Periculum in mora -- There is danger in delay

BajaRacer

BajaRacer

New member
Hi, my name is Preston, or BajaRacer, being my alias here. I’m 22 years old, living in New York, going to college to be a Mechanical Engineer, and I’m part of an off road racing team sponsored by the school. I hope to someday move out west and race in the Baja 1000, thus the alias. Other than that I haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life.

I joined this forum a little while ago, with ever intention of beginning a healthy lifestyle right then. Needless to say, I picked a wrong time and it didn’t work out. Taking classes, trying to finish stuff up for the race team and being depressed about financial troubles ruined ever ounce of motivation I had.

The question: what’s changed? The answer: I saw a picture of myself taken the other day, and realized that I really need to lose weight. And right that minute, I resolved to do so. I’ll post this picture as soon as I can get a copy of it.

A little about me: I’m 6’6” and 335 pounds and around 33% body fat. I’ve been overweight my entire life. According to all the fun scales you can find online I always will be with a lean body mass of 225 pounds, but that I could care less about if I feel good about myself. I’m not completely sure what my final goal is yet, but for right now, or at least the next 12 weeks or so, my goal is to get below 300lbs. This is a weight I haven’t seen in a long time.

I went grocery shopping 2 days ago after planning out my meals for the next few days. And managed to only buy one vaguely unhealthy thing and that was a bag of animal crackers. I have a sweet tooth and if that’s the worst I got then I think I’m alright as long as I eat them in moderation.

I’m looking at eating around 2500-2800 calories a day, this seams a bit high to me but because I’m a big guy it could be right, I don’t really know, It’s just what was suggested to me.

I plan on doing cardio 5 days a week and total body workout strength training 2 maybe 3 days a week. Other than that, taking steps to walk more places, and when I drive, parking farther away so I have to walk.

This is my plan, to eat healthy, workout, and hopefully lose weight. And so far today its’ going good, I haven’t eaten anything bad, I’ve stuck right to my plan for food, and even turned down a donut at work. Headed to the gym soon, I’ll see how that goes.

So begins this journal and the journey. I hope you’ll join me.
 
welcome to your diary and the forum - glad to have you here.. :)

I’m looking at eating around 2500-2800 calories a day, this seams a bit high to me but because I’m a big guy it could be right, I don’t really know, It’s just what was suggested to me.
Click to expand...

that actually seems like a pretty reasonable number...
 
Welcome bajaracer! Glad you found it in you to change. I agree with Mal, for your height and weight the calorie range seems reasonable. You'd starve on less and starving throws your metabolism into storing fat instead of burning it.
 
Thanks everyone for the welcome. I think this journal is going to help me a lot in keeping on track.

The food part of day 1 went good, about 2550 calories total intake. I ate a little too much for dinner and I'm pretty sure its because I missed my snack late afternoon. Only got in about half as much water as I should, but tomorrow I'll fix that, I found my Nalgene bottle.

The workout part of the day didn't go quite as good. Being the first day of classes and with all the errands I had to run I only got in a short 15 minute walk. Which I guess is better than nothing.

Day one down... and so far so good. hopefully everything else this week will go good.
 
So I'm just going to call whatever the past 48 hours were... day 2/3. and day 2/3 went alright besides the fact that I didn't sleep but 2 hours in that period of time.

I still managed to eat fairly healthy minus the french fries with my grilled chicken sandwich at 3:30 in the morning.

As for exercise, I walked for about an hour and a half... or about 6 miles total( 2 loops around campus)

Not sure how many calories I took in because of the lack of sleep I ended up eating a handful of baby carrots or animal crackers about every hour throughout the night to keep awake.

I'd say I've been doing alright given the high stress of getting 2 cars ready for unveiling on Friday and being the first week of classes. But I definitely do need to get some sleep which I'm doing as soon as I post this. Then up to start the chaos all over again.
 
Welcome to the forum Bajaracer- Glad to see you've started a diary...it really helps. Keep up the good work! :)
 
welcome... i have been overweight my entire life also, i have lost it many times only to quit and gain it all back my all time high was over 326lbs (my scale didnt go any higher) and im a foot shorter than you. Im no stranger to losing weight, just keeping it off. This time around im armed with one important thing.

INFORMATION

To be completely honest it is going so much easier for me now and its much less work, and guess work. I used program that a lot of people use on here called fitday theres a free online one at fitday.com i reccomend downloading the pc version its more customizable and its quicker to use.

good luck!

P.s racing the baja, that would kick so much ass!
 
RJAZ, Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to look into the fitday program, but that will have to be after the unveiling on Friday.
My all time high was around 345 which scared me into my first very poor attempt at losing weight about a year ago. I lost some weight due to just eating better, but the weight never seamed to come off at the rate I wanted it to, but I guess that was due to the fact that I was still eating about 3000 calories(too much), it was just in healthier foods.


So far the support from this website is helping me tons, In keeping motivated to lose weight. and I'm hoping that once I lose about 10 pounds I'll be even more motivated. and if I can get to that amazing number of 299, I'll be able to make it the rest of the way.


