Another Milestone reached

Yes folks. That number 2 is no longer the beginning number when it comes to me weighing myself. This shot here shows just about 198. Since this (which was about a week ago) I have seen from 196-just over 200, but the 198-199 has been the average. A little closer watch on the food intake and before you know it, the 190's will also be in the past and I will be giving a welcomed hello to the 180's.
I have stepped up one day a week and gone to 2 good workouts a day on Wednesdays one in the after noon and one after our choir rehearsal in the evening. Still trying to not take that Sunday nap between church services is difficult but I did so yesterday and took the kids outside to make a "MUD" project making a mini mud oven.
Lots of lifting and moving around to get everything set up and whenever you are dealing with a 3 & 5 year old, kid wrangling is also part of the project...Oh, and one other thing this involes is a lot of stepping (yes bare foot) in a mixture of kitty litter (unused), sand and water to mix the right consistency of mud. After that we added dry grass to the same ingredients, then cow manure for the finish layer. Not manure in the raw but store bought aroma free (or De-funked) cow manure.

My loving wife decided that I have been "swimmin in my pants" so she went to Old Navy to get me some new pants.




Here is my profile and straight on shots in my new pants. If you look closely at the shot on the right you will see that this belt is also on its last hole. I will either have to break out the hole punch or get a smaller belt.


Finally I have a pair of pants that fit...Guess what Honey...They are actually a little loose BUT A GOOD loose. At a size 36 waist for these pants, I am predicting if I get another 10-12 pounds gone (and I will) I will be able to get into a size 34waist pants. I feel like a kid in reverse. Usually as your kids grow, you are buying larger clothes every other month or so. With me it's sinching the belt and needing smaller clothes every other month or so. Because of the cost, sinching the belt will just have to work untill I feel I am at a size that I will be at for a while. I think what I will ultimately do is to go to a 2nd hand store and get some inexpensive clothes to clothe me along this journey.

If you continue to scroll down to some of my earlier post, you will see many a before and along the journey photo's to see the difference of then and now.
Then? 254 Pounds
Now? 198
Time? About 6 months
Monthly? About 9.something pounds a month
Weekly? About 2.something pounds a week
If any of my math magician friends out there want to give me exact numbers I will include your name for the credit.
When I started? On the treadmill 2 miles an hour? HURT!
Now? 2 miles an hour is not even a warmup.
When I started? I had no gym membership. Just some home equipment, and a local park to hike in.
Now? The home gym and local park gave me enough weight loss on my own to WIN a three month gym membership (last day is tomorrow...trying to keep it together and not cry...sniff sniff)
Then? 3months after a hip replacement surgery and very limited in what I could do physically.
Now? Even my doctor has eased my limitations because the weight loss has enabled me to do much more then just sitting around saying "woe is me"
Then? Putting my hands up to say STOP! when my son wanted to do some rough play.
Now? I initiate the rough play, and taking him for bike rides, walks in the park and more along with his sister.
Then? I ate BBQ, Pizza, and all things fried to excess.
Now? Get this...I eat BBQ, Pizza, and some things fried but nothing to excess.

Here it is folks. My big secret. I do eat few and I mean very few low cal meals and I have cut a lot of sugar and carbs out of my lifestyle. All I have done in a nutshell is cut my food intake but still eat a lot of the things I have always enjoyed, just not to excess. Two slices of pizza is enough. One piece of fried chicken is enough. Two BBQ ribs is enough "Beleive it, Or not"
Water has become one of my favorite drinks as well as some very good tasting low cal drinks but mostly water. All this plus exercising got me 56 pounds gone and cast as far as the east is from the west. I was told not to say I weight "lost", so no one else would find it.
What else has helped to get me here? ALL OF YOU THAT HAVE SENT WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT!!!!
Please continue to do so. God bless you all. CS
"If it's not a lifestyle change, it's only temorary"

50 Pounds

Well it has been quite a journey so far and still more roads to exlore are before me as I want to continue losing. Some where in last week I hit 50 pounds lost. I have seen my scale around 203-205 but mainly around that 204 area. I started out at 254, so minus 50 (Pounds that is) I am now at 204 and still losing. One thing I did not do was to celebrate with a big ole pile of food. We did do burgers at a restaurant last week but I had half of mine on Friday and the other half on Saturday night. I haven't really change much since my last posting except my weight of course but I will soon have to. My membership at the health club ends on the 19th of this month (Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!! Snif snif snif....Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!) and I will have to go to another plan at that time for my workouts. With three kids I really can't justify the monthly fee just for me to go to the health club so I will be working out at home, and doing more hiking again and now that we are averaging in the upper 90's outside the extra sweat will be ok. I lost 30 pounds before the gym so I know I will be ok without it, but I will shed a tear or two on that last day. The machines are great, and the use of the pool is one thing I know I will miss since I have been upto 30 minutes of non stop laps in the pool.
Well I did hit a few road blocks since my last post. I seemed to have gotten stuck around 210 or so and to truly admit it to myself, I had a couple of weeks of slipping in the food catagory. Even when the workouts were going great, I got a little lazy in preparing the right stuff. The good side of that is I know what happened and I learned from it. As for pictures??? here is the infamous scale pic. As you can see in this pic, I am around 203.5 which is actually 50.5 pounds not lost but just gone into never never land. I was recently taught not to say lost on the risk of someone else finding those pounds. S0 let's just say those 50 pounds are cast away as far as the east is from the west. What do I look like now? See below.

In this shot those were one of my pairs of skinny pants. A goal I had to try to get to. NOW??? If it weren't for that belt even those would fall down. Pretty much right now I do not have one pair of pants that does not fit me too big. Side shot below.

Yes, I am getting smaller and the proof is there. Till next time. God bless you all. CS