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Now, I realize that I haven’t really posted much since I started getting busy last year with trips and then teaching classes and all, however, I AM BACK! I can’t honestly say how often I will post, I am hoping for at the very least weekly, however, I can’t promise due to Tax Season starting soon. One thing I have learned today is just how valuable this blog is to me. I just spent some time rereading some of my post posts and they have energized me sooooo much! I am so excited! I realize I haven’t been in the gym much lately due to several things (from hurting my leg a couple months ago, to my lower back, to just plain Holiday sugar induced laziness), however that too will change. I am planning to start back in the gym on Thursday morning. My plan is 2-3 days a week to start, working my way up to more as I can do more.
Man I love this blog! So glad I started it when I did because rereading it was EXACTLY what I needed! 
14 weeks from today is the final day of Tax Season. That day is April 15th. My plan is to lose 3lbs on average for these 14 weeks for a total weight loss of at least 42lbs. Being the numbers geek that I am, I find it ironic that my goal date, Tax Day, is also known as “Jackie Robinson” day in Major Baseball. Jackie wore #42 during his playing career. While I did not plan this, I find it very fitting for someone like me to see the way the numbers would roll. Of course I hope to lose even more, but I would take losing a Jackie Robinson for sure!
It’s been a while since I have last posted anything. In that time I have done ok, but the last few weeks have been terrible. Part of my plan to get back on track includes me posting more here so be looking for a lot more after New Years!
It really is amazing to me that since I have been staying away from anything even remotely salty, when I do have some salt, I swell up BIG TIME! This past Thursday night, while at the Everett Aquasox game, I had some peanuts. Every Thursday home game they are only $2/bag and I thought to myself, “Peanuts sounds great”, so I bought a bag. I figured as long as I don’t suck on the shells, just eat the peanuts themselves, I cant be getting too much salt from them. Well, long story short, the next morning I was UP 4lbs on the scale and my legs were huge! Really? Just from that little bit that I did get, I went up 4lbs… overnight?!?
Let me also say that I had a terrible night Thursday night as I woke up at 1am with my heart racing and my BP was up A LOT! If I recall, I was somewhere around the 151/100 mark (usually, I am in the area of about 123/65, with the meds I am taking). I felt like utter crap! I can think of no other reason as to why this happened, except for the blast of salt from the peanuts. I know that might sound strange, cause how much could it have been really, but I can think of nothing else to cause that. It took me almost 3 hours to finally be able to relax enough to get back to sleep. Needless to say, when I get ready for my big 3 week baseball trip (20 games in 21 days), I will be packing me some UNSALTED peanuts to take in to games with me. Being prepared is a big thing and I WILL BE prepared!
Oh, I was down 3 of the 4lbs on the scale this morning. I was actually bouncing between 3-4lbs, but I went with the 3lbs as it seemed to be about right. That still puts me up 3lbs overall this week, though I know it’s still fluid from the looks of my ballooned up legs (last night they were soooo tight, they really hurt bad. Been a long time since I have dealt with that). Hopefully it goes bye bye soon.
Other than that, I am eating right and staying the course (heck, the peanuts I could have if it wasn’t for the salt and the way it effects me) and hoping the scale catches up with my efforts. I know it will one of these days!
I know every one has them, I know I have had them before and they suck. The plateau that I am on now is going on day # 10. It’s funny how the body works really. The previous 2 weeks I was on a plateau for 6 days, then all of a sudden I dropped 8#’s in 5 days. Since then, I have been the same weight, minus one small flux on my official weigh in day that I knew would be gone the next morning and sure enough I was right back up to the same weight I have been at for a while. I know I shouldn’t stress about it, especially with the 8# drop I had the previous week, but these things suck, ya know? I have been doing everything the same as I have for the past 6.5 weeks, eating the same things, yet here I sit!
