How I Plan on Doing This

So you say you want to change your lifestyle but how are you going to do that…?

 

That’s the question that I kept asking myself a couple of weeks ago. I can’t always rely on Dudley and Bob, or Workshop Fitness to bail me out. I needed to figure out a plan that would utilize what I know while also allowing me to continue to learn about fitness with people who understand fitness and health better than myself. That’s when my longtime friend, David Becker, contacted me. He asked me to come check out his gym for an open session that he has every Saturday morning.

I had only worked out with David once before about two years ago, and he completely wiped the floor with me. He had me doing a fully body workout with jogging as my active rest within about a 45 minute workout. That was when I was in great shape. Now I am in the worst shape I have been in for about 4 years so I was apprehensive about the workout. Thankfully David put me through a workout I could handle but at the same time made me sweat my butt off.  It involved a low impact warm up, kickboxing, and doing sprints on his air-dyne bikes. After the workout I had a stroke of genius.

I need to get my butt kicked by David.  I need this to help me out because without a trainer I had lost all the success I had gained. There also needs to be accountability. What better way to create accountability than to workout at his gym and get a group of people to join me who are looking to get back into workouts. The truth is that I have been getting a lot of feedback about training again. The problem with training right now is that I am not fit to tell someone else to perform to his or her best. It wouldn’t feel right. So I want to see if people would be interested in starting a workout with David that would be specific to people I used to train, friends who are interested in working out with me, or anyone who is looking to be part of a workout community.

I want to make sure its known that I am in no way making any money from this, getting a discount on any kind of fees associated with the gym, etc. I am just looking for accountability and to create a workout family I desperately miss. I am currently looking at holding these workouts Tuesday-Thursday 8:00PM.  If you are interested in finding out more information regarding this let me know.

Just some additional workout information regarding David’s gym. He will be instructing us using Caveman Training. It sounds a lot more intimidating than it actually is. The program is progressive and will start at a beginner level. And not to be intimidated by the name, it simply means going back to the basics. Basic movements structured properly to produce results. You can find more info about his gym here at http://www.austincaveman.com/ , or https://www.facebook.com/austincaveman .

This is My Confession

Sometimes in life you are given an opportunity of a lifetime and what you do with it will define your path in life. I was given this opportunity a little over four and a half years ago. Getting free workouts for a year allowed me to gain control of my weight, find a new passion for life, and it opened the door for me to meet the girl of my dreams.

Since that year a lot has changed, some things for the good and some for the bad. Now I realize, that when I stayed accountable I was at my healthiest and happiest. With that being said I have a confession to make that I hoped never to say.

I have gained a considerable amount of my weight back. To give perspective on the situation I was at 420 pounds at my heaviest. At my lightest I had gotten down to 220 pounds. The last time I had been at 220 pounds was in the 7th grade…Wow! That is hard to say. It’s even harder to admit that I have gained back almost 100 pounds and now hover somewhere around 310 pounds.

Man, the emotions behind that statement are hard to fathom. I worked so hard to get to 220. I remember the feeling I had when I hit that number. That’s an achievement I can hang my hat on. I cried knowing that I had accomplished something only a few people could understand. Losing 200 pounds is something most people can’t comprehend. Some people may never even weigh 200 pounds in their entire life.

The idea of gaining 100 pounds back is utterly shocking me. I have such confidence in how I carry myself that I lost track with how I really looked in the mirror. It wasn’t until I recently saw a picture of myself about 1-2 months ago at a birthday party that I thought, “Wow my shirts aren’t fitting nearly as well”. Maybe I should have noticed when I had to go up 2 sometimes 3 sizes in my shirts or 6-8 inches in my waist for my pants. Oh the things you don’t think about until its too late.
 

Alright its out! I feel better now…that I have shared this. But what good is sharing the problem unless you have a plan in place to take care of that problem.  Don’t worry guys I do have a plan and its called starting this blog again. I plan to be energized by the power and inspiration people give me by telling me their stories of triumph. I will rely on myself and my loved ones to keep me from falling off the wagon again, and remembering what got me here in the first place. My health is something that I am not willing to compromise...again!

So this is my shout out to everyone who wants to make a change in their life and needs a push in the right direction. Join me on this journey of self-improvement and I will continue to write my challenges and victories so that together we can find our passion to be the best we can be and live a life filled with joy and happiness, because we all deserve that.

- Ricky Lawson

Robs Introduction!

