Category Archives: Weight Loss

Day 459: Tuesday Before Life Gets “Fun”

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The semester is going to be insane.

Tuesday through Friday I will be teaching a Public Speaking class. I’m a little nervous about it, but pray for those poor little students (maybe squeeze a prayer there for me too.) Anyway, it was day two of Insanity and… wow. More about that in a bit.

Breakfast: This morning, instead of granola I had Nutty Nuggets (a Grape Nuts knock off. Thanks Dave Ramsey for ruining regular Grape Nuts for me!) with some Stoneyfield vanilla yogurt. I had a 1/2 cup of yogurt and a 1/2 cup of Nutty Nuggets. It was really awesome. I also had a cup big cups of water and a cup of coffee to hydrate for the literal Insanity that was about to ensue. 6 points.

SAWS!: Day two was Plyometric Cardio Circuit was just as bad as I remembered. Working out when you are sore is terrible but the sweat that was gushing out of my pores like that wave pool at Schlitterbahn where you can jump out in front of the wave generator and get sucked under the current (anyone have a clue what I’m talking about?)  felt completely amazing. I burned a whopping 526 calories which means I got 8 exercise points out of it. Fantastically awesome workout.

 

Lunch: We had some leftover Hoppin’ John for lunch, which is super filling after a rough workout, and a glass of milk. Lunch was about 7 points.

Snack: After a meeting this afternoon I came home and had two Walmart waffles and two tablespoons of peanut butter. I was kind of stressed so I made a dumb decision and had that instead of a snack that would have been worth the points. My snack was 9 points! Kind of pointless snack but awe well.

 

 

 

Dinner: Tonight, we decided to go out for dinner because we didn’t have anything lined up. I forgot how hard it was to calculate points and even find a place that has nutritional information available, much less have meals that are calorically friendly. After much research, we decided on Chipotle. I cut out the guac (which I haven’t done in a long time) and Megan and I were going to split a cup of sou cream and we only got halfway through it! WE ARE BACK TO GOOD HABITS!  I feel like I’m back at Week 1 or something! Anyway, Dinner was still high, but the exercise points made it alright. Dinner was 14 points.

So today I got to 36 points which is just about exact with my workout points.

First Wordless Wednesday of the year coming up tomorrow! Get stoked. See ya tomorrow.

 

Day 458: Monday Post

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It’s Monday and there isn’t school. That is awesome. I’m basking in its glory before life gets fun, complicated and kind of sad. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some grad school, but I’m ready for a J-O-B! (You hear that future employers?) Anyways, I’m also ready to get my weight loss back in gear so my blog will be worth reading. That started all today by clearing off my dining room whiteboard made space for a place to tally my points and exercise points. Alright, here we go.

Breakfast: When we were out and about at Earth Fare this weekend, I found this dried raspberry granola cereal in the bulk food section so we decided to give it a shot. I had half a serving of the cereal and half a serving of Stoneyfield yogurt. It was really good and really filling. I miss yogurt and cereal as breakfast. It was 5 points (what’s with the bold numbers? I actually use to tally my Weight Watcher points back in the day. I’m back to that.)

Oh yeah, we also had press pot coffee. It was deliciously strong.

 

 

 

Lunch: Since I’m still kind of stuck on West Coast time (three hours behind) we didn’t have lunch until around 3ish so we went to Subway. Megan and I went with the classic Black Forest ham sandwich. It was really good with some light mayo and spicy mustard. It was 8 points for a six inch sub. Hooray!

Insanity Day 1… Again: So we have tried to get through Insanity a couple of times, but we have fizzled out since it is pretty rough. Today was take two (or three or something like that) of our Insanity excursion (that is if our friends The Wards still let us borrow their copy…) and it was brutal. Day 1 is the Fit Test which you wake every couple of weeks to track your progress through out the program. What I tested today is if I can survive. The results was yes, I can survive. Thanks to my new Polar FT7 heart rate monitor watch/chest strap, I am able to accurately track my average heart rate and calorie burn. In 27 minutes, I burned 284 calories. It’s good to know how many calories you are actually burning in your workouts so you don’t under or over eat. After our workout we ate a delicious salad with 1 point of this awesome Annie’s honey mustard. I forgot to take a picture but I’ll be eating a lot more salad so you’ll see it soon enough.

Dinner: For dinner I had two Boca burgers with the scrapings of what was left in a chip bag. On my WW plan (an older one, not the Points Plus plan) one Boca burger is only 1 point which is awesome. So with the bread, the chips and the burgers were 8 points. I was impressed (plus they are cheap at Walmart too!)

