Marcus: The Weight Loss Chronicles

Hey, brother. It's been a few weeks. How's the OH treating you? Did you start the new job, yet?

:seeya:
 
Wow! I forgot I even had this diary. It's funny to look back at all the old posts and how different my goals are now compared to then.

I made a post in a different category summing up what's happened to me in the past 2.5 years, and I'll make it even shorter here. I've gained all the weight back.

I bought a scale today and officially weighed myself in at 204.4 lbs. Less than I thought, but still about 40-50 lbs too heavy. Day 2 has been successful. I clocked in around 1500-1700 calories today which is probably a little lower than I'm shooting for, but still a success. I think the healthy spot for me is about 1700-1800 calories a day to lose weight. I also made it to the gym for 30 min of cardio and got in a half hour walk over my lunch break at work.

Tomorrow and this weekend is going to be nuts. I'm flying across the country for my older brother's wedding, so keeping this diet in check will require some additional effort. This will be a good test to see how well I can control my tendency to overeat. I don't believe in "cheat" days so I'm not going to just say fuck it since it's a wedding. I plan to make the smartest choices that I can given the options that I will have over the weekend. Only what I can control is what I can hold myself responsible for.

I'm feeling pretty good about this process so far. Getting through a couple of days successfully has boosted my confidence that I can do this again. When I reach my goal this time, I plan to stay on this site and figure out how to maintain, because clearly I'm in the dark on that subject.

Marcus
 
Halfway through week 1 and it's been a pretty weird week. Between a wedding, being out of town for a few days, and halloween, I still feel like it has gone pretty well. I know a few days probably weren't great, but I tried to do the best I could given the circumstances. Today was perfect at about 1500-1700 calories and thirty minutes of cardio. The cardio is feeling easier. My weigh-in time is Friday morning and I'm hoping to see at least 1lb gone this week.

Today, I realized that my weight has really fluctuated a lot in my adult life and I know that's probably not healthy. My weight has moved as follows:
Age 16- 187
Age 19- 167
Age 22- 210
Age 23- 158
Age 25- 204

This time around I've got to do things right once I reach my goal. My head is in the right place, just gotta keep goin.
 
Pretty good day today. Got my workout in and am at 1690 calories right now which I think is probably low after re-reading some of the stickies. The first time I lost most of my weight, I was not counting calories and I was eating probably around 1500 calories a day. Once I started counting calories, I tried to eat around 1750 a day and I plateaued for a long time on that number at 170lbs until doing HIIT which got me down to 155 or so. 1750 calories per day would be a 30% cut from my estimated maintenance level of 2500.

Then again, on the weekends I will be eating out at least once and drinking at least 600 calories of alcohol on probably 2 nights. I wonder if this would still put my body into "starvation mode" by going 1750 calories x5 days + 2days @ 2500 calories?

I don't know if this is placebo, but I already feel like I've lost a little weight and it's only been a week. I sincerely believe that the last 10 lbs I gained went directly to my waist line and nowhere else on my body, so the logical place for the first pounds to drop are that same spot and my pants feel a little looser. Probably just hopeful thinking, but who knows?
 
I just went back and read my entire diary from the beginning until now. It's pretty unbelievable to me that I lost all that weight and was so into it then just pissed away all my efforts by gaining it all back.

At the very least I was able to enjoy having a good body for about a year and half. I only gained about 10lbs in the first year of maintenance (which was fine- I weighed 170). The past year has really been the blowout year. I'm beginning to realize that for those of us that have a tendency to overeat and be overweight, solving the issue isn't going to be 6 months or a year of dieting and exercise, it's gotta be a lifetime of working on it. Like a drug addict that is 10 years sober and still goes to AA meetings every week, I'm going to have to continue to keep tabs on my weight and my eating issues through this diet and the rest of my life, regardless of what the scale says.
 
I weighed in today at 200 even. I'm not sure how much of that is water weight or if it's just my body getting shocked into eating less food and shedding an initial big chunk of fat. Either way, it's a good sign that I'm on the right track. This weekend I do plan to eat higher calories and drink some alcohol, so I am hoping I do well and stay within my goals. This will take some self control.

