The cup is here, the cup is here!

My "Onesville" cup has arrived from Zazzle.com. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to me. I have been doing very well on this diet, so far. In fact I am ahead of the weight loss schedule because the self tracking of all that I eat and thinking about being proactive about the weight loss.

Designing this cup was very easy and putting it together took a grand total of about 30 minutes from the time I came up with the idea (as I was drinking my latte, writing one of the first blog submissions) until I hit the order button.

Visual motivation and completion of a plan are very important for me in doing this, or any goal for that matter. By having this cup stare me in the face (as well as having this graphic on my computer as my desktop image), almost every day as I drink my morning cup of Latte helps keep me motivated. The questions I pose are these:

1. Is $20.00 too much to pay for a single coffee mug? Answer: Yes, $20.00 is wayyy too much!
2. Is $20.00 too much for a tool to motivate you daily to lose weight that will save your life and make your life much, much more enjoyable for the next 20-70 years? Answer: That my friend is an incredible bargain

So choose your question carefully to see what the true value of something is to you.

If you want a little bit of inspiration, consider making something like this for yourself. It can be as simple or complicated as you like. You could spend nothing on it and make it with crayons and paper or you could have the local city bus have it plastered on the side in a screen printed advertising sign. Maybe ask for the bus that goes past your house every morning as you walk out your front door.

Possibly, take a picture of the scale, like I have in other posts, and print it out, and stick it to the wall near your scale, so that when you get on the scale and maybe, perhaps, just possibly, you have let that extra pound slip back on, you have a visual reminder that you have lost that pound before and you can do it again. Call it self accountability if you will.






This may work for you, it works for me.

Very Best,

"Onesville"

Who-hoo 264!

Working hard at keeping it off and figuring out that I need to be at a deficit of 700 K/cals per day to make my weight. I know that the beginning is going to be easier and there will be plateaus so I am trying to keep the accelerated weight loss going for now.

I also have been keeping a detailed, but very simple system of keeping track of my daily caloric intake. I put them on post-it notes and as soon as I eat, I write it down and estimate my calories taken in. It does two things at least.

I have cut down my intake from about 3200 calories a day to about 1800, just by being mindful of what is going in my mouth. It has helped my focus on not just putting food in my mouth if I am even the slightest bit hungry.

Start Weight: 270.0 lbs.
Last weeks Weight: 270.0
Today's goal Weight 267.2
Today: 264.0
Lost last week: -3.0 lbs.
Total lost: -6 lbs.

Ahead of schedule -3.2 lbs

Eeee-gads, double whammy today.

Well, about two days ago, the little lithium battery in my bathroom scale went dead, so I have not had a scale in a few days. I have been good on the food and at the very moment I know I am hungry and let's just say the water table is low. In other words when I put the new battery in the scale I was expecting that I should be around 266 or possibly 265 if I was lucky. I guess I wasn't lucky, the new, fully charged scale says that I weigh about 268, not that much of a gain, but a gain all the same. I don't really want to weigh in so to speak until Sunday, but you know about curiosity and the cat.

So, earlier today, I found an interesting plug in to do a countdown to Easter 2010. I couldn't remember the exact day so I looked it up, it turns out it is April 4th, 2010, not April 12th, 2010, about a week earlier, so I have a little less time to lose the weight.

I know this seems trivial, and it is but hey, I was moving along well, and these two speed bumps show up. Not to worry (as if you would be worrying... ) I just have to recalculate the spread.

Turns out that I now need to keep the pace of almost exactly 1.4 pounds per a week. I can do this. No, I will do this.

That works out to having a calorie deficiency of (-3500*1.4lbs)/7 days= -700 Cal/day

Totally doable with a fairly good diet and either walking, biking or swimming on most days.

Here I come 199!

Very Best,

"Onesville"

Time to stretch

I am a late to bed, late to rise kind of person. I have been most of my life. When I was young my sister bought me a little plaque that said "The early worm gets eaten by the bird." I thought it was so funny. In thinking about it I would say that staying up late is the time when it is most peaceful and the time that I am able to spend with my lovely wife, even if it is only sitting on the couch watching TV.

Now the thought of staying up late is starting to dawn on me (pardon the pun) that this could be part of my weight issue. I watch too much TV, and in doing so, I don't use my body and keep myself limber. IF I were to get up much earlier, even before my family and use the time to workout, time would not be taken away from them and the chance to workout would be there.

One of the reasons I am so motivated in losing this weight is that in the past year I have seemed to lose some mobility in my back. Swimming could help me in that department. I enjoy swimming, it is low impact and if you do it correctly can really get your heart rate up.

Last night there was an infomercial about how the spine works, ruptured disks, degenerative disk issues and the use of Spinal Decompression Therapy. The doctor "interviewed" spoke about how when we get older, it is very important that the spine flexes in order to get nutrients to the spinal disks.

Here is the video online if you are interested.

Dayton Spinal Decompression Therapy, Dr. T.J. Poelking
	30 min - Feb 11, 2008 Dayton Spinal Decompression Therapy. Dr. T.J. Poelking is a guest expert interviewed on the nationally syndicated television show, Incredible...all ... video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2741320636036272632

There was some great information about the workings of the spine.

