Brad's weight loss story

Move. 

I love to be active, funny that I'm in a career that is very sedentary. Editing takes long hours of very tedious mental work, yet it requires no physical work at all. At the end of a day my brain is shot, yet my body is craving movement.

In the last 5years I have seen it all, from being very immobile and not being able to move, to being incredibly fit, to then realizing that it was slowly slipping away again. I can tell you which one is better. I can tell you at which stage I accomplish more. I can tell you at which stage life is less enjoyable.

So when faced with the reality of knowing the difference, why would I choose to be less than my best???

Why would anyone purposefully sabotage their life?

When I went through the program before we talked about the mental/emotional challenges of losing weight. Its the same with gaining weight, something is triggering a change in behavior that results in using food to satisfy a desire. Just saying these words I can think of my own challenges with this and hear past conversations that I've had with people about their own self-imposed limitations as to why they feel its not possible for them to loose weight, to care for their body.

I promise you, there is no excuse that I have not heard before.

The road blocks in our life are all self imposed. I have seen people get very upset at that statement. Even more validation that our inner voice knows it is true, we are our greatest challenge, we are our greatest reward.

So lets talk about the diet for a minute, here is what I am doing right now:

Breakfast:
7am: Fruit (banana, cantaloupe, watermelon) Water, Fiber supplement, VitD, Potassium, Greens Formula, Fish Oil, Coffee
9am 2 cooked eggs, usually fried in olive oil.
11am EAS Lean bar

Lunch
1pm- Huge bowl of Veggies. Sweet Peppers, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cucumber.  Not often doing salads to avoid dressing for now
3pm- Atkins Shake

Dinner
5pm- Atkins Shake
7pm EAS Bar

at least 8 glasses of water. This is the "Blue-print" sometimes I have bars at lunch and the big meal later. I also make a Chicken breast stir fry and add Quinoa. Its not like one cannot deviate from this list, however I find it easier if my days are fairly regimented.

I am also leaving room for one meal per week to be a "family" event, not where I will go wild, rather make smart choices while eating what everyone else eats.

I am reminded of the Twinkies Diet. A professor, about the time I was completing the major weigh loss, did a Twinkies diet. For a duration of time he only ate Twinkies and proved that if the caloric count was low enough he could loose weight eating only Twinkies. He was right. This goes back to the previous blog about Math. While in the long run nutrition does matter, what really counts in loosing weight is counting the calories. Eat less, move more works every time.

Last thought for the day, Appearances. The amount of complements a person gets after loosing a large amount of weight is staggering, and if someone is blessed with a look society has deemed as attractive, it can be a real mental challenge to deal with the way one is suddenly treated, just because of appearances. For good or bad, I am one of those people. At my ideal weight, I get un-natural attention. My desire to loose weight has nothing to do with what I look like.

Its a part of this that I do struggle with. Going back to the top of this blog I talked about knowing the difference between carrying extra weight and not, it is clear, crystal clear, that at a lower weight my body works better, moves better, functions better, is healthier, operates more efficiently, performs better, is better. That has NOTHING to do with what I look like, it has EVERYTHING to do with being Healthy.

If there is one thing I have learned in this process it is the incredible gift of good health and how much "More" of my self there is to celebrate when there is less of me around to celebrate.

Zen.

Today's weight 275
Goal weight 225  
-50 to go.