Week 1 results: How you can get started

I am excited! Week 1 weigh in! And the results are in: (Drum roll please!)

Week 1 weight slips

Not bad at all! I am very pleased with this week’s progress. 2.4lbs overall loss, 1.5% decrease in fat or 5 lbs of fat, my BMI is down 0.4 and the degree of my obesity is down 1.5%.

I did not have to starve myself, sacrifice foods I love or anything else some fad diets have you do. The method to the madness is quit simple.

1. Find your BMR (base metabolic rate)

This is how many calories you specifically will burn to maintain your body at rest for 1 day.                For example my BMR is now 2238kcal.

2. Set a realistic and healthy daily goal. My max daily goal is 1600. 

3. Get an app or some way to track your calorie intake. I personally use MyFitnessPal for Iphone.

4. Be honest! Track everything that goes into your mouth.

5. Do this for a few weeks to get used to the change in diet and to adjust to how often you eat. When you start eating 200-400 calories for breakfast instead of 1500, you get hungrier quicker. That is OK! You will get used to eating 4-6 times per day, but much smaller portions.

6. After acclimating to the new way you eat it is time to start adding in exercise! Why so excited? Oh you will be after 4 weeks of eating healthier and you see the weight difference. Then you think, but I did not do anything other than change how I ate. Hmmm. If I actually got active and started burning calories, I can accomplish even more! You should be excited and motivated here!

It is important to note here:

What kind of exercise you choose to do will greatly depend on where your body is at when you start this journey. Me personally, as a former US Army soldier, I carried my weight quite well, but 280lbs is still 280lbs. Add to that a lower leg injury and weak joints, I had no exercise or cardio in 13 years. For me just getting off my butt and walking around my neighborhood was a huge step forward. I then eased into more progressive cardio and am still moving forward. If you have questions about were your should start please consult your Dr or a personal trainer.

Do not try and run before you walk here. It is better to start slowly and build up to more intense workouts than to hurt yourself trying to keep pace with people who are at a more advanced level of fitness.

7. Keep track of your workouts. Count your reps, how long you ran or walked and try and improve on those numbers weekly. 

8. Record workouts in your calorie counting app or program. The calories you burn count against your daily goal and result in a NET count for the day. 

Lets say my goal is 1600. I eat 1450 calories for the day. I estimate that I burned 600 calories for the day. My NET calorie count for the day is now 850. My BMR says 2238. Thats a huge deficit and I should probably eat more so I would add something else and try and get myself to my NET goal of 1200 calories per day. That is a deficit of 1038 calories per day which is a healthy number.

Do not set over realistic goals. Make a plan that is broke down into, small, obtainable victories that create a path to and end result and will set yourself up for success. 

For myself, I am moving to Korea at the end of January. My immediate goal is to break 250lbs before I leave. That is 11 pounds in about 4 weeks. If I maintain my current diet and exercise routine I should hit 251+/- 2 lbs.That is a reasonable goal on my way to getting to 180lbs.

Take it 1 week at a time and never give up! We CAN get there!

Share your stories with me! I want to hear from you guys. If you have questions please leave comments. If you have suggestions, leave a comment!

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Overcoming "I can't"

I was very apprehensive about today's workout. Legs and back, P90X...

This was something I did not even fathom I could do much less was I going to attempt it! My plan was to walk or go back to the gym and cycle. However; the wife pushed me. She got me motivated to do it even if I could only do 1 or 2 reps. Just DO IT!

Needless to say I did do it, though deff not at any level I would say resembled what they were doing lol. Point is, I got through the 55 minute workout and it felt great.

Hit the shower and its time for second breakfast. I feel like a damn hobbit lol. I am eating every 2 hours or so it seems like but it is small portions of healthy food.

Even with going to Buffalo Wild Wings last night, by making healthy choices, I was able to stay just under 1000 net calories for the day. Now my BMR is 2244 so that's a big deficit, but because of the strength training and cardio each day I can eat 1000 to 1400 calories and still stay under my net goal of 1000.

What is a typical days food intake?
* 5 am: 1 cup of 1% milk and a packet of carnation essentials.

*Post workout: 2 scrambled egg whites and 4oz of grilled steak.

*About 10am I am hungry as hell again and I will have either some ham, half a can of tuna fish or some fruit.

*noonish: really depends here. Grilled chicken, some form of salad, or similar. . I try to stay under 200ish calories.

*2 or 3pm: another small snack. 50-100 calories. Nuts, lean meat, fruit.

