Losing weight, and staying fit...

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
When I got married in '92 I weighted about 80 kg (176 lbs) (I'm 1.77m tall [5'-10"], and was 27 years old at the time... which is also 27 years old in imperial units :p). I didn't exercise but I was fine because my job demanded that I often walked considerable distances. Unfortunately, as the years went on I began to walk less and less and the weight began to creep on me at such a slow pace that I didn't notice, because I was not in the habit of weighting myself regularly.

After I turned 35 I finally gathered the courage to climb on to the scale, and found out that I weighted 83 Kg (183 lbs)... not too bad, considering that I had been married for seven years and that I was still not exercising. I looked a little "cheeky", but that was ok because I had a gorgeous wife that was stark raving mad about me...

Anyway, a few more years passed, and one day my beautiful other half gathered enough courage to tell me that I was "no longer slim" ... that really hurt... so I climbed the scale again, and got the awful news that I was now entering the realm of 90 kg (198 lbs) !!!

No way, José... I had never before in my life been a fat-so, and I was never, ever going to accept myself as one. So I prepared myself mentally (that is, I gathered the strength of will to accept the fact that things were about to get uncomfortable... but for a greater good), and began to count each and every single calorie that entered my mouth; recording every ingestion event into an Excel sheet that kept track of my meals, snacks and drinks. All this with the goal of never ingesting more than 1,300 calories per day. And it worked.

After the first couple of months, I had already lost more than 7 kg (15 lbs), and looked (and felt) the hell of a lot better (at least according to wifey). That's when I decided to ignite the afterburners and boost my metabolism by doing the unthinkable: I began to run for health and exercise purposes.

Running had always seemed kind of idiotic to me back then... what's a guy got to win by going in a rush with the goal of returning to the same place that he actually departed from a few moments before? But I didn't have a choice. I'm not a member of any country club where I can go and play golf at ease, or play tennis or swim for sport or my entertainment. And I was not in the mood (nor had the resources) to invest a considerable amount of money into something that also required monthly payments... there's the street out there, buddy... make good use of it.

So I spent around 70 bucks in a decent pair of shoes, and hit the pavement.

The first few weeks were excruciating! I was not only short of breath, but also had to suffer terrible heat, and I hated the feeling of a sweaty, stinky body... but I kept at it anyway.
Then it occurred to me to buy an MP3 player, and load it with the best motivational music I could find. Which was mainly movie soundtracks, Beatles music, and a few fast-paced rock and roll, and country tunes. That made an important difference...

It wasn't before a couple of more months had passed that I noticed something new. I was actually beginning to enjoy this exercise thing! ... I went to bed every night looking forward the next morning so I could hit the road and de-stress myself for a few minutes. I was now in the habit of jogging 7.5 km (5 miles) every day, except on Sundays. And I was feeling as good and as awake since my teen years!

One day I realized I had omitted an important activity. I had not weighted myself in a long, long time... so I again climbed the scale... and my jaw dropped to the floor when I read the numbers being displayed... seven, three... I had lost more than 17 kg (37 lbs) since I started my little quest... and was more than well into my dad's (he was a doctor) recommended weight range.

Then something happened, and it was not a good thing. I became obsessed with my weight, and challenged myself to weight less and less every day... see how low I could get. So I began to effectively starve myself, some days eating no more than 600 calories. And climbed the scale constantly to watch my progress.

That obsession ended the pitiful day in which I climbed the scale, and learned that I now weighted 67.3 kg (148 lbs) ... my wife couldn't take it anymore, and had a deep and long talk with me, telling me that I didn't look "lanky" as I thought I did, but rather that I looked gaunt and sick instead. And she asked me to stop doing what I was doing because it was going to end badly, and I was only going to ruin my health... and I understood and agreed with her... I no longer felt as good, nor had the energy that I used to feel in my best days. I learned something new about my own character that day.

So I relaxed my ways a bit, and went back to eating more normal. Even allowing myself a few drinks and dessert every once in a while. I stayed that way for quite a few years, always weighing between 74 and 76 kg (163-167 lbs). Which was more than fine for someone my complexion.