Some things I surmised from watching this. Any extra weight on a persons midsection is going to do to have ramifications on your spinal, and therefore, overall health:

• excess body fat will add extra pressure on the spine
• excess body fat will constantly pull your spine in directions that it probably shouldn't be pulled
• if you are out of shape, by definition, wouldn't your core muscles of your stomach not be in the shape that are holding the lower back in alignment?
• proper nutrition (while losing weight) will help any part of your body in healing.

Having had back pain since I was young due to stupidity in picking things up, my children and wife now get harped on whenever I see them picking something up the wrong way.

( just searched on Google to give you a link on how to properly pick things up, and all I got was sights trying to explain how to pick up "girls" or people writing about picking things up with their toes. Looks like you will have to do your own search on the subject.)

One of the things the video was explaining is that as you get older the spine does not get it's nutrition from a blood supply but relies on bodily movement to basically squish out the waste products and suck in the new nutrients, so if you are less mobile, then it is a good possibility to have the disk degenerate due to the nutrition not getting to where it needs to go.

I would think that anything that includes movement, be it stretching, or activities or working out in the proper way is going to help you spinal health. Yet another good reason to lose a great deal of weight for me or anyone else for that matter.

Very Best,
"Onesville"

First Official Weigh in

Good Morning, I am going to set the schedule to weigh in every Sunday morning. and I exceeded my first expectations.

Why Sunday mornings, my theory is that my most likely time to blow of my diet is on Friday and Saturday, so hopefully this will keep me thinking about it knowing that Sunday morning will be the weigh in and it might just give me that little bit of extra will power.

Unfortunately, that was not the case last night, because I stayed up late to watch SNL and started eating about another 1200 calories I didn't need at all.


I recalculated how much weight I must lose to reach my goal of 199 pounds by Easter morning, 2010. It turns out it is actually 1.365 pounds (1.4) per a week.


Start Weight: 270.0 lbs.
Last weeks Weight: 270.0
Today's goal Weight 268.6
Today: 267.5
Lost -2.5 pounds

Ahead of schedule 1.1 lbs

I have decided that I am going to try very hard to keep ahead of schedule, because I am sure that I will hit a plateau of weight loss. That way I can stall a bit. and it not be de-motivation. But at the same time I am going to try to lose that 1.4 pounds no matter how far I am beyond the schedule, also I am going to try to lose whatever weight I can, without it being drastic, making 1.4 the minimum I am going to lose per a week.

That's all for today, looks like a good start and doing the blog thing really works for me. I hope some others read this blog, but if I do nothing else but use it as a measure for myself and put some effort into the blog, it will keep me in the moment of my goal.

Thanks if you are out there reading it, please leave a comment so I know somebody is out there!

Very Best,

"Onesville"

Watch what you eat

I love crab legs, and I started buying the fake crab at the store. If you ever taste the two together, you know they are not the same, but I still like the fake crab and it is reasonably priced. It is usually made from fish and formed. So I thought, "Hey, good source of protein, I'll eat that" Well, I got about half of the package down, that is how much I was planning on eating, and then I looked at the package. It turns out that since they use lots of other stuff to make it, it is mostly carbohydrates, and only 6 grams of protein.

Maybe I will read the package before I eat, next time.

Very Best,

"Onesville"

Carbs, the addiction to them

I have picked up several books over the years and one of them was a best seller about being addicted to carbohydrates. It seems when you have metabolic syndrome that your body probably has a tendency to crave carbs.

When you succumb to eating carbs, especially the kind that hit your bloodstream quickly, like corn syrup in cola drinks, orange juice, white bread, and mashed potatoes to name a few, (don't expect the exact details here) your body's cells take and make the insulin too quickly and you end up storing it more as fat, and seems at least for me to accumulate around my torso, I don't think I have fat legs but I do have a beer belly. But since I don't drink that much, it is from food more than anything else. It is much more complicated a process than I am explaining here, but then at the end of the day, your body craves MORE carbs, not less. The simple answer, focus on a lean source of protein to give you energy, maybe a little Olive Oil to add some good fats that help your body, instead of a saturated fat like animal fat, or a hydrogenated fat, or transfat like the stuff in most margarines.

Today I have been good, I ate a modified South Beach Diet meal. I did eat grapes, that definitely is not on the diet. I am doing good, until later in the day.

I walked about a 3/4 mile very leisurely this afternoon and then came home and ate too much ham and a piece of bread and cheese. I don't have my calorie counting down yet, but I think I stayed below 1700 calories today.

I promise you, I will not try to make this blog about what I eat, every day for the next year, but it is helping me think about what and when and why I am eating.

One help is that I use my small salad plates and I am trying to always plate my food before I eat it. Put it on a plate, sit down, have a drink, and slow down on the eating. It is allowing my brain to think "I have a very full plate of food" and not have 2000 calories on one huge plate.

Just a short side note. I was furnishing an office, and there was a small kitchen in it. So I went to wall mart to buy some cool plates to use. I brought them back and when I went to put them into a normal sized dishwasher... they barely fit! These were the standard sized plates. The next day, we made lunch at the office and filled it with spaghetti. Neither of us big guys could finish our plate full of food, and on the plate, it just didn't look like it was that much food since it was on these enormous plates.

The moral of the story, find some smaller plates, plate your food, slow down and your brain will start to allow you to eat less and not feel cheated.

Any comments on the Carbs? Please post a comment.