I can tell that my body has made the shift into ketosis and is changing metabolically in the last day to two. Having been on a variety of low carb diets in the last 10 years, I know that this period for me is usually marked with decreased appetite, horrible stomach cramps, bad breath and diarrhea. I know, doesn’t sound too pleasant huh? No worries, it only lasts for a day or two as my body says goodbye to some unwanted stuff and settles in for a new kind of eating.

For me this is the eating zone so to speak. I’m starting to whole heartedly turn my focus towards following and staying on the program. I know I will have some hiccups along the way, but I won’t let them get me down.

I have to admit, I have been struggling a bit but that is to be expected I suppose. What is the “new habit” time frame? 3 Weeks? Meaning it takes 3 weeks of doing something repetitively in order to create a new habit. I can hang, I’m already a third of the way there and I know it will get better. The overall reduction in appetite is a huge helper along the way!

This morning I pose one of the most debated weight loss questions of all time… how often should you weigh yourself when following a weight loss program? There are many schools of thought, but for the most part there are two popular theories. The first one says you should only weigh yourself on your weigh-in day, that weigh (way-weight… pun… get it?) you aren’t discouraged if you haven’t lost any weight or worse yet, you’ve gained some. The second method is to weigh yourself as often as you like or daily even, this way you can monitor your progress.

I would say 99% of diet books, weight loss programs and participants will agree that a once per week weigh-in is the right method and that doing it any more often is weight loss blasphemy. I’m going to go outside the norm on this one and tell you that I tend to peek at the old scale from time to time to see how I’m doing and I’ll tell you why. Even though the Medifast program has taken most of the portioning out of the equation for you, the size and calorie content of your lean and green choices can become fairly clear with a weigh-in every couple of days or so. Also, I have noticed an immediate difference in weight by not drinking enough water while on the plan. So, I tend to be a peek-at-the-scale sorta guy so I can see how I am doing. This is mostly because I tend to be very forgetful throughout my day and forget how much water I have had, etc.

Now, I warn you, this method isn’t for everyone and in fact I would say it is for few people working a weight loss regiment. It takes a lot of personal strength and the ability to ignore temporary results that may not be in your favor. I do it because I’m a little compulsive in certain areas of my life and I want to know what is going on with my body and my progress. So you have been warned, if you can’t stand to see a 2lbs. gain mysteriously occurring over-night, then don’t sneak peeks at the scale throughout the week!

One more side note, do not sneak peeks any time other than your normal weigh-in time, which for me is about 6:30am. Your weight probably fluctuates drastically throughout the day depending on the clothes you are wearing, what you have had to eat, what you have had to drink, how much exercise you have gotten and how many times you’ve been to the bathroom. Again, probably a bad idea for most of you, it just happens to be my dirty little secret. There… now it is out. I can stop feeling ashamed.

All of that having been said, I can tell you that I am more than pleased with my progress in week one of my re-commitment to the Medifast program. I’m not going to tell you how much I have lost yet, because that would ruin the surprise for Monday!

Finally a note about yesterday’s post. I had written about how I was frustrated with coming home and not being able to watch TV because my wife was watching her “foo-foo chick shows” on the DVR. This was less a frustration with her then an overall frustration with my own inability to find relaxation after work. She read the post and was a little miffed with me, which I don’t blame her for being because it sounded like I was trying to own the whole house and everything in it when I was meaning to point out that I eat out of frustration… frustration I need to deal with in another way. Also, in her defense, she puts up with me hogging the remote 90% of the time and forcing her to watch old M*A*S*H re-runs. Anyway, sorry honey, love ya! (I know she’ll read this, obvious attempt at an epology… get it… Epology… I crack myself up).

Even though I have made up my mind to stick to the program and succeed, I still find myself wrestling the same old demons that have always driven my weight gain. I am an emotional eater…no that doesn’t mean I sit in a corner crying into a box of empty donuts or hug the cook at McDonald’s when I get a Big Mac. What this means for me is I eat when I have emotional extremes. I reach for food to comfort myself or to reward myself. If I am really happy, depressed, angry, frustrated, bored or just plain blah, I reach for food to give me some sort of emotional companionship.

I have no idea when this started really, I think it was in my early childhood when I first had issues with my weight. I went from being this frail, meek little kid who spent some time in the hospital with various ailments to being a fat kid who needed food for friendship. I don’t actively remember over-eating as a child, but I must have because about the time I turned 10 I had ballooned up quite a bit.

Well, where ever those demons came from, the urges to reach for food in times of emotional peak, they are still with me and I know I need to conquer them before I can have a decent quality of life where my weight is concerned. Yesterday was a good example. I had a frustrating day at work and I wanted to come home, sit down on the couch and veg in front of the television for a while before dealing with the kids, dinner or whatever else that would be chaotic. Instead, I get home and find my wife watching some foo-foo, chick TV shows she has recorded on the DVR. This is something we battled about periodically. On top of that, the kids where being a pain in the butt and I was just not in the mood for any of it. I retired to my den to surf the web just to find that I couldn’t bear to look at a computer after spending all day staring at one.

