I’m surprised you want to try again. Do you realize that the last time you posted on this blog…

• You lived in a different city
• You had a different job
• You drove a different car
• You still smoked
• You didn’t know you had severe sleep apnea
• You had just turned 40
• You were committed to starting another (failed) journey to lose 100 pounds

I went back and read your post called “starting over” that you made after your first failed attempt at weight loss. You talked about those couple of years as “dark times”. Things haven’t really gotten much better have they? In fact I think it’s safe to say things are worse now than they’ve been in quite a while. Sure, you managed to quit smoking 3 months ago, but at what cost? At the moment you are pretty darn close to 350lbs, you are miserable, and completely exhausted with life. Your job is stressful and not particularly fulfilling so your weekends are spent “unwinding” with a bottle of rum. Your kids don’t understand why you never play with them, and you seem depressed almost all the time. Can things get much worse? I’m amazed that you would even want to try again; you know that you are bound to fail!

But wait a minute; I also see that you are not the same person as before. Something about you is different but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s all those books you started reading about positive psychology. Maybe now you are starting to see that you need to focus within yourself instead of always looking for external fixes. I think those books have helped but I don’t think that’s it.

Maybe it’s all the reading you’ve been doing about being healthy. I know the book you read by Chris Powell seemed to really get you motivated. I’m sure it had something to do with his mental approach to losing weight. No, I think that book was helpful, but I’m not sure that has made you a different person either.

I guess it could be all the health problems you have now. I bet you hate wearing a CPAP at night. My guess is that taking medication for high blood pressure isn’t much fun nor is the constant aching in your knees and feet. I’m sure those things would be enough to motivate you to get healthy.

Or maybe it’s just all of the above; I don’t know for sure, but whatever it is that has changed in you, I can see it very clearly. I saw it 3 months ago when you simply “decided” to quit smoking. You just stopped and even when your best friend gave up and started smoking again, you kept going. No tricks, no gimmicks, you simply decided it was time to quit. You didn’t let anyone influence you and your determination was unwavering. I can see you are now ready to do that again, only this time with losing weight. I think after almost 16 months, you are finally ready to pick yourself back up, dust yourself off, and start again. Actually, I don’t think it, I know it!

Since I can clearly see you are sincerely ready to give it another shot, I wanted to take some time to give you some advice:

• Face your fears! I know you very well; I know that one thing you are afraid of is that if you succeed at losing the weight your excuse for being unhappy will be gone, and then you will have to deal with whatever else might be out there. That might happen; losing weight is no guarantee to make you happy. You are going to have to face this fear and all those other ones that you aren’t quite ready to share yet.

• You need support! From a very early age you taught yourself that you shouldn’t need to rely on anyone to get by. I think you did that so that you wouldn’t have to deal with the feeling of being rejected when you need help. While it might have helped you to become highly independent, it has also made you closed off and incapable of asking for help from anyone. That needs to change. Reach out to your family and friends. Reach out to the blogosphere and find new friends that share your goals. You won’t succeed if you think you can do this one on your own.

• Help Others! You’re a smart guy, you’ve read a lot about being healthy and you’ve fought obesity your whole life. Something happened when you started volunteering in youth sports; you discovered that you actually like to help others! Share your story (good and bad) with anyone who will listen. Keep blogging and stay engaged with the community; it will keep you engaged with your battle.

• You need to keep your word! You’ve promised this before; you’ve said you would change your ways. Every time you promise and then fail to live up to it, it eats away at your soul. No crazy commitments this time, only promise to yourself the things you can realistically achieve.

• Get ready to fail! It’s going to happen and you know it. This journey will not be in a straight line so you need to be able to forgive yourself when you fail. This isn’t a “free pass” to be used when things get tough. You need to hold yourself accountable, but when you fail, you need to figure out what happened, forgive yourself, and then pick yourself back up as quickly as possible.

• Give yourself permission to succeed! Yes, you will fail from time to time, but you also need to allow yourself to succeed. I still don’t know why you don’t feel like you deserve complete success in life, but you do. You deserve happiness and success as much as anyone else.

