Another Milestone...

Today was my last weekly visit at PHC for weigh-ins. I am somewhat "off the leash" now - I only have to go once every two weeks to check my status.

 

I had them look up my stats today. When I started on my maintenance plan, I weighed 215 pounds on their scale (that's fully clothed, including shoes). During most of the summer, I held my weight at a very consistent 216 pounds. I recently regressed upwards, but all in all, I'm only about 6 pounds heavier than I was six months ago, and I'm currently on the way down again. My goal is to hit 208 on the PHC scale - that will put me right at my lowest reasonable weight, which is what I weighed before that insane push to the end of the competition, when I lost 9 pounds in 11 days just for the privilege of being able to say I broke the 200 pound barrier.

 

There was a fair amount of external pressure to get below 200, and I suppose it fueled my inner desire to do it, as well. But with a penultimate weigh-in of 208 pounds, I would have still won the competition - my closest competitor was 18 pounds away. I guess now the motivation to get back down to that 208 number is the fit of my clothes and the shape I see in the mirror. It won't happen by next weigh-in, because that would be a pound a day, and those days are long gone. Besides, I don't want to do it the way we finished. The push of the contest drove most of us to near-starving diets and excessive workouts (we're talking THE Biggest Loser-style workouts - 4-5 hours a day is what we were being encouraged to do, for the final 11 days, and those workouts would consist of the highest calorie-burning exercises our trainer could find). No, not going there again. It will come, though, in time.

Confessional, and Thoughts On Getting Back On Track

Well, I'm back to blogging.
 

I have officially hit the point on my weight loss journey where it's time to REALLY get serious. I looked in the mirror; I looked at the scale. I know, I know... "I'm up." My friends have heard it all before. But I am officially higher, MUCH higher, than I want to be.
 

I know where I got derailed. Before I lost weight, my thing was fast food and starches. I wasn't really too big (pun intended) on sugar and candy, particularly chocolate. But with the onset of our Awana children's ministry year, we began keeping chocolate and sodas in the Awana office as a respite for our Awana workers on Wednesday nights. Some of them are convinced that enough chocolate and caffeine will help them keep up with the stress, I think. Well, I would come through the office, or near the office, during the week, and stop by and grab a small handful of little chocolate candies. After all, they're really little - mostly those little bite-sized Hershey milk chocolate, dark chocolate, Mr. Goodbar, and Krackle bars. Sometimes bite-sized Snickers, Milky Way, and Three Musketeers. I'd scarf that handful down, and later on, I'd do it again. Two or three times a day I would do this. I wasn't stealing them, because I paid for them out of my own pocket... and I always made sure that there was plenty for the workers on Wednesday night.
 

I'd inch up a little on the scale, and would tell the PHC folks, "It's just water - it will come right back off." And more often than not, I was exactly right. I held my weight very well between 215 and 217 throughout the summer, at one point holding it dead on 216 for 6 weeks in a row. But Awana started up, the candy became easier to get to, and I began seeing the scale inch up. We went to Florida in early November, and I have to confess that I pretty much ate a whole bag of them on the way there (I was driving, and trying to stay alert). On the way back, I bought another bag, and ate some of those. I bravely put the rest in the Awana office when we got back.... and ate on them the week after.
 

"Facts are our friends", Johnny Hunt likes to say, and so I finally looked on a bag of those little chocolates to see what kind of calories I had been casually tossing back. THREE of those little bite-sized bars are a serving, and they range from 40 to about 70 calories PER PIECE. Ten or twelve of those bars, and I was unwittingly (or deliberately ignorantly) consuming an entire day's worth of calories when compared to what I was eating during the competition (about 900 calories a day). Then breakfast, lunch, and dinner on top of all that, plus a couple of snacks, and I came to the stark realization that I was consuming upwards of 2000 calories a day. Note: you cannot lose weight on 2000 calories per day. For someone my size, that will be a slow, steady gain.
 

