I am thinking of starting the 100 push-up challenge like Jeremy Wright is currently working on. Also, my wife has finally officially joined in and is looking forward to trying to drop ten pounds. Hopefully, working together will give us both the extra push we need to loose weight.

Having my weight thrown in my face on a daily basis makes it hard to avoid the issue, and I still sometimes just want to run away from the fact that I am over weight.

Denial seems to be one of my biggest problems, and facing this weight loss challenge, feels more like climbing a sheer vertical wall, than a slowly rising mountain.

Even when I walk around the city and see someone extremely overweight, I feel like commenting in a negative tone, much like how I talk to my family about their smoking habit. I don’t immediately think to myself “look who’s talking”, and later when I reflect on what I thought, and wanted to say, I feel really bad, as I’ve had others make comments about my weight, and that is never helpful.

There are so many things I have been working hard to do, but when you aren’t home and can’t keep your routine going, it was super difficult. I tried to make better choices, but I made more mistakes than I would have liked. I drank lots of water while I was there, but because I really didn’t do any exercise, or even walk around lots, every calorie that I took in, wasn’t really burned off.

I am going to try to step up my weight loss efforts over the coming weeks.

Usually, people gain weight when on trips, and I can see why. One of the things that was frustrating for me is that I don’t know Toronto well enough to know where I should eat, and of course all of the old standbys are junk: McDonalds, Burger King, etc…

Does Toronto even have grocery stores?

Hopefully, once I get to Kingston, I will get myself a little more on track. I will give myself some kudos though on this trip: no pop. I drank only water with my meals, and other than water, I had a Vitamin Water, which isn’t very healthy but tastes decent and at least might transfer some vitamin content to my body, unlike most juices these days.

Hopefully, next week, I will be able to increase my exercise, decrease my calories a bit, and increase my water intake. My cravings haven’t been too bad, and I’ve been nipping them in the bud with around 50 grams of honey peanuts. Which, while not the most healthy item in the world, definitely is better than a chocolate bar or a bag of chips.

Being stuck at 265 pounds is a little frustrating to me, but I am focusing on the fact that it is still six pounds less than the 271 lbs that I had ballooned up to a little while back.

My current goal is to get to 258 pounds before the end of December, or a reduction of seven pounds in a month. While I think it is a rather lofty goal, I think that it should be possible for me as my body should be able to shed pounds rather quickly until I get to around 250, where, like previous attempts, it will start to try to keep me around that weight.

My ultimate goal is really to be able to fit into a size 38 pair of pants. I still own many pairs and it is the highest size that some stores carry. I will probably have to get down to around 220 pounds before being able to fit into them once again, and while that is still a long term goal, I am keeping my eyes firmly affixed to it. Currently, a size 42 is a little tight, and I remember when I was between sizes, where a 42 was loose and a 40 was tight.

I deserve to be more fit than I currently am, and I am making time to do things that I wouldn’t have done before due to the excuses of work, home life, and other factors. But again, if Jeremy Wright can do it, then I have to be able to as well as he is much busier than I am on any given day.

Today though, I started off the day on the wrong foot. I ate a late breakfast, had some less than happy dialogs with a few people, and it really bummed me out.

When I feel like this, I just want to eat junk food, and it is especially hard since Sabine brought home a pizza last night. I had one slice, but have resolved not to eat any more of it.

The good news is that I got a small bench to do my dumb bell workouts on for free off of Freecycle. This will be really great, once I get it together and start using it. While I don’t always see myself needing to use the bench, it will help me do certain exercises and keep perfect form.

I have the car today, a rarity as of late, and I haven’t run off to the gym yet. Mainly because every time I go, I feel bad. I have a deal where I work on the gym’s website and help them with their technology and in trade, I get access to the gym, but I haven’t been able to help very much lately as I have been super busy. They have been relatively understanding about it, and probably don’t realize that I feel the pressure, but I do.

Thankfully, the weather isn’t too bad, so I will probably take out our dog for an hour and walk and play with her. Hopefully, that will burn off most of the calories I take in for lunch.

I am down a single pound versus yesterday, which is pretty good in my mind. I am not sure what I am going to do next in order to loose the weight that I need, but I know that I have to keep focused because I am sure a piece of my depression over the last three months now is directly related to my increasing weight.

Binge Eating

I was a secret binge eater. I would walk to the store, buy tons of junk food and hide it around the house so that my wife wouldn’t find it. Then, while working from home, I would tell myself that I need the extra energy to get through my long days and would consume thousands of calories in junk food, which would leave me feeling depressed, and I’d usually just finish off whatever was around.

The worst part of this was that I would cover up the fact that I was doing this by eating regular meals with my wife. She would buy a bag of chips for us to share, and rather than saying “no”, I would consume around an equal share of whatever she would take. Thus, I wasn’t only getting a huge number of calories from my binge eating, but I was trying to hide it through eating regularly.

At first, I would leave bottles or chip bags in places I knew she would find them, in hopes that she would really take me to task and help me with this issue, but short of taking my wallet away whenever she left home, there was no way for her to help me.

Instead of getting mad at me for eating the junk food, she got angry over the fact that I was hiding it through the house.

I continued to hide food around the house, eating it whenever she left. Four packs of chocolate bars, a few cans of Coke, all the while telling myself that I needed it to stay focused, energized, and get all of my work done.

