Inadvertent jabs cut most deeply

So today was pretty great, but I did have a kind of unfortunate memory. At work there was an email that I receive every month about company policy updates. I generally scan through them since most of it applies to the clinical folks and not software folks, but this caught my eye since it mentioned the dress policy.

 

My memory was sparked by the mention that outerwear, with the company logo, given out in the past was no longer allowed in the clinical setting. This reminded me of a very nice Cutter & Buck parka in pristine condition that hangs in the back of my closet.

 

Shortly after I became a manager I received an email about a management retreat. With the email was a request to respond with some information including jacket size from a list of options that went all the way up to 1X (technically a size larger than X-Large for you little folks out there). I replied simply that they needn't include me in that, but my boss's boss's boss was A) very thoughtful and B) kind of a big guy himself (I assume they included 1X because that was his size.

 

At the end of the retreat, this man called everyone up individually to give them a personalized jacket with the logo and shake hands and thank them for their efforts. I did not expect my name, but sure enough at the very end he got to 'Z' and called me up. I wasn't sure if he knew there wasn't a jacket so I hesitated a moment to give him a chance to discover for himself that there was no jacket, but to my surprise he reached into the box and pulled a jacket a bit different than the others. The others had been simple wind breakers but this was a kind of high-end jacket and was visibly a little different.

 

When I got up there he leaned in and said in a low voice, "I figured you didn't provide a size because you needed one a little bigger, don't worry, this one is plenty big." A thoughtful gesture from a man who clearly cared enough to take the time to ascertain my situation, correctly guess my dilemma and solve the problem.

 

I never did tell him, that when he sat down to decide just how big I really was, and went with, "plenty big" he had chosen a jacket that was two sizes to small. I even wore it a couple of times to work even though the sides were six inches apart when the material was stretched to its limit. It really is a nice jacket, and who knows? Maybe I will get to wear it someday soon.

Leafy Greens and Pork Rinds, mmmmm!

Today went pretty well! I started off by losing another pound, making it 14 to date. Breakfast was a protein drink, lunch was a salad and dinner was sauteed arugula with diced bacon, a pork chop and three fried eggs.

I accomplished one of my goals for the day which was to eat more greens. I also kept my net carbs down to 20.5 (myfitnesspal rounds up and eggs have a 1/2 g of carbs each) That is 1/2 a carb over, but what are you going to do?

I have included a picture of my food journal for the day. Goal for tomorrow is to eat less pork rinds. They are zero carb, but I'd prefer to be eating something less salty and perhaps more substantial. I do like sunflower seeds, I might try those for snacking tomorrow.

The next couple of days will be tough since Tomorrow is our anniversary and Friday and Saturday will all be about Irene's graduation which means I will probably be eating out a lot.

More pictures... Fewer words...

Yo... GDPIII here.
My first post was "wordy"...
So I will change it up and post a few pics and this will be an entry of few words or fewer words...

This is the Diet that appeals most to me.
So I polled the friends who are doing it.
This was the Book that most people recommended.

My own online research lead me to this book.

It is more of a cook book and shopping tips.

So far it has been a handy companion to the first book.

I have been drinking a lot of Pepsi.
I quit on Sunday 07/07/2013.

Today (Tues) I woke up with a Withdrawal Headache. 

All we are as humans, is bags of water & electricity.
A major component of every diet is lots of water.

One of these bottles is a Quart. I try to drink 6 - 8 a day.

This is my commercial heavy duty scale.

It was given to me by a friend in the Medical field. 

My scale stays on and in position at all times.

I literally have to step over it to get in or out of my Bathroom. 

My awesome scale goes up to 2,000lbs.

It is calibrated to be accurate within .01lbs 

I have a long way to go just to get back to where I was even a year ago.

But I've never been afraid of doing the work...

Facts are stubborn things.

I don't know about the rest of you but I really enjoyed reading Geoff's post. He's a funny guy. However he sometimes gets it dead wrong.

I wrote that I did weigh 18 lbs. As of this morning, I have now lost 14 pounds and am therefore weighing in at a solid 504 pounds.

I believe you've got some catching up to do Geoff. Not that it's a competition, but if it was, I'd totally be winnning.

In honor of our journey togather I'd like to share this visual image of Geoff and I beginning a journey together. As you can clearly see, I am the little fellow on the right.

Please let me introduce myself...

Hello. I am GDPIII.

