Thinking about another member of the 100 club

The 100 pound club. When I started on the journey of weight loss a couple years ago, my goal was to be a member of the 100 pound club. I read about men and women who had lost over 100 pounds and was inspired. Two of my friends lost the weight through surgery, but I focused on people who had lost weight through a restricted calorie diet- particularly Optifast, where you subsist on 400 calories/day.

One man whose blog I read with some enthusiasm was "Optifast Loser"- he lost close to 200 pounds, then gained some of the weight back. Then his blog entries stopped. I always wondered what had happened to him. Was he successful, but just tired of writing these blog posts? Did he backslide, like I did, and became too embarrassed to share this with the world?

So, far it looks like I'll be successful in beating down the weight again. I've been pretty perfect with my diet over the first 39 days (with 35 lbs lost as of last Thursday) and I can see reaching 199 again to even out at 215 lbs.

But, I think I myself suffered a bit from the embarrassment factor. I didn't want to admit to everyone that the weight had come back again. Really, when I hit 250, I should have signed up again for the program, but I delayed and it was 40 pounds later that I refocused myself. Better late than never, though?

To make this work long term, I need to refocus myself and keep myself accountable for the months after this current weight loss. This means, constant weighing of myself and being frank about the weight gain when it happens.

Some thoughts...

Thirty Five pounds down! Race to surgery

My new chart

7/1/2016 290 lbs
7/7/16 274.5 15.5 lbs lost
7/14/2016 272 2.5 lbs lost
7/21/16 266, 6 lbs lost
7/28/16 261.5 4.5 lbs lost
8/4/16 255.5 6 lbs lost

I've got until September, when I undergo my surgery. I have to take time off the diet for knee surgery, but am hoping to lose another 16 lbs prior to going under the knife. 239 sounds like a nice number.

My Positive Choice instructor Steve used to say that just because you've fallen down the stairs, there's no reason to keep falling. After some 9 months of maintaining my weight, between November 2015 and June 2016, my weight went from 214 to 290. In between, I hurt my knee in a cycling accident, which contributed a bit to the gain.

So, starting July 1, I've been back on product. So far, so good. Twenty four pounds lost.

Starting weight 7/1- 290 lbs
7/8- 274.5 lbs
7/15- 266 lbs

I'm planning to "re-zero" my weight down to 199, eventually. Then I'll rebuild my muscle, just like last time. However, in 5 to 9 weeks, I will likely be scheduled for my knee surgery and will, I think, have to take a break from the product to prepare/recover from the surgery.

A little update on the diet

Was this symbolic? Attending a ceremony where a pig was sacrificed and roasted is a somewhat uncomfortable experience for a guy with a formerly, shall we say, hoggish appetite.




Anyway, I've been cycling since last I wrote. Ever since I've dropped the weight, cycling has been much easier. It makes sense if you think about it. People spend oodles of money to get a bike that's just a few pounds lighter than your average bike so they can ride faster. Well...I dropped 134 pounds of weight. So, you think that might make me blazing fast...

But it doesn't. I'm perhaps fastest among my friends, but in a recent bike race, I was the 310th person to cross the finish line...beating maybe a hundred people. I think I saw more than a few little old ladies and men passing me, along with a very determined looking 8 year old. I tell my wife the 8 year old is clearly a future Olympian...

Still, I am enjoying myself immensely. I bike every weekend for hours and sneak bike rides in during the week. I recently bought myself a carbon road bike and I've convinced myself that this is the path to greater fitness.

Speaking of which, you may be happy to hear that I'm still relatively skinny. My weight has remained in the 205 to 210 pound range since November. My diet has remained fairly strict, though I don't count calories. I mostly eat vegetables, chicken, fish, eggs and fruit almost to the exclusion of everything else. My vices are almond butter by the spoonful, an occasional piece of fried chicken and I've recently started allowing myself a spoonful of a desert if it looks particularly good. So, if you order Spumoni ice cream, don't sit to close to me and my spoon.

My exercise has consisted of the aforementioned cycling and weight lifting. I recently completed two bike races- a 38 mile Rosarito to Valle de Guadalupe race and a 56 mile San Diego Race. When I started weight lifting in November, I was pretty wimpy. The diet took a good deal of muscle, I think. But, after consistent weight lifting, I've about doubled the weight that I can lift. To be honest, I'm probably still kind of wimpy..but I'm working on it!