• Lastly, and most importantly, you need to BELIEVE! Even with all the change I see in you, I’m still not convinced that you truly believe in yourself. I think there have been so many failures, that it’s almost impossible for you to see yourself at a healthy weight. This won’t work if you don’t believe in yourself. YOU CAN DO IT!

That’s all I’ve got for you. I know you are planning on starting your journey on September 1, so you have 2 weeks to get ready. I wish you the best of luck and I’ll do my best to help you stay on the path.

Sincerely,
Mark (A.K.A Fogdog)

Day 20 - Weight Loss Results

Starting Weight – 330

Day 10 Weight – 322

Current Weight – 319

Period Weight Loss – 3 Pounds

Overall Weight Loss – 11 Pounds

3 More pounds!  I'm happy, though I had set the period goal at 4 pounds and didn't quite get there.  One thing I forgot about, since I'm weighing in every 10 days instead of every week there will be some periods where I will go through 2 weekends between weigh-ins.  I've said before that weekends are my toughest time, and I probably should have taken that into account this time.  Regardless, I have lots of good things going on right now and there's still lots of opportunity as well.

What went well

My first highlight of the period has to be my performance on the Friday (1/18) right after my last weigh-in.  On the day before (The day I posted my last results), Virginia had a pretty severe snowstorm.  Well, not actually severe in my book (I lived in Maine for a while), but definitely enough to wreak havoc in the area.  No kidding, I had literally just posted my 10 day results and was getting ready to go read some of the blogs I'm following when the power went out at my house.  I live in a rural area and given the magnitude of the wet, heavy snow, I figured we might be getting ready to see an extended power outage.

By morning, my concerns appeared to be coming to reality as we still didn't have power and it was pretty cold in the house.  I had to go to work so I took a shower in the dark with what was going to be the last of the hot water.  It's funny, I didn't even think about healthy eating until after my shower when I suddenly realized that I couldn't cook my oatmeal and didn't dare open the refrigerator to get out some hard boiled eggs.  Not only that, but I didn't have any snacks or a lunch to bring either.

Now folks, let me tell you that these types of events in my life are exactly what I use as an excuse to stop eating healthy.  When I look back at my past failures, you can definitely see a pattern of me utilizing changes in my routine (vacation, special events, new job, etc) as a great excuse to stop living a healthy lifestyle.  What has me so proud is that this time I recognized it and told myself that I was going to have to find a way to deal with it.

I stopped at the local Sheetz for breakfast.  I was thrilled to discover they sold oatmeal at their deli; I got 1/2 cup of oatmeal with dried fruit, a small veggie breakfast wrap, and a cup of coffee.  For lunch it was back to Sheetz for a roast beef wrap, an apple, and a banana (I never even realized they sold fresh fruit!).  At dinner time I took the family to Red Robin and I had a plain burger with lettuce and tomato and a side salad instead of fries.

Fortunately, by the time we got home that evening the power had been restored!  I didn't even try to estimate the calories, but I suspect that If I did go over my 2500 calorie limit, it wasn't by much.  I might not have hit my calorie target and I certainly didn't get to spread my calories out over 4-6 meals, but this was a small battle that I won that could have had huge consequences if I had made different (poor) choices.

Although overshadowed by the power event, another aspect that went well for me was the beginning of establishing my morning routine.  I know I said I was going to write it out and put it on my bathroom mirror, but I didn't.  However I did see progress and I believe that by the end of the first 30 days I will be well on my way to following my morning routine every single day.  In fact, I actually got up this morning (on a Sunday) at my normal work week time and followed my morning routine.

Areas to Improve

As I said above, there is still plenty of room for improvement.  For starters, my water intake slipped a little.  I missed my water target 5 of the last 10 days, but what was more troubling to me was that I missed it for 3 consecutive days during the week.  I know my body and I know that the weight does not come off that well if I don't get my water in each day.  I actually believe I would've lost another pound and hit my target for the period if I had done better with my water consumption.