I guess my biggest problems are: 1) I feel that at 444#’s this weight should be “melting” off me with what I have been doing and 2) I really have been hoping for 100#’s lost before I leave on my trip on 8/14 and here I sit, 7#’s away… still. When I look at those 2 things, it can be very easy to get frustrated… very easy! I do spend most of my time reminding myself that since November 21, 2011, I have lost 93#’s. That in the past 6 weeks I have lost 30#’s and in the past 7 weeks I have lost 54#’s. I keep reminding myself that each and every day in the past 6.5 weeks I have ate only things that are HEALTHY for me to eat. That each and every thing I have ate HELPS my body, it don’t hurt it in any way. I keep looking at the bigger picture in hopes that the smaller picture will start looking good too… and I know it will, eventually.
I refuse to let myself be disappointed in what is going on because of what I have done so far, because of what I am doing and most certainly because of what I will be doing and how I will be feeling when I get there. Every day is a battle in this journey but I am winning this battle of losing and I will continue to win it! No freakin’ plateau, no matter how big can deter me from my overall goal!
 At the Everett AqauSox game with my wife and Mother-In-Law.
I’ve probably said this before and I am sure that it won’t be the last time I say it, but it’s hard for me to believe I am where I am now. Since I picked up the book “Eat To Live” on June 14th, and then started the 6 week strict program on June 18th, I have lost a grand total of 30#’s! If I want to look back another week, to June 11th, which is where I started back on a diet after having been off of it for the better part of a month, I have lost a total of 54#’s! That puts me at having lost 94#’s since November 21, 2011. 94 POUNDS!
Why is this so hard for me to believe? Well, it’s no secret, I have said for years that I have a big time fear of failure as well as a fear of success. These things have slowed me or stopped me from doing things many times in the past… but I am working on that. While it might seem crazy, I guess I have become accustom to being everyone’s “Fat Friend”. It is the role I have played all my life, I am comfortable with being that, so why change that? I’ll tell you why.. FOR M E! For my health. I have a long ways to go before I will no longer be called “fat”. Heck, I need to lose another 140#’s to go from “Morbidly Obese” to just plain “Obese” on the Body Mass Index (BMI) chart. I am currently at 58.4 (when I started all this last November I was at 70.8, and in January of 2010 I was at 77.8). You need to be in the range of 30-39.9 to be considered just “Obese”. To no longer be considered “Obese” I would have to get to a weight of 227 or less, which is another 216#’s away. My goal is 250-275, so I doubt I will ever see that day, but I will not let that stop me!
Besides the numbers on the scale, the other indicators that things are going great for me are the measurements I finally started taking. I really wish that I had taken measurements of my waist and chest back when I started this, but I didn’t do that until a couple weeks ago. Either way, I am proud to say that in the past 2 weeks alone I have dropped 1.5 inches on my chest and 2.5 inches on my waist! I love seeing that! I also want to say that this past Thursday night my wife and her Mom went to the Everett Aquasox game and the 3 of us were able to sit in box seats side by side by side!! I got to say that those seats do look a little bigger than the ones at Safeco Field, but nonetheless, that just rocks! While at the game on Thursday, I walked up these stairs that I hadn’t had to go up since I was there last season with some friends. That was 94#’s ago and I remember struggling to get up them, but not this time! It’s these little things that really add up to keep me motivated!
Here’s to another great 6 weeks and many, many more to come!
A few weeks back my doc suggested that since I have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation that it might be smart for me to set up an appointment with a cardiologist to establish myself as a potential patient. I did just that, however, I was unable to get in to see the cardiologist until this past Thursday afternoon. The appointment went smoothly really, nothing I really wasn’t expecting, except for the short amount of time he was in the room with me as compared to how long I had to wait before and after he was in there. My total wait time was 22 minutes (7 before, 15 after) and he was in the room with me for 5 to maybe 6 minutes total.
No matter how long he was there, or how long I waited, what he told me was that my heart echo looked good (though I learned that 2 days prior at my other doc’s appointment). We discussed the basics about me and my health. He suggested that I start talking 2 baby aspirins/daily (at the same time) as it is a blood thinner and can help me out. He listened to my heart, checked for swelling in my legs, suggested I go get some blood work done to check how my thyroid is doing and that is really about it.
