Hi there, finally starting my own weight loss diary, I've introduced myself a few times on the site but here goes again anyways. All the way through high school I was very slim, topping out my senior year around 175 pounds, after high school I joined the military and went overseas to Iraq. If you can imagine it was pretty easy to keep the weight off overseas, lots of excersize, bad food, and hot all the time....anyways I came home for about a year and *POOF* I weight around 235, then I went overseas for another year and got back down to around 190, alas here it is a little over a year later and I'm up to 249...in the army I also picked up smoking cigarettes which was just terrible for mustering up enough energy to go for a walk let alone have the endurance to run a whole mile! lol, anyways I quit smoking the first of the year (finally) and I told myself that I would get in shape again if I ever quit smoking so here I am. The local YMCA is also having a Biggest Loser style competition with a 1500 dollar prize for the winner...all of these things together kind of threw me back into eating right and excersizing, I weighed 249 when the competition started last week and on monday of this week i weighed in a 246 so...going in the right direction, anyways it's been very nice getting to know a few of you and I look forward to meeting many more!

I think that's awesome your YMCA is doing the challenge! I'm sure it will keep you motivated and going strong! Having a journal on here is also really helpful. Everyone is great and always willing ti help. ;] Congrats on your few pounds lost - and I'm sure the rest will pour off soon! WOOO!

I go to the gym about 5-6 days a week for about an hour at a time over my lunch break, I usually just run as I assume that is probably the best to start shedding lbs...anyways yesterday was no different except for the fact that I was invited to play basketball by some guys later that evening, we played from 8pm to 10pm....holy jesus that is a workout, I looked on my calories burned tools and it turn out that playing basketball for an hour and a half burns about 1350 calories...which is a far cry from the 500 or so that i burn each day during lunch, I was extremely excited to see how many calories it burned and plan on doing it again next wednesday!

So yesterday I ran and played basketball for about an hour and a half, after which i wasn't hungry so I didnt eat, all in all yesterday I took in about 840 calories and burned around 1800..today I feel like garbage so I'm planning on taking in a few more calories today than I normall do, around 1800 or so, and go a bit easier in the gym cause i am feeling pretty weak...a mistake I won't soon make again I suppose!

Welcome I hope that u do great on your journey!!
You'll see that this time is going to be the good one

Wow, what a cool contest! Would be great fun and sort of motivating I guess too. Good luck with it! Oh, and if you need a overly bitchy trainer hehe let me know

no, the "trainer" that they stuck me with is more overweight than I am, so I'm just kind of doing my own thing..small town

I used to get these things that i've heard people talk about called a "workout high" that is, when i was youger after a hard workout i would just feel great about myself...im sure you know what I'm talking about if you're reading this, anyways I am on a major one of those right now, just ran 40 minutes on a treadmill over lunch, took a shower...and now im ready to kick the sh*t out of the rest of the day! As if the workout wasnt enough to get me goin, I weighed myself on the same scale I've been weighing myself on (big fancy health club one) and I have lost 4 lbs since monday...man do I feel great, nothing to keep you motivated like seeing progress!

Another thing that I wanted to mention today for the sole purpose of reminding myself from time to time is the following, which I thought of today mid-run session:

All over the media and just all over the world in general, we are always hearing how hard things are to quit doing..."it's hard to quit smoking", "it's hard to lose weight", "it's hard to quit your particular bad habit". The way that I have thus far succeeded in my attempts to quit my bad habits (smoking, eating unhealthy, not excersizing, etc..) is to tell myself that it's not that hard, I think that sometimes when we tell ourselves that we're going to stop doing something to better ourselves, we know in the backs of our heads that we are going to fail, and we actually justify it to ourselves by saying that it is too hard/impossible/unattainable...I am telling you, that if you TODAY, decide that nothing that you want to achieve is unattainable (within reason) then you will have alot more success, and just like when i quit smoking, i kept telling myself that it wasnt as hard as everyone was telling me it was, and honestly, I was a pack + a day smoker and now it almost makes me sick to smell it...that was a month ago! Do it for yourself, when you're on that treadmill, think about all the people that said you couldn't do it, think about all the commercials on TV that say you can lose weight without doing anything because of a new previously unheard of breakthrough, think about these people and thing trying to take your money and your pride and kick you while you're down and tell you that you're not good enough and just shove it all right back in their damn faces! You are the one controlling your body and you are the one in charge of how you live, no one else can tell you what is and isn't possible....if nothing else I know that reading this from time to time will keep myself motivated but if it brigtens anyone else's day i guess that's just gravy...(the fat free kind of gravy).

not so motivated today, think the superbowl might have had something to do with that, didnt go overboard on pizza and wings and all that jazz though, had a couple slices and moved on...starting to like the fact that I can give in to temptation in moderation from time to time and it really doesnt affect me too much, weighed in today at 242.5 so not any change at all in weight even though i ate worse than usual...goin to the gym here in a bit and hopefully i'll feel better afterwards.

well I am in first place at the moment at my local YMCA out of about 75 people in the contest. I came to find out today that we are going against another town about an hour away and I am in second place overall, the guy that is ahead of me is barely winning so things are looking good! I had to throw myself into the gym today cause my back has been hurting but I try to not make excuses and go anyways. Looking forward to sleeping tonight!

today was alright i suppose, I had an appt to meet with my "trainer" at 11, and i figured i would get a workout in after the meeting...well this guy decides that he wants to watch me walk to mile to test me on some level of aerobic fitness...anyways 15 minutes later i've walked a mile and i'm pissed because in that amount of time i could have run just about two miles...felt like he had wasted my workout so i excused myself took a shower and left, going back this evening to play full court basketball.

omg congratulations! that's pretty exciting! keeep up the awesome work!

hey mister^^ came to check in on you =P
congrats on the 7 pounds!

Thanks for the words of encouragement, honestly i could give less than a damn about this contest, if I win then that's just awesome, but if I don't then I'm not gonna get heartbroken over it, my goal here is to lose weight and get healthy, I'm actually really really stoked that i just managed to quit smoking, I think that in and of itself is pretty cool (for me anyways) on to more pressing issues, yesterday I found myself in pain at the gym on the treadmill, my shins have just been killing me, I can usually just shrug it off and keep my intensity up but yesteday it hurt real bad...think I have shin splints....hopefully they're better today cause i really hate eliptical machines..umm had a few more calories yesterday because the trainer(hereafter named Grobbulus)told me that I need to eat more or i'll hit a plateau. I am really hoping to get into the 230s by next week! (crosses fingers) anyways, again, thankyou for the nice words and good luck to both of you as well!

a guy, who might be a bit overweight, doing the electric slide in front of some shocked looking guests and staff at his local YMCA because he just got off a scale that read 239!

WOOT

10 lbs back in the dirt where it belongs!