I'd like to thank all of you that have supported me with your kind thoughts through this process. It's made some hard days go by much easier to hear a compliment or a good humored post. One of my favorite quotes from the movie The Edge with Anthony Hopkins is "What one man can do, another can do." I've learned from many people that have successfully lost weight. If they could do it, it helped me believe that I could as well. If, reading this, you want to lose weight, you can definitely succeed as well!

My first "meal" since April!

It feels like a long time since I started this diet, but it's really a little bit less than 6 months. Now, the end is within sight- maybe a couple more months? The end of liquid only was yesterday. I went to talk to the medical staff and they cleared me to move to a modified meal plan. You see, as I've gotten closer to my goal weight my hunger has been increasing. It used to be that I would drink a shake and wouldn't feel any hunger for a few hours. Now, sometimes the shakes don't take away the hunger at all. This isn't quite hunger like I had before where you wouldn't want to be standing between me and a piece of pizza, but it is unusual for the Optifast diet.

So, I spoke to my medical staff and they suggested adding an actual meal to the shakes. It's not In N Out, but I can now eat 3 oz of lean meat, a half cup of vegetables and 2 1/2 cups of salad in addition to my 5 shakes- this would bring my calorie count up to a whooping 980 calories a day (or the amount of my old taco bell "snacks"! Unfortunately, there will be no more runs to the border for that magical five dollar box. Maybe I can run to Sprouts? Lol.)

I ended up eating what you can kind of see on the saucer above. It's 2.5 ounces of chicken breast, a half cup of mixed frozen veggies and two cups of salad mix (no dressing.) It tasted pretty good, though it's a fraction of what I'd eaten before. Hopefully this won't take the diet too far off track. At 212 pounds, I still have maybe 12 to 22 pounds to lose depending on what my goal weight should be.

It's tough to figure what my end weight should be. My goal weight was 190, but 200 may be a better weight for me. We'll see. A few people, including the wife, are already saying that I'm looking a little bit too thin. Given the alternative, I'd say that's a nice problem to have!

As you can see from the picture below, my wife still thinks that I'm the King! Of course, the Queen is the one that's really in charge...

Will Bike for Food!!

That's me at the Los Angeles- CycLaVia bike event a couple weekends ago. They shut down eleven miles of streets in LA for bicyclists. My buddy Louie and I spent about four hours biking up and down these streets. I felt pretty good throughout the race, tired but happy.

My weight loss slowed down a bit this past week. I only lost a half pound. Ironically this is approximately the weight of my favorite hamburger at Canada Steak Burger. I think it's going to go a little bit slower from now on as I get closer to my goal weight of 190.

Ironically, some people are starting to say that I'm looking "too skinny!" Really, the only place where I feel too skinny is in my biceps. I used to have 18 inch biceps that I developed in the gym. (One of my cornier jokes over the years was to say that I got bit by a mosquito and then, as my wife groaned, flex my arm. Yes, she's put up with much silliness!). Well, anyway, as I got older and further away from my marathon gym sessions, I still had the big arms, but never really realized that much of the muscle had become fat..so as I've lost the fat, I've also lost my "guns"!

I've also become obsessed with clothes in a way that I never was before. My wife says that I'm like one of the women in the commercials who is obsessed with the latest fashion, i.e. a "Fashionista!". I defend myself by pointing out that I've had to rebuy my entire wardrobe, underwear included. So, I'm constantly receiving packages in the mail- suits from ebay, boxer briefs from amazon, etc.. So, I think about clothes now- more than I should. And so....I find myself talking about clothes, sometimes to my buddies, a bunch of gruff guys that I used to drink beer with and who just stare at me...as I talk about belts matching shoes, the proper cuff length, the cut of my Oxxford suits.

Maybe 166 days on a diet has just driven me plum loco. To date, my only cheat has been the half piece of salmon below:



I had this piece of salmon instead of a shake when we went to Seattle.

Overall, I'm impressed with my willpower through this and I think to myself that I'm much closer to the end of the diet than I am to the beginning. This guy no longer looks back at me in the mirror.

Week 1- 5/8/14 334.5 16.5 318
Week 2- 5/15/14 318.0 6.9 311.1
Week 3- 5/22/14 311.0 5.1 306
Week 4- 5/29/14 306 6.0 300
Week 5- 6/5/14 300 4.5 295.5
Week 6- 6/12/14 295.5 3.0 292.5
Week 7- 6/19/14 292.5 8.5 283
Week 8- 6/26/14 283 4.5 278.5
Week 9- 7/3/14 278.5 5.0 273.5
Week 10- 7/10/14 273.5 1.5 272
Week 11- 7/17/14 272 8.0 264
Week 12- 7/24/14 264 3.5 260.5
Week 13- 7/31/14 260.5 6.0 254.5
Week 14- 8/7/14 254.5 3.5 251.0
Week 15- 8/14/14 251 5.0 246
Week 16- 8/21/14 246 3.5 241.5
Week 17- 8/27/14 241.5 4.5 237
Week 18- 9/4/14 237.0 3.0 234
Week 19- 9/11/14 234 2.0 232
Week 20- 9/17/14 232 7.0 225
Week 21- 9/24/14 225 2.0 223
Week 22- 9/30/14 223 3.5 219.5
Week 23- 10/7/14 219.5 0.5 219

A half pound lost!

