Stability For Our Time

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Here's 2000.

Before	After

I started at 305lbs and now weigh 253lbs. 52lbs in 90 days is not bad. As I look at the two pictures, I see a lot of changes all over and I'm liking it. That, along with all the improvements in my health make all the expense and self denial worthwhile.

Now for the next phase. Now that I'm healthier, I'm shifting the emphasis to fitness. I'm modifying my diet to include more calories and more protein since I'm starting a new workout program Monday morning. I've got P90X coming, and already have my workout room set up. My goal for the next 90 days is not really weight driven, but fitness driven. I want to improve my upper body strength and my build up my endurance. I'm sure that as I workout, I'll continue to burn fat, but adding muscle may slow down my weight loss, so I'm focusing more on measurements for the next 90 days. My chest has gone from 53 to 45 inches so far. I want to lose another inch or two there, but not much more. My waist has gone from 55 to 44 inches, and I want to bring it down another 8 inches to 36. My arms have gone from 16 inches to 14, and I want to hold it right there.

I'll set some strength goals as soon as I have a good baseline to go from.

255 lbs this morning, which means I'm half way to my first goal, which is to lose 100lbs, putting me at 205. That will be 10 pounds lighter than my lowest Navy weight, and only 13 pounds over my high school weight.

Getting to the halfway point is a huge boost for my determination because now, I have less to do than I've already done. It was kind of hard to get excited about losing 30 pounds when I knew I still had 70 to go, but now, the road ahead is sorter than the one I've already traveled.

I'm starting to shift focus from my weight to measurements. So far, I've lost 4.5 inches off my chest (2 to go), 8 inches off my waist (9 to go), and 4 inches off my hips (6 to go). To make those numbers work, and to keep the weight loss going, I'm going to have to really pick up the pace on my workouts, and start focusing on upper body. I would hate to wind up hitting my goal and still have a pot belly.

I haven't had the chance to do one of these for awhile, so let's get caught up.

The week before Thanksgiving, I cheated. Big. I didn't lose any weight that week, but did lose a couple of inches.

During Thanksgiving week, I played by the rules, except for Thursday and Friday. Thanksgiving Day, I ate whatever I wanted, but did try to be somewhat reasonable. Lissa and I made green bean casserole from a Medifast recipe that really cut down on the fat and calories, and we substituted mashed Cauliflower for mashed potatoes. We made a wild rice stuffing instead of the usual bread stuffing, and I skipped the cranberry sauce.

I did not skip the pecan pie, however. Or the rolls. Or the gravy.

I meant to go back on plan Friday, but my sister announced a last minute do-over for Thanksgiving and we all went to her house.

I ate a full plate, going light on the potatoes and gravy, but had another piece of pecan pie, and a couple of cookies.

Since I had planned earlier in the week to cheat on Thursday, I made allowances for it during the week and the weekend. I didn't cut my calories all that much, but I did make sure to stay very active throughout the entire holiday. When I weighed in on Monday, I had lost one pound for the week. Since my goal was just to not gain anything, I was very happy with the result.

Last week, I stayed on plan, and lost six pounds. I also had an appointment with my doctor for a follow up visit. He was happy with my weight loss, although slightly concerned with how quickly it's coming off. He recommended that I make some changes and slow down to 3-5 pounds per month, which is a safe rate of weight loss according to him. I don't want to go that slowly until I'm closer to my goal weight, but at the same time, I don't want to lose too quickly and wind up rebounding.

My blood pressure was improved. The last time I saw him, it was 160/97 or something like that, and he put me on blood pressure medication. After I lost 30 pounds, I stopped taking the medication (I don't like pills). My blood pressure this time was 137/80 which is much better. I still want to lower it a bit more, but I'm out of the danger zone.

My cholesterol is much better. I went from a total cholesterol of 280 to 152 and my LDL is 91. And my non fasting glucose level, which was edging up into the pre-diabetic range is now down to 85.

In short, not only have I lost 47 pounds in 9 weeks, I've reduced my risk of cardiac issues tremendously.

Had a great week this week. I only got to work out for three days, then spent every spare minute of the next four days renovating a bathroom. I think I got more exercise doing the renovation; I know I ran the stairs at least 200 times over the four days we worked. But the results were worth the effort. The bathroom looks great, and I lost 6.5 lbs!

I weighed 267 lbs Monday morning, which means I've lost 38 lbs in 6 weeks, which means I'm over a third of the way to my goal of losing 100lbs.

This week, I'm hoping to work out 6 days, and I'm thinking seriously about adding more calories to my daily intake. Losing weight rapidly is great, but I don't want to go into starvation mode, and start burning muscle instead of fat.

After 5 weeks on the Medifast diet, I've lost just over 10% of my body weight. As of Monday morning, I weighed 273.5 pounds, a loss for the week of 3.5 pounds and a total loss of 31.5 pounds.

Last week, I began lifting weights, with only three sessions to get warmed up. This week, I'm on my regular schedule, working out 6 days a week for 30-45 minutes a day. I do chest and back on Mondays/Thursdays, arms and shoulders on Tuesdays/Fridays, and legs on Wednesdays/Saturdays. I work my abs every other day, and Sunday is a day of rest.

