Challenge Accepted!

Somebody had their chest all puffed out, thinking they are tough, and decided to call me out on a little weight loss challenge the other night!   That someone being Amanda!   For a little while now we have been going to the same gym, her doing all the classes and me, lifting and listening to my ipod.   We always playfully call each other out on who works out harder or who does the worst exercises (we all know I do, lol) or say, "I thought you were losing weight, why you eating that?".  Well this time, Amanda decided she wanted to take it one step further and throw out a little 30 day challenge!   Being the Alpha Male I had to show her I wouldn't back down to any challenge she wanted to throw at me and laughed at her as she sat their grinning in the kitchen (where most of our deals are made).   The challenge she proposed is as followed:

"By the end of February, lets see who can hit our goal weight loss for the month.   My goal is 10lbs."   Me being me had to one up her and say, "Ha, that's it?  I will do 20lbs to your 10lbs.".

We ended the challenge rules with a handshake and I think she may have done an Egyptian style dance with her arms and shouted "oh yeah buddy, you are going down."  So, today she emailed with a picture of her on the scale and her "starting weight" and to be a good husband I will just say her starting number is "10".   My starting number will be posted to my twitter account, down below on this blog, unless you follow me then you will see the TwitPic as soon as I get to the gym.   Last time I weighed myself at the gym I was in the high 260s, I should be in the 270s now because of the way I have been eating lately, but I ain't skurrrred!

Just so you know what we are talking about here, weight wise, cause I know you think it isn't much:

So, now you know what is going on at the household, a simple husband/wife, bet.     Whose team are you on?????  Leave a comment and let me know if you are "Team Jay" or "Team Da"!

Before The Blog

Like I said in the first post, I started my change on January 3rd, 2012.   After trying every gimmicky diet idea out there in past years, I stumbled upon yet another one (or so I thought) in the movie: "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead."

Basically the movie is about a man who was overweight, sick and on the verge of dying (thus the name, lol).  In this movie, "he trades in the junk food and hits the road with juicer and generator in tow, vowing only to drink fresh fruit and vegetable juice for the next 60 days."   And when all is said and done, the results/transformation in his body was absurd.   Something about this movie stuck with me and I decided New Years Eve weekend to buy the same juicer he had, a book on "Juicing" (not the steriod Juicing; fruits and vegetables Juicing) and all the ingredients I needed for the week to come.

At first Amanda was rolling her eyes, knowing that spending $200 on a juicer that she said I will use for a week was crazy, and that I should just eat right and run and not lift (her words). 

But soon she realized I was hooked.   Every day I juiced at work (yes, I brought the damn juicer to work), trying different recipes, adding different things, basically I was experimenting with the whole "juice craze".   And let me tell you, the first week of juicing, SUCKS!  Each day I would take a picture of the juice I was drinking for the day and send it to Amanda as proof (more of a "HA, I am using that $200 juicer" - lol).

I know, you are asking, "what is Juicing, he didn't explain" so let me briefly tell you: (I modified the juicing diet from the movie) Basically, you cut out all foods and drinks (minus water and black coffee, but I will explain that) and just drink juice all day and night, day in, day out.   I am not going to go through all the different juice recipes, cause as I found out, there are hundreds of them.  What my juice of choice consisted of after experimenting the first week was:    3 stalks of Celery, a bunch of Kale, 2 Red Delicious Apples, 1 peeled Orange and 1/2 peeled Lemon.   Again, this is what I drank; every one is different.    I drank this for 30 straight days, allowing myself after the second week to have 1 cheat day per week.

"But Jason, why the cheat day?" - Remember how I told you I bought a book called:  "The 4 Hour Body"?

Well hidden in this awesome book the author encourages to binge once a week, but only ONCE per week.   Why does the author encourage this?  Because it is very important to spike caloric intake once per week.   This causes hormonal changes that actually improve fat loss.  I basically ate whatever I wanted once a week (usually on Sundays) but still only drank water.   But come Monday, I was back on juice only.

My starting weight on January 3rd, 2012:  317.8lbs >>> Weight on January 31st, 2012:  284.4.    I lost over 30lbs on the juicing diet I was on and felt great for the first time in a long time!   This included no gym/cardio what so ever!   In the next few months I kept my diet clean, stopped jamming food into my gut to the point where it wanted to pop, cut out soda and iced tea and still juiced all day and only ate at night, but never after 9pm and started doing lots of cardio at the gym.  Which leads us to now....

I have decided to reboot my diet again and this time, along with cardio and weight training, see where it takes me!  Current weight:  268.6lbs.  (yes, that means I am down:  49.2lbs;  was 52lbs prior to Easter weekend, lol)

I have talked to many people including a friend of ours that owns a great fitness studio: http://www.littleblackdressfitness.com/ ,friends that are at the gym 24/7, friends that actually juice (the other way, lol), friends that eat whatever and don't gain a pound, etc..   All routines I post and talk about are MY ROUTINES made up mostly by ME.   They work for MY BODY and MY GOALS.    If I do mention something I read or heard I will gladly give credit where credit is due.   Don't think cause these work for me they will work for you, every one is different with different goals.  Just experiment and find out what works best for YOUR BODY.

Fat Stick Figure

Hello everyone!  See that pic right there, yeah, that's how I felt for a long time!   Throughout the years I packed on more and more weight but never seemed to think I was "overweight" (aka fat).   I seemed to think every thing was fine with the way I looked, I had a serious girlfriend>who eventually became my wife>who then became the mother of my children; who did I have to impress?   She was ok with who and what I was, why did it matter to me what anyone else thought?   Never once did I think about my health or feeling good in my own skin.  All that mattered was I was ok with being the "funny fat friend".

But then one day my wife Amanda noticed I was having problems breathing and didn't look so good (mind you, I was just sitting there doing nothing but watching TV) and she said the following that made me get my ass into gear, "Jay, you are breathing like you just ran a marathon and you haven't even got off the couch.  You really should be careful I don't need you to have a heart attack, me and the kids wouldn't like that."   I don't know if it was the fact that her being some what alarmed (for those that really know her, know what I mean) or the fact she mentioned my kids; but I stopped and really thought about it.   That night, after her and the kids went to bed, I stared in the bathroom mirror for what seemed to be an eternity, looking at myself; physically and mentally.   Conclusion, I was embarrassed.  I was embarrassed that I actually let myself get that way; embarrassed I was ok with being that way; embarrassed that I looked that way when I stood by my beautiful wife and kids.

The next morning, I woke up on a mission.   All week I was going to research every kind of weight loss program out there; and I did.   I read eBooks, bought a great book (The 4 Hour Body - more on this later) watched videos, talked to people at the gym (the same gym I been paying for without ever going) and then I watched a movie documentary that changed my life!   The movie title alone is what caught my eye:  Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.   I saw that and said, "this is me".   After watching that movie and absorbing every thing I read, I set out on my journey!

In the following blog posts I will take you with me on the "reboot" of my weight loss journey.  I say "reboot" because I really started this mass diet/lifestyle change back on January 3rd, 2012.   I was an idiot and didn't think about blogging about my experience when I first started, an experience that led to a 52lb weight loss!  I have been off the "crazy/hardcore diet" for a while now and think it is time to have another go at it and see how much I can lose now since all the "easy fat" is gone.   Along with dieting I will be including my activities at the gym and anything else I deem is worthy of talking about.   I hope you enjoy it and feel free to comment all you want about any post(s)!