How {NOT} to stay on track with your fit and healthy lifestyle

Most bloggers in the fitlife, fitspiration, and weight loss communities have posts telling you how to stay on track with your fit and healthy lifestyle. I probably do, too. Several in fact. These posts are written in the thick of it, when reading others' advice has turned you into a matra-spewing weight loss and fitspiration guru in your own mind. But how many have a how {NOT} to stay on track with your fit and healthy lifestyle post?

Here's mine.

How {NOT} to stay on track with your fit and healthy lifestyle

1. Do not control your portions sizes. Eyeball that shit and eat whatever the fuck you want.

2. Do not pack a lunch to go to work. Starve yourself all day, while you're at your highest level of activity and stress, and then make up for those calories when you get off work, driving from drive-thru to drive-thru until you've stuffed your bad thoughts deeply enough under the surface to survive walking through your own front door and engaging with friends or family.

3. Do not engage in elevated or intensified movement or activity, a.k.a. "exercise", for 20 minutes per day. This may cause you to lose weight, maintain a healthy weight, and inadvertently reduce your risk of heart attack, type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases, thus extending your life*.

4. Do not reduce or stop consumption of heavy, yeasty, and malty craft beers as a pastime, as this will also reduce your intake of added sugars. Also, you may want to start smoking pot, as this will help you increase your desire for highly sweetened, salty and fatty foods, which as a trifecta are your best friends in {NOT} staying on track with your fit and healthy lifestyle.

5. Most importantly, commit yourself to eating the cheapest food possible, so you can eat a lot more of it. Eat alone at a buffet restaurant at least a few times a week**. In most moderate-sized towns, you can find a steakhouse buffet, a Chinese buffet and at least one other ethnic buffet (ie. Indian, Italian, etc.). Make use of these resources to ensure your fit lifestyle will cease.

Thanks for reading this bullshit. Now go do some squats, get to bed early and wake up in time to get some physical activity in before work! (Don't forget to hydrate...and food is fuel, not your friend!)

*Be advised that extending one's lifespan is often a direct result of staying on track with a fit and healthy lifestyle.

**Eating alone all but ensures you will be able to eat much more than you would with others watching and judging you.

Unlike trails I hike, my fit life journey's map is but outlined in my dreams

Yesterday, as I was transferring files from one computer to another, I spent about seven hours going through old photos and videos recounting my fit life journey. I hadn't looked at many of these in a few years, and I was a bit shocked at what I looked like when I was at my low weight of 255 pounds.

Before my fit life journey began at 420+ pounds, August 2009

After 18 months and 165-pound weight loss, at 255 pounds

I looked like a different person! The round face and body curves were all but gone. And even more, when I watched myself talk in vlogs (that were never posted) I remembered instantly what I was thinking and feeling (and not saying) in them. I was saying these happy things with my mouth, but as I would catch a glimpse of myself on the screen while recording a sort of sad wash would come over my demeanor, if only for a moment, as I realized I really wasn't connecting with the image my thinner self was projecting.

After nearly 165 pounds of weight loss, with mom and dad, August 2011

Healthy. Hopeful. But lost.

When I gained back 65 of the 165 pounds I'd fought so hard to lose, I once again recognized myself. And while I found comfort in this familiarity, the joy I'd felt when I was becoming that healthy and hopeful self faded as my round face and curvy body returned.

Over the past two years since the re-gain, I've struggled to get started with a new round of weight loss. I want to get down to 255 pounds again - and in fact I want to achieve my original goal of getting down to 225 pounds to completely overcome obesity once and for all - and I know how to do it. Getting started I can do. But sticking to a new regime for more than a month is proving incredibly difficult.

Tomorrow is my 44th birthday, and birthdays for me are always a good time to become motivated to make change. So here it is again. I'm setting a goal for myself to lose 65 pounds over the course of the next year. When I turn 45 I will celebrate my accomplishment. And when I am 50 I will celebrate five years of having kept the weight off.

To get started, I need to put a framework to my goals, reasons why accomplishing this weight loss is important to me. So here goes, these are the 10 things I want to result from losing weight and regaining the fitness I'd fought so hard to achieve a few years ago:

1. I want to extend my probable years of mobility and stave off preventable disease by being kinder to my body.
2. I want to wear clothes again - regular sized clothes, like XL, not 2XL or 3XL - without feeling like I'm pushing their limits.
3. I want to go to the waterpark and not be turned away from the best waterslides because of my weight.
4. I want to feel light on my feet and reduce the strain on my ankles, knees and hips.
5. I want to be able to hike the highest mountains without having to slow down just to catch my breath.
6. I want to ride my bike for miles and miles.
7. I want to kayak without fear.
8. I want to speed through the forest canopy on zip-lines with my friends.
9. I want to be healthy and capable for my parents as they grow older
10. I want to live a life that is not obsessed with filling my body but instead one that is happy because I'm fueling it.

Unlike the trails I hike, my fit life journey's map is but outlined in my dreams

Self image is a powerful contributor to motivation for anyone, and for me especially I think. Honestly, I don't like the way I look when I get under about 280 pounds. But I need to do it for reasons that transcend self image. Just as before, I will be blogging about my journey. I do this not only as a journal to myself so that I can keep track of my progress but also because I find I am energized spurred on toward my goals by the collective support weight loss and fit life community. This is crucial. As such, I want to thank any of you in advance for reading and encouraging me along the way. THANK YOU!!! 