The other area that needs improvement is exercise.  Daily exercise is not a full blown habit for me just yet.  To be honest, I believe I only exercised on 4 of the 10 days this period.  As I lose more and more weight, it will get much harder to keep moving forward if  don't establish daily exercise as a habit.  However, I am far from beating myself up over this.  50 days ago I quit smoking!  20 days ago I started eating healthy!  I know I can't be perfect and change everything at once and I already have a lot of change going on right now.  At the moment my philosophy is this: Any exercise I do each day is better than what I used to do.  Some day soon I will need to work on this, but that day is not today.

Moving Forward

Like last time, I don't see the need to make any changes to my plan just yet, but their may be some small tweaks on the horizon (after my first 30 days).  I did hit my target for sticking to plan; I stuck to all the individual elements of my plan 76% of the time.  This was a little less than last period, and was mainly due to exercise (40%) and water (50%).

I'm setting this period goal at 4 pounds again.  I'm actually excited to get through these next 10 days; if I can lose the 4 pounds I will have lost 15 pound in my first 30 days. Not too shabby, in fact I only managed to lose 17 pounds during a 30 day weight loss challenge and I was starving myself and miserable the whole time. This time I'm much happier and so far (knock on wood) the change hasn't been too difficult.  Good luck to everyone out there!

Day 10 - Weight Loss Results

Starting Weight – 330
Current Weight – 322
Period Weight Loss – 8 Pounds
Overall Weight Loss – 8 Pounds

It’s hard for me to be critical about anything when I lose 8 pounds in 10 days, but as promised, I will look at both the positive and negative aspects of this last period:

What went well

Obviously I was doing something right to lose that much weight in just 10 days.  Without a doubt, my biggest success came from what I ate.  I stuck to my plan of 5-6 meals each day and kept my calorie total below 2500 calories on all but about 2 days (and I was only over by about 100 calories on those days).  I ate plenty of fruits and vegetables, and had a nice big breakfast to start my day off right.

I posted my plan this week, but I haven’t posted my goals yet (but I will soon).  One goal that I haven’t mentioned in any of my posts yet is that I am trying to stick to all the components of my plan 75% of the time.  What does that mean?  I have a list of items from my plan on a piece of paper in my bedroom.  Every night I put a check next to all the items that I met the target and at the end of the week I can add it up to see my % to plan.  I like this because it’s hard to be 100% perfect all the time.  In the last 10 days I was able to stay on plan 79% of the time.

I also did extremely well with my water consumption.  My goal on water is 100 ounces each day.  I did not have a day less than 80 ounces and that only happened twice.  The rest of the time I hit my target.

Lastly, I did a rigorous workout last Saturday.  Weekends are my Achilles’ heel; I have a tendency to become a lazy slob on the weekends.  Not only did I eat well all weekend, but on Saturday I completed 60 minutes of strength training first thing in the morning.

Areas to Improve

Although I had a great 10 days, there is still plenty of room for improvement.  For starters, I still haven’t been able to establish a morning routine.  As I’ve said before, this is very important for me to do.  I did well for about the first 2 or 3 days and then I started “ignoring” the alarm clock.  I think I need to write out my morning routine and post it on my bathroom mirror.  It might sound silly, but maybe that will help motivate me by seeing it every day.

Because my morning routine didn’t go so well, my exercise plan also died out as the days went by.  At first when I missed my morning workout I made it up in the evening, but eventually I started missing days altogether.  Sunday was an exercise disappointment after such a great workout on Saturday.

Finally, I also realized (too late) that I might have pushed myself a little too hard with the strength training.  Although the workout on Saturday was satisfying, by Sunday I was too sore to do anything and I basically felt that way up until Tuesday this week.  I’m not saying that’s the only reason why I didn't excercise, but it didn't help.

