My First Prolonged Struggle...

One of the things I read in "The Biggest Loser: Success Secrets" that stuck with me was this: you will always either be losing, gaining, or maintaining weight, and the people that can shift seamlessly (and often) from one phase to the other are those that are going to experience the most success with long-term maintenance. (By the way, if you are trying to lose weight, the book I just mentioned is a terrific resource - I've mentioned it in my writings before, probably in my healthyagain2010 blog. You can pick it up nearly anywhere - from the bookstores, amazon.com, walmart.com, or whatever your preferred shopping outlet is.)

 

It would be negligent and unfair of me to get online and tout my success without acknowledging my shortcomings, as well. This week has been a struggle for me. I haven't eaten particularly badly; I have had weeks where I have eaten worse, and weighed less. But old habits can creep back in, and old patterns of eating are not that far removed from me. I have been extremely tired since around the third week in July, and one of my old eating patterns was to fill in the gaps in my rest with food. I find myself eating to keep going, and while my food choices aren't bad, the constant eating is. After a few consecutive mornings of weighing more than I was comfortable with, I have shifted back into biggest loser mode. Now is the time I get to practice what I preach to others - finding the motivation to do right without the pressure of the competition.

 

If you are wondering how "bad" my weight has gotten, I'm up about 6 pounds from where I want to be. Not much, compared to the 143 I dropped from November to May. Not even much compared to the nearly 9 pounds I dropped in the last 11 days of the competition. But way too much for all the work I've done. I am back on the wagon with a vengence - no carbs, no fast food, little fat, lots of chicken, eggs, veggies, and fruits. I'll report on my progress, of course. I'm still trying to learn how to walk on this balance beam called "maintenance".

Maintenance... (the blog, not me!)

For anyone stumbling across my blog and noticing something missing, NBC Augusta has changed over to a new hosting company, and thus, all the videos that I had linked to in my blog are no longer available. Most of them I have managed to save, and I will go back and change the links so that my online record of my journey is complete, without the holes! Meanwhile, you can see my videos on the "media" page at http://www.edchavis.net.

 

Three Months...

Three months ago I stepped on a scale and posted a ridiculously low (for me) weight of 199.4 pounds, sealing a win in the Augusta's Biggest Loser competition. I can't say that I have kept every single pound off, because that weigh-in was the result of 11 days' worth of working out an average of 3 hours per day and consuming very few calories. As soon as I got some food in me, and got properly hydrated, my weight settled back up to about 208 pounds. In the ensuing three months, it has been up and down some, but on average, I have stayed right around 211-212 pounds. I immediately shift into weight loss mode when it creeps up over 215, because I don't want to have to return to writing down everything I eat! When it creeps up, it's usually because of sodium in pre-prepared foods; when I work on getting the water off, the weight comes right back down. Because I know what to do, I have actually seen the number on the scale drop 5-6 pounds in a day. Note: this has only been my experience during maintenance - if you are trying to lose, don't think I have some quick weight-loss program to drop that much. Because I continue to eat mostly healthy foods, and use extreme moderation in "cheat" areas, my weight gains have not usually been due to excess calories, but excess water retention.

 

I have added a lot of foods back to my diet, but I eat them in different ways now. If there is something sweet, or something laden with calories, that I just HAVE to have, I fill up on something healthy first, and then take just a bite of the food I thought I had to have. One thing that PHC taught me is that the satisfaction of food lasts only as long as it stays in your mouth - once it goes down, food is food (not nutritionally, of course, but as far as the whole eating experience is concerned, the pleasure stops at your taste buds).

 

One thing that has struck me three months later is that I have sort of lost the feeling of "I feel better". I know mentally that I am better, and I do feel good, but it has been 9 months since I started my life change, and I've just about completely forgotten what "before" felt like. Anytime I carry something heavy, I try to remind myself that I lived for years carrying that weight around, and more. When I look in the mirror, I still see the fat guy - I wrote about this in an earlier blog entry, and actually had a brief discussion with Liz Hill about it earlier this week. But I have all this evidence of my success, and I continue to surround myself with it. When I run, I listen to the audio track from our finale show. I listen to myself describing my goals, and how I hoped to inspire a change in others. I hear my before and after weights read aloud, and I listen to the experiences of my fellow contestants. I try not to talk about it quite so much anymore, especially to those who were around me during the entire six month process. The video archives, my pictures, my blog entries, the publicity stuff I've collected - I keep them all around me, as reminders that I am still on this journey.

 

To those of you who are still in your own weight loss struggles, you can do this, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My prayers are for you every day - Eric, Peter, Linda, Valerie - and several within my own church family, who continue to battle on.