Well it took forever to get back into the swing of things and ridding myself of some bad habits, but I have finally done away with the first 30lbs…again! It had been battle 1-2lbs at a time for the last couple of weeks and finally this morning I weighed in at 320 bringing my total loss back down after my long dosing of medication for my asthma.

I made two more critical changes that I hope are permanent over the weekend. I have given up drinking Alcohol and Caffeine. Alcohol is to be avoided on the Medifast Program and caffeine is allowed in limitation. Both were contributing in their own ways to my slow weight loss and overall unhealthy life style. I haven’t spoken too much about either but I have been a long time drinker and caffeine junkie. Even though I have been drinking diet soda for a couple of years now, the consumption of it seems to slow my weight loss dramatically. The alcohol obviously does the same thing.

I won’t lie, it was a rough weekend. I drank with friends on Friday night knowing that it would be the last time for a while or perhaps ever, so I had a bit too much. The next day while I was feeling gross, I decided to give up on caffeine as well. After all, why waste a whole Saturday and then be miserable on another day too? The absence of caffeine led to a late day migraine which was indescribably painful and blinding. But, I powered through it and this morning I can assure you that even though I have had little sleep (due to sick child) I’m up and moving without the assistance of caffeine.

I’m feeling better overall about my weight loss, my health and my general outlook. It is just a couple of more roadblocks to a healthy life and I feel as if more weight has been lifted. Today is a good day!

I’m continuing to lose weight this week with another 2lbs of weight loss! I really struggled for a couple of days last week as I worked to get back into the groove of the Medifast Program, but when all was said and done I find myself with a renewed motivation towards my weight loss. I think the impact of gaining back 12lbs after taking my asthma meds (steroids) for 3 weeks really had a deep cutting impact on me. I found myself a lot more depressed and frustrated then I really expected.

But, all is good today and I’m enjoying a Medifast Ready-to-Drink Shake as I write this. I’m finding that it makes my life easier to keep a case of the ready-to-drink shakes in the fridge at work to ensure I don’t have to worry about fixing any meals or cleaning anything up while in the office. I’m lazy, so I know that this could easily derail my progress, so keeping RTD’s on hand ensures I stay on track. No worries here!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Eat as much as you want and still lose weight. Stop over-working yourself in the gym and lose weight the easy way. Try the new miracle sweeping the nation. I’ve heard them all and I’ve tried many. I’m talking about diet pills. Some diet pills are herbal, some are made of mysterious ingredients from another Continent and others are chemical concoctions cooked up by pharmaceutical companies. They all make the same claim…you can lose weight by taking a pill.

I have so many things to say about diet pills I don’t even know where to start. The first diet pills I tried were made by a company promoting their products as miracle herbal cures for all of your health woes. I took them for quite a while and I did lose some weight, but had some serious side effects. As it turns out, many of the diet pills on the market are actually just legal forms of speed, based on Ephedrine, something the makers don’t want you to know. While the overall verdict is still out on whether they are bad for you or not, I can tell you that taking herbal speed had some pretty bad effects on me ranging from mood swings to pounding heart rate.

Even more frightening then my comparatively mild symptoms, my good friend Rob was taking a well known prescription diet pill for some time and ended up at his doctor’s office and subsequently quitting the pills after he had some horrible heart-related symptoms. Not to long after quitting he was involved in a class action lawsuit for long term health problems. I can’t imagine anything scarier.

So for me it all boils down to some simple facts and it’s these things that make me glad to be managing my weight with Medifast. First off, pretty much all diet pills have a disclaimer in their advertising if you look closely enough that says “When used in combination with a healthy diet and regular exercise”. Now wait a minute, didn’t I buy these pills because I didn’t have to do anything special and I could eat as much as I want and shed those unwanted pounds?

Second, the one thing Medifast is teaching me is that there is no miracle cure to weight loss. Whether you find weight loss in a pill, fad diet or radical surgery, you are destine to end up fat again, because by short cutting the work involved in weight loss you are skipping the most important part of the process which is modifying your behavior. Being on Medifast has taught me good eating habits, portion control and the need for regular exercise, all things I will take with me to goal and beyond. Sure, I could run out and down a bottle of miracle diet pills and who knows, they might even work (if I don’t mind the racing heart or other symptoms) but in the end I will just gain the weight back or need to take diet pills for the rest of my life to keep the weight off.

Surgery is the same way. I know several people that have had one type of weight loss surgery or another. I know of one success story, one failure with complications and one failure in progress. A friend got the less invasive stomach reducing surgery done this past year and he lost quite a bit of weight, but the small food portions he can eat now he reserves for chocolate, chips, soda and all of the other horrible foods that made him fat in the first place. So he has failed to reach goal, has the same bad eating habits and now has the complications of surgery on top of it.

