Back to Blogging

One thing that I have discovered about myself during this journey is that I don’t have a future in a blogging career. I am still ticking along with this weight loss thing, but I still have a long way to go to my goal weight. I am not sure that I have it in me to get there. I am getting a little bored with this and tired of maintaining the discipline required to lose weight. I generally have no problem choosing the correct kind of foods to eat, it just comes down to the amount of food that I eat. Even after 38 days of this, I still struggle with portion control. Anyway, here are some pics. Its been a few weeks since posting pics, but here you go.

The Wall

The Facts: Lost roughly 14 lbs in 28 days. My jump up in weight this morning is probably from the half gallon of zero calorie sweet tea that I drank last night. Though I feel like I am making good progress, I believe that I have hit my a wall a month into this thing. My weight loss has stalled out, My diet is becoming bland and my workouts are starting to get boring. How do I get through this? What will keep me motivated? Is the answer more cardio? How can I shock my body again?
I just had a conversation with a couple of friends on Saturday and it confirmed/reminded me that weight loss and weight management is 99% about diet. Someone once told me that you can never out run what you eat...meaning that in the long term, exercise is never enough to overcome a bad diet. I believe that diet is the key to getting my body to react the way I want it to. No pics again this week, I got too lazy. Maybe next week.

Preparing for the Super Bowl

Here is my game plan heading into a Super Bowl party. My kryptonite is a table full of party food. I can distinctly remember one time I was hanging out with a friend named Vince at a big gathering. We literally stood around a table full of party food for over an hour talking and we didn't stop putting food in our mouths the entire time. After an hour we both looked at each other and said, "holy crap, we have been stuffing our faces for an hour and didn't even know it."

Now I have always been a believer that one meal never kills a diet, but it can be a major set back or even worse a trigger that leads to days or weeks of binge eating. One time a Thanksgiving meal did that to me. I had been trying to lose some weight and then Thanksgiving came. I ate two absolutely huge meals that day and for some reason, that sent me into a downward spiral of over eating until my New Year's resolution came about month later.

Back to my plan for this Sunday, the first thing I am going to do is to change my expectations. I am going to preemptively remove any guilt associated eating too much. I mean come on, its a super bowl party and I have to expect that I am going to eat a few more calories than normal. I am making a deal with myself and giving myself permission to indulge a little. I will attempt to off set some of calories by getting in an extra workout (cardio) on Saturday or Sunday.

Secondly, I can not go into the party with an empty belly. If I go into it hungry, I'll fail. I'm too much of a foodie to win that battle . I may drink a big glass of milk or something before I head over there. It'll fill my belly some, make me feel fuller prior to eating because my body will be trying to digest all the protien and fat in the milk.

Finally...location, location, location. Once I eat, I need to get away from the table. I can not hover around the food table or I will turn into a bovine at a feeding trough. Luckily, the place I'm going has the media room downstairs and the kitchen is upstairs. It's going to take some serious effort to head upstairs and graze. Good luck this Sunday to anybody following my blog.

Sustainability

The Facts: I have lost 9 lbs in 12 days so far. I started at 258 and I weighed in this morning at 249. I am currently 5 below my pacing line which would put me about 14 days ahead of schedule.

Sustainability – being able to sustain things long term. I have went about this weight loss with a whole different mindset that I have on previous attempts. My goals was not just to lose weight (which I have done on a number of occasions), but rather it was to settle in on a somewhat normal lifestyle that would reduce my weight my “body’s natural weight” (whatever the heck that is) and then I would hopefully stay there long term. The trend of my adult life has been a slow perpetual weight gain, where I would slowly creep up to near 250 or 260, and then I would crash diet and lose 40 or so lbs and then the slow weight gain would start back up again. I knew in the back of my mind that I could not keep this pattern up long term. This time around I am searching for the new normal on food and exercise that isn’t forced, looks and feels natural and doesn’t disrupt my family. Am I there yet…no, not yet, but I am slowly finding out what works and what doesn’t.