At this point, I should have jumped on my mountain bike, gone for a walk or found something active to do to release that stress and to move myself away from the demons hiding in the kitchen. But I found myself in the kitchen digging around and when I realized what I was doing, I figured I would put the time to good use and instead of snacking, fix myself a lean and green for the following day. I cooked up some shrimp and asparagus and finished up. But, I still had no where to go to properly veg so I stayed in the kitchen and I fixed myself some oatmeal. It is here I realize I’m not eating out of hunger but for emotional reasons, because after finishing the oatmeal, I kept looking for more food to stuff in my face.

Frustrated, I found myself digging a bag of frozen turkey meatballs out of the freezer and cooking up about 5 of them. Now although these pre-cooked little goodies are lean turkey meat, low fat and fairly low calorie, I had already consumed my lean and green for the day and shouldn’t have been eating them. The frustration of the day got to me and I found myself eating, not because I was hungry in the least but because it was the only way to let go of my days emotions without taking them out on someone else.

Again, I know the better course of action would have been to exercise, but if I’m being perfectly honest, the last thing I feel like doing after 8 stressful hours at the office and a 45 minute drive in traffic is exercising. I will have to work on finding another release so I don’t let the demons in the kitchen pull me into their evil grip.

While many people believe it is easier for a man to lose weight then a woman, I think there are some common misconception in that thinking. First of all, I will agree whole-heartedly that men lose weight faster then women (speaking in general), however I also find that men often have more weight to lose. This simply stems from the fact that men are generally taller and take longer to show their weight gain. So if you were to look at a man and woman and make the assumption they need to lose some weight, you my deduce that at the point that a woman is 20lbs. overweight, but the man would probably show the same appearance at 40lbs. overweight. Following me? My wife has also struggled over the years with her weight and I find that although I lose faster, we seem to shrink proportionally at about the same rate.

The reason I point all of this out and go on a mini-rant is this… losing weight for a man or woman is never EASY! Let’s face it, the struggle to shed pounds is never a physical one, we all know that fewer calories taken in, plus some exercise equals weight loss. There is no magic there. The struggle comes in managing what we eat, how much we eat and how often we eat.

I know that using the Medifast Program will allow me to lose weight and get to my goal, but I also know that I have to make a mental commitment to do so. It really is easy from a food standpoint, the program is all laid out for me, all I need to do is make a mental commitment to follow the carefully laid out food plan and I will succeed.

So why spend this morning writing about this? Because I need to have some sort of affirmation, for my own good, that I will stay on track and not let the inner-demons win the battle over my waistline. I need to tell myself that I know where I am going and I know how to get there, it is just a matter of staying on the path. Interestingly enough, part of my personality finds it just as important to tell others what I am doing, hence this blog. For me that is a support structure, even if I get no feedback. I like to use others as a sounding board, because for whatever reason I feel more of a commitment to something once I have said it out loud and I know that at least one person has heard my commitment.

So ladies, if there is a man in your life working on shedding some pounds, he needs to hear that you understand his struggle, not that it is easy for him. He needs just as much positive re-enforcement as you do, even though his man-brain won’t ever admit it!

Well, I made it through day 1 of the program and amazingly enough I didn’t fall over dead from not eating fast food and other naughty treats. I thought for sure my body would go into shock and shut down with the removal of grease and carbohydrates from, but it didn’t.

The food and shakes I found to be quite tasty, especially for a weight loss program! The one thing I was truly taken back by was my lack of appetite for most of the day. I had a shake, a bar, a lean and green lunch which consisted of grilled chicken and salad and then another shake, soup and a pudding. I found myself actually forcing myself to get in all of my meals to ensure I was following the program! This was a pleasant surprise as I saw myself knocking over a convenient store by noon for all of their Twinkies. That didn’t happen and I’m happy to report I was full and satisfied all day.

I think the mental commitment is an important part of whether I feel hungry or not, because lets be real…I didn’t get fat from REALLY feeling hungry, I got fat from eating when I wasn’t hungry. I am and always have been an emotional eater. I eat when I am bored, I eat when I am depressed, angry, frustrated or for any reason really. I think what helps with Medifast is the constant eating. Medifast’s 5 & 1 Plan means I am eating something or drinking something every couple of hours that I’m awake and it leaves me feeling full and not wanting to eat, even though the urge is always there. It also helps that I am drinking tons of fluids including a half gallon or so of water.