I guess the whole point of my rant is that I have tried pills, I have tried fads and I’m glad I woke up before going as far as surgery. Maybe those are choices that work for some people but in my mind it is still missing the most important ingredient and that is CHANGE! Medifast is providing the change that I need. There is no miracle cure to being fat, it took years and work to get this fat and it will take time and hard work to get healthy. I have no illusions of anything different at this point.

I lost 5lbs in my first week back on track after finishing my medication for Asthma. I have a renewed drive and I’m feeling really good. I’m working on getting the diet soda out of my life still by replacing it with massive consumption of water, so that should help keep me going with some healthy pounds down.

As I mentioned last week, I feel a huge difference in my mental and physical well being when I’m taking in a higher volume of protein then carbohydrates. I have more energy and just don’t feel so bloated after meals. I think it has taught me what being full is really all about. It isn’t eating until you hurt and want to lie down, it is eating until the hunger is gone. Our bodies probably tell us everything we need to know about our portion sizes, but unfortunately the drug-like addiction to food can create cravings that drive us to over-eat.

I’m not a doctor by any means, but there is certainly something to all of that. What is important to me is that I feel better and eventually will look better with smaller meals more often and a smaller percentage of calories taken in through fatty and carb-rich foods. I honestly don’t miss them that much any more!

Anyway, weight this week is 323lbs. putting me within 5lbs or so of my pre-medication weight! I’m excited to get it off and to get down below 300lbs for the first time in years!

When I was young I owned a motorcycle or two…not your slow cruiser, but fast sport bikes made for speed and corners. I have long missed those days and lately have been yearning to be back on a bike. Perhaps it is just a midlife crisis of sorts as I move in on 36 years of age, but I never really stopped missing motorcycle riding. An agreement I have with my wife has recently come up again and could be the best motivator of them all where my weight loss is concerned. The deal is, if I hit my goal weight, I get to buy whatever motorcycle I want. That was the deal anyway and that is changing now.

I recently found a bike for sale that I have been eyeballing for some time, a Kawasaki ZX10R. I found one that is a super good deal and I’m thinking of buying it. Now being that I’m still 300+ pounds, it will most likely sit in my garage next to my mountain bike until I get down to a comfortable riding weight. For me this might just prove to be the biggest motivator of them all, especially for getting back on bike riding in the morning for exercise. After all, if I have to see that beautiful sport bike sitting next to my mountain bike every morning I guarantee you I will be extra motivated to riding longer and harder to get down to my goal weight faster!!

Motivation comes in all forms and I can always use more!

I awoke this morning feeling as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders and that it was a day of new opportunities. I had been feeling horrible while off Medifast, feeling as if I had failed even though I had every intention of rejoining the program. Today I am confident I will be triumphant in my battle against my obesity and I have a renewed feeling of self-worth. Knowing that even though I’m fat, I’m doing something about it makes all the difference in the world.

In my short time off Medifast I enjoyed some carb-rich foods and I noticed an immediate difference in the way I felt. Although I was watching portion sizes when possible and eating more frequently, I noticed that at times when I ate carb-heavy or starchy foods I felt drained of energy and lethargic. This definitely shows me that I have some hyper carb-sensitivity and need to monitor what I eat for the rest of my life. Being on Medifast and a high protein diet, then going back showed me just how much food affects my physical and mental states.

I will not let anything stop me from goal weight. I think these past few weeks have just proven to me that I have what it takes to continue in the face of adversity and that I have the drive to reach my ultimate goal of a healthy weight and lifestyle overall. I’m feeling great!

I’m just now finishing my nearly 2 week dosing of Prednisone (steroids) for my Asthma and I am almost fully recovered from my flu/cold/asthma illness. I can tell you that it is not a fun experience for a variety of reasons and that I am ready to get back in the saddle and continue on my Medifast weight loss journey.

More than one person has asked me in the last couple of weeks why I would stop the Medifast program just because I was sick. There is a long and short answer to that question and I will give you both. The short answer is, I knew I was going to gain weight from taking the steroids to treat my asthma.

The long answer is a bit more complicated. You see, I have a habit of associating things in my life. For one reason or another I find that I associate experiences good or bad with specific actions or events in my life. I don’t mean to do it but I do and it creates a very black and white way of filing things in my memory. For example, if I were to go to a concert and I had a poor experiencing getting my tickets through a ticket outlet, I would associate that bad experience with concert going in general and you would be hard pressed to get me to go to another concert.

A real world experience that happened recently involved ping pong. My neighbor got a ping pong table for Christmas and all of the neighborhood men were over playing it every night after work in his garage. I finally made my way over to play and found that I was the only one in the group that didn’t have this long history with the game and I quickly found myself being mocked for my inability by one person in general. Rather than focus on getting better or laughing it off for innocent ribbing, I decided I just wouldn’t play it any more because the experience was quite negative. That is just how my brain works.

