Tag Archives: diet

“Go be awesome!”

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I’m writing this on my flight to DFW. [Composing it in Monk’s Coffee Shop in Abilene while eating a cream cheese brownie from McKay’s Bakery.] It’s that point in the flight where they’re hustling their credit card, an indicator that there’s at least enough time to sign up for a credit card but not much else. Also, the lady across the aisle from me just picked her nose and ate while watching Murder on the Orient Express, a different indicator that I’ve been on this flight long enough that we’re a little too comfortable with each other.

Now…where was I?

After months of preparation, self-doubt, anxiousness and imposter syndrome, I’m on my way to Abilene, Texas to share my story at TEDxACU. I’ve rehearsed my talk with coworkers, including my CEO, my church friends, my wife and have muttered it under my breath to everyone on the 77 North City bus and pedestrians in downtown Seattle.

I’m excited but nervous. The brain is a funny creature that misplaces ideas and sentences as if they were a pair of car keys nestled under a pile of dirty laundry. It’s how it goes. But at its core, this talk is my life and the principles I live by. As long as I can communicate those to the audience, I’ll be just fine.

My talk is a combination of stories and life lessons that have defined my weight loss. This has been an amazing journey, one that has been crowdsourced with friends from all walks of my life cheering me on.

Last Saturday, I left my Weight Watchers meeting realizing that by that time next week I would be done with my talk, carrying the knowledge of how it went and whether or not I would share the link to the talk with my friends and family.

My soul felt heavy.

It was a challenging thought. On my way to my car, one of my favorite members called me over. We chatted about her upcoming trip to Arizona. “Oh! Your talk is next week!” she exclaimed. We talked a little more and she ended the conversation with this closing commission: “go be awesome!” 

It was what I needed to hear at that exact moment. Because this experience is awesome. Heck, I”m awesome!

Regardless of what happens on tomorrow, life will go on. I don’t say that to cheapen the experience. Far from it. It’s a license to get out on that stage and give it all I have.

So that’s what I’m going to do. If I hit a mental roadblock, I’ll take a deep breath and break through it. I got this.

So wherever you are on Friday at 8:30 central time, direct your positive thoughts toward Abilene, Texas. I can’t wait to tell you guys how it went.

My First Blush Notions of the New Weight Watchers System

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As a graduate student, I became fascinated by the process of introducing new innovations and the consumer response and their adaption rate to said innovation. When our amazing Weight Watchers leader Jodi started to drop hints that big things were on the horizon, I was stoked. All I could think was “GAAAAAHHHHH CHANGE MANAGEMENT AND DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS!!!!!”

If you think about it, the idea of changing someone’s eating habits is a herculean task. How do you retool a system that’s been implemented for nearly half a decade without hacking a few people off? (PointsPlus came out the first year I started losing weight. It didn’t affect me because I was doing the old system on my own.) Don’t believe me? Just ask the lady who got up in the middle of my Weight Watchers meeting this morning and yelled “this pisses me off!” Or…ask a Weight Watcher how many points are in a tablespoon of peanut butter (3ppv) or a square of dark chocolate (2ppv). They know the point value of their staples down to the number. But what happens when you know the point value of everything? You know where the loopholes are, too.

And this is why I am looking forward to the new Smart Points system. In the previous incarnations, you could easily cheat the system to your gain (pun intended). With Points Plus, you only had to calculate fat, carbs, protein, and fiber; in the older system, you only had to track calories, fat, and fiber. While those are significant numbers in the world of macro nutrients, they don’t tell the whole story. Think about a nutrition label. What are you missing from that equation? Think about sugar and saturated fats and folic acid…wait…OK not the last one but you get the idea. The new system finally addresses those blind spots that we knew were there but just avoided. But if I’ve learned anything while losing weight, it’s that you have to confront the unpleasant bits if you want to grow. It’s like opening the envelope of a bill that you know you need to pay but for some crazy reason think that if you don’t open it, it’s not due. I learned early on that it’s never nearly as bad as we think and that it will get easier with time.

I thought a lot about the head-in-sand concept during my meeting this morning. This week, I didn’t eat really well. I made some smart decisions, but I also indulged a bit. Enough to decide to quit counting because I felt guilty about how bad I was doing. During my weigh in, Jodi asked me how my week was. Softening the blow for a gain, I told her “not great. I was sick all week and I just sucked.” “Well,” she said. “You lost 3.4 pounds!” “WWWWHHHHAAAAATTTT!” “Yeah! You know, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. It’s never as bad as you think.” That idea really resonated with me, especially considering how well it ties in to the new system and its focus of eating the right things for your health and loving yourself in the process through positive affirmation and fitness. (I could talk about excited I am about the new emphasis on fitness, but that’s another blog post.)

The new system will be an adjustment. No bones about it. For the first time, chocolate is more points than chicken and white and whole grain pasta is the same amount of points. I also have less daily points and weekly points. From the discussion in the meeting room, it seemed like most men got less points and women actually got more (if that’s the case for you, comment below!) But I think if we want to improve and lose weight as a community, we have to throw a wrench in the system every once in a while. It was time for an update and I’m ready for the new adventure.