I’ve decided to keep a goal in mind, a reason why I no longer want to be fat for each week to help me visualize reaching my goal weight. For this week, it is air travel. If you are overweight, you know that there is nothing worse than flying coach. The seating appears to be designed for small Pygmies from the Congo or perhaps leprechauns. Being fat and assigned to a seat for hours at a time which only measures 18 inches across is not only personally uncomfortable, but brutal for the poor sap that has to sit next to you. Who knows, all I really know is being tall and fat makes for a very uncomfortable flight experience and since I travel for work, I can think of nothing I will appreciate more as a thin person then to be able to fit in that seat.

I realize that as I get underway with the Medifast program, the biggest enemy will be the environments I am forced to be in. At home, I’m fairly safe as I have control of the kinds of food which are in the house. There are a few temptations here and there, but for the most part it is a healthy environment for me. Work however is another story. While at the office I find myself dodging the “food bullets” throughout the day. Although my co-workers are kind hearted folks, they do little to help the plight of the fat guy.

We seem to have a large number of people in my area of the cube farm (collection of cubicles) that fancy themselves as chefs and bakers. They regularly bring in their not-so-healthy treats to share with their co-workers and I have to be honest, some of those treats are absolutely wonderful. On top of the amateur chefs, we have a large number of “snackers” in the office who have huge caches of cookies, candy, chips and other unhealthy treats stored away in secret places throughout their work spaces. These types of things have always been good at derailing my weight loss efforts.

In addition to homemade treats and stores of goodies, our office seems to be particularly skilled when it comes to ordering lunch. There are spreadsheets and Instant Messenger lists making up a complex and highly organized system of food delivery. On any given day, you can contact someone to help you get just about any type of lunch you can imagine, ranging from Thai to sub sandwiches to fast food. With a couple of keystrokes you can have a fattening, unhealthy lunch sitting on your desk, probably not the best place for a person like myself to find themselves trying to lose weight.

For me, this will by my first trial, my first hurdle in getting started on the Medifast program. I will need to stick to my commitment to a healthier lifestyle and make the conscious decision to not be that fat guy that can’t stop eating unhealthy things. I need to focus on the long term goal of a long, healthy life with my family. I need to focus on a life that does not revolve around food and eating, but instead focuses on the people and things in life that are really important to me.

I have no delusions about the journey I am starting today. I know that I will be challenged throughout, but I have made a solid commitment to myself to succeed so I can live the life I have always wanted, free of worry and anxiety surrounding my weight. With that having been said, I’m off to make a Vanilla shake and head into the war zone that I call work!

I suppose the best place to start any blog is with a little background, a peek into who I am and how I got here.  My name is Brett Calbick and I am a 35 year old Training manager, Husband and father of two beautiful little girls. I live in Gilbert Arizona, just outside of Phoenix.

I arrived here because I am an emotional eater and I have ballooned to 345lbs.  I have struggled with my weight my entire life starting when I was around 10 years old.  I have tried pretty much every diet on the planet ranging from cabbage soup to low carb to low fat and anything that I have come across that someone has supposedly dropped a lot of weight doing.  My fad diet roller coaster has taken me from 235lbs to as high as 355lbs and back down.  In the last year I have had a 75lbs differential in weight and my doctor has finally told me to stop with the yo-yo dieting and get on a program instead of a “diet” per say.

My weight has led me to a variety of issues, some mental, some physical and many social.  On the physical side, I have developed a bad case of Acid Reflux due to a life time of poor food choices and heavy intake of alcohol.  That in turn has led to adult onset Asthma which has twice landed me in the hospital for a week per stay after being admitted with respiratory distress.  Due to a combination of family history and weight, I am at an extremely high risk for diabetes.

From a mental standpoint I have suffered through quite a lot of depression and anxiety due to my ever expanding waistline.  I have my body and probably myself for letting my weight take over my life.  I would say my weight factors into about 80% of my behavior whether it be frustration, moodiness or just feelings of wanting to be left alone.

Socially I would say my weight holds me back a great deal, factoring into many of the decisions I make including those that involve my family.  Being 6′4 and obese I have to think about everything I do from a standpoint of “will I fit”.  This includes going to amusement parks, flying, sitting at a booth in a restaurant and pretty much any social situation where I need to be in close proximity to people.  I know I let these fears and awkward situations hold me back, but I worry more that I let them hold my family back by restricting these I will do with them.

So that is how I got here.  A lifetime of overeating caused by a variety of things and here I am.  I’m tall, I’m fat, I’m unhealthy and I’m ready for a change.  I have tried the Medifast products before, but I have never made a commitment to the program.  Today I am ready for a change and a commitment to a healthy eating program.  I will not be “dieting” any longer, but making the conscious decision to follow a healthy eating program, and eventually as recommended by program guidelines, I will introduce exercise back into my life.  I am excited and a little apprehensive, but I have certainly made the decision to go forward and be successful because this could be my last chance at leading a healthy life.