TAKING THE GOOD WITH THE BAD

There is some good news and some bad news that has surfaced in the past couple of days that I would like to share with everyone. I will start with the bad news, but it will lead into some pretty awesome news. 

 

This past week I was asked to go meet with my trainer Diana after our workout. We walked over to the coffee shop right next to the gym and that is where she told me she would no longer be training at Workshop Fitness. I did not see that coming. Diana was the first trainer I worked out with, and she does all my measurements at the end of the month to chart my progress. I was acting tough because that is what a man is supposed to do, but I was not handling it very well inside. It has been almost five months with her, and losing such a key part of my training team was a crushing blow.  That is until she hit me up with the good news.

 

Diana and Thomas (The trainer that heads this project) have a company called Physique Foods that I have mentioned a couple times on my blog before. They offer food based on the diet they created, a diet that I am currently on. This is when Diana offered to begin supplying me with my food starting in January. Her title would change from “Ricky’s Trainer” to “Ricky’s Nutrionist."  I could not believe what I was hearing…Free food to go along with the training? I no longer have to worry about cooking? What about my beloved Shake ‘n Bake? After the initial shock wore off I gave her a huge hug and told here this is great news. Getting supplied food only makes the goal of 180 pounds in one year that much easier and obtainable. The best part is that their food is great!

 

I am so pumped to spread the word on Physique Foods and to practice my photo skills as I take some pictures of typical meals they provide me with.  This really couldn’t have come at a better time, because my eating habits were beginning to slide. Earlier this month I had peas taken out of my meals (They are too starchy). This really threw me off because I was eating peas 3-4 times a day (I think I was going to turn into something green eventually-- but would that really have been that bad?)

 

When the trainers took that off my meal plan, I was having a hard time substituting for the ease of making peas. Recently I have been eating bags of spinach like they are chips but I can see that getting old real fast. The shredded carrots were also being treated like pretzel sticks. However, Physique Foods will offer me an array of vegetables to pick from, and the variety will get my taste buds on full alert. So thank you, Physique Foods for joining the party!

PHOTOS

Looking at myself in the mirror everyday has made me immune to any changes I have had over the past couple of months. I mostly rely on the reactions I see from others to really gauge how much I have changed.  Only when I started to look back through some of my photos from Facebook could I begin to tell the changes my body has gone through in the past 4-5 years. I went from about 350 (when I started at Texas State) to over 400, (right about senior year) to currently being about 300.  To see this almost 100-pound transition really shows me how much I have put my body through.

 

At the same time it makes me realize that for a good portion of my teenage years I did not take photos of myself. I remember trying to find some about a year ago, and I realized most of the photos I had were just the standard school photos you had to take. I have minimal pictures of myself under 300 pounds. It makes me feel like there is a time that I don’t really remember myself. It is between the ages of 12-18. It started when my parents got divorced and I moved in with my father. We never really had a camera and we never really did much that required photos. Most of the pictures of me are from photos taken by friends and family during those years. As a result, I don’t have many to really judge myself by where I am at right now compared to when I was younger.

 

When my parents were together, my mom and my dad would take tons of photos of me. There are a bunch of photos that I love looking at when I am in Houston visiting my mom, and there are definitely some ones that I don’t like to see (One particular one of me in the bathtu.  Note to parents: it is just plain creepy to take photos of your children in the bathtub!) Unfortunately I was always a chubby kid, but I didn’t get morbidly obese until about 8^th grade, so these pictures do not really help me out.

 

The whole point I am trying to get at is that I wish I could go back in time and take some photos of myself, but I know I can’t ever do that.  I won’t ever to be able to look at some of my fondest memories of high school because I was too lazy to take pictures of something that, later on in life, I would have loved to look back on. But I am glad that I have pictures from college, and the more recent photos that I can look back on 20 years from now and say that, at this time in my life, I made decisions that changed everything at the age of 25.  With these photos, I can come back to what is becoming the happiest year I have experienced so far. 

TUSA FITNESS ON FOX 7 AUSTIN TONIGHT!

Stay Tuned to  Fox 7 News

Learn how you can roll out your kinks and become your
own massage therapist with Tusa Fitness! 

When: Thursday,December 17, 2009

Time: 5PM
with Lorianna Hernandez

Top it off with free classes in January!

If you miss Thursday at 5PM, stay tuned to Thursday at 9PM or Friday morning.

SIZES KEEP FALLING!

From the beginning, I planned on riding out my clothes as long as possible because I knew I would be going through a lot of sizes during the next year. Here is the breakdown on all the clothes I have had to buy so far:

Shirts: I have been pretty lucky when it comes to t-shirts. I haven’t bought a new t-shirt yet because by the time I would have wanted one it got too cold to get them, though I have had to buy new dress shirts-- I always want to look good for the ladies.

