I’m down another pound putting my weight at 319 and total loss so far on the Medifast Program at 31 pounds. I’m not discouraged by the single pound loss because I finally got back in the saddle so to speak and started riding my mountain bike again last night. In the past when I’ve tried to lose weight, the addition of exercise normally stunted my progress for a week or two during which time I assume my body is trying to figure things out and puts the brakes on the weight loss. So, a pound is a pound and it is gone!

I have to be honest, getting back on my bike was BRUTAL! I rode a fast paced four miles and was gasping for breath at the end. I felt a bit of an asthma problem come on but I have some preventative medicine that will hopefully stop that from happening. I forgot to take it this weekend and thus I was suffering a bit. Much like changing the way I eat, changing my level of activity will no doubt be difficult at first, but I know that once I get a week or two under my belt, I will find the joy in riding I once had.

This week I’m on vacation and home with the kids for spring break. I’m going to use this time to do some home improvement projects around the house and yard and hopefully this extra physical activity will add to my weight loss. I am also doing it to keep overly busy and avoid sniping food from the kitchen all day long. I think a father-daughter fishing trip may be in order to get me out of the house!

Man, I was looking at the comparative picture the folks at Medifast added to my post yesterday and I can’t believe the difference! I didn’t realize the change was so dramatic, mostly because I look at myself every day. It definitely boosts my morale and adds inspiration to my journey.

That photo also shows something that has enabled me to be fat my whole life and that is my body type and height. I’m “big boned” in the sense I have a large chest and broad shoulders. That has always masked my weight. I don’t have the typical fat guy shape of just having a big gut, I tend to gain weight pretty proportionately. People always tell me “you’re not fat, you’re just a big guy” and I subconsciously use that as an excuse to not address my obesity. I’m fat…that is it. I’m still 320 pounds, and that my friends, qualifies me for an obesity label. I don’t mind the label either, it reminds me of my journey and how important it is.

I have all but forgotten what I look like when not obese. I am so looking forward to regular sized pants, being able to shop for clothes in the same stores everyone else does and not feeling uncomfortable in my own body. When I’m done, I should weigh in somewhere around 220 pounds, so I have 100 pounds to lose still. I have a long journey ahead and I am looking forward to each day of it!

A couple of people also asked if I was sucking in my gut in that picture. The answer is no. It just happens to be that my wife took the picture and she is a good deal shorter then I am, so it created the illusion of me sucking in my gut when in fact the picture was taken at a low angle. I tend to look good when standing and facing people (well, as good as my ugly mug can be!), my body shape hides my fat from that angle. When viewed from the side, it is a different story all together.

NOTE: If you are only seeing a single picture of me, no comparison, you need to hit “refresh” in you browser… the original picture of me was replaced with another of the same name so it will not display if it is cached in your web browser.

It has been a very busy week for me (again) at work and I am happy to say that I haven’t let my busy schedule over-run my weight loss efforts. I am finding it increasingly easy to follow the Medifast Program now that I have some of the Ready-to-Drink Shakes on hand in my office to ensure I am not to busy to get my meals in. For anyone out there struggling with finding time to mix meals, I highly recommend them!

It was a true test of my will power yesterday as we had our quarterly barbecue at work. Our management team celebrates our employees’ birthdays and hard work by grilling hamburgers and hotdogs and bringing in huge sheet cakes to eat. The food is everywhere and it goes on all day! I was proud of myself for passing on all of it and running out to grab a grilled chicken salad with vinaigrettes on it despite the fact I was in an all day meeting with people eating some really wonderful smelling food!

I thought once the lunch rush had passed I’d be safe, but later in the day I found myself waiting outside of a co-workers office where there was a long table full of sliced cake for the taking. I was forced to stand next to the table waiting for this person to finish a call so I could meet with him…next to all that cake. Finally I was able to go inside where I found myself working at a table in his office where yet another sheet cake was sitting! It was truly a test of will power.

I’ve never been much of a sweet tooth, but something inside me has always jumped at the idea of free food, so yesterday proved to be a turning point in my life. If I can control myself around all that free food all day without even flinching, I am sure that I am progressing towards a life lasting set of good eating habits!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go finish patting myself on the back!