Anyway, to make a long story short, that spell ended when I hurt my shoulder about four years ago. I was hurting so bad that I could hardly move my arm for months. I could not raise it to grab things that were above my head, nor I could even scratch my own back with that limb when I felt the urge. It hurt so much that it even bothered me when I exercised and my body did the normal bouncing up and down when I tried to jog. And so I stopped exercising, waiting to get better so I could start running at a later time, when the pain subsided.

And the pain did subside after nine moths, more or less. But by then I had gone lazy, and was again eating and drinking without restriction... and up went the weight once more... I was again overweight. The scale read 88 kg ...

I've had enough. I've made a plan again, and I've set myself the goal of eating 1,300 calories a day tops. I started on January the 1st, and will keep this rhythm until April the 1st. I don't care how much I weight on the final day. All I'm focusing now is on eating healthy, and controlling my appetite. And I've been mostly successful. This because, other than the calories, my restrictions include zero alcohol, zero processed sugars, and zero stand-alone bread and wheat products... I do eat a sandwich or a hamburger every now and then though. Just as long as I don't exceed my daily calorie quota.

My strategy has been to eat only twice a day. I eat a "brunch" of about 300-350 calories at around 10 in the morning (I work mostly from home), and then I consume nothing until about six in the afternoon. At that time I eat a hearty meal of about 800 to 900 calories. Then I allow myself a small snack an hour or two before bedtime, and I hit the sack at 10:45 p.m. Give or take 15 minutes.

I'm climbing the scale every ten days or so. Weighing myself on the days that end up with the number 9.

These are my results so far:

Code:
Jan  1: 88.0 kg (194 lbs)
Jan  9: 86.7 kg (191 lbs)
Jan 19: 84.3 kg (186 lbs)
Jan 29: 82.7 kg (182 lbs)
I have now lost more than 5 kg (11 lbs) since I got started, and all during a period of less than five weeks. And I look and feel the hell of a lot better. I feel lighter, and have more energy than before... how could I forget how being healthy felt like? ...

Anyone who cares to join this thread and share his/her experiences is very welcome to. We all have different reasons and motivations for maintaining our weight within reasonable limits. It can be health, physical performance, or even vanity. It doesn't matter. Not being fat is always a good thing.
 
Last edited:

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,978
First off, congratulations and keep it up!

My story parallels significant parts of yours, but with significant differences, too.

I've always been overweight. Actually, that's not quite true. I was a skinny baby until just before my second birthday. Then I suffered a near-fatal head injury that the doctors at the time believed likely caused significant mid-brain damage. Examinations by doctors when I was 18 suggested pituitary gland damage. Whatever happened, my weight skyrocketed even while I was in the hospital and it has be largely a lost battle all my life.

At the age of 16 I was 239 lb, or 109 kg (I'm 6' even -- 188 cm). I got serious and got down to 175 lb in right at six months. I managed to keep that off for nearly three years. Even though I got very involved in karate, which is largely anaerobic, I didn't do any aerobic exercise and at the age of 18, right after high school graduation, I still couldn't jog a half mile nonstop. So I set out to correct that by setting up a three mile course that started and stopped at my house and ran/walked it every other night. At first it was excrutiating, but by the end of the summer I was running (few would probably argue that what I did ever counted as "running") the entire three miles and, like you, not only came to enjoy it but to crave it. I worked close at a restaurant and seldom got home before midnight. Several times I was too tired to run and just went to bed -- and proceeded to toss and turn until I got up and went out and ran my three miles! Toward the end of the summer I went to a school track and ran five miles and only stopped because I had someplace I had to be. About four miles into it was the only time I ever got that "runner's high" we often here about and I don't know how far I could have kept running if I had been able to, but I would not have been surprised at all to go ten miles. My mile time was also down to 5:51 (best time) at a mile above sea level. I felt great and I didn't have to watch what I was eating because I was burning so many calories and had a healthy metabolism.

Then life took a nasty turn and while I was dealing with some school, scholarship, and personal issues I stopped running and my weight soared back to 255 lb in less than four months. I got called to active duty and was 245 lb when I reported for Basic Training (the limit was 199 lb at the time for my height) and I got to stay in Basic until I met standards, which took four months. At times it was comical. The first time we did the morning run the TIs put all these skinny kids around me and told them to keep me going. They were heaved over after the first lap or two and I dusted the majority of the several hundred trainees even at my weight -- it takes quite a while for you to lose a well-established aerobic capacity and even at that weight I could run the 1.5 mile test in just under ten minutes.