So far I have gone from a 5X to a 2X in shirts! It is a great feeling to know that I am buying shirts that I would have been buying back in 8th grade. It is a little weird that even though I am 30 pounds heavier than when I was in 8th grade, I can fit into the shirts because the muscle I've put on makes the shirts fit better.

Pants: When I started, all my pants were a 60 inch waist. That is a hard number for me to look at because I just can’t believe I let myself get that big. I mean that is BIG! Thankfully, those days are gone. Back in September, I went to buy pants because my original pants were falling off. I bought size 52 pants, but just a few weeks ago those got too baggy to wear, and now I just bought size 46 pants!! For anyone who's counting, that's 14 inches off my waist, an idea that was so foreign to me a mere months ago that I would have laughed in your face if you suggested it. Now my reality of a 32-inch waistline is halfway there…UNBELIEVABLE.

Going down in sizes with my shirts and pants is a terrific feeling, but there is something else that is making me even happier. The clothes I am now buying fit so much better than my old clothes ever did. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen my pictures of the awesome sweater I bought back in October. Some people would see it just as a regular sweater, but it means a lot to me. I haven’t worn a sweater in a long time. This also goes for the jeans I just recently bought. They were a little tight, but they formed to my legs better than any jeans I have had in a long time. When my clothes fit better, I feel better about my appearance. When I feel better about my appearance, I exude more confidence when I am out. I just can’t help myself these days.

OKAY, HERE IT GOES...

I have tried to stay as honest as possible with this whole process as I try to lose the weight that has haunted the first 25 years of my life. I have told you about my food obstacles, discussed the hardships that I have encountered with the workouts, talked about my time at the Dudley and Bob morning show and the many other aspects that have come into play throughout the past 5 months. But I haven’t really talked about how my relationship with women has changed. Okay so here it goes…

 

My entire life I have always wanted to find love and fall deeply, passionately and endlessly in love with that person. So far, I don’t think I have gotten close to this feeling. A big reason is I have never truly felt confident around women that I am really attracted to.  I usually get on the friend “ship” before ever attempting to try my luck at anything more. If I get passed this point, one of two things happens: I usually will either have so much doubt that someone can be attracted to me that I don’t trust the other person, or I grow jealous when they are not around me because I feel that I am not worthy for them to stay with me. The most obvious reason is that I always felt my weight made me unattractive and that I would have to completely sweep a girl off her feet by being charming and free-spirited than with anything physical I had to offer. This all lead to me having short-ended relationships that never came close to the type of connection I was looking for.

 

So as I got this chance to change my life I started to think of all the great things that would happen with me in the department of love. I would be able to find the person I have always wanted and we would run in fields of flowers, play Monopoly all night, have Battlestar Galatica marathons and just plain have fun with someone that I truly felt something with.  Sweet dream-- but it will never be a reality until I really figure out the underlying truth behind all of my problems before I started losing the weight. After much inner debate, and long phone calls with friends it became obvious that as cliché as it seems I had to learn to love myself before I could really love anyone else.

 

Finally getting that through my head was a hard pill to swallow. I thought I always loved myself, but I didn’t. I never felt confident that I could love someone and that I DESERVED TO BE LOVED THAT MUCH BACK because I am a good person too. I still don’t feel truly confident in this, but I am getting better about accepting myself in my skin (I think it helps when you lose 1/5 of your body weight J). But what still stands in my way is that if I try to find love now I could potentially lose focus on the task at hand, the task of losing this weight within the time period I have set for myself.  I don’t feel it's right for me to give less in the gym, or lose focus on my eating patterns because of love.  Not at this stage.  I am doing so well with my weight and my health level that any distraction could really skew my results with Workshop.

 

I think some people will disagree with my point of view right now, but with weight loss will come more confidence, which will allow me to love myself more, and create more opportunities to discover the person I am looking for.

180 Q & A

FYI: My nephew Triston and I in Houston for Thanksgiving.

 

What are the most important things you do to boost your metabolism?

 

The most important thing I do to boost my metabolism is my diet plan that my trainers put me on, which is 5 small meals a day which include six ounces of protein and at least one cup of vegetables.

 

What is your favorite/least favorite thing to do during workout/exercise.

 

My favorite workout is the cardio, especially jogging. This is really going to surprise some of my former teammates who would remember me as the last person that would want to do any kind of running, but I am really embracing making my body move like it never really has. Even when I played basketball a lot as a kid I was never in really good cardio shape, so I am trying to make this a goal of mine to start walking/jogging/running as much as my body can handle.