For example: Last Thursday my dinner consisted of a Wendy’s Chili and a baked potato. I didn’t feel like it was enough calories, but I stopped there anyway. I went to bed a little hungrier than usual. The next morning I got up and I worked out, and then my normal breakfast of two eggs, cheese, black beans and salsa was not enough. That usually is enough to tide me over to my protein shake 3 hours later. But since I didn’t give myself enough calories the night before, my body burned through breakfast too fast, thus leaving me hungry again an hour or two later. It threw my whole day off since I was snacks during times I wasn’t used to.

Day 1 Day 12

Day 1 Day 12

The Restaurant Dilemma

When I go out to a restaurant, I am always trying to determine one of two paths to take: do I exercise restraint with the choices I make or do I let loose and enjoy this treat. Here lies the proplem...one indulgent meal won't bury me. In theory this is true, but in practicality it could bury me. Ask any teacher "does one missing homework assignment put me in danger of failing, or is it the culmination of missing homework assignments?" I think the answer is yes to both.

Restaurant food is a special food that is different from the food that I make at home. That is why I want to eat as much as I can while I am out because it tastes so good. Will I never be able to stuff my face until my body falls into a food coma again? Restaurants can be a very dangerous place for people like me who have struggle with portion control. People like my wife don't seem to struggle with going out to eat. She doesn't seem to have this dilemma that I do. I know that I can't flip a switch and be like her, but I have found that the following works best for me.

My solution to this issue is that I have to make the decision about how I am going to eat prior to arriving at the restaurant. Like my pastor said at church on Sunday: "Plan your work and work your plan." If I am going out to a Mexican restaurant...yes, I will allow myself to eat chips and salsa or no I will not. If I'm heading out to a steakhouse...yes, I will chose to eat one roll or no I won't eat any. Prior to heading into Chick-fil-a....do I get the grilled or the fried, do I compensate by not getting the fries? These are the decisions I must make prior to stepping into the doors of a restaurant if I want to have a better chance of success. If I don't own up to a decision, then the food will own up to it for me.

Josh's Weight Loss- 7 Days In

Purpose of this post:

1. What did I eat

2. Workout schedule

3. Discovery/Future Strategy

4. Show updated pics

1. What did I eat:

I decided to keep track of my food intake for the past week just to see if I thought I was eating too much, so here we go: 3 bananas, 4 apples, a serving of broccoli, 2 servings of bar-b-que pork, turkey soup, 5 servings of chicken and rice, 4 protein shakes, 6 eggs and cheese, 3 servings of black beans, a salad, a taco salad, 3 tacos, 3 grilled chicken breasts, a bacon egg and cheese sandwich, half a bag of doritos (I had a moment of weakness with the spicy and sweet purple bag kind), a serving of grits, two servings of beef lo mien, a zucchini, a yellow squash, two servings of roasted potatoes, a bagel with peanut butter, a grilled chicken sandwich and a molten brownie dessert (more on this last item later).

2. Workout schedule:

I got a workout in tuesday, thursday and friday morning for roughly 40 minutes each. I warmed up with about a 1/4 mile jog and mixed cardio in with my weight training. Over these three days, I pretty much worked out every muscle group and got in about 2000 total jumps on a jump rope. I'll aim for roughly 2,500 jumps on a jump rope this week (or a little more than 600 per workout). I can already tell a difference in the mirror with my muscle tone.

3. Discovery:

Even after a significant decrease in my calorie consumption, I am still eating a ton of food. I have discovered in previous weight loss ventures that my most critical hours are those just after dinner until bed. It was often that I would consume as many calories during that time as I would during my evening meal. So in order combat that I decided to focus on one thing and that was not snacking after dinner. Within reason, I did not exercise any portion control during my dinner with the amount of food I would eat...that will come later...for two reasons. 1) So I devote all mental energy on no after dinner snacking and 2) to fill my belly so I wouldn't want more food later. So far 7 nights equals 7 victories. Now to the issue of dessert: I still wanted to remain as normal as I could, I decided to allow myself one planned dessert per week. This would allow me to resemble a more realistic eating schedule and allow me to enjoy time with friends or family on the weekends when we normally hang out. My biggest victory of the week was at board game night over at a friend’s house. He bought a huge tub of two bite brownies (110 calories each) from Costco. Where I have been known to pop 20 or 30 of those in an evening, I didn't eat a single one. I didn't plan for it, so I didn't eat it. Wish I could say the same for the doritos he had at the house.