Hello everybody! I guess this post is to provide a bit of a back story about me, so here goes. I’ve been on the heavy side almost my entire life, dating back to kindergarten when I’d ask for an extra cookie for my invisible friend (or not so invisible on the days when I would take My Buddy™ to school). I was never incredibly active as a child, and graduated from playing right field/playing in the dirt to scorekeeper during my brief career in baseball. Size really came in to play during college, thanks to free daily access to ice cream and pizza. Raise your hand if you can or could eat a whole large Papa John's pizza plus cheese sticks on your own! This combined with an increasingly inactive lifestyle brought me to my largest weight in January of this year of 350 pounds.

When I first heard Ricky’s story on KLBJ, it inspired me to try out Workshop Fitness. After a few sessions, I determined that it was a bit too far of a drive going from north Austin to downtown during rush hour. Shortly thereafter a friend advised me of a more local trainer that did one on one sessions. I worked out with him for a while, and was doing pretty good, but I was having difficulty cracking the 300 mark. This was mainly due to poor food choices, which is eventually what led to us agreeing that until I could get my eating under control, we would keep going in circles. After that, I slowly ballooned up to 350 pounds.

Then, during my trip home for Christmas, my brother surprised me with the fact that he had been going through his own weight loss process, losing a little over 100 pounds. He did it through a program called Optifast. When I returned to Austin in January, I signed up for the program. Basically, while on the program, you are on a liquid diet with only 800 calories per day for 16 weeks. It can only be prescribed through a doctor, and you have to go in to get your vitals checked every week and your blood drawn every month. More on this program later. At the end of the program, I was down to 266 pounds and feeling good.

Afterwards, I was on my own with the food again, and while I was making smarter choices and eating healthier, those not so good habits were creeping back in. Cue the new job and that fateful morning when I discovered that Ricky, the guy who inspired my weight loss adventure, was in my training class. And the rest, as they say, is history.

180 Degrees of Ricky Update

This feels a little crazy to be writing on the blog. I left this without providing any justification of why I stopped blogging. Thankfully, that will all be explained and you will get a sneak peak into the next chapter of 180 Degrees of Ricky.
Let’s first get you up to date with how life is going right now. Currently, I am living in Austin and am engaged to my beautiful fiance Crista Sheumaker. I work for a technology company in town and also at doing a little training on the side (more on this later).
I have tried my hardest to stay at my target weight and right now I am at 245 (when I finished with Workshop Fitness I was at 240). It hasn’t been easy; my weight has fluctuated from back up to 270 pounds to as low as 235 pounds. My experiences have forced me to realize that maintaining is just as big of a challenge as losing weight was.
I still workout 4-5 times a week, either at the gym at my apartment complex or at Austin Peak Fitness, a gym that focuses on group workouts. I only went there because I bought a Groupon to try it out, but I fell in love with the trainers and they are constantly challenging what I thought I was able to do.
I received my Personal Trainer certification over a year ago through NASM, and have trained a couple friends for a little while, however training people never felt right. I also was having trouble believing gyms would hire me since I still looked overweight. When you look at trainers, you see a person who has dedicated their entire lives to fitness, where I’ve only been dedicated for a little over 2 years. My body issues seem to never go away no matter how much weight I have lost. I was losing faith in being a trainer and making that something part of my life.
So I started to think why I wanted to become a trainer and it boiled down to the fact that six trainers helped me for FREE for a YEAR and gave me my life back. This is something I want to give to others, yet I was having a difficult time finding a way to make this possible. That was until I found Rob “Undercover Boss” Dooley.
Rob is a co-worker with me and he had listened to me while I was at KLBJ, the Texas State radio station.. He was inspired by my story and even went to Workshop Fitness to train there. I will let him tell more of his story when he posts an introduction on the blog in a couple of days.
Why Rob will be writing on this blog is because I am happy to announce that I will be training Rob for the next six months. The blog will now be transformed into how I train Rob, while also allowing him a forum to write about how the weight loss plan is going. I will have much more information as the weeks progress, but our start date is set for November 1st.
Rob is looking to change his life and I want him to change mine. I will be pushing Rob where my trainers pushed me. I am looking forward to seeing how people react to the new idea on the blog. I will continue to post my weight loss too, and any updates that go along with that.

June 23rd food entry

Breakfast: protein shake and a turkey bacon sandwich on multi grain toast.



