Don't say it, shut your fuckin mouth and keep on walkin'

I started writing again recently and then it hit the fan again, to put it bluntly I have some pretty stressful shit going on in my life currently and trying to stay focused on my health is extremely hard when I have so many other places my attention needs to be. I am stretched thin right now and just don't have the time to get on here and post as much as I would like and it sucks because this blog is a VERY important tool in my weight loss/health regimen but tonight, sleep deprived and feeling pretty fucked about how this weight game is going right now I came across a post that had been shared on facebook from a person that I do not know. 

I will not post her name but if she reads this she needs to know that she IS NOT a fat bitch and kids are stupid. I completely related to what she wrote as I have been there done that with someone taking the time to make sure that their stupid fucking opinion was shouted loudly cementing into a fat persons brain what they already know... Yes world we are quite fucking aware that we are fat, thanks for stating the obvious along with solidifying the fact that you are a complete douche bag. 

Struggling with weight loss is as hard as anything I or any other person dealing with it has ever done and people who have never been there do not have the right to say a single negative word about it to anyone who struggles with being over weight. How about if you feel so inclined to make sure stupidity flies out of your mouth you change it into something positive instead, and if that's too hard for you fucking idiots then just keep your mouth shut.  

We are fathers, brothers sisters moms and cousins to someone, everyone on the planet struggles with something or will struggle with something and verbally smashing their face in with insults is not helping a single person and that goes for any struggle with any person not just us fatties.

If you have something negative to say fuck off and keep it to yourself, have a look in the mirror and ask yourself why you feel the need to belittle someone else because they are fat before you take time from your day to insult someone whom you do not know.

I will get down off of my soap box now but you get my point. 

As Ever
Me

A workout plan, A menu and a fat man.

Yesterday I mentioned that I am going to raise my calories to 2000 per day and after adding that 300 calories to my allotment I have to say that it feels like a lot of food to me! I have been eating 1700 calories per day for the last two and a half years and changing it isn't easy for me, I feel like I am over eating even though my menu was awesome for the day, I still feel like its too much but I suppose that's the mental side of it. My day ended with a grand total of 2065 calories and I drank a whey protein shake to make up that balance and I am unsure if it is in my head but I felt really good yesterday over all, Here is a look at yesterdays menu.

Breakfast
7:15am
2 cups honey combs 220
1 cup 1% milk 110

10:00 AM
1 mango 120

11:15 AM
pecan zone bar 190

Lunch
2:30 PM
1/2 T Miracle whip 25
2.5oz deli turkey 75
1 deli slim 100
1 can Progresso clam chowder 220
sesame candy 45

4:00 PM
1 apple 100

Dinner
6:15 PM
5 egg whites 1 whole egg 145
6 turkey sausages 220
6.5oz potato 165
peppers/onions 40
smart balance 25
olive oil 25

8:30 PM
8oz 1% milk 110
1 scoop whey protein 130

The gym was good yesterday as well, I did 25 minutes on the stationary bike with an average RPM of 96 and then 25 minutes on the treadmill at 5% incline and 3.6mph pace. Today is a weight lifting day for me and I may change that because of the fact that I weigh in for the week on Fridays and though it should all even out in the end I did mean to lift on Wednesday this week but because of my hike on Monday it got switched. With my weight lifting I need to finish writing myself a solid program and start strictly following it because right now I am just working muscle groups together but its different every time and I am using a weight that feels comfortable depending on where in the program an exercise falls. Back more than a few years ago when I was in my early 20's I had a handle on things like writing workout programs and had myself all set up, I even wrote workout plans for other people from time to time but this time around I am finding it a bit difficult to get something together that I like.

I use a pyramid style workout program which means that I do 5 sets of 6 reps, sometimes 7 depending on the movement and at the end I throw in a light set to failure just to finish myself off. I haven't been following the pyramid style program lately but starting Monday it is what I will go to because its how I have always seen results, an example of how it works is this. I will use preacher curls as an example.

Warm up 12 reps with a light weight
1st set - 75 pounds x 6 reps
2nd set - 90 pounds x 6 reps
3rd set - 105 pounds x 6 reps
4th set - 90 pounds x 6 reps
5th set - 75 pounds x 6 reps
Failure set - 50 pounds to failure.