 

 

 

 

 

Snack: Tonight, we went to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (also known as our generation’s The Silence of the Lambs) and they had $2 candy. We were planning on getting froyo after but instead we decided to split a box of Reese’s Pieces. As I looked on the back, it scared me a little bit because I would demolish boxes of candy like it was going out of style. An entire box was 12 points! Yikes! So Megan and I decided to split the box. Still kind of high, but not a bad treat for tonight. I had about 6 points worth. To quote my hilarious friend Sarah “No wonder ET was so lumpy.” Oh yeah, and these are my new glasses from Seattle Optical. You like?

After we got home, we had some popcorn (which is way better and healthier than theater popcorn) which was only 2 points (we are now watching Gilmore Girls to mentally decompress from a super intense movie… yes, we are watching the Gilmore Girls. Don’t hate.) I also had 3 points of waffles.

So today, out of my 28 allotted points (which I have over done ever since I was down to 28 points) I got to 33 points which isn’t at all bad especially since I have workout points. A great day. See ya tomorrow

 

Day 457: Why Hello 2012!

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So here we are. 2012. Do you remember when the idea of the 2000’s was such a foreign concept? I’m getting old. But enough about that . When I look back at 2011, my successes have been clouded by the past couple of months. This past semester was rough and I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, not to mentioned my weight loss has just been up and down which has really frustrated me. Through all that though, I need to remember that this has been an epic year overall. I hit the 100 pound mark on August 14th which was epic. It was a banner accomplishment that for the majority of my life I never thought I would achieve. I guess I’ll have outdo myself this year ;).

Alright, so I didn’t gain weight on our trip to Washington State (which was an awesome trip) in fact, I lost .6 pounds. Not a lot, but it’s a new year and a new start to kick some serious weight loss but! Game time.

Breakfast: I had two WalMart brand waffles and some peanut butter with honey. It was pretty good. Their waffles actually aren’t that bad.

 

 

Lunch: After church, Megan and I went to Pizza Hut for a little lunch date. We had some pepperoni pan pizza we each dominated the salad bar. It was pretty good stuff. I had two slices and then another slice when I got home later in the afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner: Since it is New Year’s Day, Megan made Hoppin’ John, a blackeyed pea dish that we made last year which officially makes it a tradition from now on. Basically, it’s bacon, ham, rice and blackeyed peas. Along with some corn muffins, it was a pretty awesome dinner. A great way to ring in the new year.

So it was a good day. Tomorrow will be better. What up 2012. Let’s see what you got.

Day 450: Christmas Edition

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Well another Christmas has come and gone. It will be one that I will not soon forget. First things first though, according to the scale at Megan’s parents house, I have lost 3 pounds which means I am unofficially down to 241. I feel pretty good about it, but I know I’ll have to make up for today (more to come on that) and I just want to see it on my own scale. Either way, I have a good incentive to work out not only because I’m shooting to get to 225 by my birthday, but Megan’s parents bought me an awesome Polar heart rate monitor watch that I can’t wait to use! It also counts calories which will really help maximizing my workouts. Anyways, so today was definitely not what any of us expected, but it was a blast nonetheless.

 

 

 

Lunch: So Christmas dinner was planned out and the plan was to have a Christmas breakfast before or after church. Well, after church we decided breakfast didn’t sound that good at that point, so we decided to go to eat out for lunch. The only place open was Jack in the Box. It was epically delicious and epically gluttonous. The nice thing (or bad thing, depending on your point of view) about Washington state is that it’s required to have the calories posted on the menus at chain restaurants like Jack in the Box. It helped guide me kind of in the right direction. For better or worse, I had a burger, half of my fries and two tacos. Yeah I know, it wasn’t pretty. All things considered though, I ate at fast food restaurants a total of three (yes… three) times in 2011 so that counts for something? Maybe? Either way, it was an adventure and it felt like our own version of A Christmas Story except with a smiling duck I have a sad colon full of taco deliciousness.

 

Dinner: Megan and my Mother-in-Law Pattie were super busy in the kitchen making an epic and organic Christmas dinner. Everything was made with organic or fresh ingredients, along with shaving off calories here and there to make a dinner we will not soon forget. We had a massive rib roast, fresh green bean casserole, sweet potato slices and home made rolls. Like I said, it was delicious and I am still stuffed.

So like I said, it was a great and filling day full of delicious food along with great family. Although I still missed my parents and sis in Texas, it has been a fantastic Christmas. See ya tomorrow and Merry Christmas.

Day 449: A Christmas Eve Recap of the Week!

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Merry Christmas Eve Dear Readers!