I love Stand up Comedy. I would say I love blogging but as you are about to find out in the worst way. I am not a writer. Sure I can come up with funny stuff and sometimes even tug at the heart strings a little.  However, what I bring to the table in wit and charm.  I lack in spelling and grammar.  You are probably wondering 3 things right now.

1. Why did I start like that?

2. When am I actually going to start?

3. Why have you read this far and more importantly why should you read any further?

Let me knock these out in order...

#1 - The one thing Stand up comedy and Blogging have in common; Is that there is no easy way to start. There are cheesy and disingenuous ways (Hello Chicago, who is ready to have a good time tonight!).

However, its always Awkward and little clumsy (not unlike my honeymoon...)

#2 - I am so skilled at being awkward and a little clumsy. That you hadn't even realized I already started! (not unlike my honeymoon) If you think about it.  I have already introduced you to things I like and things I love. As well as admitted some flaws and set some expectations.  Then I capped it off with some self deprecating humor.
#3 - I think this 2-part question has already worked itself out. You didn't make to here if you weren't entertained or at least intrigued thus far. You would have stopped reading already. So I'll assume we are buckled in and ready to ride until the wheels fall off.

- Last Wednesday I turned 39 years old.  I only say that so we establish right off the bat that Zach, co contributor to this Blog is indeed Older than me. (He turns 40 in 5 months)

- Today I weighed myself and I was 507lbs.  I only say THAT so we can establish that Zach also weighs more than I do. (He weighed aprox 517lbs last time he checked.)

- So now you know that I am the younger, better looking one.  I am also the single one.  So that is a happy coincidence.  

Here are some other things I currently am that Zach is not; Divorced, Depressed and Unemployed.  

These sound grim. They are not.  They are temporary situations. They are things we encounter in life and we figure out how to overcome them.  The grim part is that I was tested during these trials and I failed or am still failing.  When my wife of 14 years and I separated 1 year and 1 day ago (July 7th 2012).  I weighed 422lbs.  It was only a couple months after we separated. When we were sure reconciliation was not possible. It had become clear it was not in the best interest of ourselves or more importantly our 3 children.

If I was a betting man, I would say that this was when the depression really started to kick in. It can be tricky and downright impossible to trace that back to an exact moment.  Unless you have only had one trial in your life happen at a time.  I don't know anyone like that.  Everybody is going through something, usually several somethings of varying degrees.

On Nov. 15th, 4 months after my separation, 2 months after the Divorce process had begun.  I was laid off from the job I had been at for 5+ years.  It was out of the blue and a week before we entered into the holiday gauntlet known as Thanksgiving/ Christmas/ New years. The timing was less than ideal.

Fast forward, for now, to today. Monday July 8th 2013.  In what has been a long and arduous 12 months.  I have gained 85lbs.  Now if you consider that my Exwife weighed 115lbs.  Then the combined total weight in my bed at night is still down -30lbs.  Silver lining people if you look hard enough you'll find it.

How does one person gain 85lbs in just a year?
Well, divide that 85lbs by 12 months and we are talking about just a hair over 7lbs. a month.
You see many of us, maybe most of us, have gained 7lbs in a month before.
The difference here is I was more committed and consistent than any of you. Month after Month after Month...
  

If you break that down even further;
- You will find that 7lbs divided by 4.34 weeks in a month = just over 1.6lbs a week.
- Divide that 1.6lbs a week by 7 days = .23lbs a day.

That is less than a 1/4lbs a day gained over the last year.
(Which both sounds like a lot and not very much all at the same time. Math is hard you guys...)

So for the last year:
I responded to; stress, change, insecurity, depression, anger, hurt, fear etc...
by eating 1/4lbs more of food than I was burning off each day... Crazy right?

If I'm being honest...
That was probably 60% - 70%  Calories from Pepsi alone.
(Lots more about my life long love affair with Pepsi to come in the near future)
I had stopped drinking Pepsi in an effort to lose weight back in late 2010 - 2012.
- In this tumultuous time. I consciously turned to my old friend and crutch to get me through the long days and even longer nights.
- I cannot tell you how much of this "Sweet Brown Heaven" I was putting away everyday.
I can tell you that I didn't miss a day (until I quit on 07/07/2013).

So that in a nutshell is who I am.  I will end this for now.  I promise to return again soon and regularly to share more of my past and talk more about what the future holds for me.