So, all of that having been said, let me get back to me and Medifast. Knowing that I was going to gain weight no matter how well I did on the program as soon as I started taking the steroids, I decided to stop the program to prevent myself from associating the program with failure and quitting all together. I know it sounds strange and childish but knowing myself as I do, I know I would have blamed Medifast (quite inappropriately) for not working as soon as the weight from the meds started to pack on.

So did I gain weight off the program? Of course I did. I have had a long history with taking Prednisone to treat my asthma and each time I have taken it I have gained a significant amount of weight which didn’t come back off for weeks. I weighed in this morning at a disheartening 328.6 lbs. That is about a 12lb gain in 2 weeks and for me not shocking. It isn’t from over-eating in any way shape or form, it is from water retention and the steroids. Knowing that makes it easy for me to get back on the Medifast Program and forge ahead with my weight loss.

If you haven’t read my earlier posts or if I had not mentioned it, it is this cycle of illness and medication that led me to Medifast in the first place. I have a complicated medical history concerning my weight, acid reflux, asthma and related issues. I have had a couple of close calls and hospital stays in the last 5 years and that alone is what is driving me to Medifast and weight loss. I worry about my weight, my health and my family because of my weight and it is enough to ensure I get back on the Medifast Program and stay with it.

Weight loss is not a journey with an end for me, it is a struggle and an eventual triumph over poor lifestyle choices and management of my own habits. It will not end at a goal weight it will be with me for life. Just like a drug addict is always a drug addict, a fat person is always a fat person in my mind, always in danger of becoming that fat person again no matter how much weight they might lose. So I am dedicated to overcoming the near future struggles, getting the weight off and take each day as it comes. I am full of inspiration, hope and motivation to clear up my asthma, get back on my bike and continue on the Medifast Program!

It’s good to be back!

The summer is quickly closing in and if you live in Arizona, it’s already here. With the warm weather come barbecues, food and a virtual minefield for the health conscious person, especially those of us trying to maintain a low-carb lifestyle. The American picnic table is carb laden to say the least. Macarroni salad, potato salad, potato chips, burgers, hot dogs, fresh melons and fried chicken. It is our heritage in this country and probably why we are all fat.

I found myself struggling through the weekend and last couple of days after a weekend get together that ended with many, many leftovers that don’t fit the Medifast plan or healthy living in general. Sure, the bags of chips say “Zero Trans-fats” but who cares? It still contains a ton of grease, empty calories and salt! Between summer coming and a very, very stressful work environment, I’m finding my weight loss a daily struggle again after I was able to coast worry free for so long. This just re-enforces for me the fact I’m an emotional eater and I’m heavily influenced by my environment.

It isn’t enough to recognize it, but it certainly is a good start.

Well, I have started back up on Medifast but it I am off to a slow restart weight loss wise as I weigh-in with zero change this week. I can feel my clothes are loose and now more than ever I need a new belt to hold my pants on, but the scale says I’m the same. I guess it just goes to show that the scale isn’t everything.

I have been dying to get back on my mountain bike and get riding again, but my Asthma Doctor said I need to wait until the weather gets warmer due to the bad allergy season here in the valley. I can feel that my breathing is a little suppressed and I’m generally wheezy, but I am still chomping at the bit to get back on my bike.

I was thinking about things that I am looking forward to once I have ceased to be fat and I can add swimming to the list. Living in Arizona, many summer days are spent pool side and for me those days are embarrassing as I am not attractive swimming with my shirt off. I look forward to a day when I feel comfortable in the pool and pool side, when I don’t get out of the pool and scramble for a towel.

It has been a rough morning here, hope all is well with everyone else this Monday morning!

I haven’t been around as I was recently in a car accident. It wasn’t a horrific accident by any means but I am sore never-the-less. I have to admit that during the hectic events of the last week or so I haven’t been on the Medifast Program. I fell off the wagon so to speak under the stress of some life events and found myself eating for emotional reasons. I didn’t go insane and start binging what-so-ever, I just failed to follow the program.

The good news is, I find myself eating a lot less and a lot smaller portions these days, and during me week off of Medifast I didn’t gain back a single pound!

Rather than fool myself into thinking I’m okay off the program, I have started right back up to ensure I can get down to my goal weight. I think it was good to have a short break for a couple of reasons, if for no other reason then to learn a quick life lesson. I was able to quickly identify my emotional eating and keep it under control and I know that I am not punishing myself for stumbles along the way, but rather taking each day as it comes.

I think if this had happened on any other plan or before I started Medifast I would have binge eaten my way back up to 350lbs! Anyway, I will be back and posting regularly and hope to hear from you all in the future!