What about you? What do you think of the new system? Any crazy stories from your meeting? Comment below! 

The FFK Goes to a Weight Watchers Meeting

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Have you ever had one of those mornings where I wake up and think “I wonder what’s going to happen today…” not knowing that your day would turn out to be potentially life changing? Well…that happened today.

Here we go…

You ready?

Of course you are.

W ClubNo. The W doesn’t stand for Wonder.

Today, Megan and I officially joined Weight Watchers!!!

For the past year and a half, I have been needing a push to get through these last 60 pounds to reach my goal weight (which is 167 pounds, aka 190 pounds lost). I haven’t been keeping track of everything like I should be and I haven’t held myself accountable. I needed a shift to something new. Weight Watchers PointsPlus is that next step.

Keep in mind, I wasn’t planning on this happening when I wrote last night’s post. The plan was to talk about possibly doing this down the line a little. But then at lunch, Megan and I discussed it and decided now is the right time because why should we wait?

My WW StartSo after work, we went over to the Weight Watchers location in Tallahassee and signed up. Then they asked if we were going to stay for the meeting at 6:00. “Why not?” we said! We also weighed in with my new “starting weight” which was rough (keep in mind that was in the evening with completely clothed). Basically, I am up 12 pounds from two weeks ago. Sooooo glad to be back on track!

The meeting was absolutely great! It was educational, supportive and convicting all rolled in to one. The challenge for this month is ask yourself when eating “is this worth the Points?” which is incredibly serendipitous. In my first post when I started my weight loss journey, I called my readers to hold me accountable and to ask me if what I was eating was worth the Points! (You can read that post here!) After the meeting, we met with our leader one-on-one and she gave us some more insight and explanation about the PointsPlus. We told her about about our own weight loss journeys and how excited we were to get started. When we asked her about switching from the old points system to the PointsPlus, she said, without missing a beat, “You’ve got a brand new car. Drive it!” And she was right! The eTools are awesome, the app is better than Calorie Counter and other apps I’ve used in the past, and I can tell that the meetings will make such a huge difference for my own accountability.

So logistically, I will be weighing in at meetings meetings, which will be Saturday mornings. I’m not sure if I’m going to count that as my official blog weigh in, but I’m leaning towards still weighing in on Tuesdays (I would love to get some feedback on this. Do you consider your WW weigh in as your official weigh in or do you weigh in at home first?) Either way, I will have a weigh in tomorrow. (I didn’t weigh last Tuesday because our scale had a battery problem and we were installing a washer and dryer where the scale usually is. Long story.)

Pretty crazy day. Can’t wait to report to you tomorrow with PointsPlus. See ya tomorrow.

So I’ll have more about everything this week.

Day 935: Welcome to Weigh-In Day!

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I’M ALIVE!!!!!!!!

My awful bronchopneumonia (yeah…that’s what I had) has finally subsided and I feel sooooo much better. Hooray for NyQuil and antibiotics!

So I didn’t really post my weigh in last week pseudo-unintentionally. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if it was going to “take”. You see, when I REALLY sick, I tend to drop weight pretty quickly (like the time I lost 9 pounds in 24 hours from the Great Flu Fiasco of 2011). I thought this was the same case. I was down to 226.6, which is was my lowest recorded weight. I had FINALLY gotten past the 227 threshold that I’ve been flirting with since this time last year, and I figured I would just go back to where I was.

Well…that wasn’t the case!!!

I stuck well within my points last week and I drank water like it was going out of style! I really didn’t exercise much since I was sick, but I did randomly run a 5k on Saturday which was awesometastic as well! Anyway, with all of that I got on the scale this morning and I did a double take I weigh 224.6 freakin’ pounds! I lost 2 pounds this week!!!! I cannot describe how much better I feel! I was wondering if I was ever going to get through that 227 barrier that really has been haunting me. (Oh yeah…I’ve lost 132.4 pounds since September 2010. WHAT UP!!!!!)

Today, I started to evaluate my weight loss journey so far and how things are going. Like a lot of people, after I broke through the 100-pound milestone, my weight loss start to slow down quite a bit. I thought I had hit a plateau (which was half true) but the other part of it was that I got complacent with the whole journey. I started to let some things slide. An extra piece of dessert here and there, that kind of stuff. The biggest thing was I kind of just stopped counting points for a long time. It was just getting strenuous. All I knew is that I wasn’t going to backtrack back to 357, but what happened instead was I just got stuck: first in the 240’s and then in the 230’s, which is where I have been for about a year now. I was dieting but not dieting. I wasn’t fully committed. Now, I’m back at it. I realized that if I wanted to see results, I have to be a lot more stringent than I ever have. I’m not depriving myself, I’m just actually tracking and being sensible (that’s why there’s weekly points.) Sure counting and configuring points does take some work, but when you just think of it in the context of just another step in your food prep, it makes it easier. So to summarize, I’m back, baby! And it feels great. Thank you all for being so awesome. Your support means much more than you ever know. Thanks for being awesome.

