Using MyFitnessPal.com, I started recording my calorie counts, exercise and daily weight on April 12, 2013. My starting weight was 305. My first day's meals were the following: Salad. Turkey chili with beans, a Nutri-Grain bar, a small apple and a tablespoon of peanut butter for a total of 760 calories.
You can read about my journey over the course of the past year in the "If I Could Turn Back Time" posts.
As you can see by the time winter came around, the effectiveness of the diet pills I'd been taking and my commitment to reducing beer drinking were both waning fast. I regained most of the weight lost.
I knew going-in that the odds were against long-term success. Fatalistic thinking you say? I say realistic. But I also don't count out my pig-headed determination. I will try again. And again. And again.
Unlike a Sisyfusian struggle where one has to start again all the way back at Square One, at least I've maintained some of the benefits of my endeavors. I'm stable in the upper 280's/lower 290's and if I could make another push only half as successful as that first 30 days a year ago, I'd be about the same weight, roughly 275, that I was then.
Can I do it without Phen though? Should I try to go back on it? I may have been off it long enough for my body to be sensitive to it again...at least for a while. How can I give up beer? This has been a multi-decade struggle in which I have no enduring wins frankly, just a long string of losses. Exercise? I still find it inconvenient, messy and hard work. It's fun under optimal circumstances but sitting on my ass in front of a computer is more fun and much easier.
But this thing with John Pinette's death (as I posted earlier about) is sticking in my subconscious craw. I bet he too thought he'd work towards getting fitter soon, but that "soon" kept getting put off. Maybe he was planning to start it the morning he was discovered.
We always think we'll have tomorrow. Until we don't.
You can read about my journey over the course of the past year in the "If I Could Turn Back Time" posts.
As you can see by the time winter came around, the effectiveness of the diet pills I'd been taking and my commitment to reducing beer drinking were both waning fast. I regained most of the weight lost.
I knew going-in that the odds were against long-term success. Fatalistic thinking you say? I say realistic. But I also don't count out my pig-headed determination. I will try again. And again. And again.
Unlike a Sisyfusian struggle where one has to start again all the way back at Square One, at least I've maintained some of the benefits of my endeavors. I'm stable in the upper 280's/lower 290's and if I could make another push only half as successful as that first 30 days a year ago, I'd be about the same weight, roughly 275, that I was then.
Can I do it without Phen though? Should I try to go back on it? I may have been off it long enough for my body to be sensitive to it again...at least for a while. How can I give up beer? This has been a multi-decade struggle in which I have no enduring wins frankly, just a long string of losses. Exercise? I still find it inconvenient, messy and hard work. It's fun under optimal circumstances but sitting on my ass in front of a computer is more fun and much easier.
But this thing with John Pinette's death (as I posted earlier about) is sticking in my subconscious craw. I bet he too thought he'd work towards getting fitter soon, but that "soon" kept getting put off. Maybe he was planning to start it the morning he was discovered.
We always think we'll have tomorrow. Until we don't.