I kept the weight off for most of my time in the Air Force but sustained a back and lower body injury and, true to form, the weight came piling on and in five months I had gained sixty pounds. After I was discharged I made numerous attempts to get the weight off and get running again, but my back, hips, and and knees couldn't take it for more than a couple weeks. After each attempt my weight would ratchet up another ten to twenty pounds and I topped out at 408 lb.

In desperation I had gastric bypass surgery in 2013, mostly because I had become an insulin dependent diabetic and the particular surgery I had has about an 85% success rate of getting people like me off insulin the very next day. I didn't quite accomplish that, but I did cut back over 90% and got off insulin a couple months later. Things went well for a couple years and I got down to 215 lbs and then went off the rails. Hard to say way. My weight went up to about 260 lb and stayed there for a while. Then I went completely off the reservation for all of 2016 and let my sugar addiction run wild on top of not taking any of my drugs. My weight stabilized at a pretty consistent 233 lbs (on thing about out-of-control diabetes -- it will cause you to shed weight since your body has no mechanism to store fat).

At the very end of 2016 I decided to get my act together and by mid-January I was down to 214.5 lb. But I went to the doctor and my HbA1c was the highest he's ever seen at 16.1% and my blood work was a train wreck. My sugars had come down from diet along from 600+ to about 160. I started taking my insulin again and got my sugars down into the 110 range pretty quickly -- and the weight absolutely poured on. I gained 35 lb in ten days. The belief is that this was almost all water weight because my skyhigh sugars were forcing my body to dump every ounce of water it could to get rid of the sugar -- I had insatiable thirst and was drinking between two and three gallons of water a day. Okay, fine, so I had to reset my clock and accept that my real weight wasn't 215 lb, but rather 250 lb. Fine. Then my weight kept going up -- a reliable 10 lb to 12 lb per month. I finally got it to slow down just short of 300 lb, but it still kept going up and I'm now back up at 315 lb -- so 100 lb gained in one year.

It's hard to keep up any sustained effort when you constantly see months and years of work dashed in weeks or a few months. Part of me insists that I'm not ready to give up yet, however my actions speak otherwise.
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,764
Struggling with excessive weight myself I managed to keep a quite regular schedule for eating (twice a day, as you) but no exercise at all. In few days 71 yo, I am tempted to give up but I recognize I do not feel well and I do not look well either.

Yes, when I have to work, I walk a lot and I do not complain but,"going nowhere", walking and walking just to come back to the starting point is not my thing.

Not in my best moment I think.
 
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atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,764
Hola César, @cmartinez

Regarding healthy food and exercise, you could find this of interest:

An 85-year-old couple, after being married for almost 60 years, died in a car crash. They had been in good health the last ten years, mainly due to her interest in healthy food and exercising. When they reached the Pearly Gates, St. Peter took them to their mansion, which was decked out with a beautiful kitchen, master bath suite and a Jacuzzi. As they looked around, the old man asked St. Peter how much all this was going to cost.

"It's free," St. Peter replied, "this is Heaven."

Next, they went out in the back yard to survey the championship-style golf course where the home was located. They would have golfing privileges every day and each week, the course would be changed to represent different golf courses on earth. The old man asked, "What are the green fees?"

St. Peter replied, "This is heaven, you play for free."

Next, they went to the club house and saw the lavish buffet lunch with the cuisines of the World laid out. "How much to eat?" asked the old man.

"Don't you understand yet? This is heaven, it is free!" St. Peter replied, with some exasperation.

"Well, where are the low fat and low cholesterol tables?" the old man asked timidly.

St. Peter lectured, "That's the best part - you can eat as much as you like of whatever you like and you never get fat and you never get sick. This is Heaven."

With that, the old man went into a fit of anger, throwing down his hat and stomping on it, and screaming wildly. St. Peter and his wife both tried to calm him down, asking him what was wrong.

