Last January while I was at a friend’s house on vacation I stepped on to their bathroom scale. I hadn’t weighed myself in years and only had a vague idea of my weight. Seeing two hundred and fifty pounds on the dial was a shock. I knew that I was heavy but I didn’t realize just how heavy.
With my motivation and focus at an all time low following Michele’s death, and my mother’s illness approaching the terminal stage I didn’t do anything about losing weight until about a month ago. This series of postings by Jeremy Zawodny got me to thinking, and what’s more, got me to acting.
As of this morning I saw two forty even, 240.0, for the first time. I’ve lost ten pounds. In a nutshell I track everything I eat in a spreadsheet, calories and grams of fat. I also weigh myself every morning after getting up and using the bathroom. Just the act of recording every single thing I eat in a day or a week made me very aware of where I was getting extra calories. At work I was typically consuming two or three sodas and a candy bar (or two) a day. Added too that was another soda with dinner and maybe dessert as well. Just eliminating those items from my diet saves me upwards of 800 calories per day. Over the course of a week I’m taking in 4000 to 5600 fewer calories.
Combined with my lowered intake I’ve increased my energy output; twice weekly kendo workouts (outside, two hours or more, in ninety plus temperatures) and walks in the evenings. I’ll never see one sixty again, but I think my goal of two hundred by next summer is well within my grasp.