I got on the scale this morning and it said 249, I have lost a little over 1 pound in the past week. This was a bit surprising, I didn’t think I did that well this week. It’s hard looking back to the first time I dropped below 250 and how exciting it was, I didn’t think I would be here again. But, I am moving forward, I’m gonna keep loosing and continue to be positive.
What I have done for the last three weeks in a row, is go to the gym for three days. That’s right, I have been to the gym at least nine times in the last three weeks. Some people say that you have to do something for three weeks in order to create a habit. Hopefully I can stick with this habit and keep up the good work.
One of the things that has been keeping me going is that I can feel and see my body changing. I can see slightly more definition in my arms and shoulders, this is a great incentive to continue working out.
I will be going to the gym tonight with Michelle for an excellent full body workout and am looking forward to more weight loss next Friday!
I guess it’s time I fess up and explain why I have not been putting any weigh ins on the site in a while. After making a conscious decision to take a break over the Holidays I got home from vacation and I weighed 258, I was ashamed.
I let myself go and I shouldn’t have. Every new day is an opportunity for becoming healthier and I made a lot of poor decisions concerning food over the week and a half that I was back in Maryland visiting family. Initially I was hoping that it was water weight or something like that and that I would be back to under 250 in a week or so, then I would put a weigh in up on A Healthy Vegan. A week went by and I did loose some weight, I went down to 252.4, a pretty big drop in a week. I have no doubt that this weight loss is do to my personal training (Thanks Michelle!).
Then we arrive at today, my “official” weigh in day. I stepped on the scale, sucked in and I had lost a little under 2 pounds since the last Friday. The scale said 250.2, I am disappointed but at least I am still loosing.
I will check in with you next week, I promise.
Thanksgiving did a number on me. For quite a few weeks now my weight has remained pretty stable around 243 and I was content with that for a couple of reasons. Today though I weighed in at 248.4, I am not content with this. 248 is dangerously close (I know 243 kinda is too) to my first big goal of 250.
Over the years I have become quite an expert at being able to ignore certain problems; like my weight, eating habits or lack of exercise. Since hitting 250 and congratulating myself I have sort of been ignoring the fact that I still need to loose a serious amount of weight. I feel kind of like a broken record writing this lately, blah, blah, blah I am slacking off; blah, blah, blah I can’t get motivated. In a way this here blog has kind of backfired a little bit. I created it, in part, to have some accountability with friends and family and now I don’t write when I think it will be boring to read. But, this will change.
I have started doing some small things to get back on track with my weight loss and fitness. First of all I have been walking to the T stop from work everyday (unless it is rainy). The walk is a little over a mile and according to an application on my phone a leisurely walk burns almost 150 calories, which I know is not a lot but it adds up write? In addition I have gotten back onto green smoothies for lunch and breakfast.
My big problem lately is hunger. I get home from work and I am so hungry that I go on these binges and it seems as though I can’t stop myself. Sometimes I will do awesome at work, drink lots of water have my smoothie for lunch and then I get home and it all goes out the window. This has been the hardest thing for me to tackle of late.
I am planning on getting my butt to the gym this weekend and I have found that the more I work out the more I am willing to make better food choices so hopefully that will help.
This morning I weighed in at 243.8 not much change from a couple of weeks ago. I may be a little too optimistic for my own good but I’m kinda happy that I have stayed at 243 for some time now.
Unfortunately staying at 243 is not my current goal though that would be nice. My goal for now is to weigh 199 pounds and if I am going to get there I need to get to work, I need to find motivation, I need to pay more attention. I also need to forgive myself and be able to move on from my mistakes.
It seems like every week I plan to start fresh on Monday and then Monday comes along and it life gets in the way. This needs to become a priority in my life, it needs to become part of my life. It’s on my mind everyday, I just haven’t been putting it into practice.
There’s always tomorrow.
I weighed in this morning at 241.6. I have gained about 8 pounds since my last weigh in on July 23rd, 2010. I have been quite lazy this summer, I guess that’s why they call it the lazy days of summer. Lazy with exercise, lazy with food and especially lazy with this whole blogging thing. Well summer is almost over and I am a little happy to be moving on from vacations, travel, and being lazy.
We are planning to get back our health beginning in September. I will be hitting the gym several times a week and keeping track of my calories. Having already been to a newly open gym right near our apartment several times we even have a bit of a head start. It may be hard to get back into the swing of things but I am gonna do my best.
In order to jump start all of this we are planning to eat mostly raw foods for all of September, 30 full days. The raw food lifestyle has been something that I have been increasingly interested in. Back in July I went completely raw for a week and at the end of the week I felt amazing. During that week though I did have some cravings for sugary, crunchy, salty things. I am hoping that 30 days on a raw food diet will be detoxifying and help me get rid of some of the cravings I have.