The old man looked at his wife and yelled, "This is all your fault! If it weren't for your blasted bran muffins, I could have been here ten years ago!"
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
Hola César, @cmartinez

Regarding healthy food and exercise, you could find this of interest:

An 85-year-old couple, after being married for almost 60 years, died in a car crash. They had been in good health the last ten years, mainly due to her interest in healthy food and exercising. When they reached the Pearly Gates, St. Peter took them to their mansion, which was decked out with a beautiful kitchen, master bath suite and a Jacuzzi. As they looked around, the old man asked St. Peter how much all this was going to cost.

"It's free," St. Peter replied, "this is Heaven."

Next, they went out in the back yard to survey the championship-style golf course where the home was located. They would have golfing privileges every day and each week, the course would be changed to represent different golf courses on earth. The old man asked, "What are the green fees?"

St. Peter replied, "This is heaven, you play for free."

Next, they went to the club house and saw the lavish buffet lunch with the cuisines of the World laid out. "How much to eat?" asked the old man.

"Don't you understand yet? This is heaven, it is free!" St. Peter replied, with some exasperation.

"Well, where are the low fat and low cholesterol tables?" the old man asked timidly.

St. Peter lectured, "That's the best part - you can eat as much as you like of whatever you like and you never get fat and you never get sick. This is Heaven."

With that, the old man went into a fit of anger, throwing down his hat and stomping on it, and screaming wildly. St. Peter and his wife both tried to calm him down, asking him what was wrong.

The old man looked at his wife and yelled, "This is all your fault! If it weren't for your blasted bran muffins, I could have been here ten years ago!"
Lol! ... as we say down here "I'm gonna be the healthiest corpse in the cemetery" ... :D
 

killivolt

Joined Jan 10, 2010
835
The only thing I can say is my Diet of not eating certain foods rich in Lectins has changed my overall physiology, I don't count calories anymore because the Diet is about healing the Gut lining and promoting healthy bacteria, rather than taking probiotics which my Diet say's without prebiotic's the probiotics will die out in about 2 weeks. They say we start out now as children with a minimized amount of bacteria compared to that of our ancestors and further degrade what we have consuming foods rich in not only different lectins but we also take antibiotics which sometimes cannot be avoided however we still don't know how to increase them naturally.

With the studies now and in that past conducted concerning gut bacteria, I understand from reading a few articles, they're saying they might be able to produce them but, we still need to consume prebiotic's to keep them alive or maybe we just take them with our Vitamin's? I'm not sure.

@cmartinez glad you found control over you OCD's, I have that problem also, once I fasted for 3 weeks it was the worse thing in my life to do, I would never do it again. After the first week I lost my appetite, then I just didn't eat at all, I don't recall a rapid decline in my weight but I do remember the amount of toxins that were building up, probably because I wasn't drinking enough water to flush them out, my lips swelled and blistered. I slowly began eating again, introducing certain foods gradually to see if they were the cause of my issue's at that time, the only thing that lowers the amount of inflammation in my skin is cutting Gluten out, I also react to Yeast.

I have asthma it's only increased over the years, they call it harding of the lung, it skips a generation or two but always returns in our family, it's what my dad died of, so I can't run never have or I would have ran all the time growing up, best I can do is 50 yard dashes. So, instead I weight lifted I was good at that, did it for years, I road bicycles put in an average of 20 to 25 miles a day, some days I did more. It could be why I was 210 pounds yet my pant size never increased because I put the weight on in my legs and shoulders and back.

I'm like you don't want to go to the gym, so I improvise by doing stairs every day and walk at least a mile, at least 280 stair steps a day from the first to the 6th floor twice daily it's the only way I can do aerobic training without pounding my knee, I also have a total gym, can't say enough about that little machine, I paid a lot of money for it so not to use it is just stupid anyway lol

Keep up the good work folks, BTW I hate to sound redundant but here's the book my diet is based on.......... The Plant Paradox

“SUCCESS STORY

Usher Loses Pounds and Gets the Role
My assistant got a call from a Mr. Raymond who wanted to thank me personally for what I had done for him with the Plant Paradox Program. I was puzzled since I didn’t know anyone by that name and didn’t recall ever giving a Mr. Raymond my two-page list of foods to eat and avoid; but I was intrigued, so I picked up the phone. Usher Raymond IV was on the line. Yes, that Usher. It seems that he had been cast to play Sugar Ray Leonard in the movie Hands of Stone.

