Diaries of a Nearly Dead Man

It finally happened! The weight on the scale started with a 1. I know, if you weigh 99 pounds that might freak you out. However, if you weighed 300 pounds and your goal weight started with 1, you’d be freaking doing the happy dance. I don't really know how much I weighed at my worst. I stopped using the scale at 276. I am sure it was close to 300.

One scale victory is worth a few non-scale victories in my book.

What we weigh, how much we've lost and our goal weight is all relative. I just happen to have lost a pre-teen child. This may surprise you, but I have been on a very long plateau. It's been about a year. My goal weight set by the cardiologist has been elusive. Last summer I had two surgeries and even gained weight.

So what worked? Cutting calories!! Duh!

I really had to look at the portions of my clean-whole-food-diet and get a grip. How could I be eating too much after 3+ years doing this? People had made blind comments about calorie consumption. They had created "rules", made calculators, and even tossed in enough scientific information to do a convincing infomercial.  PhD nutritionists as well as the ones with masters degrees in nutrition have done it to me! All their sentences started with "You need to __________."

I measured my portions very carefully with a scale, a cup or an ice cream scoop. I bought containers to make sure I didn't over do it. I learned that you need to level off the teaspoon of peanut butter, not just make a heaping one. I still gained weight at my prescribed caloric intake. The dieticians were shaking their heads.

I had to cut the calories back!

I only ate the amount of calories I needed for the weight that I wanted to be. It worked for about 10 pounds. I was hovering around 200 pounds last year. I know that my legs got bigger and my waist got smaller, but I still had a belly roll. I also got my waist to 34" but with core, it came back to about 36".

So, I cut 400 calories a day and stopped all sugar intake. No cheats, no sweets. (Yes, sweets were well within my daiily alootment of calories!)

On Saturday (2/28) I ran my 18.7 mile training run on the Boston Marathon course. As I made my way home I guzzled a 20oz bottle of Gatorade, a 16 oz bottle of water, a medium coffee and chowed a large blueberry muffin and a banana. When I got home, I stripped off three layers of stinky running gear and decided to hop on the scale. I have been avoiding it mostly because there has been little or no overall change.

I got on and there is was 198.5 and I didn't even have poop first!

As excited as I am about my scale victory, I recognize that being fit is not being skinny or fitting into my perceived clothing size. Sure, I already ordered custom made jeans and bought some other new clothes. I am down from 2 X-Large to Large shirts too.  What matters the most is that my blood work, my blood pressure, my pulse and my ejection fraction (heart capacity) are all excellent. Everything is normal.

In closing, I would like to say this: If you have been following the plan for many months and you haven't lost weight, you may just in fact be eating too much for you.

Thanks for the votes and comments.