Right now, I'm working on building muscle to replace fat and increase my metabolism, so I might see a slow down in my weight loss for a short time, but I should see bigger changes in my measurements, especially in my waist.

Overall, everything is going well, and I'm still a few pounds ahead of my original schedule. Tonight will be a challenge though as I'm taking Luke out for his birthday dinner. It will be my first night in a restaurant since we started dieting. We'll see how that goes.

I lost four pounds last week, which isn't too bad since I cheated one day. I'm down to 277 which is 28 pounds lost in 28 days. My goal for the next four weeks is 20 more pounds, or five pounds a week. I've started weight training to burn more calories and to increase my fitness level. This could slow down my weight loss as I build muscle, but will pay off in the long run with increased metabolism and improved overall health.

I've started noticing some changes in how I move. I can bend over without having to hold my breath, and I can actually bend at the knees instead of just at the waist. I'm down another notch on my belt, and I wore a pair of jeans I haven't worn in a couple of years.

We've started getting more creative with our meals, and that's helping to fight the urge to break from the plan.

Next week's goal is 272.

Weighed in the morning at 281 lbs. That's 4.5 more pounds gone for a total of 24 in three weeks. I'm hoping to continue losing about 4 pounds a week and I'm adding in some exercise this week to help make that happen. The Medifast folks recommend waiting three weeks before exercising to allow your body to adjust to the reduced caloric intake, and now that I'm through that period, it's time for some weight training.

I'm going to add a little more variety to my menu by using some 0 carb, 0calorie, 0 fat sauces and condiments I just ordered. If they taste okay, then I predict this diet will be even easier to stick to.

My goal for next Monday is 275 lbs. That's 6 pounds, which will be a stretch after a 4 pound week, but I'd really like to end the first four weeks with a nice round 30 lb weight loss. But if I only lose, four, that's okay too.

Any loss is good.

On Monday, Oct. 4th, Lissa and I both started the Medifast diet. My starting weight was 305, and my goal is 205.

If you haven't heard of Medifast, it's one of those plans where you eat pre-packaged meals 5 times a day, then one "lean and green" meal you make for yourself. The principle of the diet is portion control, combined with fat and carb restrictions. The food costs about $300 per person for 4 weeks, so this isn't a cheap plan by any means. However, given that I routinely went out for lunch 3-4 times a week, and Lissa and I ate dinner out about as much, the price for both of us to stay on this diet is les than what we were spending on food. Also, the high cost of the food acts as an incentive for a cheapskate like me to stay on the plan.

Each of the meal choices is designed to provide you with 20% of the nutrients and vitamins you need for the day. Soy protein provides the base for each of the meals, and most of them come in pouches of dehydrated powder. There are lots of choices, ranging in taste from decent to mediocre to somewhat less than appetizing. The bars are the least filling choice, but also the tastiest. The shakes vary, and are very sensitive to preparation method. The soups are pretty good, as long as you help them out with some seasoning. Breakfast offers three flavors of oatmeal, or scrambled eggs.

A tip for the shakes: use a mini-blender like the Magic Bullet to make them up, then let them chill in the fridge for 15 minutes or so. The protein powder is very slow to dissolve, and the extended stay in the fridge combined with the speed of the blender gives you a much better shake than using a shaker jar.

The lean and green meal gives you a choice among different meats or proteins based on fat content, along with 3 servings of veggies, plus different condiments for flavor. We usually end up making a salad, or stir fry using a tim=ny amount of olive oil, which is considered a healthy fat on the plan.

Since this diet limits carbs, I figured it would work for me since I had lost so much before on the Atkins diet. Given that this plan also restricted fats and limits calories to roughly 1000 per day, I figured it would work even faster.

To make things more interesting, Lissa created a challenge page on Facebook where we ask people to pledge money to our favorite charity, The Lord's Child, a ministry of our church.

So, after all of this, I'm sure you want to know how the diet is going.

Well, during week one, I lost 12.5 pounds! Week two, I dropped an additional 7 pounds for a total of 19.5 pounds in just two weeks. I've lost two inches off my waist, and three off my chest. I'm wearing a belt I haven't worn in about two years and I'm looking forward to buying a new summer wardrobe come March.

These are not typical results, nor do I expect to continue this pace for long, but it wasn't entirely unexpected given that I have so much weight to lose, and my average daily caloric intake prior to starting this diet was around 3000 calories.I'm going to add in a light workout this week to try and keep my metabolism up and start building up some endurance. My short term goal is to be down to 265 by my next doctor's appointment in early December and stop having to take meds for blood pressure and cholesterol. Other than that, as long as I see a steady loss each week, I'll be happy.

This time, instead of just quitting like I did after the Atkins Diet, I will go through the Transition Phase and make sure that I don't let the weight creep back in. I've got two grandchildren, two more on the way, and I want to be around and be able to play with them.

And their kids.

I'll update next week, and post some pictures when I can actually see a difference.