You would of course use a weight that you can handle, I used roughly what I estimate that I will be using for the example. Normally I choose a weight range that makes the 4th set a struggle to complete and you should be able to do the max weight or third set to completion without too much issue, If the final set is a real struggle or you need a hand to finish the 6th rep that's probably the weight you will want to use. In the past I have had great results using this pyramid style workout and it will be the back bone of my lifting starting on Monday, I wanted to condition my muscles a bit before I got back into more serious lifting but now that I am not overly sore after my weight training workouts its time to implement whats worked in the past for me. I generally use this method as long as I am seeing gains in strength and when it slows down I go to a more traditional three to four sets of ten reps for a couple weeks and go back to the 5x6 plan when that feels easy with whatever weight I was using.

Something else that I am going to be adding to my workouts is going to be a daily core exercise because in all honesty it is one of the places that I don't work out specifically on any kind of regular basis. Riding a bike out in the trails works my core for sure, some of the weight lifting works the core secondarily or even thirdly but I rarely ever do what I would call a "core workout" and that will change beginning Monday along with the more serious strength training routine. My core training workouts will be a lot of calisthenic movements along with a personal challenge to complete as many crunches as I can and I will create goal numbers to reach each month that will hopefully grow every month as I get stronger.

I still have a good amount of weight that I want to lose but because of the success that I have had so far I have some skin that I am not diggin' on too, I believe that I can enlarge my muscles to take care of a lot of the "sag" in certain places so that will become my secondary goal for my health. Eventually I hope to make the weight training my main goal as the weight issues become more of a maintenance thing and we shall see if I can get myself back into some kind of a muscular build to offset some of the collateral damage that the 500 pound version of me left behind.

Now that you used your entire morning reading my longer than usual post you deserve a big ol glass of H2O so grab that and I will be on my way as I have to get to the gym and show my body that it has no choice in what happens. Thanks for following along with this fat dude getting slimmer and healthier and for today, That's all I got.

As Ever
Me

You could spend your entire life walking around in the nowhere land of self doubt.

Or you can get your ass up and do something about a situation that you ultimately do have control over, I mean it, YOU control how you live life and there is only one go at it so why not make it count? In the beginning I was doubtful that I would be successful with this whole weight loss game yet I kept going and upon doing so I found out that as long as I did my part the rest sort of happened, when I didn't do my part, well the rest stopped happening, simple right? sort of.

There are challenges that each and every one of us face on a daily basis and we somehow make it through to the next day each and every time but with weight loss it feels different, the word that comes to mind is impossible. It takes months or even years to put the weight on and we expect it to come off over night and honestly in the beginning it felt like it was! My experience with weight loss and gaining a better place within the health spectrometer has been very eye opening for me. When I was 500 plus pounds and feeling like there was no way out compared to how I see things now I sometimes can't believe that is how I felt after coming to the realization that my health is heavily dependent on what I do to keep it where it needs to be.


Its hard when you weigh 500 pounds and almost everything hurts, emotionally and physically to get up and do something about it but if you are wearing those shoes and are reading this trust me when I say that the pain only lasts as long as you let it. We doubt ourselves every day when we weigh as heavy as I did when I started down this road and that doubt will keep us from our goals all day long, know that when we apply a healthy eating regimen along with some movement then follow through with that plan that the weight has no choice other than to evacuate from our bones. There is a lyric that resonates through me almost daily, it goes like this "When you start to doubt yourself the real world will eat you alive" in many of our cases where we are extremely over weight while the real world is eating us alive we are eating ourselves to death, its as simple as that.

I am not super weight loss guy and I only know what I have learned in the last couple years about health and weight loss, I hold no degrees in this field and I am not a doctor but I do know from my own experiences that as long as sitting on my ass was my sport of choice that things were getting worse by the day. Losing weight and keeping it off is a full time job and not an easy task by any means, it is a daily struggle and takes a shit load of dedication along with a lot of hard work so when you start down that road don't expect it to be bunny rabbits and baby chicks else you are setting yourself up for a let down. I will say that how you will feel and all of the things that are possible after losing a sizable amount of weight is more than worth the struggle, sweat and pain that needs to be put into the process.

Stop doubting yourself and what you are capable of this very second and get up off of your ass right now, not later, not in a minute and certainly not after you finish your muffin! and do something for your health, for yourself, for your life!....ANYTHING! but do it now because we only get one go at this ride called life and its shorter than we want to believe.