As I sat there waiting for the nurse to come back in (btw, she checked my BP before the doc came in and it was like 130/75 or so, which is better than what I have been getting at home, but much better than what I had been seeing at my regular docs office recently) I started reading the posters on the wall about the heart. Those are some really scary posters if you think about it! Yikes! Anyway, as the nurse came back in she went over the things with me the doc wanted me to do: 1) Get blood work done, 2) Start taking baby aspirin & 3) Get a sleep study done. Um, hello, what?? Get a what done? While I know what a sleep study is, and it would probably be a good thing for me to get done, I am not sold that he was talking about me when he entered that into the computer. I say this because, well, 1st and foremost, we NEVER talked about sleep studies, let alone getting one done and 2nd, the directions read “patient will get a call from her primary doctor setting up the appointment.” Um, HER?!? The nurse read that and corrected it by putting a line through it and wrote in “his”, yet when I told her that the doc and I never talked about it, at all, she didn’t seem to care that those are 2 strikes right there. Either way, I guess I will wait and see if my primary calls me to set up this study. If not, then I will know for sure.
After getting some blood work done (to test my thyroid), I left there and was glad to know that I do not have another doc’s appointment until October 26th! That’s good news to me!
Back in May when I went to see my Doc, he wanted me to come back in in 2 months to see how things have been going since he put me on blood pressure medicine. That appointment was this past Tuesday. A lot has been going on since I saw him back then (I did see him for my EKG since then, which was when he put me on the meds for atrial fibrillation), so we had bunches to talk about.
The appointment started out with his nurse asking me what I thought of the Ichiro trade to the Yankees, then taking my BP, which was 130-ish over 80, which is down from what I had been tossing in there, even on the BP meds (it was usually in the 150′s). I have been averaging about 122/75 at home on my machine though. As the nurse left she said the doc would be in soon and a couple minutes later he walks in asking me what I thought about the Ichiro trade. lol I guess they know me as a big baseball fan… of course I was also wearing my See All 30 Mariner’s jersey as well.
The doc and I talked about several things and I really think I was there with him for almost 30 minutes, which is crazy for me. However, we talked about my meds, he decided to write me a script for 100mg metoprolol instead of the 50′s so i can take 1/day. I told him how I think it is wearing off in about 21-22 hours almost every day. How that I usually take those pills at between 8-10pm and by 5:30-6pm the next day I can feel my heart starting to race a little. He suggested that I split my pill and take 1/2 at 9pm and the other 1/2 at 9am to see if this helps with the time release factor of it. I am really hoping that help with that as well as eventually cuts down on my sleeplessness because of only taking 1/2 of the dose at night. We shall see…
We also talked about my weight loss. He was thrilled to see that I had lost 48# since I had seen him the first time. I told him how I was following Dr. Fuhrman’s “Eat To Live” like we had talked about when I was in just before my EKG was done. I asked him for clarification on a couple things, the biggest one being number of calories I should be eating. I have read on websites, such as SparkPeople.com, that **nobody** should eat less than 1200 calories a day. As a matter of fact, asI learned, SparkPeople are pretty much Communists when it comes to this. If you dare mentioned to someone what is working for you, if it is a low calorie plan like “Eat To Live”, you will get attacked! It is actually in their ‘terms of service’ that you do not speak of other programs that are contradictory to SP and what I am doing, is. Either way,I explained to the doc that I am averaging 650-900 calories daily and wanted to know what he thought about that. His answer was simple really, “You’re good.” He went on to explain that because of all the excess fat that I have, I will be supplying my body with more than enough calories for it to live on from it. With this much mass on me, my body can live on it and I wont be starving it or send it into “Starvation Mode” like the people at SparkPeople.com would have you believe. For the record, the recommendation for me as to total number of calories I should be eating daily, from SP, is 2400-2700! They say if I do that I should lose 3-5#’s/week. Yeah… so not gonna happen, sorry! Good to know that my doc agrees with me and that we are on the same page and that I am doing good.
