Welcome to my Weight Loss journey. Travel with me!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Update: September 20th, 2011

Well, things are still rather stressful for me, but I've noticed my holding weight, which has been bouncing back and forth is starting to do so less and less, and for the better, so it sounds like some things are stabilizing.

I'm probably going to do a full week cycle soon after I return from Vancouver BC at the beginning of October. See how that holds up with my system.

Also, tried on my jersey the other day as a measuring gauge of my progress thus far. When I first tried to try on a Timbers jersey back at the end of January, I couldn't even get into a 2XL-sized jersey. Three months later I was able to squeeze into one, but it was rather sausage-like. Last week, I am proud to announce, I was able to squeeze into my XL-sized jersey with a sausage-like fit, but I couldn't have done that 8 months ago. This made me feel pretty good.

I haven't been eating as much lately, which is good and bad. On one side, when I do eat it's mostly lean protein, like chicken or fish, some beef. On days when I'm not seeming to eat as much is when I have slips, where I have a little bit of a bad food, like a burger from McDonalds which is high in calories but in a small size. Luckily I have been not ordering much in those situations so the effect is minimized. For example, the last 2 days I've eaten fairly healthy.

Yesterday, my birthday, I enjoyed 7 oysters (5 of which were very lightly breaded and pan-fried; the other two were raw), as well as pork and (lightly breaded) calamari, and then later on smoked chicken wings, some diced potatoes, green beans and corn, and three meat balls. A slice of birthday cake was also consumed. Today meals consisted of a beef polish sausage with chili, cheese, veggies and jalapenos, a half a hot dog with onions, and sushi.

I've also been drinking lots of water and tea. Lately I've added some honey to my tea due to irritation from soccer matches, which won't be getting any better this week! I had some beer on my birthday, but for the month so far I haven't had much more than that.

Things are holding steady, which means that progress remains. I'm looking forward to seeing how this next cycle will go!

Thanks for reading, and for your support. And not just diet-related support, but in everything. I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

Cheers!

Monday, September 5, 2011

Update - September 5th, 2011 (yes, it's been a while)

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything in over a month. Some of you are wondering "why?", and some of you may already know some of why already.

I'm just going to lay it out. My parents are getting a divorce. For years they've been unhappy together, and for a variety of reasons, but finally my dad went and filed around the time of my last entry. At first I didn't think it was going to affect me any, knowing that it was for the best and that they'd both be happy finally. But little did I know that I was wrong, oh so wrong...

The first inkling I had that I knew I was being affected by this was that I realized that I stopped practically everything I needed to be doing in Phase Two. I've ridden my bike 3 times since the filing. I have been to the gym once. I ate about half of the last batch of the soup over the course of a week and the rest went to waste. I haven't been eating like I planned out. Luckily my weight has been maintaining, with a fluctuation of around 5 lbs. both ways. But no progress has been made.

Another thing that I realized is that I started to drink more. Now, a couple of occasions were ones I knew I was going to, like a visit to the Oregon Brewers Festival and the Timbers Army Homebrew Tailgate, but it seemed like I was going out of my way to drink, and once I realized that I stopped. I think since then I've managed much better. But all this drinking has had a negative effect on the weight loss, and that's not surprising.

I've also been under a lot of stress. It's no secret that being under a lot of stress can cause weight loss, and I think combined with the heavy drinking and the sometimes horrid food choices I've made over the last month this is why I've maintained the same weight.

I keep wanting to put out the effort to make more soup, get on the bike, hit the gym, but when it comes down to it I just don't feel like it when the time comes, and I've come to realize that I've become depressed over the divorce. And they haven't even been to the first preliminary hearing yet!

I want to thank those of you who've talked with me about my lack of entries and progress over the last few weeks. Talking about it with friends has helped me to fight off some of this depression and make some positive progress again. I can't do it without you.

I can't promise that things will get immediately better as this process goes on, but I can promise I'll be doing my best to see that things get better. At the very least I'd like to be able to maintain my progress at the end of this proceeding, and give myself a great platform to springboard into another spree of pound-shedding.

Thanks again for reading, and for your support. It means everything to me.