I’m feeling amazing. I can feel the difference that 30 pounds has made and I’m looking forward to more loss. In the grand scope of things, 30 pounds is significant, but a long way from my goal. I started at 350, I’m at 320 now and I’m heading for 220. So, in 100 pounds or so I should be good to go, but I realize it will be a long journey. I’m excited about it. Yesterday a co-worker commented he could see the weight loss in my face…not just a little, but a lot. It feels great to hear people say they recognize the fruits of my labor!

When I started the Medifast Weight Loss Program, I never thought eating enough and often enough would be a challenge. I figured I would be hovering around my kids as they eat their pancakes or other good food. The reality of it is that I have really lost my appetite and don’t find myself thinking about food much at all during the day. This might sound like a real benefit and maybe in the long run it will be, but while on the Medifast program getting all 5 meals plus a lean and green is essential.

In order to remedy my on-going battle to eat enough I have done a couple of things to help myself along.

1. Scheduled Meals - I am eating at 7am, 9am, 11am, 3pm, 5pm and 7pm. My lean and green is at 11am typically so I left the most time between meals at that point to ensure I had enough time for the larger quantity of food to settle.
2. Ready-to-Drink Shakes - Yesterday I received my shipment of Medifast Ready-to-Drink Shakes. I ordered them to help me ensure I’m getting all of my meals during the day no matter how busy I am at work. It also keeps me from making the excuse of “I’m to busy to prepare, drink and clean up after a shake” which I typically do when I’m not hungry.

I think these simple steps will help me remember to eat and eat often in order to stay on top of my program.

I finally did it…I broke the 30 pound barrier of weight loss!! In 6 weeks, I have dropped exactly 30 pounds, which my amazing math skills tell me is an average of 5 pounds per week, which is unreal! I’m pretty stoked, especially after this weekend. I only lost 2 pounds this past week (I know, ONLY 2 pounds right?) but that was partially my fault. In addition to the 30 pounds, I have also lost 5 inches of waistline!! I am at a point where I need get a smaller belt to hold up my pants! I’m shrinking and it feels amazing!

I had a frantic weekend and ended up not doing so hot following program. I did however make some better than bad choices when eating meals out and made sure to avoid things like fries, potatoes, or starchy carbs. I know, I know…I should be 100% on the program and behaving, but the reality of life is, I’m not always the best at planning my day and things happen. What is important here is that I was able to maintain my pre-weekend loss of 2 pounds through moderation of food intake and avoiding bad foods. This tells me that when I move on to the maintenance phase of the Medifast Program, I won’t have any trouble maintaining a diet that will keep my weight off. I am learning to eat less, eat better and live a healthier lifestyle.

Most importantly, after a busy weekend, I’m 100% back on track to continue my Medifast program. Without a second thought. I think an important part of any weight loss program is realizing just because you didn’t have a perfect day or even weekend there is no reason to call it quits or blow a whole week out. In fact, one bad meal doesn’t mean you give up either…if you find yourself without “program food” for one reason or another, seek out some healthy alternatives and press on!

This isn’t my first time around for Medifast, I had done the program a couple of years ago…well, sorta. My friend Ethan was starting the program at the time and convinced me to join him. I had heard of all sorts of people that had lost weight on Medifast so I gave it a whirl.

For 3-4 months we both worked the program hard core, sticking to it without as much as a cheat. The fact we were both on it, were weighing in together and had similar goals made it easy enough to do. After having lost just over 70 pounds or so I decided to “take a break” from the program, Ethan was disappointed in me and continued on. I did not leave Medifast following their Maintenance Program, I just quit cold turkey one day and resumed my old eating habits (over-eating habits really) as a “celebration” for my hard work. Wow…what a mistake that was!

Ethan went on to lose just over 100 pounds and achieved his goal, at which time he took up Brazilian Ju-Jitsu to help keep fit and to keep the weight off and he followed the Medifast Maintenance Program. Meanwhile, I ignored my weight gain and continued to over-eat and gained it all back in a period of a year or so. I had changed nothing, didn’t follow the program, didn’t follow the maintenance plan, I just quit and re-gained.