Lunch: 8 ounce steak, carrots, mashed potatoes.





Mid afternoon meal: peanut butter and jelly with chips and salsa.





Dinner: 6 ounce pork chop and peas. Forgot to take a picture.


Overall: Not the best way to start out but nothing outrageous.

THE FINISH LINE

It has been about two months since my last blog entry, and I will be the first to admit I have failed in the department of giving out updates. No excuses necessary, but I do bring exciting news.

For the past couple of months, trying to figure out what to write about has been a tough task. I have been talking to my editor, Sam, about how I keep running into the same struggles, and writing them would just be boring to most of the readers of this blog. I needed to find a different way to utilize my blog, and after talking with Sam, I feel that I have a good idea.

Starting June 23, I will be posting a picture of everything I eat or drink. If it is a glass of water, a handful of nuts or a cheeseburger; I will put it on my blog. I will then take all the food I have eaten for that day and calculate how many calories, grams of fat, carbs and protein I accumulated throughout the day. I will put my starting and ending weight each week, and post my weight for the final month. If I get any questions or comments, I will also try to post a response each day.

Doing this may not interest many people, but to me, it’s a great way to keep myself in check, and to give people who have been wondering what I eat to lose weight a better picture of my day-to-day habits. The idea also keeps me in better check of what I put in my body. For the past two months, I have lost a total of 8 pounds, and a main cause of that is due to my diet. I have eaten so much worse than I was in the previous months that I really have struggled to even keep off those 8 pounds I lost since April. With the last month approaching I need to re-dedicate myself to losing as much weight as possible when I have the help of all these wonderful trainers at Workshop Fitness.

DUDLEY AND BOB SPOT 4/22

9 Months

I have to first give a huge thanks to all my trainers and to the Dudley and Bob Morning Show for making this all possible.

Nine months down, three to go.

I always had a hard time picturing nine months. It’s the last leg of the race, yet I remember the day I met the trainers back in July, and the anxiety I'd built up wanting to get the process started. It seemed like so far off. Since Day One I have had the attitude that I am the only one that can slow this down and to this point I feel pretty happy with my success. So let's just see into the numbers.





I want to first show my July 23, 2009 numbers:

Neck: 17.75
Arm: 19.25
Chest: 58
Waist: 64
Hip: 63
Thigh: 28.5
Calf: 19
Weight: 370





And here are my numbers as of April 19,2010:

Neck: 15.75
Arm: 15.75
Chest: 44
Waist: 42.25
Hip: 46
Thigh: 25.25
Calf: 17.25
Weight: 254

Total inches: 63.25
Total Weight: 116

So I tweeted that I had lost 73 inches, but I forgot that we added the Waist at its smallest point about three months into the measurements.I don’t have a day one measurement for that, but I have lost 10 inches in that spot since the three-month mark.

I FEEL GREAT BY THE WAY!

Is this where I wanted to be at nine months? Not exactly, I thought I would be about 20 pounds lighter, but that number doesn’t define all the work I have done and I won’t let it hinder my progress going forward.





OTHER BIG NEWS!

I announced this on the Dudley and Bob show this morning, and now it's time to say something about it on the blog. For the past 3 months I have been playing with the idea to become a personal trainer, and I am happy to say that I will be in the next 3 months. I am currently studying for the CPT exam through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. In the next couple of weeks I will have more information about where I will be training, and how you guys can come work with me if you are interested. I am really excited about this whole new direction for my life and it would have never happened if it weren’t for the great people I have spent my life with these past months. They have guided me in becoming a much better person than I ever was and to them I am forever grateful. The trainers at Workshop Fitness gave me my life back and now I would like to return the favor helping others reach their fitness goals.

UPDATE

I am failing at my duties of keeping you guys up to date on what is going on with this weight loss journey, so let's catch everyone up to speed.

I am currently at 257 pounds, which is 113 pounds down from my original weight when I started July 23rd 2009. That equates to about 30.5 percent of my total body weight I have lost in a little over 8 months.

The first week in May I will be participating in Warrior Dash, a 4-mile obstacle course being held outside Dallas, Texas. My trainers Thomas and Jason will be in the race as well as my friends Monty and Todd. I have been preparing by doing at least an extra hour of cardio 3-5 times a week for the past month or so. I am hoping to be fewer than 250 by the time the race comes around. I am excited to see if my body can handle four miles of work, the farthest I have gone is 3 miles. It will be a great test of endurance and heart.

