Wow! Moabnt,
Good job on sticking to your new lifestlye. You got so much will power. Happy for you. And keep it up. You'll get where you wanna be real soon

Talk about willpower, I skipped out of a drug rep meeting today early skipping a free awesome desert so I could hit the gym before it closed. I didnt do so hot with dinner though, but who could turn down free lobster, I mean is that really so bad? I dont think lobster is that bad for you anyway. I didnt drink wine, I had diet soda. Heres an interesting factoid for all you knowledge hungry folks. Alcohol has 7 Cals/gram. Thats almost as much as fat! Almost twice the Cals compared to carbs and protiens. Beer bellies start making some sense hu? Anyway, I worked out for over an hour after eating at a nice resteraunt. quite a contrast of situations, going from being waited on to working out like a dog...lol. Other than dinner I did pretty well today.

Way to reach your first goal! Don't stop now! Good luck with the challenge!

Thanks elizab3th....Im just feeling sorry for all those poor saps trying to compete against us!

I didn’t make it to the gym today, I was using the excuse that I was getting ready to travel, but I didn’t put much time into that…I could have made it. I haven’t been feeling up to par today too, just a little off. It was easy to convince myself not to go to the gym because if Im coming down with something, the gym could exacerbate it. I did OK calorie wise though. Im heading home in the morning. I heard my family is already planning a get together and I heard the word pie mentioned. So Im beefing up my resistance and getting ready for war.

This weekend I did really well. I stayed on my diet and even took my wife and kids to the gym and I got in over an hour of cardio and 45 min of weight lifting. I did eat at my sisters house but I ate like I’m trying to maintain my weight….well sorta. I probably ate more than I should have, but not by too much for a family get together. I had less than anybody else there and I usually can put down more than most. Id have to say it was a successful weekend. And the greatest part was that it was officially a weight loss weekend, which has never happened.
Flying back to MI was hell, I had to gate-check my bag with all my food on the redeye flight to NJ, and didn’t get it back till noon in MI. I went right to the hospital and worked for the last couple hours of the day. I had about 120 cal of beef jerky, coffee driving home, and a bit of a granola bar at work, that’s all I ate all day. When I got home I crashed and slept for 8 hours and now its like 2 AM and I just woke up. Im all screwed up. I was going to sleep for a few hours then go to the gym but of course that didn’t happen. Hopefully I can get back on track tomorrow.

Hey! You can do it - just take enough time to rest you don't want to overdo yourself and burn out! Your weekend sounds like it went by awesome though - I'm happy I'm on your team too! And yay for hitting the gym - sometimes it's harder to just get there than actually do the exercise. We're totally gonna kick butt! Keep up the good work buddy!

lmao@saps we are gonna win!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

About a month ago I went running 2.5 miles and my back hurt for a week after. I decided to put it off a few more lbs. I am now in the 220s and have run a lot in the past around this weight without too much trouble, so I ran 2 miles yesterday at 6.0 on the treadmill and didnt have any back pain at all. So I think Im going to slowly be stepping up my running and getting off the elliptical. My goal is to be running 4 miles a day by the time Im around 220 or 215. I will be running a half marathon in June so I really need to start running soon. The weigth has been coming off nicely and Im really starting to feel great. I now consider myself chunky instead of just plain fat. Ive always been chunky, but under 220 is the "thin for me" stage. Almost there!

moabnut, Your doing great. It seems like your catching up with me & your on your way to passing me up. I guess I'm not working hard enough. Thats pretty darn good on your running. Curious of how tall you are, I'm 5 Ft. 11 In.

Thanks Troutman. I dont think that Im catching up to you because you are not working hard enough. we probably work out about the same but I eat less than you. Its as simple as that. I probably eat less than most people here. An acquaintance asked me the other day what my secret was to be able to lose so much weight so fast. I said: “anorexia.” Even though Im not really anorexic (have to be underweight), there is some half truth to it. I basically designed my diet pretty much after what an individual would be able to eat after a bariatric surgery. There I was sitting at 280#’s thinking “man, the only way out of this blubber is the bariatric surgery.” I looked it up, I qualified to have it done. Im a pretty determined person, so I figured what the hell, if you can do it with the surgery, you can do it without. That’s what Im doing. Of course I don’t follow it exactly, I can splurge occasionally. I can drink large amounts of water or soda (they cant) I don’t even need B12 shots because the part of my stomach that needs to be working to secrete intrinsic factor to absorb B12 is still intact. I just eat about 30-50 Cals/hr…about an ounce of food. Sometimes more if its veggies. And I eat tons of protein and a little carbs. I sometimes have a small meal with less than 200-300 Cals. So my daily average is around 600-700 Cals, sometimes even lower. Yeah, I know its not the most healthy way to lose weight, but I needed something drastic or I would never do it. Ive always been a bit extreme in the things I do. Im a faster too. Ive never mentioned that here before, but Ive been doing fasts for 7-8 years. Most around 3 days. Countless 5 day fasts and one 7 day fast…just to see if I could do it. There’s a hell of a lot of “common sense” anti-fasters, but no real concrete evidence against fasting. There are the well known things like weight gain after fasting and whatnot. To be perfectly honest, I do have very large weight swings, but they don’t seem to be related to my fasts. But I cant say for certain. Anyway…enough of my rant. My point was, I started this weightloss competition with about 5 guys. They knew my technique of eating normal until 5 days before the weigh in, at which time I would start fasting. By the weigh in I would blow them all away. So they made me promise that I would eat every day, no fasting. So I put together all I know about physiology and nutrition and I came up with this diet. I don’t get the “euphoria” associated with fasting, but I can stay on this for a very long time, and the weight is just melting off. Our competition ended March 1st and I REALLY wasted them all. I lost 53 Lbs, the next runner up lost 15 lbs. Ive had no signs of “slowing metabolism.” I have a large appetite of course, but Im not actually hungry all the time, because I eat all the time. Ive had the largest weightloss in my life (right after the largest weight gain) and I have no intentions of stopping any time soon. Is it the healthiest diet? Id have to say no, but neither was my artery clogging, blood pressure raising, joint degrading, diabetes inducing, exercise prohibiting extra 100 lbs of pure fat that I was carrying around (now only 50). Id have to say it’s a healthier option. This is a long post so Im going to stop there.

Sorry Troutman, I forgot to tell you, Im about 5'9".

I ran my 2 miles again today and did about 35 min on the elliptical. I didnt have any trouble at all. If I can do it for a week trouble free Im going to add another mile. Im really getting excited about it because running is my favorite exercise and I get really addicted to it.

I had a hard day today. I was very hungry...way more than normal. I still stayed within my calories, but I did eat more than I wanted to. I went to the gym and did my 2 miles again, plus about 30 min on the elliptical. I kayak so yesterday I was trying to use my upper body a lot more on the elliptical and today I was sore...even though Ive been lifting weights. Im buying a new kayak tomorrow, thats why the sudden intrest in training for it. It was going to be a present to myself for when I got to 180, but I found a killer deal that I couldnt pass up...hey, Ive been doing pretty good...what the hell. My wife said that if I dont make my goal though, I have to sell it... guess Ill just have to make my goal then!

53lbs?! Thats amazing!! I'm down about 22 and am freakishly excited, can't imagine how you feel keep up the great work!!!