Moving Forward

I’m not going to change much for the second 10 days; I’ll be keeping my calorie and water targets the same.  I am going to set a goal to write out a morning routine and post it in my bathroom and I want to put some effort into doing it every day.  As for a new weight target, I’m going to go with 4 pounds in the next 10 days.  It was great to hit 8 pounds this period, but I know some of that was just water weight and it will be a little harder to shed the pounds in the next 10 days.  Best of luck to everyone else out there!

Day 1 – And my starting weight is… Unknown???

Ok so the new year has come and gone, time to get this weight loss started. I just got back from vacation on Monday and decided I would start on Tuesday (yesterday). There were really 3 big reasons why I chose January 8th:

1. I wasn't ready with my plan and goals at the start of the year
2. I was planning a vacation on January 5-7
3. January 8th marks 30 days since I've quit smoking

Part of my new plan is to have a morning routine that includes some exercise so I got up yesterday at 5:30AM. Obviously since it’s the start of my new weight loss journey, I wanted to get on the scale and see my starting point. I got on my Wii Scale and prepared myself for my starting weight. The result… “oops you’ve exceeded my maximum weight limit”. I stepped off and then back on again (you know, because somehow if I stand a little different, maybe lean forward a little, the result might change). No good, I’ve exceeded the weight limit of my Wii scale. I had just weighed in at 327 before Christmas, so my guess is the scale tops out at 330 so that will be my starting point.

I’ve had this Wii scale for 4 years and this is the first time I’ve managed to exceed the weight limit on it. Oh just how far I have fallen! My wife seemed to be bothered by it; I think because she thought it was going to be a de-motivator for me. The truth is, I said to myself “Perfect, you’ve just hit rock bottom! Nowhere to go but up.” And that’s how I started my day.

I made it through the day quite easily; I wish all the coming days would go so well (not likely). I met my calorie intake goal, got almost 60 minutes of exercise in, and met my water goal. By the end of the day I was pretty tired so it was off to bed at 9:30PM.

That brings us to today. I managed to get up on time so I could get a workout in before work. Of course as still curious about my actual weight so I got on the scale again this morning. SUCCESS! It worked; I weigh 329.7. I typically don’t weigh myself more than once per week but I really wanted to see just how close I was to 330. Now I know.

So now it’s on, let the weight loss begin. In the coming days I’ll be posting my goals and my plan, both of which are quite a bit different from the last time. Best of luck to all of us!

Weigh-in #15 - 2/20/10

I realized that when I nominated people for the creative writing award, I linked them to my main page instead of the award page.  If you are here to collect your award, please go here for the instructions.

Starting Weight: 297 lbs
Previous Weigh-in: 283.8 lbs
Current Weight: 280.9 lbs
Weekly Loss (Gain): 2.9 lbs

Total Weight Loss: 16.1 lbs


A Solid loss this week!  I was a little nervous... I ate well all week and I got my exercise and water intake right, but my youngest daughter is having problems with one of her knees and she had to get blood work yesterday.  She couldn't go to gymnastics so to make her feel better I took her to McDonalds for a Happy Meal and a sundae.  I only ate 1 sandwich and fries (and the rest of my daughters sundae that she couldn't finish), but I was worried all the salt would cause me to retain water.  I guess not.

My friend is back in town today, so I'm going to see if he's still up for the 30 day challenge.  If so I'll put it out here early in the week.  I'm pretty excited; it's going to be a tough challenge!

A Bitter Pill To Swallow

I meant to write this post yesterday but I got called in to work and ended up spending my whole day (and most of the night) there. Although I don’t particularly enjoy working on my day off, it does provide me with some weight loss benefits. When I have to go in to work, it’s because a piece of equipment is broken and needs to be fixed immediately. The work is usually intense with lots of moving around and little time to stop and eat. From noon yesterday until 3AM, my diet consisted of 1 Whopper with small fries (my only option at 10PM) and a Fiber Bar. I also drank about 80oz of water, so I did pretty well yesterday. What I liked the most about it is that I was so busy I didn't even think about eating.

