Fatblogging

I promise this isn’t the start of “fatblogging” here on alexking.org, but I found Jeremy’s posts very helpful and thought I’d briefly share some of my experiences over the last year.

On Nov 1, 2006 my volleyball team started a 10 week weight loss competition and I was at 216 lbs. I decided to keep going with it and in the last year, I’ve lost 29 pounds and brought my weight down to 187.

This was the first time I’d ever consciously tried to lose weight. I’ve always been pretty active with sports, etc. and I’ve been blessed with an active metabolism, so it wasn’t until I hit 25 or so that the pounds started to creep on a little. From 1999-2006, my weight went from up about 30 pounds (~185 lbs to 216 lbs).

I made a number of small changes during the year, all of which added up to losing 1-3 pounds a month1. Here’s what I did:

Activities

  • I played 2 hours of sand volleyball 2 nights a week. I play in co-ed sand 4’s leagues at the SportsOasis, and the play is pretty competitive.
  • I played 1-2 rounds of golf a week, weather permitting. I also stopped riding in golf carts and walked almost all of my rounds this year. Each round is about 5 miles.
  • Occasional weight training. After the first 15 pounds or so, I plateaued for a little while. To help get past this, I started mixing in 20-30 minutes of weight training 2-3 times a week. I’ve been pretty consistent with it for the last 4 months.

Eating Habits

  • By far the biggest change for me has been portion control. I now make my sandwiches on smaller bread, try to eat smaller things more often, and try to avoid getting so hungry that I stuff myself beyond what I need.
  • Try to eat breakfast and try not to eat past 9pm. I’d get so hungry by lunchtime that I had a tendency to overeat at lunch.
  • Cut out fast food. Luckily I’ve moved from the west coast and there isn’t any Jack in the Box here in Colorado (mmm, tasty sourdough breakfast sandwiches), so this wasn’t as hard as it might have been. I still get fast food on occasion (maybe once every 2 months) but I generally feel a little sick afterwards now as my body isn’t used to it.
  • Limit myself to 1 soda a day. And drink more water.
  • A little more chicken, a little less red meat – though I still don’t eat terribly healthy.
  • Salads instead of french fries. I still don’t know how to count calories, so I was really surprised when I saw that french fries were generally worse calorie-wise than burgers.

That’s basically it. A collection of small changes that I’ve been consistent with all year, and it’s paid off. Thanks to Jeremy and others for sharing their path down this road, hopefully my reinforcement of their success will in turn help someone else.

  1. I started tracking my weight daily in a spreadsheet so I could take monthly averages and see trends better. It’s funny how your weight can fluxtuate from day to day. [back]

This post is part of the thread: Weight Loss – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.