The diet is being tweaked on an almost week-to-week basis and it's honestly becoming almost too much to handle. Trying to keep up with how much protein, cabs and fat I am supposed to intake depending on the day can be very confusing with the workouts, actual work, and other obligations I have. I am trying to figure out what my food plan can be four months down the road. I don’t believe I can keep the regiment I am on now forever, but I feel if I modified it I could still see results-- just not as drastic as I have been seeing.

I have planned a trip to Colorado to see a good friend after the training is over to visit Fort Collins and to hike a 14,000-foot mountain. Will I make it up to the top? Not sure, but I am willing to try.

Sorry, guys, this so short but I will have more updates coming soon.

New Workouts

The trainers at Workshop Fitness have been putting me through some new workouts and I wanted to share them with you guys.

· Mariesa, who is the co-owner of Workshop, has started spin workouts with me. I remember as a child riding my bike in the old neighborhood, going over to a friend’s house or heading up to the park to play some football with the old gang, but unfortuntately spin brings back zero of those memories for me. One on one spin is tough just for the simple fact that you can’t slack since the instructor can see you the entire time. I can’t tell you how many times she says, “Come on Ricky, can’t you go any faster?”
· Jason, the other half of Workshop, has been taking me out to Town Lake to do all kinds of crazy exercises outdoors. We start with pushups and pull-ups at the monkey bars by the Zachary Scott Theatre, then we do some jogging on the trail, followed by scaling the rocks by the pedestrian bridge and we end it with some sprints on the stairs to the pedestrian bridge. The main thing about this workout is that its not isolated-- people can watch me workout. If we had done in this month one I would not have been that up for it, but now I don’t really care about working out in public because I feel in good enough shape to show off a little.
· Christine “Torture” Tusa has been adding more weight resistance to my ab workouts. Even with lightweight it creates a lot of resistance when you are trying to concentrate on engaging your abs. She is also adding new stretches to help get my body back in balance. I never realized how hard stretching can be but after being asked to hold a pose for over a minute it can be just as painful as any workout I do with one of the guy trainers. After working out with Christine I try to run as far as I possibly can because my body feels completely recharged from her torture sessions.
· Paul has fallen in love with the prowler. Instead of me pushing the prowler, he is now strapping me into a harness and dragging it. He has also been hitting my legs hard, and after one workout a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t walk right for 3-4 days because my legs were in such pain.
· Thomas has been the most consistent workout when I come into Workshop. We still hit chest and back. This isn’t because Thomas is boring its because he knows that is what I want to do and he pushes me in those two areas. He even let me do a little bit of bicep work after I shared some concern for my gun show.

These are just a few examples of what these people put me through. I couldn’t be more blessed to have such a great foundation for health in my life. The key to these workouts is that there is so much variety with each trainer. I am not doing the same thing everyday so my body can’t get used to the work. With their help I will be able to hit my goal in four months and start the new chapter of maintaining.

Location:Kirby Blvd,Southeast Harris,United States

8 Month Measurements

 Eight months. Really?

I seriously can’t believe that 8 months have passed since I started working out at Workshop Fitness. To think that I have only 4 more months of this training before the next part of the journey starts has its own set of emotions, but for right now I am feeling fantastic about where I am at today.

January 25th

Neck - 16.25
Chest - 44.5
Arm - 16.75
Waist (Smallest part) - 44.5
Waist (Belly Button) - 49
Hip - 49
Thigh - 24.5
Calf - 17.5
Weight: 280

March 11th

Neck - 16.25
Chest - 44.5
Arm - 16.5
Waist (Smallest part) - 43
Waist (Belly Button) - 48
Hip - 47.5
Thigh - 22
Calf - 17.5
Weight: 263

Total Inches: 6.75 inches lost
Total weight loss: 17 pounds


So far I have lost approximately 69 inches off my body and 107 pounds. There is some good and bad news that comes with my results.

The good news is that I am still losing weight and inches. The bad news is that I am not losing them at the pace needed to reach the goal I put for myself of 180 pounds in one year. I am trying to figure out how I am going to lose 18.25 pounds a month from here on out to reach 180 pounds. All I can do is put in the hours at the gym, and if I don’t hit the goal weight I will at least know that I tried my hardest to achieve it. If the worst thing that happens to me in this process is that I lose 160 pounds instead of 180 pounds, I think I will live.