I haven't started weight training yet, but I know I need to do it. Weight training is so draining to me. Getting back into it and dealing with soreness is the worst part by far. I plan to start a routine next week where I am not killing myself, but hopefully giving my muscles enough strain to keep from losing any while I'm in caloric deficit. I have a gym at my apartment and at my office, so I don't really have an excuse, except that both of the gyms have shitty equipment (mostly machines and dumbbells <50lbs). I'll have to make do and come up with something I can live with. I think I gained some muscle after I stopped dieting a few years ago. I started eating whatever I wanted, but I was doing intense weight training 2-3 times a week. I got up where I could bench press about 250lbs and made a lot of progress on squats and deadlifts. I still feel like I have some of that muscle mass remaining, but I wonder how much of that strength remains?
 
Hunger is starting to catch up with me. I could really go for entire large pizza for dinner. But NO! Reasonable food.
 
Well this past weekend was decent I guess. I didn't work out on Friday-Sunday which was a failure and I drank kind of a lot on Friday and Saturday. I do think I didn't overdo it with regular amounts of healthy food on the weekend. So far during the work week, I've been right on point with the diet and exercise thus far. I still haven't started a weight training program and I plan to make a go at it some time this week.

I had to argue with co-workers today about why I wasn't going out to lunch with them. That was irritating.
 
This has been a tough week, but successful. I weigh myself tomorrow morning and hoping to see at least a 1 lb drop. I've made it to the gym 4/4 since Monday even though last night was a shit workout and I felt tired after 20 minutes. Tonight was much better and I even threw an interval in to see how I would fare. Let's just say one was enough.
 
Damn, it sucks to lose and gain it all back. I've been there -- went down 40 and up 50 but you seem strong and motivated so I know you can do it.
 
Hey daybehavior, it does suck. I guess some people like me would seriously be fatasses for life if they didn't work on it each day. It's not like we can just lose the weight and forget about it, right?

I like the quote in the signature- I was just about to jam out to some La Roux at the gym in a minute. Have a good one!
 
Thanks, I've adopted it as my new theme song haha. I'm goin' in for the kill next :smash:

You're right though about weight loss. Can't just "set it and forget it". I think maintenance will definitely be the hardest part. I made the gigantic error of giving up after I saw no results on the scale after three weeks (at this point I had no idea what a plateau was). Fastforward to a few more years of dillydallying and with my 29th birthday just around the corner I read up as much I could about weight loss and decided to get my ass in gear. Good luck to us both! I'll be checkin up on ya.
 
Best of luck for tomorrow dude, and well done for the gym visits. It doesn't matter if one wasn't so good, at least you went!
 
Ugh holy shit so freaking tired today. Just took a nearly four hour nap and completely don't think I'll make the gym tonight. I think I will give myself a pass tonight.3 of 4 isn't that bad right? For some reason I'm really low on calories today also and am not very hungry. I hope this isn't a sign I'm getting sick. OK if there were any weird texte errors in this message its because of swype. This thing is weird.
 
A whopping 0 pounds lost this week. Gotta say I'm pretty annoyed. It looks like the damage I did last weekend outweighed the progress I made during the week. I've got to get my weekends under control and slow down even more on the drinking.boooo
 
Yeah, that drinking is a killer :( It's like a triple whammy - you can easily drink a ton of calories, it stimulates your appetite, and it can cause water retention. It's good you're deciding to cut back. These days I'm not so mad at 0 lost as much because I know, it doesn't -erase- progress like a gain does. Maybe you'll pull a big number next week though.
 
Its been a minute since I've posted and things have been going okay. Not exceptional, but moving along nonetheless. I've lost about two pounds in the past month and that's despite my Thanksgiving consisting of three days of debauchery in new Orleans which had to have set me back a bit. I will say that going at this slower pace is certainly feeling doable even though slow. Another six months and I might be down to where I need to be!
 
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