I am an open person, an open wound and an open book.  You may ask me anything. I find healing in writing, sharing and community.  So join in or just follow along. It's your choice. Feel free to leave a comment or ask any question you want. I promise to answer it as funny and honestly as I can.

Geoffrey Dale Pierce III -
*** Here after known as GDPIII -***

My Plan and Progress so Far

I have followed many,many types of eating plans. In a sense you could call me a diet expert. I have read books a plenty and have had moments (sometimes long moments) of success. I guess you could say that I should teach weight loss since you know, "Those who can, lose weight. Those who can't, teach." I have a feeling that nobody wants to listen to a fat guy wax eloquent about the path to successful weight loss.

Still, I have lost well over 350 lbs. over the last five years. How many of you can say that? Unfortunately that means that I have also gained 250 lbs. The ratio is better than it could be, but I consider myself dedicated to practicing, and perhaps one of these days I will get it right!

What I've Learned

I won't pretend to know the answers, but I can tell you a little of what I have learned that seems to work when I apply it consistently.

• Exercise helps, but doesn't win the battle alone.
• Carbs are not your friend.
• There is a word for people who rely on willpower alone to lose weight, they call them fat.
• Plan ahead, plan ahead, plan ahead! Never get to hungry without knowing what your next meal will be. Hungry people don't make good decisions.
• Every skinny person is an expert on your weight loss. Because well, they're skinny right? They MUST have the SECRET!
• I used this in my first post, but it bears repeating, "The eternally thin are all the same, but everyone gets fat in their very own way." Losing weight doesn't appear to always have the same answer.
• Every diet essentially "works" in the sense that a roof over your head, of any kind, is a home. Some are cardboard boxes, and some are a bit more comfortable. Just because it's a place to live, doesn't mean you would want to call it home.
• failure isn't eating something you aren't supposed to, it's giving up entirely.
• When nutrition is high, cravings are low.

I am sure some people will come here and have an opinion on my plan, such as it is. I welcome that, on the other hand I hope you will understand if I just keep on doing what I am doing. I am open to lots of things, but frankly, spend as much time reading about weight loss as I have and you will start to notice the substantial number of people who have lost 100+ lbs and kept it off who are on some variant of a low-carb diet. I myself have had the most success on low-carb. And before anyone brings up the idea of a calorie restricted low-fat diet, I will just say that those end up being low carb as well, of necessity, since you just can't afford many carbs on 1500 calories per day.

Why Low Carb?

What keyed me in on the idea of low-carb was a period of weight loss five years ago where I lost 75 lbs. I ate 1500 calories per day. With each meal totaling around 500 calories that gives you enough for about 6 oz. of lean protein and a salad per meal with an occasional slice of toast thrown in for good measure.

I quit for a while and then tried to get back on it, only this time I bumped the calories up to 2000 per day. According to all of the low-fat diet experts I had read (including the FDA) it's a simple equation of calories in, calories out. There are formula's that allow you to calculate your basal metabolic rate i.e. the number of calories you burn by just existing/breathing/sleeping. Mine is around 3800 calories per day (based on my quarter ton girlish figure). Now according to these calculations, a 3500 calorie deficit yields a pound of fat lost, which means that at at 2000 calories per day I should see about a 3.5 lb per week loss. I tracked every bit of food that went into my mouth and at the end of three months with ZERO weight lost, I finally quit.

I cannot express to you just how dispirited I was. I didn't understand what I was doing wrong and I had no idea how to fix it. I considered going back to 1500 calories per day, but honestly I felt tired and weak much of the time on that diet, and I just didn't think I could handle it with my work load and other activities.

Several months later I came across a book called, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taub. I read it and then I went back and read it again. It was NOT a "diet" book, he never even recommends an eating plan. Rather, it is a science based analysis of the medical studies that have been performed over the last 150 years on the topic. His conclusion was simple,and it put a different spin on weight loss I hadn't encountered. I will try to sum it up in a couple of sentences though the book is very long and very dense. Children and adolescents eat calories far in excess of what they burn yet (usually) do not get fat, but rather grow tall and grow muscle and bone. Why is that? It's human growth hormone a chemical that instructs the body what to do with excess. Why, he says do we not look to a hormonal answer to our abnormal growth? Insulin is the hormone that regulates where excess food is stored. I won't say anything more since I am likely to only misstate something and prevent you from reading further. Regardless, I found his analysis very compelling.

What variant of low carb?