We discussed the heart echo that I had done 10 days prior as well. I had not heard anything back, officially, on it so it was good to hear him say “Your heart looks good.” He told me that my valves are working as they should, that I am running at about 55% (which freaked me out to begin with, but he went on to say that anything over 40% is normal, and that the best he has ever seen is 75%, that nobody has a heart runs at 100% efficient). He explained that it did indeed show that I have atrial fibrillation but that since the heart isn’t really enlarged (like he was expecting… it is slightly, but nothing to worry about at all), that it appears we caught the A-Fib really early. I am still not sold on the fact that I didn’t get this from the BP meds I started talking because I never had any feeling of anything like the A-Fib until after that point, but I honestly can not be 100% sure.
Last, but not least, we talked about me exercising. I told him I am to the point now when I go walking that I feel the want/desire to jog some. I am sure I look incredibly crazy when I do and I can’t go for long periods of time (like 1/10th mile or 2), but I feel this is my next natural progression. However, I was curious about if I should be because I am still 444#’s and all. He explained to me that I am already to the point where walking wont raise the heart rate enough, so naturally I am going to want to job to get a better workout. Yep, I agree. However, he feels that due to the possibility of problems with my joints from having this much weight pound down on them, that I should hold off on jogging now, until I lose another 50-100 pounds. He suggested i use an elliptical if I can because it gives the same motion, but without the pounding on the joints. also suggested me running in water as well. I talked to him about the stationary bike and he liked that idea as well.
As I left, he suggested I wait 3 months to see him again (unless there is an urgent need to) so I scheduled my next appointment with him on Friday, October 26th. All in all I think that was one of the best doc appointments I have ever had.
 July 23, 2012 This is a picture that my wife took of me this morning wearing some of the clothes that I typically wore to work this past Tax Season. As you can see, yeah, they don’t even come close to fitting me! I can actually put my hand inside my pants, flat between my belly and the edge of the pants where they snap together. That’s insane! Just the beginning, but how freakin’ exciting is this? WOOOHOOO!!
Today marks the official end to my 5th week following Dr. Fuhrman’s “Eat To Live” program. It’s funny to me, as I start week # 6 of the 6 week strict program, that I am actually here at this point doing great on this program. It’s funny, in a strange not “Ha Ha” way, because I would have never thought I would have taken to a program like this so easily. If you had asked me in the past if I would just simply give up meat & dairy and eat only vegetables/fruits/beans/nuts/seeds/legumes I would have told you that you were crazy! However, here I am starting week # 6 of just such a lifestyle. You gotta love that!
Over that past 5 weeks I have seen certain mixtures of the foods I eat work good for me and others that just simply don’t. I have also seen that if I exercise too much, the scale goes completely flat on me. I’ve had periods of time where the weight just melts off me and times where I couldn’t buy a pound lost. It’s been interesting to say the least. However, overall, it’s been awesome! I have not at all felt deprived of foods and as crazy as it seems, I find myself looking forward to meals the following day because the things I have been eating are just that good.
I know this is just the start and that I have a long ways to go, but I cant help but be excited about this. Most days I have more energy than I have ever had. I say most days because I am still on the medication for atrial fibrillation and it really slows me down at times. Most nights it takes me a long time to get to sleep, even though I am mentally exhausted, because of it (yes, a side effect is insomnia). When you take that out of the equation, I feel amazing! The scale? Well while it’s not always friendly, like I have said I have had a few periods where it’s gone flat on me, but overall it’s been moving nicely. In the 5 weeks since I started with “Eat To Live” I am officially down 29#’s! That’s an almost 6#/week average! You can’t at all complain about that, especially when none of that was from “water weight”, as I lost those 24#’s the week before this, thus meaning in 6 weeks I have lost 53#’s for an average of 8.8#’s/week! Holy schmoly! My overall weight loss since I started losing back in November is 93#’s! That’s 17.3% of my body weight!
Going forward: Even though I am starting the 6th week of the 6 week program, that don’t means I will stop doing this. I will be going forward with this program until I leave on my trip next month (3 weeks from this Wednesday). At that point I have decided to add back a few things, like some eggs and cheese. This will still keep me vegetarian, just not vegan, and it will help me get a little extra protein for the extra energy I will need on my trip. When I get back I will go strict again. Life has been too good to not want to keep this up!
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