If I ran out of junk food, I would walk to the store, thirty minutes away, and pick up more. I didn’t care what the weather was like, and would sometimes bring back enough junk food for a family of four for a month, and consume it in a week. two large cases of pop, four bags of chips, half a dozen chocolate bars, and bags of various candy. I would consume it so fast that I had to sneak out a garbage bag full of wrappers, cans and containers every month.

Of course, my weight then started to rise fairly rapidly, as I wasn’t really using up any of these extra calories, and my sedentary lifestyle became more sedentary as my wife went back to University.

The Shock

After being caught for the third time, my wife was absolutely furious. She didn’t understand why I felt the need to hide all of this from her, and I finally broke down and told her it was because I didn’t want her to realize how much I was consuming.

We had a long heart to heart over the whole thing, and we decided that we both need to be more vigilant in making sure I work on this issue. I am sure there are psychological issues regarding this that I should work out at some point, but that doesn’t seem too possible/plausible at this point, financially.

I bought some dumb bells to do basic exercises at my desk while watching videos, or reading through my e-mails and RSS feeds. We organized some free time to make sure I could go to the gym, and we also decided that the best way to help control these cravings and binge eating habits would be to work on them slowly.

No Denying Food Cravings

I am no denying my food cravings, but I am learning how to deal with them responsibly. I don’t stop myself from eating that chocolate bar, but I do ask myself if I want that chocolate bar because I am hungry. I haven’t binged out on junk food since then. While I still eat much more candy and sugary products than I should, it is no where near as bad as it once was.

My Weight

My weight though is still higher than it has ever been. Just a week ago, I weighed in at 271lbs. I never thought I would let it get so bad. Things that used to fit me comfortably, no longer do. I am already working harder on trying to scale that back, and have been down around the 265lbs range since seeing that scary number.

I still need to get it further down. My original goal still exists. I still want to be closer to 200 than 300 pounds, but how long will it take me to get there? Can I make the sacrifices, and how can I learn to have a better sense of willpower, control, and create a better work/life balance?

My Inspiration and Challenge

I have people in my life that are inspiring me to loose weight, and the biggest inspiration right now is Tom Leroux, a friend of mine from Ottawa, who has come out and challenged me as part of his own weight loss journey. You can read about that on his blog Leroux.ca, and check out the conversations and pictures on Flickr as well as Twitter mentions under the hash tag #25lbs.

Other people inspiring me and pushing me forward include my wife, Tracey (Tom’s wife) and Jeremy Wright.

I want to give a second to talk about Jeremy Wright’s weight loss journey because I think his lifestyle closely mimics my own in many respects, and yet he has found a way, even with his busy life and schedule to make time to get healthy. His messages on Twitter about what he is doing are very inspirational to me, and gives me a stronger sense that my goals are possible.

My Goals

So my goal today is to get from the 267 pounds I weighed in at today, down to 242 pounds as part of the 25 Pound Challenge. I hope to do that between today and February 2nd, 2009. Who is with us? Join the challenge over on Leroux.ca and let’s all support each other going forward.

Sound weird? Well, that’s because I am doing a lot of freelance work for people in hopes of making some money but it is taking up huge blocks of time and concentration right now. Soon, I will be starting a new full time job which will hopefully help get me back into a stable routine.

I do have another small excuse though as the gym I go to isn’t twenty-four hours a day during the week from now until September. I can’t wait until they are open pretty much all of the time again so I can go whenever the mood and energy hits me, be that at two in the afternoon or two in the morning.

I am back up to 255 pounds, and feeling really depressed about the whole thing. I thought having a slow, long term goal, a gym membership and this blog to hold me accountable would be enough to keep my weight loss on track. I even had some very supportive friends (I am looking at you specifically Tom), but I wasn’t able to keep on course.

I have started feeling the fitness bug again, and have been going to the gym every other day for the last two weeks. It is slowly starting to become habit and I feel weird when something comes up and I can’t go.

Some ways that I have made going to the gym more fun is bringing my laptop to watch movies, bringing the iPod for music, grabbing an FM receiver so I can listen to the televisions at the gym, and working on reading some novels, all while I am on the bikes or the treadmill.

I have found that I can quickly lose track of time, and also how fast I am going. Recently, one of the owners of the gym came over and let me know that I had to slow down, as I was pushing my heart rate way too high. I think she was afraid I was going to stroke out, but I was listening to some fast paced alternative music and was really feeling the energy.

My goal is still the same. I want to get down to just under 200 pounds, but I have decided to revise my goal to not have such a firm date. I am going to start a food log (something I absolutely hate doing) as well as keeping track of exactly what I do at the gym, so I can work on improving slowly, but consistently. I am also going to buy some dumbbells for home, so that when the mood strikes me to get in another small bit of exercise, there isn’t anything in my way with regards to doing so.

Lastly, Sabine and I have been carrying on with our evening strolls. We have tripled the length of them, some of which now last an hour or two, rather than the thirty minutes or so that they used to be. Surely, this should mean some extra calorie burning.

The biggest issue I am having right now is dietary. I love junk food, and as I increase my exercise, my cravings for it also go up, and with my personal willpower feeling pretty low, I am having the fight of my life to make sure that I eat healthier.

Recently, I have been going through a rough time emotionally, and have gained back some of the weight I had been losing which only feeds the negative emotions. Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have an amazing group of friends and family help me through all of this, but it is still frustrating to have gained back weight that you had hoped to shed forever.

How do I work at stopping my emotions from controlling my eating? It is something I will definitely have to research.