A Healthier Jim
August 20th, 2008Yes, you read right, healthier. As in, being more self aware of my choices.
It’s new and not normal, but I’m surviving. Try not to be too shocked.
So basically, here’s the run down. I’d been feeling sorta blah in general. Hard to explain, but blah none the less. Didn’t feel like doing much, but I knew I had to. I’m 23, going on 24 here in a handful of months, and if I’m going to get into shape again, now is the time. As many of you know, back when I was 19, I dropped down from 270lbs to 180lbs in about 3 months. I did this the ‘really bad way’, by basically not eating. Marlboros and bottled water were my diet for almost 90 days, and it did indeed get the intended results. I leveled off about 205lbs and was happy there, and I stayed there for awhile. I was at 210 or 215 when I moved out of my apartment due to reasons out of my control and moved in with my grandparents for, oh, I want to say 3-6 months. I don’t remember, but in that time I was up to 235lbs (Grandmas have a way of insisting you eat way more than you should). At this point I was still pretty mindful of my portions, but my Grandma sort of helped me break that habit. Damn you, delicious Grandma food!
The nail in the coffin for me was moving to Texas. I moved down here, had home cooked meals, and had a decent job for the first time in, well, forever. I was able to eat out regularly and I took full advantage. Also, being busy as crap with work, I’d eat fast food WAY more than I’d like to think about. Breakfast (on the way, waking up late), for lunch obviously, and for dinner since I worked 12 hour shifts. The long days made it rough to get actual meals in, and shopping would sometimes go to waste since I’d never get around to eating before it would spoil. All the more reason I didn’t shop.
A year and a half later, and my ass was up to 280lbs again. Yikes! People always say I don’t “look the weight”, and I hear it a lot, but I’m not sure if it’s something they tell the fat guy to make him feel better. I may hold my weight well, I may not, but I gave up my concern for other peoples’ notions of what I looked like years ago after being a skinny guy for a good year+. If that experience taught me anything, it’s that your weight really doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. It still does ‘hold some weight’ (pun!) on how people look at you, but not the majority. I just want to be happy with how I look and feel about my current situation.
I decided that I was not happy and needed to do something about it.
Also, these decisions are always hard to make. It’s easy to stand on a rock and say “I am man, hear me roar!” but when you fail to roar and let out more of a meow, people are quick to remind you of this. AKA, when you try and fail, it sucks when people remind you. It sucks enough when you visit your family and all they can do is remind you of how fat you’ve gotten in Texas. Yes, I know, I thought about it the entire time before I came to visit, no, you’re not the first person to tell me. Amazingly, my family were the only people to bust my chops over gaining weight in Texas (No, ‘everything must be bigger in Texas’ is not original, nor witty, try again). All my friends were just glad to see me. Ahh, how nice that would be to feel welcomed home for me and not my appearance.
Anyway, I basically started being more healthy and didn’t try to hide it. Generally, when I go for a new venture, I try to go about it solo and not tell anyone, just in case I revert (back to the whole told ya so stuff). However, when people see you abruptly change habits, it’s hard to explain past saying you’re changing your habits. Like, for example, I started back up smoking again in Texas. Stress mixed with extra money is the main culprit to that nasty problem, but I decided awhile ago that I was going to quit again, and this time not let excuses be the reason I start up again. I’ve always turned to smokes when I get blisteringly stressed out or pissed to calm me down, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to learn to deal with things on my own and not through cigarettes. I think I bought a pack over some stress maybe 3-4 months ago? I dunno, but I remember saying “You know what, no more.” and I threw the pack away. I think I smoked 2 cigarettes from the pack. I haven’t had one since, and this blog post is really my first big “woot” about that really. I know Donnie from work asked me if I had quit on Saturday when I was by the office with Ralph, but I hadn’t really thought about it. Either way, I’m back to the point of ‘ugh, cigarettes smell like garbage’, which is where I was the last time I’ve quit. I’ve had some stressful moments and gotten over them by either working on something else, or going for a walk. For those interested, you’d be surprised how going for a walk helps calm you down/help you not want a smoke. Also, walking after a meal (usually dinner) has the same calming effect as an after-dinner smoke. I can once again breathe in a full, deep breath and it not hurt, so I’m pretty sure my lungs are happier now (if you’re a smoker, try this, it’ll hurt). The biggest step to actually quitting, especially when you work with smokers, is turning down the offer for a free single.
So smoking is out. Waste of money, jacks up your lungs, makes you smell, yeah…I heard all this before but never really cared until recently. Funny how that works.
So, the next step in this mantra was giving up soda (pop to those of you reading this from the great, white north). Soda is bad, bad bad. My God I hadn’t realized how not good this crap was for you until recently. So, I started going after what I ate and I didn’t care about ingredients, carbs, etc., I just looked at calories. Nice, easy number to go buy. Like MHz on a processor, it’s not all the same, but it’s a good reference point for someone who knows very little about nutrition. 150 calories per can. 150! I usually drank like 2-3 cans PER MEAL in a day. So, maximum enjoyment, that’s 900 calories from Dr. Pepper or Coca-Cola alone. Again, holy crap! For the record, you want to aim for somewhere around 2,000 calories in a day. It differs depending on your height/weight and if you’re trying to lose or maintain weight. Your body burns X amount of calories a day, so you want to eat less than that to lose (obviously). But holy crap, that plus whatever I was eating for lunch (fast food, burgers, chinese, etc) we can see where the ol’ belly came from. Jeez! So I figured step #1 was cutting out soda 95% of the way, and allowing it like once a week or something on special occasion (like an outing to an excellent burger place on a weekend night or something).
