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.

MONTH 5

 
How crazy is it that I am about to start month 5 of my workouts? The love, pain, sweat and work have all been so overwhelming, but I feel that they will compare nothing to the time period between Thanksgiving and New Years. It's is the time of year that most people say goodbye to their good habits and over-indulge in the turkey, pies, casseroles and cranberry sauce that we all love so much. This time of the year I think of the white chocolate-covered Oreos that my grandma would always have at her house, and would always somehow disappear when we came over. Then I think of my love of gingerbread houses, and how one year my friend Amey made me this great gingerbread house which I ate in its entirety. It was so good, but unfortunately (fortunately?) I won’t be doing either of those this year. I am so close to getting under 300 for the first time in a long, long time that I shall not transgress. (I was trying to figure out when I was last sub-300 with my friend Tyler a couple of days ago, and we came to the conclusion it had to be around Sophomore year in high school). 

 

Realistically, I am not expecting to keep the same weight loss (about 4 pounds a week), but I am going to still push myself at workouts and try to eat even better when I can prepare food, because I know I will be eating out a lot.

 

I got a really great tip from my friend Holly the other week that I will put into motion after I go under 300.   The trick is to not get on the scale, but to judge my weight loss from the fit of my clothes. This will allow me not to fret over the scoop of banana pudding I had at the Christmas Sweater Party, or the couple of drinks I had with my old friends that came in town. Adjusting some rules and giving myself the occasional break should help release the tension/guilt I feel when I “cheat” on my diet.

 

The next month will be interesting but with a little help from friends, family and my trainers I think I will get through with great results! 

NEXT PHASE OF MY JOURNEY

I cannot even begin to tell you how much my life has changed since July, but I am not satisfied yet! The weight is coming off, Dudley and Bob is going great and my social life is thriving but there is a new movement I want to start and that is conquering fears. With this in mind I have come out with two scenarios that I think will test some of my deepest fears:

1 – I will be boxing “Chuy Manana” within 3 months.

I have always avoided getting in fights. For one, I have never known how to control my size or strength, and I also feel a certain moral aversion to physical violence.

I never got in a fight growing up for two reasons: I was always bigger than all the other kids, and I can usually talk myself out of any kind of trouble I am in. I am inspired by my friend Karl who got into boxing shape 3 years ago and fought at Texas State in a boxing match. He didn’t win, but he still did a great job and showed no fear even when he was in a ring with a guy trying to knock his head off. That’s something I would have been scared to do. My quest for new experience makes me feel like this is the right situation with Chuy. I know him and he is a great guy. I am really looking forward to kick my inner Rocky into overdrive and compete with a friend that I have made along this journey. In some subtle way I will be stepping into the ring against myself, pitting my fear against itself in a physical confrontation and test of will. Hopefully, I'll kick the shit out of it.

2 – Once I hit the weight requirement for skydiving I am going! I am not that afraid of heights, but jumping out of a plane is something I never thought I would want to do. When I was about 8 years old one of my friend's mom offered to pay for a ride at Fiesta Texas for us. The ride tethers you to a cable, then pulls you up into the air to about 150 feet and drops you. I couldn’t get myself to do it because I couldn’t handle the height. That was when I felt I was too big to do it, though, and now that I am working my way towards a suitable weight to skydive I am all about it. All my friends that have done it say it’s the best time in the world, and why would I want to miss out on that? Hopefully I can do it sometime in the April/May time frame.

By completing these two goals I will show myself that it's not just the weight I am changing but rather my entire outlook on life.

MONTH 4 RESULTS

Today is the 4 month mark and that means more results for you to feast your eyes upon. The first two months with Workshop saw incredible numbers in the inches department, and then October came around with results that were pretty good-- but not as spectacular as the first two months.

 

The success was still there for me, though.  It’s hard to get upset when you lose 9.5 inches off your body in a month (amount lost in October). November has been a different story with inches and weight loss. I think I have some explaining to do.

 

Neck: No Change

Chest : Down .25 inches

Arms: Down 1 inch

Waist: Down 1.75 inches

Belly Button: Down 2 inches

Hip: Down 1.5 inches

Thigh: Down .25 inches

Calf: No change

Weight Loss: 13 pounds

 

Total Inches Lost: 48.5 inches

Total Pounds Lost: 67

 

OK.