I hope your break has been great and has been spent with loved ones like mine has. So far in our time in Seattle, we have eaten well and have actually eaten pretty healthy. It’s been awesome seeing all of my recently added Hoffman cousins that I haven’t seen in about two years. It was especially awesome since a lot of them have been great supporters of the blog (you know who you are! Thanks for being awesome.) Anyways, we are watching the classic “A Christmas Story” and just relaxing so I’m going to keep this brief. Megan’s parents have a scale so I’m going to weigh in tomorrow but it won’t be down to the tenths of a pound. I’m not sure how it will go but either way I’m going to work out a ton next week. I’ll report tomorrow, but for now enjoy these pics of The Hoffman Christmas Party and of Megan’s hometown of Poulsbo, Washington, a little Norwegian town that puts a the Norway pavilion at Epcot to shame. I’ll have some more pics up soon, but for now enjoy. See ya tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 445: Reporting From Seattle Edition

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What up my blog readin’ buddies!?!

Sorry I didn’t post last night. There’s something about traveling for something like 13 hours that just takes a lot out of you. So it’s Christmas week! I love seeing all of my favorite Christmas commercials like the child snowman that melts his body with Campbell’s Soup (which sounds and looks very painful. I don’t want my body to deteriorate via soup!) Anyways, we are up in Washington visiting Megan’s family (which has been a blast so far) and the time change has been taking some adjusting to (three hours is a beast of a time change.) So far, food has been pretty good, but I’m a little worried about the treats that will passing through. Luckily, there is a huge bowl of oranges on the table that I have been peeling and chowing on like a boss. Good stuff.

Breakfast: (Before I start, I feel the need to admit that 67% of my blood is now coffee) For breakfast, I had two eggs and some hippy super health bread that was delicious. I love bread with seeds and nuts baked in. Anyways it was awesome. For a snack I had a few graham crackers which aren’t that bad for you and pretty filling!

Lunch: I decided to be a little creative for lunch and made some salmon salad sandwich. I found a can of salmon, added some Hellman’s light mayo, a little mustard and some salt and pepper. It was really good and really really filling!

Dinner: For dinner, Megan made the awesome tamale casserole from the WW cookbook. She’s even more awesome because she made a pumpkin pie (also out of the WW cookbook) and as always, it was awesome.

So today wasn’t too bad like I said. I’ve been drinking my share of water and all that fun stuff. Huzzah! See ya tomorrow.

PS sorry there aren’t any pictures (computer issues) but I’ll make it up to you tomorrow with a killer Wordless Wednesday and my favorite SNL Christmas skit. Enjoy.

Day 443: The Weigh In Before the Craziness Edition

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So Kim Jon Il and Osama Bin Laden both died on Sundays? COINCIDENCE!?! probably.

So this morning something happened for the first time since I have started this whole crazy weight loss thing. I stayed the freakin’ exactly the same. Yep boys and girls, it was a no gain but a no loss. Like most sports fans (except for those soccer weirdos… I kid I kid) the idea of a no gain is like a tie. No one wins, yet everyone is a winner. I feel really weird about it. I’m not proud about it but I’m not mad. This also makes me worried that I might be reaching a plateau, but I don’t know. I’m in a place where I don’t feel like my body can’t look any smaller than the weight it is right now (if that makes a lick of sense.) I don’t see with the flabby condition my body is in right now how my body style could be in the 230’s or 220’s. I’m in an odd place, which is driving me to make some changes with my eating so I break through this… whatever this is.

For a while now, I haven’t really been counting my points, in fact I pretty much stopped counting when my daily allotment dropped down to 28 points a day. I can only imagine where I would be now if I had been counting… but you can’t get caught up in crap like that. It’s now time to pick ut back up so I can make the goals I have set out for myself. Sadly though, I’m thinking that getting to 225 by my birthday in mid-January is a pipe dream, but I’m still going to shoot for it! Anyways, today I finally counted out my points and actually measured out things like peanut butter (which I have been eyeballing which has lead to at least 100 calories more than I have been thinking it is. Ruh roh.) It was an eye opener to how off I have been recently and it’s challenging me to get back on the horse. If I’m not going to count the points total them: A) whats the point of blogging? and B) how do I expect to get the results I want? Alright, let’s get through this because I still need to pack!

 

 

Breakfast: For breakfast I had two pieces of toast and then spread one tablespoon across them. Lately, I have been schlacking both pieces and then wonder why we are running out of peanut butter more quickly… Although it wasn’t much peanut butter, it was definitely more than enough. Breakfast was 3.5 points.

