Back to it!

Man, am I out of my routine! The contests both ended. Vacation happenned. And I just have not gotten back into the swing of things!

Lots to blog about...but more than anything, I just need the accountability.

It's easy to lose weight. But changing habits...so difficult. I definitely haven't stopped running to food as a source of comfort. so much to blog about that!

I also keep going back and forth with whether to merge my two blogs or not.

hmmm....we'll see.

thanks for stopping by!

A year later pics

Last year I took my kids on one of our church's mission trips and on the last day we stop off and take a tour of this glass art place and they have this cool gazebo of hand blown glass blue birds. I took a pic with Ciera and Noah last year.

We went back again this year and took another photo. It's amazing to see how big my kids have grown and conversely, how small I have gotten. The funny/sad thing is that this picture wasn't even at my heaviest and I weigh less than the newer pic.

I suppose they are momentos for the journey. Pretty cool.

(click on the pics to see them larger in a new window)

Are you a bigger loser than Marko Contest ends today

Well, the results won't be posted until Monday. Last week I was in 4th place at 230 lbs. I gained (?) 2 lbs this week. I'm not really happy about that but I am pumped at the results.


In 12 weeks I lost 40 lbs! that's 3 and 1/3 pound a week! Want more? My sweet wife Jen lost 24 pounds! While she was frustrated with many weeks of one pound or no pounds lost, in 12 weeks she averaged 2 lbs a week! THAT'S HUGE!


And yes, Marko won...and he looks great! My hope and prayer for all of us is that we'll keep it off.


Jen says she has more to lose...I know I have 30 more to go...so maybe in 12 more weeks we'll be in maintence mode.


The Wichita contest ends next Saturday so I'll try to post some pics of that too and hopefully win the right to keep my blog name.

(these thumbnails are pretty small. You can click on them for the high res version. although, you may not want to click the first one...that's pretty fat. ;^) )

My first real jog

In Dr. H's book, he talks about every morning going out for an hour jog/walk. That sounds as exciting as....exactly...it's not. I'd rather go to the Y and watch TV while I sweat.

But I really want to follow his instructions and today I gave it a shot. I jogged for 3 minutes, then did his recommended Dynamic Warm Up which lasted another 12 minutes. Then I jogged...and jogged...and walked....and jogged....and walked...and jogged....(you get the idea)...for 30 minutes then turned around. At an hour I stopped and just walked home ( a little more than half a mile).

then I took my sweet wife and Charis and we drove my track. Dr. H reccomends running at a pace of 5 miles an hour being the goal. In one hour, I jogged and walked 5 and a half miles! And hit 7 miles with the before and after.

pretty cool. i've never done anything like that. It'll be more fun when my foot doesn't hurt afterwards and when it's not 30 degrees. burrrrrrrrrrr

What a week....another 4.6 lbs....gone!

Well, I honestly didn't know what to expect this week. On Wednesday, I was stressed and I ate a bunch of mini candy bars....probably 400 calories worth. On Thursday....I didn't do much better.

I did exercise all week except Wednesday and increased my intensity in one set of videos.

The hard part was, over these last 12 weeks, this was the first time I'd really sought the false intimacy of food for comfort again. Both Wed and Thursday I ate late at night, all carbs, and pretty significant amounts, at least I thought.

so when I weighed in this morning, I had very low expectations, and when the scale rang out 234.4 I simply couldn't believe it. Blown away.

I'm resting today. Didn't go crazy with food. but didn't keep track either. Which is still an issue. My "free" day is an exercise in realizing how much work I still have left, even though I do better than I did before. But that's for another blog post another time.

On Thursday I weigh in for the Biggest Loser comp here in Wichita. I need to weigh 229. I have no doubt that in 4 days I can, at the very least, lose enough water weight to weigh in. Which is exciting.

I still need to keep working and I still have the YS loser comp too. But the real game, is getting to my goal and keeping it off.

Big week: 5 lbs, only 10 to go!

At this stage of the game, 5 lbs is HUGE! after only losing one last week, I was really hoping for a great week. I would have loved 5 lbs but didn't expect it at all and pretty much assumed I'd still be in the 240's.

not today though! 239!!! I'm only 10 pounds (and 12 days) from my goal weight for the local competition here! that is so sweet!

I worked out hard this week. Ate really well with the occasion of a couple hundred calories over on Friday night. It's nice to have a day off before hitting it again! and losing 5 lbs is great motivation to not consume a bunch of crap today, Easter Sunday.

I think losing 5 lbs will be a big gain for me on the Marko contest too, so that is sweet!

239! wow! that is 70 lbs in 11 weeks. simply amazing! only 9 pounds from how much I weighed when I got married in 1997! I simply cannot wait!!!!