 

My least favorite exercises are the stretching and minor-league yoga poses that Christine puts me through. It feels good afterwards, but holding a stretch for a minute is tough.

 

Have you found any new veggies you like?

 

My favorite veggies at this point are green peas. I am also in love with any veggie that is grilled. Cauliflower is a great veggie for me because it doesn’t have a distinct flavor and I am pretty sure I have the taste buds of a five year old. I am still working on expanding my veggie diversity. Any suggestions would be great!

 

What is something that you love to eat now that you never would have never wanted to eat 6 months ago?

 

I really love everything grilled at this point. Whenever I go out, I look for grilled veggies and grilled chicken. Six months ago I would have gone straight to fried chicken, or chicken fried steak and some french fries.

 

How important is accountability to the process?

 

To me, it is the biggest part of this process. I have tried so many times to lose weight, but I would be shy or timid about it. Doing this really hurt my ability to count on others for help and guidance, and to count on myself to maintain a diet and workout schedule. Now that I have the blog and have the food journal I have to watch everything I do

 

What was the hardest thing to cut out of your diet, and how did you accomplish cutting it out?

 

The hardest thing to cut out of my diet was all the fried food I was eating. If you ask anyone that hung out with me for long periods of time they can tell you that I ate fried foods whenever the opportunity arose. My body had a tough time adjusting to this at fist, but I fought through it and now I have no problems controlling my desire for fried foods.

 

I can usually keep up pretty good eating habits, but when I fall, it's hard. Question: How do you keep from doing that?

 

I allow myself one cheat meal a week and I take full advantage of it. I find having that meal to look forward to during the week controls my other desires to cheat. I really have found a good medium with my food and with my ability to control my old, bad eating habits. I feel one cheat meal is good right now.  When I try to maintain I will increase the “cheat” meals I have, but make better choices when eating them.

 

What is so good about Shake n' Bake?

 

Besides "everything?"

 

Shake n' Bake is a great alternative to fried food. It tastes very similar to it, but it has way less calories/fat/sodium, etc. It also is what a dietician gave me to try when I was in high school, but of course I didn't. It comes in all kinds of flavors and I have not met a person yet who hasn’t liked it when I prepared them some.

HELLO AGAIN FRIENDS

I haven’t written in a bit, and there is definitely a reason behind it.
I have become obsessed with getting under 300 pounds. About two weeks agom I hit 303 and I couldn’t stop thinking about getting under 300, which has been one of the bigger goals for me in this journey. I became completely absorbed with regulating my diet, exercising more and watching what I drink. Nothing happened.
The result? No weight change the first week, and this week it was going slow. It was just so frustrating to not see the numbers fly like that had before.

The frustration was leading to me becoming short tempered, I began to show signs of sass with friends and family, especially with my close friends that were asking me if I had gone under 300. At KLBJ, I was lacking focus when working the podcasts, and I forgot to send a song to a friend- more importantly to Bob, who needed it for his internet show. I just haven’t been the same person since getting so close to the goal, and I was wearing thin. I figured that maybe it was just never meant to be.

My trainers could tell all week that I looked strained. Their words of advice were to not worry about the scale, or to even forget the scale for a week or two. The main concern was that I wasn’t eating enough, or getting hydrated enough for my body to burn the fat because I had told them I was trying to clean up my dieting to get this last bit off for my first real goal weight.

The bottom line of the whole situation is that I stopped doing what was working and ending up slowing the process down due to my own desire to see faster results. If I had followed the guidelines that the trainers had given me, I would have hit my number faster. But...
I hit 299 today!

When I finally saw the number I couldn’t help but get completely overwhelmed with a variety of emotions.
I felt pride that I had lost 71 pounds.
I felt guilt that I still have so much weight to lose and I should have never gotten this big to begin with.
I felt love from all the people that have been pushing me through this whole experience from my trainers, to my family and my friends.
And I felt the fire in my belly that tells me I have a long way to go, and to not forget the big picture in this whole journey.

As I sat in the bathroom with tears in my eyes I wrote my trainers a mass text saying the following: “I just hit 299! Thank you so much! I love all of you for changing my life…you have no idea what it means to me. :)”

The responses in no particular order: “F*ck Yeah.” “Badass, man – that just made my day!” “I can’t imagine how you must feel. Congrats! You’ve worked so hard for it!” “Woohoo! We are so glad to be a part of it and truly enjoy helping you. And Kicking your butt!!”

I can’t wait to reach my next big goal of 250! That is how much I weighed when I was going into 8th grade. I know that's crazy to think of, but my next goal is to weigh what I did over 10 years ago. My goal for that weight is March 13th.
I sincerely thank you all for the love and support. Stick with me and I'll prove to you what one man can accomplish when he puts his mind to it.