4. Pics

6 lbs in 7 days. I’ll include the graph next week, but I’m ahead of pace, so I am happy with that.

Upcoming Posts:

The Restaurant Dilemma, Creating the New Normal

Josh's Weight Loss Log

Alright here we go. Starting tomorrow on 1/18/11 I am going to begin my weight loss journey again. See if I can get it right this time. My goal is to lose roughly 40lbs by mid May. What is in mid May you ask? Carrie Anne and I are running in the warrior dash together. It's kind of a arbitrary date for me, but I find things easier when I have a start date and an end date to commit to. Plus it works out to about a 1lb every three days. I think this will be a good pace for me. I have posted "before" pics below and will be updating the pics every week or so along this journey. I have also posted my trend line if I were to lose my weight in a linear fashion over the next few months. The horizontal axis is the number of days since the starting day and of course the vertical axis is my body weight. Using the graph, you can see if I am at, above or below my pace line. (I stole this idea from personal conversation with Zac Caudell http://zaccaudell.wordpress.com , though this blog is inactive now.) Enjoy.

Christmas Time 2010

December was a busy month for us. Besides Davis having surgery, I turned 29 (I should mention that in November Josh turned 30)!! Josh took me to the Dillard House up near the GA/NC line for a night. We woke up had breakfast at their fabulous family style restaurant and then we even went horseback riding. It was Josh's first time on a horse. We had a great time but it was COLD. The temperatures were in the single digits and we definitely had to dress in tons of layers to not freeze. It was a lot of fun and Josh did a good job of making me feel special on my birthday.

We also spent a lot of time with family this month which was wonderful. My brother, Chris, who lives in Los Angles flew into GA for a day before he drove back to LA. We got to go and have dinner with him and Lily and Davis got to spend some time with their Uncle Chris! My parents also went with us to something called Journey to Bethlehem. It is a recreated walk through of Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem mixed with a live nativity. It was very well done and we will definitely do it again next year!

Lily also had her Christmas performance at her preschool. It was so cute. The performance consisted of telling the Christmas story by way of songs. The kids did great, I enjoyed seeing Lily on stage. After the performance we went back to her preschool class and enjoyed a little class party.

Christmas Eve was spent at our church, The Vine. On Christmas Eve the Vine doesn't have childcare for kids under 2, so Lily got to come to service with us for the first time. She did great until the very end when we did the candlelight part. She desperately wanted to hold the candle which wasn't going to happen, her response to that was to throw an all out tantrum during the singing of Silent Night. Nice!

Christmas morning we went over to Josh's parents house. We opened our gifts at home and then went over and spent time with Jay, Katy, Liam, Grammy and Grampy. We had a good time and the kids got lots of great toys and clothes! It's always so fun to hang out with family and let Lily and Liam and Davis play together.

My parents were supposed to come over for Christmas dinner but my dad was having some trouble with his neck and wasn't feeling good at all so we postponed our Christmas until the next day. We ended up going downtown to their condo to celebrate so that Dad didn't have to venture to far out since he still was feeling pretty bad. We did enjoy going over there and hanging out.

We kept up our tradition of giving Lily and Davis 3 gifts total. This helps to remind us of what Christmas really is about and celebrating Jesus' birth by remembering he is the best gift. Jesus received 3 gifts upon his birth from the 3 wise men.

