Mar 24, 2012

The Journey Celebrates the Two Year Mark

(Edit... This post should've gone up on the 24th...)

This post has been two years in the making... It was two years ago today that I stopped drinking sugar soda in an attempt to get my ballooning weight under control.

I had an 1,800 calorie a day soda habit that was making me look more and more like Jabba the Hutt. It was time for a change! You can read my first post in the Journey here and then go forward from there. And with a few exceptions I have not had a sugar soda in those two years. And I still crave it on a daily basis.

I dropped a decent amount of weight just by cutting out the soda. I shed 30 pounds in 11 months. Then I really kicked it up a notch and joined the gym and lost another 25 pounds in two months.  And then we went on the trip of a lifetime to Hawaii. It was great being in a tropical paradise, but it was even better that I was in the best shape that I had been in a long time. But then on the second to last day there my feet got severely sun burnt and I could barely walk (read about that here...). It took me a month to recover and by then I had lost all momentum & motivation.

At my lowest I was at 315 pounds while in Hawaii. I then crept all the way back up to 335 before refocusing. As of this morning I'm at 326 pounds. I'm currently back at the gym 4 to 5 times a week and keeping an eye on my calorie intake. We are going to Oregon in mid May for a family reunion and my goal is to be 311 pounds by then. My sister-in-law is getting married in mid July and I want to be 295 at that point.

I've pretty much wasted the last 10 months. I have no intentions of wasting the next ten. If I can lose 2 pounds a week I will finish the year off at 251 pounds, which will put my total weight loss at 120 pounds. If I can do 2.5 pounds a week I could be at 231 by the end of the year. By this day next year I want to be 221, which would be 150 pounds lost in three years.

But even if I stay stuck where I'm at I've still have won a battle... How? If I hadn't done something when I did I would be well over 450 pounds today. I would've been doomed.

Mar 20, 2012

Fat People Clothes

My blog readership got a nice little bump last week... I reposted a rant from Dave Ramsey on student loans and somehow it comes up as the top search result if you are using Google. It's amazing how the internet can work.

And then it's amazing when stuff that should be obvious isn't. Take fat people clothing for example. According to all the studies & fear-mongering news reports America is faced with an obesity epidemic. Everyone is fat apparently. So why then can't we buy some decent fat people clothes at a decent price?!?

You skinny people are probably not aware of what us chubby people have in clothing options. We can either buy cheap, ugly clothes or nice looking, overpriced clothes. There's no middle ground.

Granted, I expect to pay a little more for my clothes considering they do have more raw materials in them. But a pair of Levi's that would go for $40 bucks at a normal store will cost you almost $100 at a "Big & Tall" store.

Fred Meyers & JC Pennies do a decent job of stocking our clothes. Kohl's & Sears do not. Walmart is hit or miss.

So if anyone is looking to become a millionaire in a down economy, open a store that sells fashionable fat people clothes at a price that doesn't require financing for a pair of socks.

Mar 16, 2012

Seven Ways to Destroy Your Marriage

 I saw this post the other day from Perry Noble and decided it was worthy of repeating here. Remember, these are ways to destroy your marriage... As in these are things you don't want to do.

Want to absolutely destroy your marriage?  Here are seven ways that always work!
#1 – Refuse To Communicate
Talk about the person and not to them because doing so will be awkward…this will assure destruction!  And, the silent treatment is really an amazing weapon when it comes to refusing to communicate, don’t worry about the fact that five year olds do it…just own it!
#2 – Refuse To Listen
Interrupting my spouse during conflict to immediately correct them and then trying my best to make a stronger point always helps tear a relationship to pieces!
#3 – Always Assuming The Absolute Worse About Your Spouse
As soon as I hear (or even think about) something negative about my spouse it is absolutely essential to carry that thought to its fullest illogical conclusion.  Don’t EVER ask for an explanation or clarification as more open communication will lead to a stronger marriage!
#4 – Make Sure The Goal Is To Win The Argument Rather Than Actually Settle The Dispute
If you realize you are wrong about something you must allow pride to dominate your thought life, thus unleashing a barrage of accusations that actually have nothing to do with what the original argument/discussion had to do with in the first place!  Win at all costs, even if it means saying things that hurt and wound deeply.
#5 – You Must View Your Spouse As Your Enemy, NOT Your Friend
You cannot see your spouse and you as being on the same team if you want a great marriage, you must view everything as some sort of game and make it a goal to compete with them and not actually complete them.
#6 – Focus As Much As Possible On Their Inadequacies & Shortcomings
You’ve GOT to talk about how much they are “not meeting your needs” and how they need to “step up and do better” as often as possible.  By all means do NOT take a look at yourself and what you could do to improve the marriage.  Everything MUST be blamed on them and you’ve got to see yourself as flawless and perfect.
#7 – Do NOT Have Fun Together
Heck no!!!  You need your set of friends and your spouse needs their set.  Don’t have mutual friends.  Don’t have date nights.  Don’t do anything fun as a family.  Make sure that when you are out on a date as a couple you spend as much time on your phone with someone else as possible because communication with your spouse will do nothing except make your marriage stronger.