There are many people who eat 100% raw foods we are planning on eating what some folks call the “High Raw” diet which means eating 85% - 95% raw foods. With the cooked foods being mainly whole food grains. It also will allow for the occasional (very occasional) non raw food snack or meal out somewhere. Going raw for 30 days will no doubt be hard at first, but much like going vegan I believe it will get easier after the first or second week.
I am not sure how we will feel at the end or even in the middle. What I hope is that we will sort of reboot our health and at the end eat much healthier by default.
This morning I weighed in at 236.0 pounds, I have gained 1.4 pounds in the last week and lost 38.8 pounds since August 16th.
This is gonna be a short one folks. I am quite unhappy to be up, I only spent a week with 40 pounds lost. I only went for 1 run in the past week and I was a little too happy eating a lot of food.
This week I am kicking my training into high gear, with the race coming up in 2 weeks I need to make sure I get out there.
On a positive note, if you look at the scale photo for this post there is a section below my weight, that is the fat percentage. This scale I have sends some sort of electrical signal up my feet and makes some calculation to determine what my fat percentage is. Now I don’t know how accurate it is but when I started this on August 16th, 2009 the scale stated I was 35.2 percent fat and now it says I am 32.4 percent fat. It feels so good to at least have that number lower.
This morning I weighed in at 234.6 which means I have lost 7 pounds in the last week and 40.2 pounds since August 16th, 2009.
I am so happy to write that. I guess this proves that last week was a weird fluke cause 7 pounds in a week at this point is wild. For the first time in this process I have lost just over 40 pounds and I am so happy about it.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been loosing weight very slowly, a pound here and there. Sometimes I have a weird week like last week when I gain a bunch of weight and then the next week I loose it all. If I was still at the beginning of this whole weight loss process I would be upset that things were not moving faster. But, here I am, 40 pounds lighter than I was on August 16th, 2009 and I am pretty content with the weight I have lost.
I am extremely happy with the changes I have made to my lifestyle and I am excited about the changes I will continue to make. I still take the stairs to my office everyday, I only have soda at the movies (which is amazing, I used to drink it all the time), and I have been very conscious of what I have been eating most of the time.
In addition I am taking steps to create a more active lifestyle for Michelle and I. We have taken a break from the gym for a while, but instead we are getting outside and taking walks or running. With our 5K coming up on May 16th we are trying hard to get out and run at least 3 times a week. After this 5K I would like to continue to sign up for them so that I am sort of in a constant state of training or at least maintaining my health.
That is all for now.
This morning I weighed in at 241.6 which means I gained 6 pounds in the past week and I have lost 33.2 since August 16th, 2009.
I don’t know how I managed that, it must be some kind of record or something, 6 pounds in a week. While it is depressing to be back above 240 and further away from a 40 pound loss than I have been in a couple of weeks, I have not given up hope. I am attributing this gain to eating really poorly this past week, not drinking enough water, and a lack of getting my body moving. I ate a lot of bread this past week, it was almost like I was craving it and since it was in the house I ate way too much, sandwiches, toast, bagels, lots and lots of simple carbs that probably turned right into fat cause I was not doing anything to burn the carbs off.
This morning I weighed in at 235.6 which means I have lost .8 pounds in the last week and 39.2 pounds in the last week.
I am pretty happy with my loss this week, even though it’s not even a full pound, every little bit counts right. We were in New York City for the weekend and had a lot of amazing food, we ended the weekend with a meal of chocolate and milkshakes, it was wonderful, more on that in a later post. Even with all of this I still lost .8 of a pound, I am proud.
I am proud that I had the opportunity to eat a lot more food than I did and I did not overeat! And it didn’t even feel like I was trying to eat less. Michelle and I even shared an entrée at one place, we decided that we were not hungry enough for two. We did a lot of walking which was awesome and definitely helped me not gain any weight this week.
These last couple of weeks I have lost very little each week, but I have still lost. When I began this journey I would have been very disappointed in myself but I have been learning on this journey as well as loosing. I want my new found health to be sustainable and for me, at least lately, counting calories and going to the gym 5 nights a week is just not sustainable. I am finally beginning to realize this is more of a meditative walk than a sprint to the finish, and I am perfectly fine with that.
Stay tuned for details of our amazing New York Vegan extravaganza.
I weighed in at 236.4, I have lost .6 pounds in the last week and 38.4 pounds since August 16th, 2009.