I’m sharing this information because I want to explain why I spend so much time talking about a lifestyle change. The Medifast Program works and it works well. But, it only works if you follow it and the guidelines within and if you follow it entirely, long passed your goal weight and through maintenance. More importantly, the program is teaching you about your body, about your eating habits and about moderation if you will take the time to learn. I didn’t learn the first time around, I was just interested in “the cure” for my fatness. I was reaching for that “miracle” of weight loss that would let me get thin and be a pig of an eater.

There really is no mystery as to how people get fat, although many of us fat people could rattle off hundreds of reasons why we think we are fat. The plain and simple truth is that a healthy diet, moderation and exercise are the key to a healthy lifestyle. Medifast facilitates the rapid and healthy weight loss, but does not change the fact that you should never eat a whole pizza by yourself or consume 2 gallons of soda per day. Over-eating is how I got fat and it is something I am learning to change through the program. I will not let myself fail, I’m putting far too much work into it.

Getting back to Ethan, he learned a lot better then I did about long term, healthy living and lifestyle. His is doing well with martial arts, is working out regularly and is within 6 pounds of his Medifast goal weight, only this time much leaner and more muscular. I find myself inspired by his long term success and use it as a benchmark for what I would like to achieve. It shows me that a positive attitude and lifestyle change makes Medifast work and means I have a chance at leading a normal life. His success also shows me that my old eating habits DO NOT have a place in my life ever again.

Thanks Ethan!

Well, I have five weeks completed on the Medifast Program and I weighed in this morning and found I had lost another 5 pounds last week! That brings my total 5 week loss to 28 pounds! It has been an up and down ride thus far, which for the first time seems to have stabilized. If you have been following me progress, you know that there has been more than one occasion when I was starting to bum out a bit due to plateau or slow loss. But, those days are hopefully behind me as I have been using the last 5 weeks to figure out what works and doesn’t work for me on this plan. Here are some things I learned:

1. Water, water and oh yeah…MORE WATER! I am now drinking a half-gallon jug of water per day to ensure I’m staying properly hydrated. Water is an important part of any weight loss program and Medifast is no different. I have noticed that when I drink water throughout the day, I’m not hungry and I feel better.
2. Eat all 5 Medifast Meals plus the Lean & Green Meal just as the program calls for, regardless if you are hungry or not. In addition, I have noticed that this is most effective when meals are equally spaced throughout the day. I typically have a Medifast Meal every 2-3 hours throughout the day, that way I’m not stacking up 2-3 meals towards the end of the day or having 2-3 first thing in the morning. Now I wasn’t drinking 2 shakes at once or anything like that, but I was having them within an hour of each other and that isn’t really how the program is supposed to work.
3. Use my tools! Medifast has put together a huge assortment of tools including MyMedifast an impressive online community to support the folks following their weight loss program. You don’t have to be alone or fail if you have questions, just look online and get help!
4. I realized food is a necessity and not a luxury. Last night was a perfect example, my parents and mother-in-law came over for Sunday dinner and brought two kinds of pie, pumpkin and my favorite, banana cream! Although I was resenting everyone in the room for about 20 minutes for eating it, I realized that I wasn’t really hungry and that I in no way, shape or form needed the pie. To ensure I would not cave in to temptation, I had a Medifast pudding and my craving was gone. I have to thank my wife as well, she made her mother take the leftovers with her to avoid any unnecessary temptations I might develop knowing it was here.
5. Finally, stay positive and keep the lifestyle change in mind! I know it might sound corny, but I really do think of what I am doing as more than a weight loss program, but as the start of a new life with new habits and new points of view. If I don’t keep a positive attitude and change the way I think about food in general, this is all for nothing as the weight will come right back after I reach goal and re-enter the “real world”.

