New Milestone

Well, its been less than a week since my last post- so I'm back on track with weight-loss and blogging :)

This is an unofficial post, but my home scale has been pretty accurate so far, so I'm pretty excited about this:

My Current Weight: 307 pounds
Change Since Last Update: lost 7 pounds
Total Change: lost 62 pounds!

My Current Pledges: $82.75 per pound
Amount Raised: over $5,000 (almost 20,000 meals)!!!

Only 8 more pounds to my goal! Unless something goes seriously wrong, I should have no problem hitting it a month early. I'll have an official weigh-in in the middle of July and (since I'll probably already be over the goal) I'll give people a choice to either "cash out" then or stick with it for one more month with me.

Since recovering from all my dental work, I've been really good about not eating any junk food... at all (there's a delicious looking frosted lemon cake in my fridge right now that I haven't touched, and I skipped going out to ice cream with Angie and Asa last night) but I'm really craving it. I think when this is all over I'll lose an extra 10 pounds just so I can go eat 10 pounds worth of cake and ice cream :)

Official Month 4 Update

So the last month was rocky... I had to have some serious dental work done and had a lot of trouble following any kind of diet while I was recovering. Here's the numbers:

My Current Weight: 314 pounds
Change Since Last Update: 0
Total Change: lost 55 pounds

My Current Pledges: $82.75 per pound
Amount Raised: over $4500 (about 18,000 meals)

So, the bad news is that I haven't lost any weight since my last update. The silver lining is that I actually gained some weight while all I could eat was pudding and ice cream and took it back off, so I am actually moving in the right direction again. Now that I'm feeling better I'm hoping to up my activity level and maybe even reach my goal (of -70 pounds) a month early.

Overdue...

I apologize for not having posted an update this week or last.... Last week I had to go to the hospital because I had an infection in one of my teeth that spread down into my lymph-nodes. They put me on an aggressive antibiotic and sent me for an emergency tooth extraction. I'm fine now but my diet has been all over the place and I haven't weighed myself in weeks. I go back to dentist on Monday to find out if the tooth next to the infected one can be saved or if it needs to get pulled as well, either way I see my doctor again on Wednesday (I think) and I'll post an update after that.

Week #? Update

Well, I've lost track of the weeks... it's one week past my 3 month check-up, but I think one of those months had 5 Wednesdays... so, week 14 maybe...

Whatever week it is, I'm also not entirely sure what to write for weight-loss this week; do I go by the actually week or since the "bonus" update 5 days ago? I'll go by the actually week- it looks better :)

My Current Weight: 314 pounds
Change Since Last Wednesday: lost 9 pounds!
Total Change: lost 55 pounds :)

My Current Pledges: $82.75 per pound
Amount Raised: over $4500 (about 18,000 meals)!

Thank you to everyone has been encouraging and supporting me on this journey- together we really are going to make a difference!

Official 3 Month Update (plus Bonus)

So here are the numbers from when I saw my doctor on Wednesday:

My Current Weight: 323 pounds
Change this Week: 0 pounds
Total Change: lost 46 pounds

My Current Pledges: $82.75 per pound
Amount Raised: same as last week :(

Still on the plateau... Obviously what I had been doing wasn't working, so we (my doctor and me) talked about what changes I could make to get back on track. I've been doing a new program for 48 hours and here's the numbers as of this morning (from my home scale, so maybe a 1 pound margin of error):

My Current Weight: 318 pounds
Change Since Wednesday: lost 5 pounds!
Total Change: lost 51 pounds :)

My Current Pledges: $82.75 per pound
Amount Raised: $4220.25 (over 16,000 meals!)

The program is not Atkins but it is a low carb program that reduces insulin production, and its working very well right now (don't worry- I won't be sustaining this rate of loss, I know that would result in my body breaking down stuff that's not fat...) and can be translated into lifestyle changes that will help me keep the weight off. I'm excited to not be standing still anymore, and really excited to have broken the 50 pound mark! 20 more and I'll be under 300 for the first time since (a few months after) my accident :)

2 More Weekly Updates...

Well, apparently I never actually posted last weeks update... sorry, here it is:

My Current Weight: 321 pounds
Change this Week: lost 1 pound
Total Change: lost 48 pounds

So, the plateau continued. Unfortunately, that was the good news- this week the change was small enough that I can pretend I'm still stalled, but in truth I started drifting the wrong direction:

My Current Weight: 323 pounds
Change this Week: gained 2 pounds
Total Change: lost 46 pounds

My Current Pledges: $82.75 per pound
Amount Raised: $165.50 less than last week :(

For a while, I was hoping that I might hit my goal in 3 months (instead of the original 6 month time frame), but I only have one week left to 3 months and it seems pretty unlikely that I'm going to lose 24 pounds this week. Obviously, dieting with my wife hasn't really been working so I'm going to go back to my old program and look for other ways that I can help/encourage her. I still haven't had (or made...) the time to add significant exercise (which is probably what I need to get off this plateau) and, with the semester drawing to an end, it will probably be 2 more weeks before that's a real possibility. Hopefully, the weeks in between will be productive and I might still be able to reach my goal in 4 months.

Official Two (and a half) Month Update

I just came from my Doctor's office and here's where things stand after Two Months (and 10 days):

My Current Weight: 322 pounds
Change this Week: 0 pounds
Total Change: lost 47 pounds

My Current Pledges: $82.75 per pound
Amount Raised: $3889.25 or over 15,000 meals!

So, some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I didn't lose any weight this week. The good news is that, inspired by the success I've been having, my beautiful wife has decided that its time to lose the baby weight. We've been working on using the same plan- which is basically just eating healthier stuff and kind of watching how much of it we eat. So, its more practical as a long-term change and it'll be great to be doing it together; unfortunately, I didn't lose any weight in our first week of doing it together. Part of that was splurging a bit on Easter (and occasionally since, thanks to the giant basket of candy in the kitchen), but I do need to make some kind of adjustment. I'm going to try to accomplish that by increasing my exercise (from "barely any" to "some"), but time is still my most scarce resource so we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully next week I'll be over the 50 pound mark (which will be over $4000)! Oh, and I think we may have picked up one or two more people, maybe. If I can make time, I'll try to put together an update of how much weight everyone connected to the program has lost (and a rough idea of money raised) for one of the next couple posts.