I won’t lie, this wasn’t easy at all. I grew up with soda (yes pop, shut it lol) in my house my entire life more or less. Always soda, always in cases, never ran out. It was like a magical soda machine, that fridge. So, I grew up with soda as a staple, when others were used to juices or water. Water! Hah. The water in the house where I grew up tasted like ass. Ugh. I can say that if I actually sat down and figured out how much I actually drank water at home, it’s probably a frighteningly low figure that I don’t even want to think about. Almost never comes to mind. So, milk was my breakfast staple (or anytime really, <3 the milk) and soda went with anything lunch/dinner related. Burgers? Soda! Chinese? Soda! Pasta? Soda! My palette was trained to have soda with everything and the thought of only having water seemed foreign and down right kinda gross. I always thought people who got water were just cheap. And they may be.
However, I did it. The first week was just….strange. I had to force myself to do it to be quite honest. I wanted to grab a soda so bad during my lunch breaks at work, but I persisted with my ice water, and eventually pulled through. Oh, and for the record, we have free soda at work, so this is also a contributor to the ‘ol belly. But now, I actually prefer water with my meals. Imagine that! Certain stuff I totally want a soda with (burgers and steak, primarily), but home made food or pasta, chinese, etc., I enjoy a nice glass of ice water. And once you’re past the soda funk, water is actually way more refreshing. Who woulda thunkit.
Also, beyond the soda being cut out, I also now mind my portions. I eat breakfast every day (because if you don’t eat breakfast, your metabolism is slowed for the rest of the day, bad), but it’s a healthy breakfast. Usually plain Cheerios or Kix with 1% milk, maybe some OJ if I have it. Lunch, unless I go home and make a sammich, I’ll get like Panda Express and just have a normal double entree with rice and water. Or if I go anywhere and get food, I get a normal sized thing. No triple entree, no super size, no biggie, none of it. Just the base size will do just fine. Dinner I try to eat at home, generally turkey/roast beef sammiches, chicken, whatever. Mixed with Sun Chips or 100-150 calorie pack of doritos maybe, depends. Usually down it with water, or if I want something more flavorful, Fresca or Gatorade (Gatorade isn’t great for you, but better than soda).
So where has it gotten me? I started the food thing about, oh, 3-4 weeks ago maybe? I really don’t know. But I’ve dropped roughly 8-10lbs I think, and yesterday morning I clocked in at 272 lbs.
Woot! It’s nice to see actual results in the form of the scale. I also think my belly looks a little better, but that could also just be my mind, dunno. I don’t think atm I look ‘fat’, just bigger. But if I keep this up, I should be down to my target weight hopefully by year’s end. if not, I should at least be slimmer.
Benefits so far? I’ve been walking Lee (Barbara’s dog) on occasion for her and before this, it was surprising rough on me the first few times. Not even a long walk, but it kicked my ass a bit. I think the Texas heat has something to do with this, but not entirely. Now, I can walk Lee and I don’t think about it like ‘wow this is rough’, it’s just walking, like it should be (like it was not long ago). I also actually enjoy walking now, I find it relaxing. Smoking smells like complete shit and I have no desire to do that, so that’s a plus, and I’m able to manage my stress a bit better. I’m still me, still bold, still too much of a mouth on me for my own good sometimes, but I can deal with stress w/o the Marlboros. And when it comes to eating, well, I had Whataburger today since I was in a rush and it was a rootbeer + burger and fries and my God, it kicked my ass! My system was not happy about that at all.
Barbara also helped kick start this off, and no, not because I want to slim down and be ‘the mega sexy’.
I already have heard you people saying this, not true. She’s actually a good inspiration because she herself is a bit of a health guru and has all sorts of ideas/recommendations to replace things with, and so far, they’ve all been good. I’m trying some more of them tomorrow morning as a matter of fact, and we’ll see how that goes. She cooks a lot, and avoids certain ingredients, and has a lot of substitutions for things to help you stay healthier. She also loves outdoors stuff and biking, so again, great influence there. I may try to get a bike again for that very reason, since I’d have someone to bike with and I really do miss bike riding (but I need to trim up hardcore before I try that again haha). But I have a new iPod Shuffle to walk with, so I’m going to try and walk daily if I can, even if I don’t have someone to walk with. Hopefully that’ll eventually turn into bike rides (some nice back roads around where I live currently for this).
Okay, so this is way longer than I expected and I need to shower/pass out. I just thought I’d post up here so everyone knew that I was on the warpath to drop the belly again. However, this time I’m doing it the healthy way, so hopefully it pays off. I’ll try to update as the scale gives me a lower number. ![]()






