Fat Guy on a Diet

First, I wish to thank everyone that has followed me and he blog throughout the years. You’ve seen me through my ups, my downs, and my extended periods of silence. For quite some time, I gave up entirely on the dream of living a healthy lifestyle, and instead regressed into my old self-destructive patterns. In my initial journey, I lost nearly 40lbs over the span of 6 months. It was an impressive feat that even I didn’t think could happen. Unfortunately, the holidays caught up with me, bad habits kicked in, and I couldn’t find the willpower to go back to eating healthy. In the year and a half since, I’ve tried getting on the wagon several times, as can be seen from the previous posts in the blog. I’ve tried Atikins, low carb, vegetarian, Weight Watchers – none have worked as well as the days I originally started Fat Guy on a Diet.

Today, I find myself heavier than my original starting weight of 323lbs. The last time I weighed myself, I was 327lbs, 4lbs heavier than my starting weight almost 2 years ago. That was about a month ago. Since then, I’m sure I’ve only gotten worse. Clothes that at one point I found to be slightly baggy are now getting stretched to the point where I really need to go up a size – something I absolutely refuse to do. It was a few nights ago when I dressed up in one of my favorite outfits, and found myself to be so uncomfortable, it scared even me. There’s only one way this can go – I need to lose the weight, now moreso than ever.

The first month of my original diet worked the best – it’s when I did nothing but eat low calorie, watching what I ate and not worrying about any methods or processes. It’s when I started experimenting, eating more calories or trying different diet plans that things started getting a little haywire. Lately I’ve had friends starting new diet regiments, some with supplements, others just cutting back the calories. After careful thinking and planning, I came up with the plan for my next phase -

The Plan

The original diet wasn’t based around counting calories, or doing anything truly diet related. The idea was that by eating better, healthier foods, in turn I would lose weight and get healthier as well. That quickly changed and went to a very strict calorie regiment – one that worked very well. The original diet did have a few flaws though, and those flaws I’m hoping to stay away from in this go around. So, here are the ground rules:

1. No Free Days – Giving myself free days and treats were a bad idea to begin with. I’ll have days when I eat slightly worse than others, but by no means will there be days when I go crazy on junk food or whatnot. My goal is to stay within a specified calorie range – no more.
2. Calorie Range: 1200 – 1500 per day – Not a guideline – that’s it.   I will only be allowed to eat within this range on a day by day basis.  In the original diet, there were days where I was well within this limit, but forced myself to have more because I didn’t feel I was eating enough.  No more.
3. Holidays – So, everyone else is eating fun festive food, and I’m stuck eating light and healthy?   Too bad!  Every day will be treated the same as every other day.  Holidays will be no exception.  Thanksgiving will mean turkey instead of chicken, and perhaps a few veggies.  No stuffing – no sweet potatoes – no spaghetti and meatballs!
4. One failure is not a complete failure – Sure, there might be some times where I’ll eat the wrong thing, or where my willpower will not be strong.   One failure is not an excuse to throw everything else off.   I fell off the wagon, and I will now pull myself back on!

Unlike the original diet, I’ll not be doing daily calorie tracking here on the blog. From time to time, I’ll give updates on meals and such through Twitter, but every single meal will not be reported. I will be tracking calories, but that will be for my own purposes.

It’s time I took my life and my health seriously.   My goal is to not only meet my original results, but to exceed them!   Tomorrow, I’ll post information about my goals.  They’ll be very difficult, but anything worth doing will be.   My utlimate goal is to be down at least 120 lbs by the time I get back to New Orleans for Christmas this year.   That gives me a little more than 9 months to get there.   That’s roughly 14lbs/month – it can, and will be done!    So, follow my journey – see how I do.  I’ll post at least once a week with my weigh-in and progress report.   Between those posts, I’ll discuss how I’m feeling and what’s going in my life.   I’ll try to keep things fresh and interesting, but there won’t be daily food diary posts.  So, come back tomorrow to see how I do for the weigh-in.  Hopefully my scale can even register my current weight. :-/

Thanks again for following – this time, I will not fail!