As Ever
Me

If I can do it then YOU can too!

It seems that lately I am posting later than normal because of the fact that I am taking advantage of the absolutely perfect New England weather but I am sure that's ok with you since this is a weight loss blog. This morning I headed to the gym early because I knew that I wanted to get a bike ride into my afternoon, I like to split the gym and bike rides a bit so that my metabolism keeps guessing whats next. My day at the gym was relatively easy, I did 20 minutes on a stationary bike and 20 on the treadmill nice and easy like, when I hit publish on this post I will do 100 push ups and no not all in a row. The video that I posted yesterday got me thinking about maybe posting more now that my video cherry is popped and I thought that some of you may be interested in seeing more from the bike going off of some of the emails that were sent in reference to that vid and I made something to make videoing on the bike a little easier.

No more wonky speedometer, that's the distance from my camera test run ride which was a fun ride! But then they all have been lately!

I took the video from yesterday on a whim, I literally whipped the camera out of my pocket and said what the hell and did it, I then debated with myself on whether I would actually post it or not. Riding one handed down a trail at about 10 mph on a mountain bike whilst taking video of ones self probably isn't a great idea in the grand scheme so I made a handlebar mount out of an old reflector and a couple nuts and bolts that I ran out and grabbed last night at the local hardware store. Five minutes after getting the supplies home it was mounted and seems really stiff for what it is, the test video has LOADS of vibration so I think a couple more neoprene washers may be in order to get that down a bit but the test video came out ok so a bit of tweaking and I believe it will work nicely.

This is what I started with.

This is what I ended up with, that wing nut on top is just there to hold the washers on while there is no camera mounted.

I am happy right now with how everything is going for me and my health and I think that starting to ride the trails more often than the streets is a heavy contributor to that state of mind. My intake has been pretty much perfect lately too besides yesterday when I decided to make some red meat for dinner in the way of a probably cloned beef chuck that was slow cooked all day with white potatoes, baby carrots and an onion, the short of it is that I ate more of the beef than I probably should have. Hydration is never an issue with me unless I get stuck out at a fair or something all day and forget to bring enough for myself, I mean you know it gets tiring carrying around a gallon of H2O or tea AND a 46 pound 5 year old! but yeah I am usually always hydrated more than enough.

I was once a 534 pound guy that could not even get out in the yard to run around with the kids or go for a walk with his wife through a park and remembering how those things felt will keep me doing what I need to do for my health. Today I probably did more for my health than I did in the entire year of 2007 and that is quite sad but as long as I keep doing what I am doing I can say with 100% certainty that I am giving my kids a healthy role model so that they may not have to endure some of the things that go along with being (and again really I hate this fuckin' word) obese. Me my bike and my Salter scale shall walk hand in hand making sure that I stick to the path that will ultimately lead me to my health goals and beyond, it will be so because I say that it will. I wanted to also mention that I have been active on My facebook page and have gotten a good amount of interest there lately so if you have a facebook account please don;t hesitate to add me or send me a message there, you know, if you were spo inclined to do so.

I might get more bugs in my teeth now than when I was 500 plus pounds but it just means that I am smiling the whole time that I cruise through the trails on my bike, something that was merely a dream in the old days of me, that's all I got for today.

As Ever
Me

Simply inspire.

Weekends seem to go by too quickly, Saturday morning comes, the day begins and it seems that Sunday night is there faster than it should have been. There is a difference in the weekends now compared to back when I was much heavier though and these days my time is spent enjoying life instead of shooting people up in Socom2 online. I had the luxury of going to a local fair on Saturday and spent about 4 hours walking around the fairgrounds while the kids rode the rides and Wify and me just enjoyed all of what was going on. I did however eat a fried dough and a cinnamon bun at the fair so I didn't stay where I needed to with the intake but its not anything that will ruin my outlook on how my weekend went. My daughter has been copying me lately and that's something that I am not disappointed in one bit because she is making up exercise games and said that she wants to start coming to the gym with me, of course I told her that she would have to wait until she was 16 for the gym but I will exercise with her any time that she wants to.

Just me at the fair, yes yes I know I always have an Adidas shirt on, truth is I have about 10 of them, same shirt, same size, three colors no waiting. When ya find one that fits right ya go with it!