Why am I okay with not hitting the biggest goal I have set for myself this entire time? The reason is that I have come to the conclusion that I would rather have a lifestyle change than a diet that limits my food intake so much that when I get off of it I just gain all my weight back. I also am able to do so many things that I wasn’t able to do before. Just this weekend I spent a large portion of the day outside hiking with friends and playing basketball. Then the next day I went to play more basketball with friends. I was completely sore, could barely walk afterwards but I could still do it. For me at this time that is what matters, being active and being able to be happy with myself.

Battle Scars

As my weight continues to fall, I am starting to notice that my body is changing in both positive and negative ways.

 

Some of the positive things that are happening is I am actually seeing muscle definition on parts of my body. As a kid I was in shape by playing basketball and football, but never had any kind of muscle definition to speak of. I can also feel my ribs when I lay down and that hasn’t happened since high school. These feelings are nice but it isn’t necessarily why I wanted to get healthy, and so I am trying not to focus on this part of the process. What I find more interesting is the negative side effects of my weight loss.

 

The biggest thing I have noticed is that I have a ton of little bumps around my stomach and chest area. At first I had no idea what they were and I went to the doctor to find out. Turns out they are fat deposits called lipoma that are all over my body from the all the weight I had put on. The weirdest part about it is that they probably won’t ever go away (except with some kind of surgery. Note: I am not a doctor so I could be completely wrong on this subject). I don’t want to look at this as a negative thing-- more like a reminder to myself that you have gone through a lot and to never go back to where you came from. No matter how great a shape I am in I will always have the reminder that not so long ago, I was the person playing videogames, drinking Dr. Peppers and eating pizza all night by himself. When I am down on myself, or feel like I can’t do something because I am tired, I like to feel those bumps to remind myself that I have come so far in this journey, so why stop now? I only have so much more time with the trainers,  so why waste it complaining when I can show myself everyday that I can improve and I will reach my goals if I put the time and work into things. 

 

As I was writing this blog post I was thinking to myself.  It occurred to me that, at the beginning of all this I would have never written anything this personal. But I am starting to realize that this blog isn’t just about me. It's about everyone who is going through the same struggles as I am with weight loss. If I can show someone my pains and struggles, maybe they can also push through the tough times and come through their own journey a better person. 

Chewing Gum

If you hang out with me you know that I always have gum on my person. It helps me fight the cravings I have of sweets and usually can curb my appetite if its not quite time to eat again. Counting Calories did an article talking about their feelings on gum and I found it pretty useful. Check it out here.

MY FORMER MENU

I smelled something very familiar the other day while driving...Wendy’s! I thought to myself how it's been such a long time since I ate there, but I remembered when I went there I had been responsible with my choices and got the Chicken Mandarin Salad (which turned out to be fine). It did, however, make me think of all the bad food choices I used to make just a couple months ago, and now I don’t think I could stomach most of them. So I came up with a list of some of the major fast food places I used to frequent and what my normal order would be.

McDonalds – 20 piece McNugget. Super Size Fries. Large Dr. Pepper. 3-4 packs of BBQ Sauce.

Wendy’s – Spicy Chicken Sandwich combo no veggies. Large Fry and Large Dr. Pepper. Order of 5 nuggets. Order of junior bacon cheeseburger, no veggies.

Papa John’s – Large pepperoni pizza. Breadsticks. 3 packs of garlic butter sauce.

Chic-Fil-A – Chic-Fil-A sandwich no pickles. 8 pack of chic-fil-a nuggets. Large Fry. Large Dr. Pepper.

Dunkin Donuts – 4 strawberry filled powdered sugar donuts. Large Chocolate Milk.

Burger King – 2 chicken sandwiches, no lettuce. Large onion rings. Large Dr. Pepper.

Sonic – Chicken Toaster Sandwich, no veggies. Route 44 ocean water. Sonic Size tater tots with cheese.

Fazoli’s – Chicken Paramgiana. 2 baskets of breadsticks. Large Dr. Pepper.

Whataburger – Grilled Chicken sandwich with bacon and cheese only. Large fry. Large Dr. Pepper. Apple pie.

Jack in the Box – Chicken strips. Bacon Bacon Cheeseburger. Large curly fries. Large Dr. Pepper.

Long John Silver’s – 5 piece combo (2 Fish, 3 Chicken). Large Fry. Six hushpuppies. Large Dr. Pepper.