Loosing .6 pounds kinda makes me feel like I am moving like a snail. I felt like I had a great week in terms of what I was eating. We also had a great weekend, my Parents came to visit and we celebrated Michelle’s Birthday. The only problem with all of this is that there was lots of eating going on. We went out for pizza, we made lots of food at home, we had birthday cake and ice cream. Everything was amazing and delicious but it certainly did not help me with this recent weigh in.
Michelle and I really want to try and bump it into high gear these next couple of months. We have a goal of loosing as much as possible by July 6, 2010, which is our 3 year wedding anniversary.
Now that the weather is nice and spring like we will be going for walks every day, and we may even begin to do some light jogging to prepare for the 5K which is on an unknown date.
That is all for now.
This morning I weighed in at 237 even, which means I have lost 3.4 pounds in the last week and 37.8 pounds since August 16th, 2009.
I am so happy to write that sentence, I am so close to having lost 40 pounds that I can taste it. With only one gym visit, this past week really proves that focusing on what I am eating really makes a difference. I am still having some trouble incorporating working out into my daily life.
Sometimes I just don’t have the energy at the end of the day to go back out to the gym. Incorporating “work outs” into my daily life is something that is necessary for me to continue towards my goal. Thanks to a friends recommendation Michelle and I are considering signing up to run a 5K so that we have a goal that we need to get into shape for. I am a little nervous about it but I am also excited to do some barefoot running, as soon as this darn Boston Spring rain stops.
In addition I need some practice staying focused. I am very good at being able to ignore my goals when I am hungry or bored so I am gonna try and take some measures to keep my eyes on the prize. You’ve probably noticed that I have not really been keeping up with the posting here on the blog, so one way that I am going to help keep my goals in mind is being sure to write a new post at least three times a week. So keep checking back and thanks for reading.
This morning I weighed in at 240.4 pounds which means I have lost 1.2 pounds in the past week and 34.4 pounds since August 16, 2009. I am not happy with myself, perhaps I should be satisfied with 1.2 pounds, but it still makes me upset that 4 weeks ago I was under 240 and I have been battling to get back there since then. The problem is, in this battle, the enemy seems to be currently winning.
My motivation can drastically change from day to day, sometimes even from hour to hour. When I am reading up on nutrition or inspirational stories on the Vegan Bodybuilding forums I am so motivated to eat well and get our and exercise. This motivation quickly goes away when my 2 enemies, hunger and boredom, get the best of me. Hunger and boredom never fail to get the best of me, especially when I am at home and left to my own devices, if I suddenly discover a bag of potato chips or some other delectable snack item and I happen to be hungry, you can kiss that bag goodbye. I don’t know why I let these things get the best of me, when there is delicious food around and I am hungry it is almost like I am on some sort of drug, drunk on hunger. The worst thing about it is not being able to stop when I am full, even when I try to be more conscious of my body and when it is telling me it’s full I will still continue eating.
As I have said before this portion of changing my life to become A Healthy Vegan will absolutely be the hardest, harder than incorporating working out or anything else. Simply being able to control myself will be the hardest task for me to complete, but I will keep trying.
Today I weighed in at 241.6, I have lost 2.8 pounds in the last week and 33.2 since August 16th, 2009. I am pretty satisfied with this weigh in, of course I wish it was more, it’s a little disheartening that I am not back under 240 which is where I was 2 weeks ago. I did loose these 2.8 pounds without getting to the gym this past week, which goes to show how important diet is, I did not do any counting this week but I was trying to eat well.
This weekend even though Michelle and I intended to get to the gym on Saturday and Sunday we ultimately decided that we needed a relaxed weekend at home. It has been a couple of weeks since we have had a whole weekend to ourselves and we decided to spend it at home together. I have to tell you it was so refreshing, we slept late, we relaxed, watched some movies, doesn’t sound very productive does it? Actually, I think it will help us to get to the gym this week and get back on the ball.
Anyone else looking forward to spring as much as I am? I cannot wait, the past 4 days here in the Boston area it has been raining like crazy. All I want is some sunshine so that on days when Michelle and I cannot get to the gym we can at least take a walk down to the beach and get a little bit of exercise and Vitamin D! Usually I don’t mind rain so much but after day 4 or 5 of downpours it starts to get downright oppressive.
On another topic, my parents are coming up to visit the first weekend in April, I am very excited to see them but I am also nervous, they have not seen me since I have lost over 30 pounds and I want them to notice. I sure would like to loose a bit more weight before they fly in, I really want them to be impressed with my weight loss so far, even though I am still pretty far from my goals.
I am hoping for a big loss next Monday, do you think I can get to under 235?