Sunday I was relaxing on the couch while my daughter played with a friend in her bed room and when the play date was finished she asked for some plain white paper, so I obliged and gave her some from the printer. She began writing in little boxes that she had drawn onto the paper and then asked me for some names of exercises and how to spell them, Wify wrote a few and the kid wrote some more and then cut them all out. The game that she made up was that Mom would pull a random paper square out of a box and read the exercise off of it, I would demonstrate how to do it and she would then do as many as she could. I don't know if Wify picked up on it but I was smiling ear to ear when that little girl asked me to play it with her because I was genuinely enjoying this game that she made up on a whim and I believe that it shows that I am making a difference in her way of thinking even at age five.



Something that I have realized during this whole process is that our kids will follow us, whether it is into oblivion or to mountain tops they do as we do. I think that I am going to dedicate this week to inspiring my kids to be as active as possible in everything that they do more so than I do normally, if I had been inspired at an early age to be active perhaps I would never have made it to more than a quarter of a ton in weight. I think that every one of you that reads this post should do something inspiring to one child this week, even if you have no kids find a way to be a positive role model to a child in some kind of a way that promotes health and fitness. Let a child see how fun you are having when you are out for your run, or your bike ride, perhaps just give a positive smile or a wave to a kid playing a sport and I think it will go further to better their young outlook on fitness than we know.

Making a game from paper clippings followed by some exercise is far from socom2 on a PlayStation and I am happy that its the way things are going. I have said before that I have changed my life by deciding to lose some weight and make fitness a huge part of that life but in truth I am changing more than just my life because the lives of my children will certainly be enriched because of how I live now. Eating healthy and exercising as much as possible is as much a part of my days as anything else and I actually enjoy this healthier way of living a lot more than the drag ass days of sodium and fat packed dinners from a sack followed by hours of being stationary.

With that the end has come to this episode of as the fat guy turns, now get out there and inspire a child to walk the path of healthy living so that we may not have to read their blogs about how they struggled to lose 200 plus pounds.

As Ever
Me

Thatsfit featured little old me in an article? Very cool!

Later than usual today but its been a long hectic day for me! Alarm goes off at 3:30 AM and I jack in the box out of bed to drive my mom to the airport I had the idea that I would hit the gym on the way in since I drive right by it. Walking into the gym at ten minutes to five in the morning was a little different because other than the Arc trainer army the gym was relatively empty so onto my bike I went and 30 minutes later was on a treadmill. Home I came to greet my wonderful wify getting ready for her day and I prepared an awesome scramble for breakfast that only cost me 390 calories and had peppers, onions, potato and egg whites. Somehow I am feeling driven lately like it was in the beginning, to the point where I am excited about this whole better health thang all over again.

I suppose that being featured in an article on a site as big as AOL can get me feeling awesome again and the Thatsfit article was indeed posted up today! see it at "Moderation helped Tony lose 229 pounds". To think that I would be associated with anything that was health related was eons away from reality just two and a half years ago and now something called "Thatsfit" has my image and some info on me on their site. A once 534 pound guy changed his life for the better and I honestly see myself going into a health related field at some point as a job because I really do feel passionate about staying on this road that I am paving for myself and my health.

My calories have been more than perfect lately and I am getting in loads of foliage and green tea, I am drinking about 2 gallons of fluids per day between the H2O and green tea and am loving the gym again since the kids are back to school. For far too long I sat in the back row watching everything happen around me and now that I have slid up more than a few rows life is going to be on my terms from here on out because its the little things that we miss that are most important. Being able to run around the yard with my daughter kicking a soccer ball instead of sitting on the porch watching is one of the best rewards that have come from this whole weight loss thing and I would not give it up for anything in the world. Once upon a time I was literally leashed to my couch and now that the tether is gone I dare you to try and get it back on me but don't be too upset when you go home with rope in hand and a hollow feeling of failure because I tell you I am not going back to that.

I want to thank Martha Edwards for the article and hopefully there is someone out there who can take something from it that will help them start down their own path to better health. Onward and upward we go and I see good things in my future and all it took was to make a decision not to sit in the darkest corner of the theater watching as the show happened around me.

That's all I got for today and this episode of as the fat guy turns has come to an end, tune in tomorrow for more.

As Ever
Me