Looking at this list now, it almost makes me want to throw up it's so disgusting. I can’t imagine trying to eat that much food. I can really see that one of my old problems was portion control. I had no control over how much food I put in my body, irrespective of the horrible quality of the food. I also waited way too long between meals, so I would be starving when I ate, and that is just asking for trouble. I would have put what I get at all these places now but the problem is I haven’t been to most of them since I started working out. I think that is something I really need to start looking into as I get into my "maintain phase" of this journey. I will have to come face to face with these places more and I need to be ready to make healthy choices.

ENCHANTED ROCK

My friend Lisa came into town a little while ago, and on Valentines Day she wanted to go to Enchanted Rock with some friends. She asked me if I wanted to go, and at first I was pretty hesitant about accepting the invite. The last time I went to Enchanted Rock I was very young and I remember it being quite high. The old worries of not being able to do an outdoor activity came back, and the anxiety that I would slow the group down crept up. But Lisa sounded so excited about going that I wanted to join in on the fun. 

 

When we got there one fact just kept running through my mind…The top of Enchanted Rock was about 1800 feet high. I thought back to a couple of weeks ago when I was with David and we were doing the nature walks that were about 500 feet high. Those nature walks were pretty tough, and I was thinking that I have to more than triple that elevation to get to the top.  Over-analyzing is something I have always done, and sometimes it can psyche me out of doing certain things, but I wanted to test my body to see how far I have come since July. 

 

As we began the climb I could tell my body was in for a challenge.  Since I do a lot of my cardio on machines I wasn’t used to walking on uneven ground. My ankles were going in all kinds of directions and that is always a scary sign for me because I have such weak ankles. With all this going on I pushed forward and continued to climb higher. There were a couple of times that we had to do a little bit of a climb onto a higher rock, and each time I was able to easily clear whatever was in the way. Once again I was really shocked by how much progress I had made and how easy things were for me to do. 

 

When you are just looking up at the top of the rock you lose sight of how high you have climbed. We got around the halfway point of the hike and took a little break. The best part of the break was that I really didn't need the break because I was tired, but because it was just so cold outside and we wanted to get out of the wind for a second.  As we continued the climb, I kept waiting to get out of breath and break it to everyone that I needed to stop.  But it never came. I just kept going and going. It was such an unexpected feeling to have. 

 

We finally reached the top of Enchanted Rock and the view was just amazing. What was even better was that I got to do it with some great friends.  As we stood at the top, one thought kept coming to my head, “I would have never been able to do this six months ago.”  I wasn’t sad for myself-- I was more excited about the fact that I am taking care of what has always held me back from doing things like hiking Enchanted Rock. For such a long time I would have said 'no' to going, but now that I went and got to experience the excitement you get from hiking all the way to the top, I know I have been doing something right in my life. Then I kept thinking that if I could hike up Enchanted Rock with ease, what is next for me? What will I conquer next?

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

I stumbled across this web site Natural Physiques that has a calculator to show you how far you have come in your weight loss. As of today I am down 104 pounds, so here are my stats for what that equates to in several categories. 

 

How Much Fuel Is That?

To lose that amount of fat would mean to burn 364,000 calories or 1,522,976 KiloJoules! That is the equivalent of 11.74 gallons of gasoline. Humans, however, are far more efficient than cars, getting about 912 "miles to the gallon". If you could dump this many calories into the tank of a Honda Civic, you would be able to drive it about 399 miles before running out of gas!

Let's see how your goal would convert to other forms of fuel. 364,000 calories is equivalent to:

        11.74 gallons of gasoline, or

        130.05 pounds of coal, or

        180.65 pounds of oven-dried wood, or

        15.94 gallons of propane

This amount of energy would ...

        Brew about 1,015 pots of coffee, or

        Light a 60-watt light bulb for 7,051 hours ( 294 days = 0.83 years)

Cutting 364,000 calories is the same as saying "no" to:

        4,550 apples, or

        3,640 bananas, or

        21,412 cups of cabbage (whew!), or

        2,510 baked potatoes, or

        4,550 large eggs, or

        3,033 cups of 2% milk, or

        262 pounds of ground beef, or

        4,184 glasses of wine, or

        1,127 Snickers bars, or

        1,517 Clif Bars ( 2,022 Luna Bars), or

        2,619 cans of Coke, or

        2,141 pints of Guinness beer, or

        740 Big Macs, or

        707 Quarter Pounders with Cheese, or

        520 Whoppers, or

        1,103 Subway 6" Oven Roasted Chicken Breast sandwiches, or

        2,141 Taco Bell crunchy tacos, or

        1,549 slices of pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut

What it Takes to Burn 364,000 Calories

To burn 364,000 calories, a 190 pound male would have to:

        Backpack for 603 hours (25 days) nonstop, or

        Walk for 1,395 hours (58 days) at 3 mph straight, or

        Walk 4,184 miles (2,615 kilometers), or

        Bike for 1,055 hours (44 days) at 10 mph, or

        Bike 10,551 miles (6,594 kilometers), or

        Play basketball nonstop for 581 hours 24 days), or

        Play billiards for 1,685 hours (70 days), or

        Go bowling for 1,405 hours (59 days), or

        Stay on the golf course for 1,055 hours (44 days), or

        Spend 469 hours (20 days) playing competitive football, or

        Jump rope for 443 hours (18 days) straight!

You would have to walk the length of England about 7.03 times to burn 364,000 calories.

How Long it Will Take?

The range for safe weight loss is about 1 to 3 pounds of fat per week. It could take anywhere between 35 to 104 weeks (8 to 24 months) to safely and reasonably lose that amount of weight.

 

 

They also had some other calculators for how many calories you should burn in a week based on your weight, a better version of how to measure your Body Mass Index and a bunch of others. 

WHAT I EAT DURING A TYPICAL DAY

I was asked if I could provide a rundown of what I eat on a normal day…here goes.

Breakfast

•     I take a cup of frozen strawberries and a cup of frozen blueberries and I put them into a blender. I fill it up with water and throw in some Metamucil. Blend it all together and you get a decent enough smoothie.
•     1 cup bell peppers
•     2-3 pieces of turkey bacon.
•     A carbohydrate source like bread or oatmeal.

Meal 1

•     Six ounce Pork baked.
•     1 cup of spinach
•     1 ounce almonds

Meal 2

•     Six-ounce chicken breast baked.
•     1 cup of carrots
•     1 cup brown rice

Meal 3

•     Protein shake (I use skim milk to mix my protein shake and usually throw in a cup of fruit)
•     1 cup of green peas.

Meal 4

•     Six ounce steak grilled.
•     Salad with dressing on the side and used sparingly.

And that would be a day’s worth of food for me. This is just an example of what I would eat but it’s not always the same. And I would be lying if I said I followed this everyday but this is my template. Sometimes I will eat more meals, sometimes I will eat less but four is usually good enough for me. If I miss a meal at any point I always try to carry a protein bar with me to at least get something down that is low calorie and will help fight the hunger. So on any given day I am eating usually about 4-6 cups of vegetables and 3-5 cups of fruit. This is an extreme change from how I used to eat. At first I was having an extremely hard time adjusting to it but you eventually get over the initial shock of this eating pattern and at least for me, you flourish.

TRIPLE DIGITS

Sometimes in life you do things that you never thought you would: Talk to the prettiest girl in the room, jump out of a plane, sing the national anthem at a baseball game. The list can be varied, but in general there are things that people put in their minds which are almost understood as impossibilities. Number one on that list, for me, is losing over 100 pounds. As many times as I have tried to lose my weight, I have never gotten past 50 pounds. At that point, I would usually start to slip into my old ways, and things would just spiral down from there. I would usually gain it all back-- and more. Then I would try another diet, and the cycle felt like it would never end.  Well, this time it's different, and I think the quote, “Never, Never, Never Give Up” really fits this situation.

 

The day I did my first workout I weighed 370 pounds.

Today, I am 269 pounds. 

Hitting the triple digits has taken so much hard work, dedication and commitment to the idea that I can’t eat a rotation of pizza, chicken fingers, fettuccini alfredo and pancakes. Also, accepting that I am the only person responsible for what I do with my life is a huge part of my accomplishments. If I don’t work out, it's no one else’s fault but my own. If I eat too many chips at the restaurant, I can’t complain that the waiter is too good at his job, it's my fault for being a chips-and-salsa-eating machine. Ultimately, being responsible for your own actions and realizing how many positive things you can accomplish come from healthy choices.

 

I was trying to remember the last time I weighed this much, and I came to the conclusion that it had to be somewhere around the 8^th grade.  It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that all through high school I was bigger than I am now.  I don’t remember feeling that big, but that is part of the problem. I never really looked into the mirror and said “WOW I have really let myself go! Maybe I should do something about this.” Instead, I just made a goofy face and went on with my day thinking everything would be okay.