 

 

 

 

Lunch: For lunch, we were going to go home and eat whatever was left in our fridge, but then realized that we didn’t have any food left in the house, so we went to Olive Garden for a really awesome light lunch. I did the soup and salad combo (minestrone and salad without the dressing) and then we split stuffed mushroom appetizer which was good but not our favorite. However, the stuffed mushrooms are 3 points for half of the order which isnt bad at all. By then end of lunch, we were both stuffed! It came out 11.5 points and that was two servings of soup, three stuffed mushrooms, two heaping helpings of salad and one and a half breadstick. Yes, that is a ton of food. To put it all in perspective though, my lunch was as many points as about four breadsticks! I use to pound four breadsticks easily before my weight loss. The moral of the story, calories add up really quick.

Snacks: I had 5 points worth of pretzels and reduced fat wheat thins through out the day. Yum.

Dinner: Tonight, Megan and I had our own Christmas before our trip up north. Megan whipped up an awesome rendition of chicken parmesan without the parmesan. It was an awesome dinner which was followed by some amazing press pot coffee made in my new press pot that I got for Christmas! It was a great night of sitting around, listening to the Charlie Brown Christmas album and sipping on coffee. Dinner was 12 points.

So today I got to 32 points which is not bad for the first day back on the point counting horse. I’m definitely going to get that number down and I plan to return to Tallahassee thinner than when I leave. See ya tomorrow.

Day 442: The Saturday After the Madness

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IT’S WINTER BREAK TIME!!!

and it feels amazing.

This week was full of stress and frustration, but it is over and Winter Break is finally here. Sorry I wasn’t able to blog this past week, but it seemed like most of you enjoyed the my initial weight loss post! Anyways, so this week overall was pretty good food wise. I also got some really good workout time in before Leach closed on Friday for the break. The weather in Tallahassee has been ridiculous the past few days (it was almost 80 today!) So I’m going to try to capitalize on that with a run or some awesome physical activity outside. Hooray for global warming!

Breakfast: This morning I just had a bowl of cheerios. We actually got to sleep in today so by the time we got up it was close to lunch so a small breakfast was okay.

NSV: Today, I went and got my hair did at Regis in the mall (we had Groupons! Holla!) and although my new hairstyle was not my own choice (because of the cultural communication breakdown between the hairstylist and myself) it turned out okay. As I sat down in the chair and my butt fit comfortably without having to worry if I was going to fit or not, I remembered the time I sat down in an old barber’s chair when I was in high school and I barely fit. Flabs of me were squishing out like one of those play-doh mold thingies. Morris, the crazy old guy that used to cut my hair looked at me and said “Son you need to lay of the King sized meals!” I was slightly embarrassed, but I agreed with him. He wasn’t telling my anything I didn’t already know. I knew I needed to change so I could sit in a chair and be comfortable and not worry about it breaking. Well it took me seven years later to finally make a change, but with weight loss, it is truly better late than never.

 

 

 

 

Lunch: Alright now where was I? Oh yeah, so after shopping and fighting the crowds in the mall, we went to Black Bean Cuban for some lunch! I had the turkey cuban sandwich and a side of moros (black beans and rice cooked together in a marriage of deliciousness.) As you can see, it was a lot of food and I am still full from it. (Granted we did eat lunch at around 2.)

 

 

 

 

Dessert: So after fighting off more crowds, we decided to go to TCBY for some froyo awesomeness. I had a lot less froyo and a lot less toppings. The awesome blogger/TV host Hungry Girl suggests that if you are going to have toppings to get simple things like chocolate chips so I got snowcaps (which are chocolate chips with sprinkles) and some peanut butter chips. I usually put scoops full of toppings, but I’m getting back to containment and not overdoing it. Good stuff.

More Dessert: So sadly, grad school is wrapping up for some of my friends within me department. My good friend Chip Reed, the first person I met in my department, graduated this weekend so I went to his going away party and our friend Alex’s house (he is the one with the sick Mario stache on my FFK Facebook page.) Anyways, Alex’s mom had made her super awesome monster cookies and brought them to the party. I remembered their awesomeness from the Oklahoma game at their tailgate. (Yes, that was three months ago. They were that memorable.) I had three of them. They were epic.

Dinner: We just made some Lipton chicken noodle soup. Yum.

So I have been alright this week. I’m really hoping that it will show up on the scale. I guess we’ll see. See ya tomorrow.