Anyway, I wanted to spend a little time writing about what happened to me last week. As I said in my weigh-in post, I felt liked I got kicked in the teeth. Earlier in the week I had written a post about making sure you win those little battles. I was feeling pretty good because I had quite of few of those little wins and I was feeling like things were all starting to come together. But with those feelings came another foe that sometimes strikes without warning… complacency. When things are going bad, you spend a lot of time thinking about how to make things better, but when you are doing well, there’s this tendency to stop pushing yourself because you are already doing well… more on this in a moment.

When I hit the scale I was extremely disappointed. I felt like I squandered what was a good thing and it made me sick just thinking about it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a loss over a gain anytime; usually when I comment on other people’s blogs, I encourage people to see any loss as a good thing. For me though, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t lose a lot of weight, it was more about missing the opportunity that was right in front of me.

After starting the week off well, I started to get that feeling of being on the right track. With that, my focus waned and complacency rolled in. Being an engineer, I’ve since spent a good deal of time analyzing what went well and what went wrong for me last week:

What went well

• Early in the week I had a lot of small victories. I managed to go all week long with chocolate cake in my house and had the will power to refrain from eating it.
• I also got all my exercise in and I actually increased my elliptical workouts from about 1.6 miles to 3. 
• Finally, I kept to my goal to stay off the TV and PC until 8PM each night. Unfortunately my overall activity level didn’t really go up much because I didn’t work out in the morning so I filled that empty evening time with making up missed morning workouts.

 

What went wrong

• By late in the week my portion control was off. Instead of 4oz of protein, I was eating 6oz. Every meal had just a little more than normal and over the week it definitely added up.
• I didn’t drink water like I usually do. TLEstrogen Has been posting some good stuff about the importance of water and she's absolutely right. I didn’t drink bad stuff, I just didn’t drink anything.
• Lastly, my weight workouts weren’t as intense as they should’ve been. I’ve been having problems sleeping lately and as a result, I haven’t been getting up to work out. All week long I had to do my workouts in the evening and I know that I never work out as hard when it’s in the evening.

The results on the scale showed why I can't get complacent.  I accept responsibility for my actions, and in hindsight, the results were not surprising; they were just difficult to see.  It was indeed a bitter pill to swallow.

So this last Saturday was a bad day for me, but I decided to try something new to deal with it and I found it seems to have worked really well. After the morning weigh-in I was feeling pretty bad. I knew it would be hard to gain any motivation and I also knew that further negative behavior would just make me feel even worse. Instead of trying to fight it, I decided to give myself a day off. For all of Saturday, I didn’t worry about diet and exercise. Instead I spent the day playing with the kids and just hanging out at the house. It might sound funny, but by allowing myself a down day, it lifted my spirits and by Sunday I was back at it. I didn’t eat badly on Saturday, but I also didn’t worry about what I did eat. Those people that actually know me would say I’m a bit of a perfectionist; I think I put too much pressure on myself to do the right things all the time. To be honest it really felt good to just forget about it for a day.

Now I feel refreshed and ready to get back at it and the timing is perfect because I have some things to look forward to on the horizon. First, this is week 6 of my current workout. After 6 weeks I said I would take a week off from lifting (it’s good to let your muscles have an extended recovery periodically). After my week off I will start a new workout plan so I’m excited to do something a little different.

The second event I have coming up is a 30 day challenge with a good friend of mine. I’m going to do a separate post on the specifics, but for now I’ll say it’s going to be extremely tough to do and there’s potential for a decent amount of money to end up changing hands. This kind of challenge is right up my motivational alley! I’ll have more about it in the days to come including the rules and a side by side comparison of the challengers so you can see how we match up.

Lastly, I wanted to give a little recognition to someone who’s been fighting the weight loss battle for years and lately has been doing really well. Weezel lost another 3.5 pounds this last week bringing her total since January to 13.5! This is a great accomplishment especially when her profession has her working around food all day long. Although she doesn’t have a blog about weight loss, she does have a real interesting fiction blog called What Scares You?, and a recipe blog called What’s Cooking?. Weezel, I’m proud of the fact that my blog has inspired you, but you deserve all the credit for all the hard work you are doing. Keep it up, I have no doubt you’ll get there!

