Confessions of a fat kid

Sometimes the hardest advice to follow is your own advice. I have come (and gone on occasion) on the message boards here for the past two years or so offering solid advice and motivation for anyone who needs help shedding the extra pounds, I may not look it at the moment but I know a few things about losing the weight (and unfortunately putting it back on). Weight loss for me has been a focus of my life since I was discharged from the Marines, due to medical reasons I put on a lot of the weight I am carrying to this day.

 What is my point in all of this? Well here it is my point is this over the past year or two of offering up help to those who are sincere about losing the weight I have preached over and over, consistency, consistency, consistency. Along with time and smart choices you can and will lose the weight you so desperately are trying to lose. For those of you who have seen my body space these past two weeks I have lost 1/2 a pound each week. Fearing that I am about to hit a plateau the first time I feverishly looked over my diet, again and again trying to see what I could change when the third week hit.

 Why the third week? Well that is part of the advice I give, if something isn’t working give it 3 weeks before you freak out and change things about your diet even if you gain weight! Sometimes things just take time in your diet and your body has to get used to something. I have no idea why my body thought it would be okay to lose 1/2 a pound these past two weeks but for whatever reason it did and I was fearful of the third week of 1/2 pound losses.

But never fear, even after all of my freaking out and reviewing my diet (note no matter how much I eyeballed it that’s all I did, I did not change one thing about it!!) I jumped on the scale today to check my half week weight (not the best idea for someone starting out but I do it to maintain consistency in what I am doing weekly just seems so long to me). Sunday I weighed in at 187 pounds, today I am a much happier 185.5 pounds. Come Sunday I will probably be somewhere around that same weight (Since I know my body fairly well). Which just goes to show you, sometimes the hardest advice to follow is your own.

   People often look at what they want and think if only I was him/her. The problem with this of course is that when someone does this they are not him/her. However this is to help keep people motivated and while you can’t have something now people need to learn delayed gratification. Maybe that is the problem with today’s society as a whole has grown up without this concept if they can’t have it now they don’t think it’s worth going after.

   The problem with this is you didn’t get fat overnight. Weight gain creeps up on you and before you know it that’s all she wrote your fat and can’t figure out how you got here. The problem now is the biggest loser fad. People or should I say larger people (I don’t really want to use the term obese) who try to lose weight don’t think they are getting anywhere if they aren’t losing 15-20 pounds a week.

   This is where anyone who has lost weight or a sane personal trainer steps in and says stop. People should only be losing 2-3 pounds a week, just like the weight sneaks up on you, you shouldn’t try to lose it all in one day. That isn’t sustainable and that is the biggest problem with the biggest loser. Consistency is the key to anything (be it weight loss or weight gain) If you want to lose weight do it the right way, the first time.

   Think of it like this you could paint your car in one day if you had all the tools to do it. But it would look much better if you took your time, did it right and spaced it out over time to get everything perfect. Your body is much like a car, you could try to lose the weight all at once but it isn’t going to be exactly what you where hoping for. You will lose water weight and muscle long before you start losing the fat. The problem is the human body will want to hang on to fat, especially if you starve yourself to biggest loser standards.

   So take it from the fat kid I went from 250 to 175 pounds but I didn’t do it overnight. Things take time, more so then the television obsessed public want to believe it needs to be sustainable weight loss, that is the right kind of loss. We are giving people the wrong information and expecting them to do something with it. That is the biggest problem with the biggest loser.

It either makes you or breaks you. Everywhere you go people use this turn of phrase. In body building I like to think that if it breaks you it will make you better. Not that people should go out and throw out there back or shoulder or knee (who hasn’t had at least one of those happen right) but the point of the matter is that the limits of the body are much harder to reach then the limits of the mind.

   Once upon a time (every good story starts this way I think) I was 250 pounds. I was sick not physically sick but I quite literally thought something was wrong with me and there was. I didn’t take responsibility for my actions. No one was shoveling the food into my mouth I was doing it to myself. If it wasn’t for the Marines and there strictest of weight standards I would still be the same fat kid I was. From that experience I learned a lot about myself namely that the difference between a 250 pound teenager and a 180 pound teenager wasn’t just 70 pounds. (Now I am at 208 but a much healthier version then back in those days)

   Breaking bad habits and coming to terms with the fact that I did this to myself and there wasn’t really something wrong with me was the hardest thing I have had to come to understand about myself. I’m no longer that person, I eat clean food I’ve learned that diet is 80% of getting you to your goal maybe more but the other 20% for me is mental, your mind will give up long before your body (So I cook almost everything I eat no prepackaged stuff), I swim and I lift. With that I hope to reach my goal of having my six pack in 9 weeks (12 week slow and steady cut like it should be). But remember those bad habits are what makes you heavy or even keeps you from reaching your goals, if you break them it will make you.