 

 

Day 438: A Look Back At The Beginning Of This Mess Edition

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So like I said on my Facebook page, I don’t have a lot of time to write because finals make me sad. I’ve never been much of a test taker. I can write a paper like nobody’s business (obviously I like writing at least a little bit) but tests come really hard to me (especially when they are at 7:30 am.) Anyways, a few weeks back, I was interviewed by my friend Kate about blogging for a paper she was writing. She asked me about The Fotographing Fat Kid and how the blog took shape. Well, before it was a weight loss blog, it was a place for me to rant and say weird things. I thought I would share this post with you so you have something interesting to read tonight. This was the post that started it all so to speak. Just to give you some context, I am around 360 pounds at this point, Megan has just bought a scale and I am frankly scared for my life. Up until this point in 2010, I had worked hard to lose weight, but I just kept falling back in to old habits where I would eat my emotions… a lot. So I hope you enjoy it, and I will have a fresh new blog out tomorrow with that fresh new blog scent. See ya tomorrow.

PS: realizing all of the note cards you have written up are pointless and not helping you study less than 12 hours before your final is no fun….

Day 437: Monday of Finals

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Why hello there little fella… lost?

Well if you are lost and you have landed on this blog, welcome to the awesomeness!

So today was the first day of getting the train back on the rails so to speak. We figured finals would be a good time to get everything back in order and so far so good. However, I’ve already decided I need to change one of my resolutions from last night for 2012. One of my resolutions was to get in to the 180’s by the end of the year and I’ve decided to tweak that just a little bit. By December 31st, 2012, I want to be half the man I used to be. I want to have lost 50% of my body weight from when I started this journey in 2010. My official beginning weigh in weight was 357 whopping pounds even. So if you do simple math (which I can’t do. God invented calculators for a reason folks!) that means for me to have lost 50% that would mean I would be at 178.5 pounds. Not too much more than what I was looking at, but it gives me an actual goal to look ahead to and stay focused on. So with yesterday’s weigh in, I will have to lose 65.5 pounds in about 377 days. That’s plenty of time right? Like I said last night, this goal will have to align for this ultimate goal to be complete. Here goes nothing…

 

 

 

Breakfast: I woke up early so I could proctor a 7:30 am final (hooray) so I just had a banana to get me through. Then after the final, Megan met me up on campus at Einstein’s to have bagels and my favorite coffee in the world (seriously, their hazelnut vanilla coffee is the bomb. It will literally blow up in your mouth and shrapnel of deliciousness with demolish your tastebuds.) Anyways, I had an everything bagel with cream cheese. It was pretty good and it held me over pretty well.

Lunch: For lunch, I made microwaved a Chicken Suaza Smart One. Delicious, but nothing too exciting there. Just a good ol’ lunch.For dessert I had an orange.

Pre-Workout Snack: Before we headed over to Leach, I had a piece of toast with peanut butter. It was amazing. I also had some caramel rice cakes because they are awesome too.

 

 

 

Workout time!: Once again, I have made Leach my second home on campus. Even though we went during “rush hour” I was still able to snag one of the last working bikes to do about a 30 minute ride. For the longest time, I was scared of the bikes. The small seat hurt my large butt, and it wore me out. Now, my butt is fine (in more ways than one ;)) and it still wears me out, but the latter is okay with me. Like I said, I did a 30 minute ride and by the end of it I was soaked and my entire body hurt from my shoulders to my hips. I was just overall sore. It felt awesome. I can’t wait to get better at the bike so I can maybe get up the courage to try a 40 minute spin class at FSU. Anyone care to join me? Misery loves company…

After I got home I had another banana.

 

Dinner: Megan made some awesome chili for dinner. It was… well, awesome. Like yesterday with the mac n cheese, I was able to limit myself to just one bowl while being able to be content with what I had. My issues with seconds has always been that I just want to keep eating because it’s so good, not necessarily that I am still hungry. I’m finally learning how to handle that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dessert: So like I said a while back, I wanted y’all to call me out if I had toppings on my froyo the next time I go. Well, I think you’ll be pretty proud. Look mom! No toppings! Now I know what you might be thinking, and yes that is a waffle bowl. What I have found out is that if I use the waffle bowl as a delicious container, then I don’t get as much froyo overall. And since a waffle bowl that size is not that many calories, it totally makes it worth it. So judge if you must, but get over it.

Well that’s about it for today. I don’t have a final tomorrow, but I do on Wednesday morning at 7:30 am (WHO THE CRAP THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA? WHO IS UP AND FUNCTIONING THAT EARLY!?!) so I’ll be studying for that all day, along with some gym time in there to get the endorphins kicking. See ya tomorrow.

PS: Check out my new Fotographing Fat Kid meme generator! Are you creative? Make one and then let me know so I can check it out. Better yet, upload it to my awesome Facebook Page. NOW GO GET THOSE CREATIVE JUICES FLOWING!