"When the real Sugar Ray met Usher, the boxer sized him up and said he was too fat to play him!"

Now, if you have ever seen Usher, “fat” would not be a description that you would use. Seven percent body fat is not fat. But there it was; Usher was too fat to play Sugar Ray. So Usher went on the Paleo diet, then a gluten-free diet, and finally a raw vegan diet. He also worked out for five or six hours a day. Nothing worked. Did he need to exercise more, or cut more calories? He was so frustrated he nearly gave up.

Around this time, Usher’s agent was visiting a girlfriend in New York who had been following the Plant Paradox Program with great success. The agent took a copy of the food list off the refrigerator and went back to Usher. Fifteen dropped pounds later, Usher was on the phone with me. He was now Sugar Ray! He had been eating everything he wanted from the “good” page and avoided everything on the “bad” page. By following this two-page list, he had lost the weight he needed to. Miraculous? Not at all—just the perfect functioning of a perfectly designed system. Now Usher wants the world to know about the plant paradox.
I know how frustrating diets and exercise can be in attaining an elusive goal. What if that goal was just waiting for you to attain it? What if perfect weight and health was the natural consequence of allowing your own nature to thrive, once the obstructions from “healthy” foods and “all-natural” products were removed from your life? That is what the Plant Paradox Program can do for you. ”
This is only one of many successes quoted in the book, most of the people criticizing Dr, Gundry are people who want their name next to his even if it's negative, none of them have Board Certified Cardio Surgeon in front of their name or have 10 medical patents, only one of two Surgeons in the world who can perform a surgery on a baby with a heart defect inside the womb and lastly,

Dr, Gundry: “Thanks to my work with xenotransplantation, I happen to hold the record for the longest-surviving pig-to-baboon heart transplant.
So, yes, I know how to fool the immune system—and I know when the immune system is being fooled. I also know how to fix it.”


kv
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
30,712
BTW, from the little reading on the subject that I have encountered, I understand that diet drinks and artificial sweeteners do more harm than good.
I do not drink diet drinks and I stay away from margarine. I use butter and will sometimes indulge in sugar flavored drinks, ice cream, cookies, chocolates, etc. I have a sweet tooth and not likely to give it up any day soon. I do not drink tea or coffee. While I do not have a weight problem, I engage in much outdoor physical activity, hiking, running, cycling, swimming, canoeing, and sailing.
 

MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
28,619
I have never really been overweight except for a period where I couldn't resist a particular source of Treacle Tarts, at least that is what I put it down to!
About 25 yrs ago I started getting out of breath and was misdiagnosed for 10rs, a new doctor immediately sent me for a T.Mill. stress test exam and immediately put me on the list for a heart by-pass, the 10yr warranty ran out about 3 years ago and I am still going strong on a diet of 2l to 2.5l of beer a day and plenty of nuts!.
Otherwise I prefer fish over meat let the chips fall where they may.
Max.
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
30,712
Oh! I forgot about the beer and nuts. I don't like beer but I drink it when I'm with company which happens way too often. But I am nuts about nuts. I am addicted to cashews, peanuts and chocolate coated almonds. I eat a lot of trail mix which has a lot of nuts. I've cut back on red meat and eat mostly chicken and fish when I do eat meat. I love falafel wraps.
 

Sinus23

Joined Sep 7, 2013
248
I've never been overweight but that doesn't mean that my diet has been "up to code"

I'm "blessed" yet cursed with having my appetite somewhat linked to my activities. Sounds good? Well no, because I have very irregular meals because of different routines over my lifetime and that isn't very healthy as far as I know . The only time where I ate 5-6 times a day was when I worked on a farm as a teenager in the summers. Never been in a better shape honestly...:cool: But as soon as I went back to school in the fall my meals became 1-3 times a day even though I was really active...Just not as labor heavy active.

However since this is about diets and motivation I think that like many things one size doesn't fit all when it comes to diets and exorcise so people need to experiment a little bit and use what they know about themselves to find what works for them.
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
I think that like many things one size doesn't fit all when it comes to diets and exorcise
My thoughts exactly. Diet and exercise are very personal things, and I mean it in the metabolic-organic sense of each individual. A diet that is adequate for a baby is not the same as one for a child, nor a teenager, nor an active adult or an octagenarian...