The Biggest Loser and my DEXA

Based soley on a post by McNutt, I went out and bought Dr. Rob Huizenga's book "Where did all the fat go?" Dr. H is the doctor on The Biggest Loser, and in the book, gives his WOW! prescription to reach one's ideal weight.

Early on in the book Dr. H stresses the need to get an accurate measurement of one's "fat weight." Which is basically finding out how much muscle you have, how much bone weight, and how much fat.

There are lots of different ways Dr. H suggests to find this weight. The easiest and most accurate way I was able to do this was to get a DEXA (Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry) scan. I was able to do this at the local university. I found it by googling: DEXA Wichita.

The contestants on the Biggest Loser, amid all the tests, get to do an iDEXA, which is a newer version of the DEXA. Wichita State has only one of two DEXA's with the new programming made for conducting body scans for weight loss. And for $100, they were happy to have me lay on a table, perfectly still, for 6 minutes while the table moved me underneath the x-ray so it could shoot billions of electrons through my body and calculate my density.

Here's a pic of the DEXA:

After getting dressed, I received my printout. On the tv show they get a cool color picture. Mine is low-res black and white. It is hard to tell all of my fat because it isn't in color but you can see a difference on my inner thighs.

You can see the light gray is the muscle and the dark gray is the fat. It's all over my body, but you can really see it there on my "loins." (I just wanted to say "loins.")

The coolest thing about the DEXA is that you get a realistic analysis of your weight. Knowing that, you can calculate how many calories your body burns normally (your resting metabolic rate), and the amount of calories you need to lose .5% of fat each week. But that's not all.

The best part for me is that it gives me a realistic goal. Here are my results:

According to the DEXA, I have 175 lbs of muscle and bone. I thought 175 lbs was close to my goal weight! Even if I had zero fat, I would still weigh 175 lbs! dang! According to Dr. H, men are supposed to have 12%-18% of fat. Which means that my goal weight is 199-213 lbs. That is only 40 lbs away!!!!

What a RELIEF!!!! So cool!

I do wish I would have gotten this done when I was at my heaviest. I weighed in at 309 (fully clothed). I now weigh 244. I got this done last week, with breakfast in my belly and some light clothes I weighed 246.

On the Biggest Loser they get to see before and after DEXA scans and it is so cool to see the difference! Nevertheless, I am so glad I through down the Franklin. It has given me so much good information and has really helped me focus on my goal which seems so very close now!

Only one more pound this week. Down to 244

What a wierd week! If I had been on the biggest loser...I totally would have been eliminated. I thought I did really well this week. Loads of workouts...quite possibly the most workouts in a single week. Really pushing hard too. Even had a double day on Saturday.

On Friday night I over ate, but not by much. Nevertheless, when I weighed in on Sunday morning I was only .8 pounds less than I was last week! So frustrating!

Of course I got all depressed and way ate bad yesterday. so I'll have to work that off now. stupid!

But at least I still lost a pound. At that point I have 19 days to lose 15 pounds in order to reach my goal for the local contest here. That seems like a HUGE goals when I was counting on 4-5 lbs last week. We'll see how it goes.

On the bright side, I only have 40 lbs to go before I reach my goal weight. I did a DEXA scan which I've been meaning to blog about for a week. Pretty cool deal.

Woo Hoo!!! 245 lbs....

Actually...it's 244.4, but I'm saying 245. I had an 8 day week last week instead of seven, so with being one day behind, I'm giving my self a .6 lb jumpstart for next week.

Not only am I only 15 lbs away from the Play it Again Sports goal, which two months ago seemed absolutely impossible, I was away on a youth trip this weekend with temptation all around!

We left on Friday and I simply packed a dinner. Saturday, I ate a HUGE breakfast (900 calories) knowing that I may possibly not be eating lunch or dinner. For lunch they were having chick filet and dinner, Pizza. So I grabbed two apples and two oranges from the hotel and had them along with only the fried chicken part of the sandwich for lunch.

I skipped the pizza and took the students out to ice cream where I had a rasberry lemonade smoothie made from lemonade sorbet.

Sunday morning I had a good breakfast at the hotel. With all kinds of muffins and rolls and sugar and biscuits and gravy, it was a temptation. But I did great and chose a couple boxes of raisen bran cereal and had an english muffin and a sausage pattie. then for lunch we went to mcdonald's where I had a hamburger and an ice cream cone (400 calories total).

anyway, there is so much more I could bore you about, but the end result was 6.6 lbs loss in 8 days and that's HUGE! I can't even remember when I weighed 244 lbs!!!! (of course I mean 245 ;^) )