My Motivation to Lose Weight

Last week I wrote an article called Finding Motivation to Lose Weight, so I though this week I might share some of my motivations. For me, the motivational force that drives me the most is probably “Challenge/Competition”. I love to be challenged; something about it just gets me going. I hate to lose in anything I do. I would be dominating on The Biggest Loser.  It probably comes from my childhood since I played a lot of sports. After that, I would say that 2 other smaller motivational forces for me are “Greed” and “Fear”.

So how do I leverage those motivational forces? Below is a list of some of the things I do to stay motivated:

The Bet - The first and biggest motivation for me is the bet I have with a very good friend. It started last year at the start of the year. At the time I weighed 314 pounds and he weighed 300 so we were pretty close in weight. The bet is very simple; the first person to 250 pounds wins! The prize is $2 for every pound difference in weight at the end of the competition. So if I win (and I will) and my friend weighs in at 280 when I reach the goal, then he pays me (280 – 250) x $2 = $60. He offered to give me a handicap because I weighed more, but I refused as it only made the challenge even greater! The money adds a little “greed” motivation, but I really don't care about the money.  The need to win the bet is what really keeps me going. By the way, for the record, I am currently winning the bet handily (If you are reading this DJ you better get your ass moving).

The Blog – I started writing this blog because 1) I wanted to add accountability, 2) I wanted to share what I know with others who want to lose weight, and 3) Because I’ve never done it before.  As I said I enjoy a good challenge. A few years ago, I started to consider writing about losing weight and being healthy. I kept telling myself that I would do after I lost the weight. Then at the end of last year I started to realize that the process of writing about it would actually help me to complete it and what better way to prove it can be done than by doing it yourself. What adds to the challenge is the fact that I know this doesn’t work if I don’t produce results. Who is going to follow a blog about losing weight written by someone who hasn’t lost any weight? I hate to fail at anything I do so I am motivated to keep at it and make this endeavor a success.

The Trip – This summer I am traveling to the northeast for vacation with family and friends. This one has a lot of “Vanity” but there is also a bit of a competition here. Most of my family members are also overweight to some degree or other. In my mind there is some satisfaction in being able to say to myself “I lost it all first” and since I can’t really say that directly to my family I need to show it in person. I know it seems silly to some people out there, but those people obviously aren’t highly motivated by competition.

The Summer Tradition – Last year we started a tradition that I hope to continue on this year. At the very end of the summer, I take a day off from work and we drive to King’s Dominion (an amusement park here in Virginia). Last year I was extremely nervous that I would not fit on the rides. Luckily, my oldest daughter (the daredevil) did not quite make the height requirements to go on most of the roller coasters and other big rides that usually have tight seats in order to keep you strapped in. However, she did qualify for a couple smaller roller coasters and of course needed to try them out. My wife hates roller coasters, so I am the default parent for thrill rides like that (she’s the default parent for spinning rides). Anyway, the lines were long as they always are at amusement parks, and I was forced to stand there for 20 minutes and wonder if I would be able to fit in the seat. When we finally got close my fear grew immensely. I was so worried about how disappointed my daughter would be if we couldn’t go on because of my weight. Then I saw an overweight person that could not fit on the ride. I felt horrible for her as she walked away with her child towing behind her. I spent the next 5 minutes trying to decide if I was bigger than her or smaller than her; it was really close. Luckily I fit (barely) and I didn’t have to take that long walk with my kid towing behind. I said before, fear is one of the strongest motivators out there. This year my daughter will be tall enough for the big thrill rides and some of them even have posted weight limits. Occasionally I remind myself of how I felt waiting in that line and I know that I never want to have to worry like that again.

So these are some of the things I do to try to stay motivated. Some change from time to time and others take their place, but I do try to keep a list of motivators because sometimes it’s hard to stay motivated and you need to look for something different once in a while. Finding the right motivation is key to success and is unique for everyone who takes the journey. What motivates you to lose weight?