Archives for April 2017

04/22/17
Day 39
Extreme Accountability Challenge
Total weight loss to date 32.0 pounds to date

Thanks to posting my weight loss journey on Facebook everyday and the program that I’m following with my health coach John Davisson, I’m taking off a lot of weight in a short period of time. But as anyone who’s ever lost weight can tell you it never comes off fast enough. It goes on slowly over the years but it’s seems so slow coming off. Today I’m going to focus on being thankful, yes I had a 8/10 pound drop since yesterday but it pays to look back and see what ground that we’ve covered. In 39 days a lot has happened.
Indulge me in looking back,

Day one for me was really March 8, 2017 when I hit 304 pounds on the scales, I freaked out, panic set in and changed my eating. I had this silly idea of posting my scales daily to Facebook but I I had not really made the decision until a week later when Hyo Kim a Life on Fire life coach from California was matched with me during a week long Webinar series that I participated. Hyo and I talked about several things but I told him that my weight was really holding me back. Then I told him about my idea to post my scales daily to Facebook for Extreme Accountability. He then challenged me to do it then. I was terrified. But I was desperate, because I knew that if I didn’t do something drastic, my life would be less than it could be and I would always have a weight problem and probably die before my time. So I posted.

That was March 15th, 2017 and I weighed 298 pounds for that post. Now today 272 pounds, still a big boy, but I’m going to get there, 175 pounds. I never dreamed that any of you that are posting your weight daily with me would come along for this journey. Maybe we will look back 5 years from now and realize that in some small way the ounces that we were all brave enough to post daily the up days the down days, maybe someone is watching that will change. Somewhere a man will get to meet his grandchildren or a woman will live to see some dream fulfilled that she never believed she could achieve and would not have achieved if she had not lost weight.

Fellow Extreme Accountability Challenge Participants you are doing something bigger than yourself, stay the course, you are making a difference in your lives and in the lives of others.

04/21/17
Day 38
Extreme Accountability Challenge
Total weight loss to date 31.2 pounds

For so many years, I’ve tried so many diets. Losing 10 or 20 pounds, only to gain it all back and more. Once I lost 43 pounds, but fell off the wagon there also and gained and gained and gained to my peak weight of 304 pounds.
Most of the diets weren’t the problem, I was. Ouch! Truthfully I wanted to lose the weight but I didn’t really want to change. I still wanted to eat what and when I wanted and as much as I wanted. My desire to keep the old behaviour explains why I always failed until now. I wanted to be thin but I didn’t really want to change.
A few years ago I heard our pastor at The Journey Church in Yulee, Florida, Darryl E Bellar, preach one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard on John 5.
John 5 1-3
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
John 5:1‭-‬3‭, ‬5‭-‬8 NIV

Just think a man that had been an invalid for 38 years, waiting for a miracle all that time and the first thing that Jesus asks is, “Do you want to get well?”

Maybe that’s the question that I should have been asking. The answer for the last 35 years was that I wanted to be thin but really I didn’t want to change.
When I started posting my scales daily on March 15, 2017, that was the day the answer changed, that was the day that I decided that I wanted to get well.

Do you want to to get well?

04/20/17
Day 37
Extreme Accountability Challenge
Total weight loss to date 30.4 pounds

A view from my scales this morning and my bicycle yesterday to liven things up!

Some days are just not as exciting as others. As I move into the 37th day of this journey to 175 pounds, the thought of a day like today where I am up 4/10 pound is just ho-hum. I know that I followed my eating plan yesterday 100%, I was able to get about 40 minutes of exercise riding my bicycle to the beach, and I’m up 4/10 pound. I’m at the point where I know the weight will come off, weighing everyday may not be good for some but it keeps me focussed on my goal everyday. So sometimes my body adjusts, maybe it retains a little more water, maybe I am standing on the scales a little differently, but honestly it really doesn’t matter, I know that there are mountain top experiences, valleys, and the ho-hum of a days like today. This is just part of the journey.

As long as I can look myself in the mirror and know that I followed my plan, I know tomorrow or the next day it will show in the scales. For a habitual over eater like me, this would have been an excuse to go back to my old ways, when I wasn’t seeing immediate results every single day. Not this time, not ever again. This is just part of the journey that I probably won’t even remember when I’m at 175 pounds.

I believe that throughout my life of fighting this battle for a smaller healthier waistline, I was always either convincing myself that I could stick to a healthier lifestyle or that I could not. Consistently in the past the voice that said, “What’s the use, just eat what you want, you will never be thin again” normally won, well my new normal wins, and 30 years from now when I am amazingly healthy and youthful. I will remember that you helped me get through this by liking and commenting on my posts. Thank you for holding me accountable.

04/19/17
Day 36
Extreme Accountability Challenge
Total weight loss to date 30.8 pounds

“Comparison is the seed of all discontent.”
A friend told me this years ago. I honestly don’t remember the circumstances but the words are so true. As many of us scan the pages of Facebook and other social media, it’s so easy to get into a comparison mindset. Whether it trips, dinners out, vacations, beautiful homes, scenery, thin waistlines, or a myriad of highlights we see from other people’s lives, it is so easy to go into comparison mode. You’re probably asking, “what does this have to do with the Extreme Accountability Challenge?” Well a lot since you ask.

When this process started and I first posted my “weight manifesto” ( I like the sound of that, “manifesto”, sounds impressive) March 15, 2017, it was for one purpose. Over the last 35 years of my adult life, I had ballooned to 304 pounds, it wasn’t some accident that caused it, my lousy metabolism, or any other excuse that I could tell myself. It was due to one primary glaring reason, I had made thousands and thousands of decisions that turned into a little of this food, a little of that food. 100 calories here 50 calories there and slowly I ascended to my massive size of 304 pounds. Guys it was no accident, it was simply sticking my head in the sand and eating whatever I wanted because I wanted it.

So now how does this comparison thing come into play, well first I am thrilled that so many others have joined me in this journey, my prayers for you are that this will change your life forever and you will enjoy many more healthy days because of participating in the Extreme Accountability Challenge. But understand this I know that weighing everyday we will all have ups and downs on the scales, I want everyday to reflect a weight loss, but my body will fluctuate some every day By the way, I haven’t weighed yet this morning, so I write this with no knowledge of the scales yet today, but I do have this knowledge, I post my scales daily because for me that’s what I need as motivation to stick to my program. That’s the reason I first posted my scales, I want to be thin, I want to fit into normal size clothing, I want my wife Angie to look at me and know that I want to be married to her so badly that the food is not important, she is, so that I can be her only husband not her first husband that died from complications of obesity.

All that said, regardless of what the scales say, I have to behave, and you know what, I did yesterday, and everyday on this challenge. My health coach John Davisson told me what I have to do but it is up to me to do it. Behave. The scales may fluctuate but if I follow my plan and stick to it I know I will succeed.

So, make a plan of what you will eat, it’s up to you, your doctor, whoever, I’m not telling what you should do, but post your scales as a way to be accountable, then every day run your race. If you want success, don’t cheat, if you do you’re just fooling yourselves,( don’t forget,I’m an expert in justifying having something not on my program, I did it for decades). Stop comparing, it’s your race, you may have a little to lose or a lot, I will be here either way, posting my scales daily and running my race., not anyone else’s.

Go run your race and run it like you never have before, you were created by the most creative of all, he created you for more, not more food, more life!