For me, the immediate plan is atkins. I have experimented with a few different levels and I find that if I eat very many carbs I get mad cravings, so this time I am following the Atkins induction plan. I am 10 days in and so far so good. I have lost 13 lbs, as of this morning and the weight loss has been consistent regardless of caloric intake. I am tracking my calories and will post that on this blog each day. My cravings seem to be subsiding already and my appetite is sated more easily. One concern I have so far is eating more green vegetables. Many leafy green vegetables are surprisingly high in carbs and I want max nutrition for the low carb count I am getting. I am also supplementing vitamins and protein using a product called Pro Complex which has 1g carbs and 60g protein per serving + about 50% of every major vitamin nutrient and mineral the body needs. My experience with the green juice before was that when nutrition is high, cravings are low.

My apologies for these two book length entries, I expect most of my future posts to be considerably shorter. Thank you for reading this far and I hope that you will continue to check in on me. I have included today's calories from my food journal on MyFitnessPal.com

My Story, My Motivation, My Life

I turn 40 in 5 months and 11 days. This does not excite me.

I weighed 518 lbs as of June 28th. This does not excite me.

I desperately want to change my life and regain my health. My blood pressure is out of control (without medication), I have recently been diagnosed with diabetes (though no insulin) and as recently as a year ago I was clean. I have struggled to breathe and my testosterone is so low that I am one point away from developing a uterus. I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and I am on numerous medications to control all of this. While I am grateful for medical intervnetion I want to be done with all of it.

I have a two year old daughter who is the light and joy of my life, she makes me very happy. a couple of months ago we were watching one of those dancing competition shows and she was grooving to the music and she came up to me and took my hand and said, "Dance with me Daddy." She turned immediately and started walking towards the middle of the room only to get pulled up short when I didn't immediately follow. She trned again and said, "Please Daddy?"

What could I do, I got up and danced.... for about 30-45 seconds, whereupon I was too tired to continue and I sat back down. That was a dark moment for me, and not the only one since my daughter was born. There have been several moments where reality has slapped me pretty hard with how fat and sick I really am. I feel too old to have a young daughter. She doesn't deserve this. Right now, I am her buddy, her hero and her friend, but someday, not very far off, she will become aware that her Daddy isn't like other daddies. Honestly I just don't think I can handle seeing the look of embarrassment on her sweet face when she does. I can feel that timer ticking down.

How does this happen to a person? I am minded of Tolstoy's quote (badly paraphrased here) skinny people are all alike, but every fat person got fat in their own way. I was always "big" but I always felt mobile and so I never worried that much about it. I hiked and ran and swam with my friends growing up. Most of my favorite activities were outdoors and active through my teenage years.

I recall at about sixteen, seeing a man at the potato bar in my father's restaurant who was so large that he blocked the entire five foot width of the bar. It comforted me to know that although I was "big" I wasn't side-show "big" and I assured myself I certainly never would be. I went on my mission weighing 275 lbs. (I lost 50 lbs. during the 6 weeks before I left) came home at about 325 and remained there for about 6 more years.

Then the company I worked for went bankrupt and I had trouble finding a job in the computer industry so I became a truck driver instead. For two years we drove long haul and I put on a LOT of weight. When I came home I could no longer weigh myself on a standard scale and I could no longer walk to the mailbox without considerable effort. My wife started working for 1-800 contacts and they had a gym for emplolyees and their families. My wife started going regularly and tried to get me to go as well. eventually I did which is when I learned that I had hit 450 lbs. We both did well for a while. Irene anded up running a marathon and I lost 40 lbs or so. ventually Irene left and i started putting it back on. over the course of the next several years my weight has been all over the map. I have lost 75 lbs. 80 lbs and 150 lbs in stretches at various points over the last 8 years. My weight has been as high as 588 lbs and as low as 425.

I no longer care about weighing anything in particular, but I do want to be the kind of father that my daughter deserves to have. I want to see her grow up and I hope to play with her children someday. I want my health back. I want to be able to go to the store without exertion. I want to take walks with my family. I literally drive the car to church and it is a block away. I want that to stop.

This blog for me is a way of making myself accountable. Should you be reading this and you are also considering a change, I urge you not to wait as long as I did. I plan to talk in future posts about what I am doing and my progress. You will also find posts by Geoff. We have been friends since, well since a long time ago. He shopuld put up some pretty entertaining stuff, but please don't tell him I said so. It gives him a big head and he is trying to reduce his size after all...