Lily's Christmas presents from us:

Aquatic frogs (real living ones in an aquarium)

Princess Stamp Set

New Baby Doll

Davis' Christmas presents from us:

Tricycle

Wooden Hammer Tower

play cellphone

The Results

By Friday I was patiently waiting for the phone call that never came but since she said Monday was a possibility I wasn't too concerned when I didn't hear anything. By Monday mid-day I decided that I should call and check to see if the results were available. The nurse paged the Dr. to call me with the results. Not 30 minutes later my cell phone rings. Unfortunately, my cell phone barely gets service in the house so I immediately grabbed the phone and ran outside into FRIGID weather. The temperature was maybe 20 degrees outside and I ran out the door without a jacket. The Dr. started to apologize for not calling me earlier as she had gotten the pathology report on Friday. At this point she starts to explain to me that the biopsy had been sent to Paris to the leading pathologist for "this type" cell makeup. At this moment I felt confused and unsure what she was really saying. So I tried to ask for a little clarification. It went basically like this: "So, what your saying is, the pathologist here in GA found something that didn't look good (she called it an atypical spit or something like that) and to confirm what he was seeing he sent the biopsy to a guy in Paris to confirm what he saw?" The Dr. responded: "Yes." I then asked, "How long until I know the results?" She said in about a week. I then asked her, "if this was your child would you be worried about these results?" This is where the conversation takes a turn because up until this point I thought she was just saying that the results came back a little funky but she had never said cancer or anything like that. She responded by saying, "yes, I would be pretty scared because there is just not treatment for this kind of thing." WHAT?! Did she just basically say that Davis has some sort of incurable disease. I was floored and FREEZING and numb all at the same time. For that brief moment in my life, my mind started racing to, what are we going to do, how is this going to change our lives, I should start praying right now. I numbly responded, "well, I am glad that we took out the lump then. Some friends had questioned why they took out Davis' lump because their son/daughter had an enlarged lymph node and their doctor never mentioned removing it." By this point she gasped and said, "Oh gosh, I am so sorry, I just told you about the wrong patient. Your son's name is very similar to another patient that I did surgery on last week. I am so sorry. Please disregard everything I just told you." WOW. To go from believing for about 10 minutes that Davis had some kind of incurable cancer to being told that it was a mistake was an incredible emotional roller coaster. My main emotion when the conversation ended was RELIEF. I was not mad or upset or angry, just relieved. The second emotion that course through me was saddness for the parents that will be getting that horrible news that had just been relayed to me. The Dr. closed the conversation with, I will call you in the morning when I am in the hospital and can access the results. She did call me the next morning and the results were much different than the ones I heard yesterday. Davis' lymph node came back "reactive lymphoid hyperplasia," which is a benign condition and since the lymph node is removed there is no further treatment necessary. I can't help but be thankful and grateful that Davis is FINE and the road to recovery is complete for him and in the same breath I ache for the family that is getting devastating news that will likely alter the course of their lives forever. I don't know their names or anything about them except that the results of their childs biopsy are severe and will be confirmed by the Paris pathologist by Friday. Please say prayers for that family and thank you once again for all the prayers that you have said for our family and Davis during the past month.

The Surgery

Davis went in for surgery on Dec 7th. I wasn't nervous until that actual day. I had no idea how it would all go. His surgery was scheduled for 11:30am. I was kinda nervous about that because poor Davis was not going to be able to eat anything until after his surgery and that is a long time for a little one to go without food. Luckily I was able to do clear liquids until 8am so he got a breakfast of juice and jello! Josh took the day off and helped me with Lily so I could take Davis to the hospital. We drove down and got there on time, but when I was trying to find a parking space I couldn't. The entire parking deck was FULL, but for some reason they let you drive in anyway not knowing that there were zero spaces. So I wasted probably 15 minutes trying to find a spot. I was not able to find one so I drove out to the pay booth and asked the attendant where I could park if the deck was full. She told me that there was valet parking across the street. I informed her that I did not come prepared with cash to pay a valet. I was getting anxious and upset because I was late now in getting Davis to his surgery. I started to cry, the parking attendant felt sorry for me I guess because she had me park in some reserved spaces there. We made it upstairs to the surgery center and got checked in. Davis ended up getting into surgery around noon. They had given him some sedative to help him get drowsy and calm before they took him back, but the opposite happened. He got wound up, but he was wobbly. When they came to take him away he was wide away but altered. They let me walk him back to the OR doors where at that point I had to hand him off. It was awful. He freaked out and you could hear him even after the doors closed. I became a basket case but thankfully got to wait in our private room instead of having to go back into the large waiting room.