Mar 14, 2012

A classic Dave Ramsey rant...

I love it when Dave goes off on a rant... It's always something he's passionate about and he's always right on the money.

Here's a link to his most recent one on student loans.

I love what he says:

I’ve got to tell you that I’m about to blow a gasket. I’m about to go into orbit. I’ve taken so many calls like this. Where are the parents here? If your kids are that stupid, jack them up! Seriously—$130,000 to get a degree from Columbia in divinity to get a $40,000 job as a minister. Spending $130,000 to get an undergraduate degree in psychology—that’s crazy!! So when you have babies, you go home to be a stay-at-home mom.

I love stay-at-home moms. But you know the number one reason I’m finding out now that people can’t stay home with their kids? It’s their freaking student loan stupidity! I’m not mad at this particular lady that just called. This concept is driving me bananas!

If you have a 20-year-old or an 18-year-old walking around, grab them by the ear and tell them they should not get a useless degree from a private university that you cannot making a living with and then choose to go home and be a stay-at-home mom with $100,000 in student loan debt.

This is how life happens. You say you’re going to be a professional at something and then you change your mind—YOU LOST THAT OPTION! You lose these options when you go this far in debt. You are forced into a situation where you are choosing between your children and student loan debt to get a useless degree!

You know what a psychology degree without a master’s degree is worth? NOTHING! Nothing! Absolutely nothing! You can’t get a job in a factory with that degree! You know what a theology degree from Columbia is worth? NOTHING! It has no marketplace value! Think, people!

This is what’s going on! You’ve lost your ever-loving minds, America. You are stupid about education—how paradoxical is that? You wander in, spend any amount to get a degree and act like the student loan tooth fairy is going to come in and pick up your stuff. There is no student loan tooth fairy! You have to think.

Your stupid degree in a stupid field does not have a marketplace value and it doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to get a job! As a matter of fact, it’s an indicator that you’re too stupid to hire! Do not allow your 18-year-old to go $200,000 in debt so they can get a good Christian education in underwater basket weaving. That’s stupid! Stop it!

It’s out of control, people. Somebody’s going to have to stand up and say enough already! It’s not the institution’s fault, it’s the parents’ fault! Parents, tell your children to not be stupid and don’t assist them in this stuff. Don’t assist them to go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree that has no marketplace value. This is ridiculous! THINK, people!

Stupidity with education choices is about as paradoxical as anything I can think of. It’s got to stop. It’s destroying the American family. It’s destroying the economy. It’s ridiculous!

HeeHee.... Student Loan Tooth Fairy... I love it.

Mar 5, 2012

2012 Resolutions

At the end of December I was contemplating making a New Year's Resolution to work out everyday in 2012 after reading an article from someone else who had done this. (You can read my blog post about it here...) This led Christy and I to have a discussion about our New Year's Resolutions. I don't normally make resolutions, but we decided to give it a go...
Here's the list (at least my part):
  1. Work out at least 20 minutes a day, every day of the week but Sunday.
  2. Severely limit my potato chip consumption by not keeping any here in the house.
  3. Be in bed by 10:45pm each night.
  4. Update my blog at least once a week.
So, how am I doing? Here's the breakdown:

Work out at least 20 minutes a day, every day of the week but Sunday. January 1st was a Sunday, so we started on January 2nd and went to the gym. And then we skipped the next 45 or 46 days. For the last three weeks or so we've gone 2 or 3 times a week. I guess technically we've failed on this one, but since we've been going consistently the last few weeks we are still felling pretty good about it.


Severely limit my potato chip consumption by not keeping any here in the house. I'm doing good on this one. I had a pretty serious chip habit. I'd come home from work pretty hungry and get dinner started. To "hold me over" I'd bust out a bag of potato chips and a large glass of milk. By the time dinner was done an hour later the bag of chips would almost be empty. I was shoving down at least 600 to 800 calories in potato chips easily...
So, I'm not completely cutting them out like I have soda. I was at a birthday party and had some... I got a snack bag with my subway sandwich the other day... I bought a bag of kettle chips the other day when I was doing some driving... The point here is moderation.

Be in bed by 10:45pm each night. I'm doing really good here. I've had a lot of nights where I've beaten my deadline by 15 to 20 minutes. Studies have shown that proper sleep is a big, big key to weight loss. One study compared kids who spent their day playing outside to kids who spent their day inside playing video games. There was no clear correlation between the kids activity levels and their weight. But then they looked at the amount sleep the kids were getting. The kids with the earlier bed times who got the recommended amount of sleep had much healthier weight levels than the kids who were allowed to stay up late.

Update my blog at least once a week. Well, since this my first post in a month, I'd say I've bombed on this one...

Overall I'd give myself about a C+. Weight-wise I'm sitting between 325 and 331. My lowest ever  since beginning the Journey was 315 last April. March 24th will mark the 2 year anniversary of the Journey. I really could've been in the low 200's by this point if I had stayed focus the whole time. I had really hoped to be under 300 by this point, but I'm a long way away.

So, I will do the one thing that can be done: continue on. I'm still grossly overweight but if I hadn't started this Journey when I did I would easily be over 400 pounds by now. I was almost at the point of no return...