I got a heart rate monitor for my birthday in December from my cousin who is really into fitness, and its useful in calculating calories burned and an easy way to keep track of them each week. I was just wondering if anyone else has any experience with these and doing any heart rate training. When I get a chance this weekend I'll probably post this in one of the other sections but I figure I'll start here.

day 4/5(because I know I'm not getting a lot of sleep tonight) is going alright so far. Oh how I can't wait for getting sleep at night.


and yes RJAZ racing the Baja is going to be awesome, my plan as of right now is about 4 years away from racing.
 
Ooo...my husband and his buddies are planning on doing the Baja1000 in 2009 - there goal isn't to win obviously - but to finish!!

Best of luck to you!
(and welcome to the WLF)
:)
 
So this weekend was more than likely a complete health and diet disaster. I didn't sleep Thursday night. all I ate Friday was 2 pieced of pizza and 3 cookies, but I did have a lot of water. Actually got some sleep Friday night. Then it was St. Patty's day and being that I'm in college that means a lot of drinking. I tried to curb what I was drinking. but it didn't work out to well. I had a blast but it definitely did not do good for my diet. Sunday went a little better and I at least ate healthy and got sleep.

Today has been going better, I'm headed to the gym around 8 tonight, hoping it wont be too crowded. and hoping that this weekend didn't completely kill my weight loss from last week.

But I've got to keep on track even after a set back.


M2M... my goal for the first time running the baja 1000 is going to be just to finish too.
 
i have a a heart rate monitor i love it. i have a Polar F11... nothing too fancy but gets the job done. i enter the calories burned for a given activity into fitday
 
So things are finally starting to even out and I'm not so rushed on everything, unfortunately I think I'm getting sick due to the lack of sleep last week.

Thanks to RJs advice I started using Fitday.com today. Being a poor college student I don't have the money right now until my taxes come back to pay for the PC version, but as soon as my money from taxes comes in that is one thing I'm going to buy. So far I like it, its a lot easier for me to keep track of everything I eat that way than it is trying to write it all down. And I really like all the charts and graphs that it gives you.

I'm struggling a little bit to eat healthy and get in enough calories for the day. I keep ending up around 2500 and with being more active like I have been as near as I can figure I should be taking in at least 500 more than that. All the water and fruit seam to keep me pretty full. I'm going to start planning my menus a couple days in advance so that I can ensure I'm getting the right amount of calories.
 
After reading a few things (this forum and other places) and doing some research. I've decided that my caloric intake is a bit low for what I should get.

I think Steve said it a post somewhere recently that a 300 lb guy eating 4500 calories as maintenance isn't out of the question. and thinking about that, and the fact that I've been having a hard time eating that much.

I'm adjusting my menu daily for about 3000 calories a day, and I'm going to keep absolute track of what I'm eating to make sure I'm getting as close as possible.

Hopefully with a little better planning I can get the right amount of intake and keep my weight loss on track.
 
good job on starting tracking your calories, the freee version is just fine, better than nothing! before buying the full version i would reccomend getting a foodscale, will help cut out a lot of guesswork, even if it is a little off on accuracy it will still be better than guessing. its made all the difference for me!

keep up the good work!
 
So I'm back, I've been so busy in the last couple of weeks that when my computer stopped working I didn't have time to get it fixed. Its finally fixed so I should be posting somewhat frequently. I've been trying to keep on track with my healthy eating, although i do slip every now and then.

I've been having a really hard time making it to the gym because I've been so busy and haven't been able to get motivated to go.

I'm happy that its getting warm out, because now I can go outside and ride my bike and enjoy doing my cardio instead of being inside and hating it. But after not riding for the winter and not exercising much I realized today how bad my cardio-vascular health had gotten even over the winter, because my lungs burned and I was wiped out after my 30 minutes of riding. I kept my heart rate at an average of 151 during the entire ride and burned 650 calories.

I'm hoping to keep up this rate and be able to ride every day for a couple of weeks. Then be able to get myself back to the gym and start lifting.

I've also been reading some on body weight workouts, that I can do without having to go to the gym. but I haven't come up with a good plan for that yet.

Not sure what my weight is, but because I haven't been able to make it to the gym much, I haven't really noticed my pants or anything fitting better. I'm hoping to keep hard on this plan so I can start noticing a change.

I start my summer internship in 10 weeks and I'm hoping to be under 300 by that point. So my first official goal is 299 by June 11th. and I know this is about 3.6 pounds per week, which for just starting off I don't think is that bad.

Cheers Everyone.
 
So my eating habits are still hurting me. I've managed to give up soda, and most of the sugary iced tea, but every time I think I'm doing better I slip. And part of it is that I tend to eat when I've got time because of work and classes and the race team. I have a lot going on.

Now that I've managed to give up soda. I'm going to put something else into that category and work on giving that up. and I think as sad as this is for me to say, It might have to be pizza :( because thats usually what I eat when I slip from my healthy eating.

The exercising was going good until there was random freezing rain this evening and it cut my bike ride short by 15 minutes. But somethings better than nothing.

The only problem I've got now is the cache 22 of my back hurting. My back hurts because I need to lose weight, but when I start doing so, It hurts because I'm stressing it. I'm thinking a visit to the chiropractor is in order so that I can keep up my workout and lose this weight so I don't have back problems.

I know this forum helps me, because It make me responsible for the things I do, I just wish I was having better luck with everything.
 
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