04/23/17
Day 40
Extreme Accountability Challenge
Total weight loss to date 33.6 pounds since starting this public weight loss journey on Facebook March 15, 2017, I get a lot of questions regarding what I’m eating and how much I’m exercising. The short answer is that I’m sticking to a program that I’m guided by my personal health coach John Davisson. It focuses on making lasting changes and making healthier choices in every area of my life. Nutrition and exercise are key components but just part of the program.I’m not doing anything extreme regarding my food or exercise but guess what? As great of a program as this is, I’m down 33.6 pounds as of this morning, I have failed on this program several times over the last few years. I said that I failed, not the program, I was the problem because I always cheated!!!! I cheated every time on this program and the dozens of others that I tried. So was the program the problem or me, well we both know the answer, me.
I wanted my way with food more than my health, that’s crazy!
I went back to John for one last try because of everything that I had ever tried I knew this one was the one that made the most sense for me. But the magic bullet is the accountability. The Extreme Accountability Challenge is my version of AA for me. The truth is that I cannot be trusted with food, posting my scales daily is a bit of a pain in the neck but it works for me, Others have joined me, not to use the same diet or exercise program, but to hold each other accountable. We don’t discuss what we are doing to lose weight, just encouraging each other to stay the course of the path that works for them and post it daily, good or bad.
It works, I can honestly say to you 39 days and 33.4 pounds into this journey that I will get to my weight of 175 pounds because of this silly little idea that I had to go public with my weight loss journey and post my scales daily to Facebook.By the way, if I haven’t said thank you to you for liking, commenting, or just reading these posts, Thank you. You have given me the courage and willpower to change. I will never be the same and will never forget the part that you play daily in my journey.

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.