But let's keep religion out of this thread, please... if you feel that you need to face your demons through "exorcise" :eek: then let's open a new thread to discuss that... :p:p:D:D
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
First off, congratulations and keep it up!

My story parallels significant parts of yours, but with significant differences, too.

I've always been overweight. Actually, that's not quite true. I was a skinny baby until just before my second birthday. Then I suffered a near-fatal head injury that the doctors at the time believed likely caused significant mid-brain damage. Examinations by doctors when I was 18 suggested pituitary gland damage. Whatever happened, my weight skyrocketed even while I was in the hospital and it has be largely a lost battle all my life.

At the age of 16 I was 239 lb, or 109 kg (I'm 6' even -- 188 cm). I got serious and got down to 175 lb in right at six months. I managed to keep that off for nearly three years. Even though I got very involved in karate, which is largely anaerobic, I didn't do any aerobic exercise and at the age of 18, right after high school graduation, I still couldn't jog a half mile nonstop. So I set out to correct that by setting up a three mile course that started and stopped at my house and ran/walked it every other night. At first it was excrutiating, but by the end of the summer I was running (few would probably argue that what I did ever counted as "running") the entire three miles and, like you, not only came to enjoy it but to crave it. I worked close at a restaurant and seldom got home before midnight. Several times I was too tired to run and just went to bed -- and proceeded to toss and turn until I got up and went out and ran my three miles! Toward the end of the summer I went to a school track and ran five miles and only stopped because I had someplace I had to be. About four miles into it was the only time I ever got that "runner's high" we often here about and I don't know how far I could have kept running if I had been able to, but I would not have been surprised at all to go ten miles. My mile time was also down to 5:51 (best time) at a mile above sea level. I felt great and I didn't have to watch what I was eating because I was burning so many calories and had a healthy metabolism.

Then life took a nasty turn and while I was dealing with some school, scholarship, and personal issues I stopped running and my weight soared back to 255 lb in less than four months. I got called to active duty and was 245 lb when I reported for Basic Training (the limit was 199 lb at the time for my height) and I got to stay in Basic until I met standards, which took four months. At times it was comical. The first time we did the morning run the TIs put all these skinny kids around me and told them to keep me going. They were heaved over after the first lap or two and I dusted the majority of the several hundred trainees even at my weight -- it takes quite a while for you to lose a well-established aerobic capacity and even at that weight I could run the 1.5 mile test in just under ten minutes.

I kept the weight off for most of my time in the Air Force but sustained a back and lower body injury and, true to form, the weight came piling on and in five months I had gained sixty pounds. After I was discharged I made numerous attempts to get the weight off and get running again, but my back, hips, and and knees couldn't take it for more than a couple weeks. After each attempt my weight would ratchet up another ten to twenty pounds and I topped out at 408 lb.

In desperation I had gastric bypass surgery in 2013, mostly because I had become an insulin dependent diabetic and the particular surgery I had has about an 85% success rate of getting people like me off insulin the very next day. I didn't quite accomplish that, but I did cut back over 90% and got off insulin a couple months later. Things went well for a couple years and I got down to 215 lbs and then went off the rails. Hard to say way. My weight went up to about 260 lb and stayed there for a while. Then I went completely off the reservation for all of 2016 and let my sugar addiction run wild on top of not taking any of my drugs. My weight stabilized at a pretty consistent 233 lbs (on thing about out-of-control diabetes -- it will cause you to shed weight since your body has no mechanism to store fat).

At the very end of 2016 I decided to get my act together and by mid-January I was down to 214.5 lb. But I went to the doctor and my HbA1c was the highest he's ever seen at 16.1% and my blood work was a train wreck. My sugars had come down from diet along from 600+ to about 160. I started taking my insulin again and got my sugars down into the 110 range pretty quickly -- and the weight absolutely poured on. I gained 35 lb in ten days. The belief is that this was almost all water weight because my skyhigh sugars were forcing my body to dump every ounce of water it could to get rid of the sugar -- I had insatiable thirst and was drinking between two and three gallons of water a day. Okay, fine, so I had to reset my clock and accept that my real weight wasn't 215 lb, but rather 250 lb. Fine. Then my weight kept going up -- a reliable 10 lb to 12 lb per month. I finally got it to slow down just short of 300 lb, but it still kept going up and I'm now back up at 315 lb -- so 100 lb gained in one year.