That is it, that is my 5 week wrap up and concludes my “looking back” spiel for this morning. Now, looking forward, I plan to start biking again today after nearly a year of absence. I love riding my mountain bike and had given it up last summer. Knowing that the initial 30-45 days of weight loss on any program is by far the most dramatic, I need to make sure I do some things to keep that level of loss up. Exercise is a big part of doing that and an even bigger part of keeping the weight off once I have finished the program. I have said it before and I will say it again, there is no cure in a pill, in a diet or in a can. Weight loss and maintenance is about life style. If you watch those diet commercials for the “miracle pills” you’ll notice that they always have a little disclaimer at some point you can barely read which says something like “…when accompanied by regular diet and exercise”. Gee, why is that do you think? I’ll tell you why…the pill isn’t the catalyst to weight loss your diet and exercise are! Although I’m looking forward to the Medifast Maintenance Program, I do know I will not be on Medifast the rest of my life, I need to ensure I am getting exercise and a proper diet. Lifestyle, lifestyle, lifestyle!

Hope everyone is having a great start to their week and remember you are not alone if you don’t want to be! Seek out other folks in the Medifast community…it’s free and it’s an invaluable resource!

I have moved passed all of my cravings and inappropriate hunger at this point. I no longer want to do drive-by raids on the refrigerator and I’m not finding myself sniping little bits of food randomly. I am in fact having quite the opposite problem.

Typically I eat oatmeal, a bar, my lean & green, a shake, soup and a shake. But lately I am finding I have almost no appetite and I’m really struggling to get all of my necessary meals in. As I’m reaching the end of my variety pack I’m looking at my options for products. Because my life has been super busy lately and I find I have less and less time to eat 6 times a day, I’m thinking I will order a bunch of the Ready-to-Drink Shakes so I can keep them in the fridge both at home and at my office. I realize being “too busy to eat” is an excuse of sorts, but when I am seriously buried at work the last thing that I want to do is go to the other end of the building, make a meal and come all of the way back. This way I will have my meals right at hand near my desk and won’t have to even think twice about getting them in.

I never really thought I would reach a place where eating enough was going to be a problem and I have to admit it is a much better problem to have then being unable to control myself around food. At my office there is always food around somewhere. People bring in donuts and bagels or order out for food from dozens of awesome restaurants. In the beginning it was a struggle to not eat the food laying about but these days I hardly given it a thought. Now If I can just get my meals in order, I will be set!

To help with my weight loss, I’m adding some exercise into my program, probably starting this weekend. I live in Arizona and the weather at this time of year is amazing. It makes me want to get back on my mountain bike and ride and that is precisely what I’m going to do. Last summer I was riding about 10 miles each morning and doing so at a pretty good pace. I stopped when I went on vacation in Tahoe for a week and found the desert temperature to be a bit much when I returned. I haven’t been on my bike much since, certainly not regularly. So I am going to start riding again and hopefully it won’t be too painful! I’m excited to get out and exercise and I’m hoping it makes a big impact on my weight loss program.

I thought a lot about this weekend and the mystery of my diet soda addiction. I realize there is a chemical component to it, with caffeine playing a role as an addictive substance of sorts, but I couldn’t help but feel there is less of a drug-like addiction and more of a behavioral problem attached to it. So, I begin thinking about when and under what circumstances I have been drinking soda and when it gets out of control.

It really didn’t take long for me to realize that having given up carbohydrate heavy meals, I have quickly replaced them with diet soda. At first, I gave up drinking it all together but then realized any time I was in a restaurant I would need something besides the filthy tap water they offer to drink. And that is where it began again, just a casual soda at lunch. Here I am noticing two bad behaviors, both of which are correctable.

The first behavior is much like someone abandoning their diet or weight loss program entirely after “cheating” one time, using the justification of “well, since I just cheated and ruined everything, I might as well give up and over-indulge…” The same sort of process has been going on with diet soda for me…somewhere in the back of my mind a little light went on that told me that “Hey, since you have a casual diet soda at lunch once in a while, you might as well drink it all the time!” Well, we all know this isn’t a good way to think about anything that goes in our mouth whether it be diet soda or a cheeseburger. Moderation is key to any healthy lifestyle and this sort of thinking is the opposite of moderation, so I have taken a key point of change for my new lifestyle from this thought process.