Wednesday night I watched, "Where Are They Now?", a Biggest Loser special. I watched as the former winners from seasons 1-9 (minus Michelle from season 6) came into a room for a healthy Thanksgiving meal. With the exception of Danny Cahill, every man had gained a pretty significant amount of weight. Ryan from season 1 had lost 122 pounds en route to his win, but has regained all but 10 pounds of his weight. They are not happy with him, needless to say. Matt from season 2 regained a lot, but continues to be quite athletic in spite of his weight. Season 3's Erik had regained most of his last year, but has taken 162 of it back off, with probably about 40 or so left to lose. Season 4's Bill Germanakos looks "okay", but I doubt he is much below 200 (his finale loss was 170 pounds down). Next was Ali from season 5, who is within 2 pounds of her finale weight. Helen looks "okay"; Danny looks terrific, and Michael still looks like he has a ways to go. I knew most of these results already, but it really brought home to me that if those guys who had all that time on the ranch, all that training, all that knowledge, and all that motivation could stumble, I was certainly not immune. Watching that particular episode has helped to fuel the fire again.
 

I didn't do TOO bad on Thanksgiving for lunch... I made sure I ate only white meat off the turkey, only one bite of ham, loaded up on veggies, and I did try to limit my desserts and starches. That was lunch - dinner was another story altogether. We went out to some friends' house around 7:30 PM, where we had been invited to get "a bite of supper". I ate more than "a bite"... and indulged in desserts. Cornflake candy (2 pc.), white macadamia nut cookies (2), half a chocolate chip cookie, and some kind of chewy bar that was very good - two bites of that.
 

I had a not-so-good meeting with my scale this morning. But I am pleased to report that today, I ate absolutely perfectly. In spite of us having tons of ham, macaroni & cheese, two pies and a cake, I did not cheat a single time today. My total calorie intake was right at where it was during the competition, and with the exception of having to do the workouts on my own, I am in full-blown contest mode. I had two eggs for breakfast, a white-meat-only turkey sandwich on a 100-calorie wheat bun with a slice of low-fat cheese for lunch, and a dinner consisting of 6 ounces of chicken and a cup of steamed broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, etc.
 

To those of you who are still telling me that I look great.... I love you all, and I will politely and humbly accept your compliments. But I'm not going to pay you any attention!

Starting Over...

Well, I had to take an out-of-town trip... and as my wife pointed out to me, I ate too much chocolate, chicken and dumplings, biscuits, etc. on the trip and at my mother-in-law's house. I had not been there in a year and a half, so no one down there had seen "the new me". Took a few copies of CSRA Active to show the family, and also took my Biggest Loser scrapbook. It was fun re-living the experience of a whole bunch of people who had not seen me, but I knew that even as I was talking about losing weight, I was putting the pounds back on. I did make some attempts to eat right at meals, but I ate a LOT of chocolate trying to stay awake and alert. We stopped at Cracker Barrel, and while everyone was eating pancakes, I had a yogurt, and only a few bites of the HUGE muffin that accompanied it. We hit Steak and Shake about 7 PM Sunday night, and I had a decision to make. And of course, I made the wrong one. I ate what I wanted to, telling myself that I had not eaten at a Steak and Shake in over a year and a half, and I "deserved" it.

 

Got home late Sunday evening and crawled into bed; this morning, I decided to come face to face with the number on the scale... I was hoping against hope that it was not as bad as I thought. It wasn't... it was WORSE. Much worse. Could not wrap my brain around the number being so HIGH!! But I made a conscious decision to not beat myself up... and that I was not going to do the 4-day cleanse that frequently marks our attempts to get back on track. I just decided I was going to do it - get some serious exercise, get the food plan into gear, and do all I knew to do.

 

Fortunately, a big chunk of that number was water retention, which can happen not only with poor eating, but with the sedentary nature of traveling. My horrible number didn't last very long, as I dropped over eight pounds of water weight today; really, just in a matter of a few hours. I got myself back to the gym this morning, and did some serious treadmill sprints, step mill, and other cardio work. I ate absolutely perfectly today - zero cheats, more protein than anything else, and all of my carbs from vegetables and a protein bar. The only thing I missed today was the pedometer, but I will start tomorrow.

 

I know what to do; it's just a matter of doing it. And because it won't "get done" before Thursday, I will have some explaining to do when I show up at PHC Thursday for my weigh-in. And I will "deserve" that, as well!