It's hard to keep up any sustained effort when you constantly see months and years of work dashed in weeks or a few months. Part of me insists that I'm not ready to give up yet, however my actions speak otherwise.
That's a very interesting story, Bahn. Its a very vivid reminder to anyone that we all have our weaknesses, some visible in plain sight, and some hidden much deeper. Their source can be attributed to one's own character, or to a medical or metabolic condition. Either way, we should never judge a person for that sort of shortcomings.

When I was a teen I was too judgmental and couldn't understand why there were overweight people in the world... I mean, I ate anything I wanted in the quantity that I wanted and I always looked thin and fit!... what a fool I was... it's not until we have to walk through fire ourselves that we get a glimpse of what others have had to go through. And same thing goes to medical, financial, personal, intellectual and emotional problems... I honestly believe that we're all given a gift, and it's up to each one of us to use it in the benefit of all. Otherwise our lives end up being sadly wasted.
 

jgessling

Joined Jul 31, 2009
82
I can tell you what's worked for me. I ride a bicycle. Starting in school and continuing until now that I'm retired. While I was working I would ride to the train station and then back in the evening. When I was working away from the train, I always had a bike in the trunk of my car and would take it out for a spin at lunchtime. As an aside, I always figured that when the "big one" hit then I could always ride home. Might take a full day to do the 50 miles depending on bridges and road conditions but I'd make it even if I had to loot some drinks from a store on the way.

It's easy to not ride, there are a million available excuses. It's too cold, too hot, I'll get sweaty, it's too dangerous, etc. etc. But once I get going, I feel better and at the end of the day I know that I did something just for me. That's important. The point is that every errand I run or just a pleasure ride is good for my health and automatically for my weight. No, I'm not a MAMIL (middle aged man in lycra). My bike is a practical model with an 8 speed hub and tires large enough to take care of any bumps or gravel along the way. And I'm not locked into a metal cage thinking that I'm having a good time because I turned up the stereo. There is a world out there, and I intend to participate in it.
 

Glenn Holland

Joined Dec 26, 2014
703
I'm at the other end of the weight spectrum.

I'm 65 years old and presently 6' - 0" and 150 Lbs. (wearing only my undies). However this has been the norm for about 40 years. I cannot seem to gain more than 150 Lbs. and many people comment that I'm always skinny as a rail.

Also, I seem to have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and I'm always out of energy and I can sleep about 9 hours per day. I'm also prone to "narcolepsy" where I can suddenly fall asleep without knowing what's happening. Consequently, I've never owned a car (or did much driving other than what was required by my job) because of the risk of falling asleep on the road and getting in an accident.

However, all of my tests (for blood sugar, heart and breathing rate, etc.) don't show anything wrong. My mother had the same problem so it's some kind of hereditary illness.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,978
My dad (not biological) had similar weight problems and, coincidentally, seemed to stem from a head injury as well. In his case, he was a young boy (maybe eight or so) and fell out of a horse-drawn wagon. He said his weight then shot up immediately and he struggled the rest of his life. At one point in his life when he was about 30 (so late 1950's) he got into body building and got in really good shape. But he always said that the big lesson he learned from his body building days is that a gym is where fat people and skinny people go to sit around and admire each other.
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
Today's Feb the 9th ... it's weighting day. And the scale reported that I weight 82.3 kg. I've only lost 400 g in the last 11 days! :mad: ... that's less than one stink'n pound ...

What that means is either that I've been retaining a little water, or that my weight loss is slowing down because I've not been exercising ... at all. It's time to hit the pavement and start doing some brisk walking. I'll even try to jog a little, if I can.

Here's what I'm gonna do: I'm going to walk 7.5 km (5 miles) every day until Monday the 19th ... then I'll see what the scale has to say.

I need to break that 80 kg barrier ... :cool:
 
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