Now, in lieu of photos of food and things, here’s a Vine of me making delicious Healthy Cookies from Skinnytaste.

Enjoy!

 Click Here To Watch Me Make All The Delicious Things

See ya tomorrow.

Day 753: Jacob is a Jerk Edition

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Hello my friend (except that I mean actually mean it).

So today, I did really well with food and I conquered an eating out challenge which has always been an issue for me. Let’s get started shall we?

We weren’t going to be able to run tonight (more about that in a second) so Megan and I decided to run this morning. We went over to Lake Ella around 6:30 and I ran with Megan and her Couch25k run program. It was still dark, but the stars were out and the weather was perfect. It was amazing. We ran two minutes on, one minute walk which was a great recovery run for me after a couple of really brutal runs. I think I might start doing that down the line, especially on the Tuesdays after long Saturday runs. Fun stuff!


Breakfast: I had had a piece of toast before running so by the time I got to work I was starving! I had a honey Fage yogurt and when that wasn’t close to being enough, I ran and got a bagel from the little convenient store by my office.


For lunch, I made a Lean Cuisine the Hungry Girl way: I cooked up a sweet n’ sour chicken LC and then microwaved a steam in bag of broccoli to not only make the meal more filling, but to get more veggies in my diet! It made the meal go a lot further! Give it a try sometime!

For an afternoon snack, I just had an apple and some peanut butter. More than enough to keep me full. I also had some sunflower seeds which aren’t bad, but can be high in sodium.


So tonight, I said adios to one of my great friends from grad school. Jacob has always been a huge supporter of my weight loss journey and is a big fan of the blog (or that’s at least what he tells me…:)) He has accepted a job in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Megan and I couldn’t be happier for him and his awesome wife Emily. It’s been great to have had support from the guys who were there from the beginning, who were there when I arrived to orientation, having just bought my first pair of 54 sized pants hours before. It’s been awesome to have gone through the weight loss journey and the joys of grad school together at the same time. Thanks for being an awesome cheerleader yo!

(Alex and Andrea, when you guys move, I’ll gush over you too.)

Anyway….

So tonight, we had a celebration dinner for him and his wife Emily. We went to a seafood shanty called Calico Jack’s and it was AYCE boiled shrimp! Since shrimp are surprisingly low-cal, I ate my share. Thankfully, fried seafood isn’t really my thing so there’s not temptation there. I did however eat a lot of saltines with cocktail sauce (because that’s one of the most delicious things in the world.) Anyway, so I ate two plates of peel and eat shrimp which isn’t as much as you think and then a side of cole slaw which wasn’t that great (but I still ate anyway…)

So that was it for today. Like I said, pretty good food-wise. Now it’s time to stick with it this weekend. Like I said the other night, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays have been my downfall so far. That’s changing this weekend. See ya tomorrow.

 

P.S. Now matter what your political leaning is, you have to admit these pictures are hilariously weird. (Personally, I like “Pouty Paul” on the left the most.)

Day 693: Gaining Confidence

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Hello!

I can’t flipping wait for college football. It’s only a few days away and it feels like flippin’ Christmas morning.

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So sorry about not post the last few days. We went out to beautiful St. George Island for the annual Musicology beach trip. We swam with dolphins, ate delicious food and hung out with great friends.

Yesterday I was going to post, but then I fell asleep while watching an episode of Doctor Who. On Sunday, I had a massive non-scale victory. Our church is putting together a softball team for a city league and our first practice was yesterday afternoon. The last time time I played softball, I was embarrassing and when I say that I mean I felt embarrassed when I was playing. All during undergrad, I was the intramural team joke. I had fun and I made people laugh, but in all reality I was a waste of a player. The last time I played softball, I went to swing, I farted in mid-swing and struck out. I uttered “I hate my life.” While I meant it in a humorous way, the reality was that I was in a dangerous position. I was on the cliff of my life taking a turn for the worst. Sure, I was a pseudo-active 350-pounder, but I knew I was one injury away from gaining a lot of weight because that’s what happens when you’re that size.

As I was saying…so yesterday, I was a little worried about how it was going to go, but I that all changed when I went up to bat and clocked it. In our scrimmage, I was 5 for 5, had an RBI and had 4 runs. I was whipping around the bases like crazy. It felt awesome. Don’t get me wrong, I’ sore as all get out today, but I feel awesome. Earlier this week, I thought about what would happened if I did gain a significant amount of weight from just being laxed about food. After being actually competitive in sports affirmed the doubts I was having. This work is paying off, I won’t lose sight of that again. See ya tomorrow for a weigh in that could go either way.

Buying New Running Shoes? Here Are Some Things You Need to Know!

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I love infographics, especially when it’s from a company that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Thanks REI for making something so awesome!              Are you looking for shoes? Did this help? Let me know!