*dinner: again this depends. At home, I can grill fish, pork, chicken ect. Add in some corn or a type of bean. Maybe another salad.

I personally have cut out anything except water to drink. However! I have found that after a month of no sweets and very low sugars, I can enjoy unsweetened tea. I pop 1 or 2 tea bags in my water bottles.

Eating healthy does not mean giving up flavor or taste!! Learn to use herbs and spices to add flavor or enhance the food you do eat.

Keep at it and never give up! You CAN find that sexier you! Small victories and goals are key. Yesterday I used a new hole on my belt! Small victory, but it made my day. At 5am when it is time to get up for that workout, that small belt hole motivated to get up and get moving!

My daily report from MyFitnessPal from yesterday.

Hell froze over, whaat??

It seems hell hath frozen over.
I sucked up my insecurities, had a glass of "get the fuck over it" and headed to the gym today for the first time in 13 years.

What the hell is this strange device? What kind of devilry is this?

45 minutes of cycling and 328 calories later; I hope my calve does not lock up today or over night and I can still walk tomorrow! But DAMN IT I feel great! I feel more alive than I have in years and this journey has only just begun.

A quick breakfast of 2 egg whites and 3oz of grilled tri-tip steak hit the spot. It is amazing just how much more energy I have and how much more productive I am throughout the day.

The first stone

The first stone.

It changed my life.

What stone could do that you ask? The fist stone, or 14 pounds, you loose marks the start of a beautiful journey.

I was injured in 1998 during an equipment transfer between Fort Drum NY and Tobihanna Pen. Our cargo van was ran off the road in the snow by a big rig truck. We struck a tree head on and I was rushed to a local ER for eval due to back and neck pain. All seemed fine, but I had lingering back pain.
The back pain was an easy fix. For a soldier! Ruck march 5 days a week with a light ruck to strengthen my back. Two miles on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, five miles on Tuesday and Thursday. I diligently took my medicine, and rucked it out for over a month. Then the numbness started in my feet. Particularly my right foot. As weeks passed it got progressively worse and I started to develop foot drop during exercise. My right calve also started enlarging and causing severe pain when exerted.
Back to the doctors I went. No one had answers though. I was put through physical therapy, shock treatments on my calve, and gradually less and less exercise. Still no one had an answer. The doctors gave up and I was medically chaptered out of the Army in 2000.

For the next 11 years, I gradually did less and less. I went from 180 lbs to over 230, and eventually 280. I was depressed. It affected my entire life. I could not play with my children outside. I could no longer be the active person I was any longer. No more surfing, hiking, baseball, football, running, jumping, anything the exerted my calve. It was a slow downward spiral into depression. My job choices started to also be extremely limited. All due to something no one could explain.

In 2011 I got tired of being told "we do not know, live with it" and I found a pair of doctors who could give me answers. I went to a vascular surgeon and it was found that I had a blood clot lodge behind my right knee in 1998. That resulted in the slow death of the artery that supplies blood to my lower right leg. Only because I was very athletic and continued to push myself and train for those first few years in vain hope of it getting better did I not loose my leg. It actually grew subsidiarity veins to compensate to maintain the life of the leg. It was not however 100% effective at replacing the artery that was lost.

This is a from behind view of the veins in my legs. On the left of the image is my right leg and the right of the image my normal left leg.

I was told there was nothing that could be done. I would live like this the rest of my life. On the side lines.

I am 34 years old and I am married to the most amazing 22 year old on the planet. This poses a great many challenges as I am continually  holding her back by not being able to no many things your typical 22 year old does. Depression had a strong grip on my life. I retreated into my computer further and further. I distanced myself from my wife to the point of almost loosing her.

At the beginning of December, 2012, my wife left for Korea for 15 months. She is an Air Traffic Controller in the US Air Force. I made a decision that day. I WOULD NOT be the same man when I saw her again.

In the first month after she left I completely changed how and what I ate. Portion control was key here. It was a very passive approach to my goal. But after that first month, I had lost my first stone, my first 14 pounds! This excited me to no end. After fighting a loosing battle for 12 years, I had finally made a significant stride forward in controlling my weight.

This spurred in me something I had not felt in over 10 years. I felt good. I felt like I could do this.
So I got really motivated here. I downloaded an app called myfitnesspal. It tracks my every calorie. I also started P90X. I have to modify a lot of the workouts that involve jumping or over exerting my legs, but I get through it. I also started walking, and other cardio outlets.

Today is day 3 of my new journey. Come with me, and lets find our sexier selves!!
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