They came back about 45 minutes later and let me know that he was out of surgery and that it all went well. I still didn't see him for another 3o minutes or so. They finally brought him in and you could tell he wasn't feeling great. He sat in my lap for another 30+ mins before they finally discharged him. We won't find out the results until Friday or Monday. After we left the hospital and I was able to give him some food, Davis was back to his old self!

Here are some pictures from the adventure we had!

The Lump

Back when Davis was 15 months old (July) I noticed that he had a lump on the side of his neck. We had just had his 15 month appointment the day before so I didn't want to go back in unless it was necessary. So, I called Davis' pediatrician and asked what she thought and she felt that it was just an enlarged lymph node since he was a little sick, but she said that if it didn't go away in a week that I should bring him back in. Well, I stopped noticing the lump and kinda forgot about it for a while. Right around Davis' 18 month check up I noticed the lump again and at this point I was feeling terrible because I was questioning, "was that there the whole time?" I took Davis to his 18 month check up and his Dr. checked him out. He was sick this appointment too and she said, to keep and eye on it again and if it didn't go away after his sickness was gone to call back and get an appointment. This time I was much more aware of the lump. Davis seemed to be sick on and off for a few weeks after his appointment. At just about 19 months I noticed the lump was still there and he was definitely no longer sick. I called the Dr. and she had us come in. She didn't like that the lump had gotten bigger and she didn't like that it was still there after 4 months. She started some basic testing to see if we could figure it out. She did a Tuberculosis test on him first which came back negative. We then did a course of antibiotics which also didn't cause the lump to go down or go away. At this point, she set up an appointment at a pediatric surgeons office in Atlanta. They were able to squeeze us in for an appointment the very next working day.

At this point I am a little more nervous about everything because we got the specialists appointment very fast and Davis' pediatrician seemed a little more concerned but I was trying to stay positive and optimistic. The surgeon said she didn't like that it had gotten bigger and that it had been there for 4+ months either. She said that doing a biopsy would be inconclusive. If the biopsy came back positive then they would have to remove the lump, if it came back negative it still wouldn't rule out that nothing was wrong. The only way to be sure that nothing was wrong was to take out the lump completely. Surgery was then scheduled for Dec 7th.

Thanksgiving!

We had a pretty low key Thanksgiving. My parents were in Germany over Thanksgiving and my brother Chris was still in California. Josh's brother ended up getting really sick over Thanksgiving so Josh's parents, Grammy and Grampy came over so we had a small intimate gathering! Despite there not being very many people, we definitely had a spread!! The food was great and we enjoyed leftovers for quite a while.

Road trip to North Carolina

As the holidays started approaching, Josh and I realized that this year he was getting the entire week of Thanksgiving off. We definitely wanted to take advantage of his time off so we decided to hit the road for an impromptu road trip. The last time we went up to North Carolina was 3 years ago. We had gone to Elon's homecoming when Lily was 6 weeks old. We thought traveling with a 6 week old was a lot of work, that's nothing compared to traveling with a 3 year old and a 1 year old for 5 days. We had a lot of fun along the way and got to see a lot of old friends that we wish we could see A LOT more often. Here was our itinerary!

FRIDAY

Leave Friday afternoon 11/19 and drive up to Charlotte (stay with the Powells)

SATURDAY

Wake up and have breakfast with the Powells!

Drive up to Elon

Walk around campus and reminisce (Wow have things changed)

Eat lunch and head over to the football game

Watch Elon play their last game of the season

Drive from Elon to Salisbury (stay with the Jones')

SUNDAY

Eat breakfast with the Jones'

Drive from Salisbury to Winston-Salem

Hang out with the Williams'

Spend the night with the Williams'

MONDAY

Went to the Children's museum with Becca, Isaac and Joseph

After lunch and naps (for the kids of course) drive back to Charlotte

Stay with the Powells and the Bautes

TUESDAY

Eat breakfast with the Powells and Bautes

Get back on the road and drive home.

Make it back to GA around 1pm Tuesday!!

SO MUCH FUN!! We loved seeing all of our friends from our college days! Must say a big thank you to the Powells, Bautes, Jones' and Williams' !!!!