 

With every milestone I hit, I try to appreciate how far I have come with my workouts and overall health.  Sometimes, you forget how far you have come until you compare pictures, or visit someone you haven’t seen in a while to really get the full spectrum. But with every small goal achieved, the ultimate goal still looms. I realize that I have a lot of work left if I am serious about hitting my target number by July.

DRINKING ON A DIET

This topic hasn’t really been brought on my blog, but I feel like it's time to clear the air because I have been getting some questions about it. Yes, on my diet my trainers allow me to drink. There are a lot of rules to the drinking, and when I have strayed from the rules I have suffered on the scale. So here are some of the rules:

 

1.    No Beer – This one I thought I would be okay with because I don’t really drink beer that much to begin with. But every once in a while a man enjoys an ice-cold beer with his dinner and I haven’t been able to do that with a clear conscience in a while. The beer has carbohydrates that I don’t need, and has more calories than a vodka soda (The only acceptable mix drink I can have).

2.    No dark liquors – By far the hardest rule they gave me. If you have ever partied with me you know I have a love for whiskey. Unfortunately the dark liquors have more calories and carbohydrates.

3.    Vodka soda, Vodka soda – So the one drink I can have is vodka soda, but the problem at the beginning was that I didn’t even know what it was. That might sound stupid but I just never ordered it. If I were going to order vodka I would do it with sprite or tonic. So when I finally tried it I had to prevent myself from spitting it out. The taste was so bitter compared to the whiskey and Coke I was used to.  I might have been the saddest little boy on Sixth Street the first night I got these rules because I just couldn’t get past the taste. But just like anything I have become accustomed to the taste, and now I prefer that drink to anything else.

4.    Drink in moderation – Sure I have had some crazy nights with my friends, but I am getting older and drinking in moderation just comes with maturity. So-- maybe that isn’t the complete truth, but I really have improved on my drinking quantity since starting this. They suggest only about 2-3 drinks when I go out, and only drink a maximum of two nights a week.

 

Now that I have gotten that all out I also have to bring up the fact that I have recently decided to not drink. I came to the realization that yes, drinking is fun and that I enjoy participating in what goes along with it, but I only have so much time to fully utilize my trainers and I need to respect that time I have with them. Drinking only decreases my chances of hitting my goal weight.  Not only are they empty calories, but it also increases my chances of cheating on my diet with greasy foods. And if I have drank too much, I will want more greasy food to battle the hangover. That isn’t fair to myself, and it’s not fair to the people cheering me on. I have to be stronger than that to prove that I am in this to complete all my goals. 

CHANGES IN DIET

Food has always been the trap for any weight loss program I have tried. When I first started with Workshop Fitness I was afraid that the diet would be too hard to follow and I would just fail yet again. Thankfully, I loved the plan of a very simple diet of 4-5 meals a day consisting of six ounces of protein at every meal and at least one cup of vegetables. You add a couple things here and there but that is the basic structure of the diet. This was working really well for about the first 90 pounds, but recently my weight hasn’t been dropping. Some this was that I have been eating pretty much the same amount of food the whole time. The only problem with that is when you lose 90+ pounds your body begins to burn way less calories. A rough estimate of how many calories my body burned at my starting weight was about 3200 calories a day. At my weight now it's around 2600 calories. These are both rough estimates, but since I have lost the ability to burn about 600 calories a day over the course of six months, I really had to figure out something different to do with my diet, or else I felt I would be stuck at my same weight.

 

So I went to my head trainer, Thomas, to ask him what I should do. He suggested that instead of having a diet that was high in protein all the time we switch up the diet. I was a little hesitant because what we had been doing was working pretty well in my book. What Thomas wanted to do was lower the amount of protein I was getting three days a week and on those days increase the amount of carbohydrates. I would do this by eating oatmeal in the mornings, and then having some brown rice with one of my later meals. I would also have to cut the ounces in each protein for that day in half (3 oz. instead of 6 oz.).

 

The change in the diet has resulted in a steady loss in weight again. I have lost about 8 pounds in the past two weeks.  This probably isn’t the last time my diet will change, and I am just going to have to take the changes in stride because I am closer to my goal weight than I really have ever been in my entire life. Here is to using food as fuel!