Twenty weeks and counting..I'll toast to that! (with Optifast..)

Being on a diet doesn't mean you can't party a little. The guy with the beard is Edward James Olmos from Miami Vice, American Me fame- one of the more respected actors in the Latino community. (No wonder he looks a little nervous in the midst of all these lawyers!) This was at the La Raza Lawyers annual scholarship dinner. There was great food and drink to be had...and Optifast for me. You'd think by now that I would have gotten over all temptation, but the steak on my plate looked so good that I almost threw it at my friend Andy to get it away from me! Yes, temptation will always remain, I think. But is food something that has been an addiction to me? We're looking at this issue in my new Optifast class. (For the record, I tend to look at it as more of a bad habit with serious health effect. Doritos are good, but I don't know if my urge for them was of the "crack addict" variety.)

Last Tuesday was a new chapter in my weight loss journey with Optifast. I transferred from my original moderator (the wonderful Ann Tenover) to begin a class called Solutions-Food Addictions. It was a pretty different experience and definitely took me out of my comfort zone. With Ann, I was used to a more "touchy, feely" approach- kind of conversation among friends with plenty of support and laughter. So, why change? Well, after 18 weeks, she started a new group to go over the same syllabus with only a couple of us remaining from the original group, so I thought it was time to learn something new and different.

My new teacher is definitely different- much more sarcastic and confrontational than Anne- though he also shows a deft touch with the group in knowing when to ease off. He came from a work history that included working in the prison with addicts, having been a engineer and many academic degrees. The class, which he created for Optifast, examines over eating as an addiction- i.e. an unhealthy behavior in excess which attempts to fill one of our basic needs. He cites our basic need as feeling safe and loved. I think I'm probably going to like him, but he's definitely much more directly challenging than Ann was. He's an aggressive presence. I felt almost as if I were back at U.C. Berkeley, as he talked about different research studies, hormones in the body and constantly quizzed us.

My lawyer mind kept jumping to counterarguments for much of what he said, but I mostly held my tongue, thinking that there was a lot that I could learn from this PhD in nutrition. But when he went on attack against the destructive property of artificial sweeteners, I almost burst out and said "Heavens, man. Don't take away my diet Coke!" Yes, apparently there is some research backing up the idea that artificial sweeteners actually cause us to eat more. They definitely cause white mice to eat more... I'm skeptical, but will read the research with an open mind.

The moderator's most interesting idea was the rejection of categorizing ourselves as addicts for life. His position is that once you deal with the underlying causes of your addiction, you really aren't an addict anymore. He wants us to leave the class with a beginning understanding of what we need and an idea of how to meet these needs in a healthy way. I'm looking forward to learning a great deal from him.

Week 1- 5/8/14 334.5 16.5 318
Week 2- 5/15/14 318.0 6.9 311.1
Week 3- 5/22/14 311.0 5.1 306
Week 4- 5/29/14 306 6.0 300
Week 5- 6/5/14 300 4.5 295.5
Week 6- 6/12/14 295.5 3.0 292.5
Week 7- 6/19/14 292.5 8.5 283
Week 8- 6/26/14 283 4.5 278.5
Week 9- 7/3/14 278.5 5.0 273.5
Week 10- 7/10/14 273.5 1.5 272
Week 11- 7/17/14 272 8.0 264
Week 12- 7/24/14 264 3.5 260.5
Week 13- 7/31/14 260.5 6.0 254.5
Week 14- 8/7/14 254.5 3.5 251.0
Week 15- 8/14/14 251 5.0 246
Week 16- 8/21/14 246 3.5 241.5
Week 17- 8/27/14 241.5 4.5 237
Week 18- 9/4/14 237.0 3.0 234
Week 19- 9/11/14 234 2.0 232
Week 20- 9/17/14 232 7.0 225
Week 21- 9/24/14 225 2.0 223
Week 22- 9/30/14 223 3.5 219.5

Three and half pounds lost!