 

Breathe, Ricky, just breathe a little…I understand I still lost weight and inches, but for the numbers to keep shrinking is really hard to see. I can’t blame the trainers; I can only blame myself.

 

In the past couple of weeks I have been enjoying a little too much.  For both my trip to Fort Worth and my Westwood reunion weekend in Austin, I drank way more than the allotment given to me by Thomas and my other trainers. I have also had 1 to 2 more cheat meals more than I normally do (I usually have about one a week). With the workouts getting more intense, I decided to slow down the cardio I do outside of the gym, which could have also slowed my progress down. A lot of factors went into results that I personally feel are lackluster.

 

Even though I feel like the numbers are not what I want to see right now, I know what I need to do to see them get better. I need to shore up on the diet, not drink as much when I go out and pick up the workouts from home.  This is a great month to test out how bad I really want this change with all the temptation around me…Can I fight the urge to find the easy way out? I know it won’t be easy but nothing so far has been easy.

 

When I talk to people about my weight loss, a topic that comes up a lot is hitting a “plateau”.  This comes with the usual words of encouragement of "fight through it," and "it'll be OK." 

 

My usual response is that I will be able to handle it. Now that the hour draws near, I am feeling more and more desire to escape the clutches of this so called “plateau,” but it just seems inevitable. I will have to come to grips with the idea that, at some point, I won’t lose as much weight or inches off my body.  Thanks, guys, for checking out the update, and be sure to listen to Dudley and Bob tomorrow as we discuss the results on the show.

SHARING MY SUCCESS WITH YOU

Four months with Workshop Fitness has changed my life forever, and it’s also affected a lot of people around me. Whenever I see someone that I haven’t talked to in awhile they always have a bunch of questions. How much do you work out? What are you eating? Who are your trainers?

Of course, I love answering these questions, but I want to give people that I don’t get to see as often the same chance in case they are looking to begin their own weight loss, or would like some of the information I have been given. So for the next week please feel free to e-mail me your questions, concerns and opinions of my first four months. I promise to read each and every one, and to answer the best ones next week on the blog. I won’t use your name if you don’t want me to, and I will send the response before posting if you are worried about your name being on the blog. Thank you guys in advance, and once again I appreciate all the support!

LETTER TO MYSELF

I was recently asked if I had any words of wisdom for a gentleman who is 17 years old and is struggling with his weight.  I asked about him and was told things that really reminded me of myself at that age which made me think what would I say to myself if I could go back in time. This is the letter I wrote down:

Dear Ricky Lawson (Soon to be Sir Pat),

I write to you knowing that these words will be hard to swallow, and that you probably won’t react very well to what I have to say. It is hard to accept that people know what they are talking about, especially when it comes to something as personal as your health. No one ever wants to admit that they have a problem.  It shows a lack of discipline and a loss of self respect.

You are a very proud person who is very aware of what he can accomplish if pushed correctly. You worked hard to get better at basketball, be a more social/funny person and to be a better writer. These were great talents you had but you are wasting them. You have become weak with your laziness and your acceptance of mediocrity. I never thought anything was wrong in my life until I realized how happy other people were around me, and all I wanted to do was see them unhappy. You can’t live your life like that.  All it will lead to is being consumed by hate and jealousy. Realize how much the people around you love you and how much support you will receive if you push yourself to places you never thought you could. Take everything in stride and never forget to be nice to EVERYONE! If we were to take care of this problem now, your future life in college would be re-written, and our life as we know it would not be the same.

Some of the things you have to look forward to in the next 8 years: Failing to come back to both sports you love (Basketball and Football), getting bigger than you ever imagined, self-destructing in almost every relationship you begin, having more embarrassing stories than one person should ever have, losing yourself in your indecisiveness with faith, and creating un-needed space with a lot of people you love.

 There are some things that happened in those 8 years that I love (New friends, Texas State, Fuplex), but that's not to say I would not make changes if I could. To be healthy is to be thriving in life and that’s not what is going on right now. Please listen to what I have said and consider this all before you crumble this up and throw it away as you drive towards Conan’s for your meeting with Parliament.

You have too much to give to let it all sit for 8 years.

Love,
Ricky

P.S.  Its okay to be scared, it means you are alive.