The second behavior is just as detrimental as the first as far as losing weight and keeping it off goes and that is rewards. I realize now that I treat food as a reward. It could be to celebrate something, to mourn something or just to reach a “check point” during my day, either way I am looking at food as a reward of sorts. Even following the Medifast Program closely, I realize that I treat my Lean & Green Meal as a “reward” instead of just a meal during my day. Diet soda is a killer in the same way…I realized that all last week I had allowed myself to have a diet soda with my lunch and therefore was double re-enforcing this idea that my Lean & Green was a reward (as was the soda).

I use the word “reward” in a very general sense to indicate something that I pay myself with. Food and drink is the currency of my life and has been feeding my greedy body for years. I need to disassociate myself from this type of thinking and treat food and drink as exactly what it is…a necessity of life, a passing habit throughout the day. By not treating a meal as this built up pay-off, I can keep myself from over-eating.

I know from some of the comments left on previous posts that some folks think I over-think this whole process and perhaps I do, however as I have stated previously I am in this for a life change, not just to drop some pounds for the summer. If I don’t take the time to think about how I look at food and drinks and how I behave in relation to them I will never be able to maintain a stable weight. I would say that understand yourself and the way you interact with food is the key to life long health. I can point out a couple of things to re-enforce this idea.

First, look at the overall failure rates for some diets. Sure, they work at first to help you drop a bunch of weight, but sooner or later you find the weight back again. For those of you looking to start Medifast or currently on Medifast how many of you are repeat weight loss participants? Second, look at folks who do surgery as a weight loss alternative. It works for a while, but I have known 3 people that have had the bypass surgery and within 2 years had gained some or all of the weight back. None of them followed the recommended eating habits or diets outlined by their doctors and they were right back at fat, but this time with scars and permanent changes to their bodies.

In short, I am lamenting over this a lot to help me come to some sort of understanding with my psyche over what I can and can’t eat, how much I should eat and how often. The Medifast Program is giving me great guidelines for being successful in those areas, but it is up to me to understand the “whys” behind them. It is up to me to remain positive and to change my thinking about what I put in my mouth day to day.

Whew… that was quite a rant, sorry about that!

Well another week has passed and I’m down 2 more pounds! I have to be perfectly honest, I was hoping for more but then I realized, 2 pounds is a loss and it is going to take me a long time to get rid of this fat body I have built over a lifetime. I think for many, one of the biggest triggers of failure in dieting is impatience. We want it gone and we want it gone now! I think this is a product of fat person thinking that will just lead us back to our old eating habits.

I do however recognize some things that have definitely slowed my progress this week. First off, I found myself drinking a bunch of diet soda over the weekend. I can’t say for a medical fact that this is impacting my weight loss, but giving it up made an immediate impact and drinking it again seems to have had an immediate negative impact. Next, I have eaten some overly portioned Lean and Green meals in a last minute effort to make up for missed meals. All of this happened over the weekend as I was super busy in a home remodeling project. I wasn’t getting in my spaced out Medifast meals throughout the day as I was busy and forgetting to eat. I recognize that this isn’t the right way to feed my metabolism and over-eating a single meal is equally as bad. It was a learning experience on many levels for me.

I recognized some things that might help me in the long run to keep the weight off when I have finished the Medifast program. First and foremost, I found that eating many small meals has worked well to limit the total amount of food I take in daily. Second, by waiting too long to eat, I end up over eating, even healthy foods. This reveals to me for the first time the answer to a long standing question in my mind. I just couldn’t figure out how I had gotten fat and stayed fat in the last couple of years when I was only eating twice a day. Well, waiting too long to eat had me gorging during meal time and prior to starting Medifast, those meals I was gorging on were Carbohydrate loaded feasts! No real mystery how I packed on the pounds now!

It was a good week for learning about myself, my body and the importance of following the Medifast program exactly as it is laid out! I remain positive that I can finish this program, lose the weight and finally feel normal!