NOTE: Hey #fitfam! Please follow me on Instagram @fitlifechronicles and Twitter @myfitlife2day. 

Tracking my way to success: This is why I use MyFitnessPal

Weight loss and healthy weight management can feel like such a chore if you're one of those, like me, who seeks out food whenever the going gets tough. My mantra throughout my 165-pound weight loss a few years ago was simple: Food is food, not your friend! So that's why I'm glad there's a tool like MyFitnessPal - it is THE quintessential food-is-fuel tool!

For me, MyFitnessPal is perfect, because I have four things I like to track as I'm working toward achieving weight loss success, and MyFitnessPal helps me track them all - for free!

First and foremost, I track my water intake. Hydration is the keystone to staying on track. I drink the typical eight glasses of water a day, but I drink five extra - one glass for every twenty pounds I need to lose. My goal is to lose 100 pounds in 2014, so I log 13 glasses of water every day.

Tracking portion size and calories can be a chore - not with MyFitnessPal!

Second, I track my portion size and calories. Portion size is tricky, but tracking healthy portions on MyFitnessPal is a snap. All the foods I eat are easily searchable, so I can log my food intake immediately and not have to worry about forgetting to do it later. I use the website as well as the app on my smartphone, and they sync my info so I don't have to!

Third, I track my exercise. My goal is 60 minutes of cardio per day and four days of strength training. Sometimes I conveniently forget whether yesterday was a workout day or not, but with MyFitnessPal I have a constant reminder and proof of what I did.

Tracking my exercise helps me make sure I give myself credit for hard work!

Finally, I track my measurements. Sure, I weigh myself and log that. But sometimes pounds don't come off as quickly as I'd like, but maybe I have a success in waist size. That's a win, too, and I want to be aware of how far I've come as I make my way toward my fitness goals.

If you're on a weight loss and fitness journey as I am, please feel free to friend me on MyFitnessPal so we co-motivate each other. I'm Fitness400. On Instagram I'm fitlifechronicles. And on Twitter I'm myfitlife2day.

My weight loss (and fitness) motivation (revisited)

I want to hike the highest mountains. I want my body not to lumber along, but to move through the world with grace. I want to ride my bike great distances without tiring. I want to swim oceans and rivers and not be taken by the currents. I want to climb great rocks. I want to camp on mountaintops.

I want my body to create energy, not only consume it. I want to be fit enough that I may help others in case of emergency. I want to be able to run if I must run. I want to be able to carry those who cannot run to safety on my shoulders. I want my body to be strong well into old age.

I want my feet, my knees, my back and my joints to be happy. I want my cells to be friendly, not fight me. I want not to be a slave to pills and medical procedures. I want health to radiate from within. And most of all, I want my parents to know I value the life I've been given.

Follow on Twitter @MyFitLife2Day and on Instagram @fitlifechronicles

Thanks for reading MyFitLife2Day. For more about what I am doing NOW to overcome obesity once and for all, check out this post. The orginal post - My weight loss motivation - was written in January 2010 when my weight topped 400 pounds. 

Follow me on Twitter @MyFitLife2Day and on Instagram @fitlifechronicles.

Answering "Why I choose weight loss" and "Why I choose Nutrisystem"

I started Nutrisystem for the first time in early January 2010. At that time, one of the counselors I spoke to recommended I write a brief statement about why I was losing weight so that as I achieved incremental goals I would be able to look back on my statement and be edified. Today, after two years of being in a more-or-less maintenance mode (give or take 40 pounds - ugh!), I thought I'd look back on that statement and see what encouragement it could give me. Here is what I wrote:

I want to be able to ride rollercoasters again, feel more comfortable in airplane seats, be able to sit in those tiny chairs on the patios of cafes, not cause the tires in my tiny compact car to wear unevenly, start my 40s in a year and a half with the same healthful optimism with which I started my 20s, let my parents grow older without having to worry about my health, be able to shop for clothes at the mall again, rollerblade without pain again, and dance the night away again without having to sit the next one out! 

Breaking apart the statement goal by goal today, I see that I pretty much achieved every one of them. So why am I re-starting Nutrisystem again now? Well, it's complicated. To make it more comprehensible (to me and to anyone who might be reading this blog for inspiration or sheer curiosity), I should break this question down into its component parts. Why am I choosing to "diet" again? And why have I chosen to go back on Nutrisystem when it's obvious that I am able to lose weight on my own?

First, I'll address reasons why I'm "dieting". Well, to be more precise, I'm not "dieting" but rather "modifying my diet" (but that's for another conversation). And the reason for this is clear. I am currently at a weight that is unhealthy. It's not unhealthy because I say so or because society says so (or even because I am currently experiencing any health problems, as was most definitely the case when I was 420 pounds). But according to the medical community, I have a disease - obesity - and this disease is a precursor to a slew of other chronic and acute disease that I personally would like to avoid.

No one believes me when I tell them, but I am pushing 300 pounds. At 296 pounds, I may "carry it well", but I would rather not have to carry it at all. This weight is hard on my body and limits me in many ways, not the least of which it makes it more difficult for me to pursue my hiking passion, keeping me from doing longer and more strenuous hikes. It also hurts my joints and keeps me from recovering as quickly from injury. I recently twisted my ankle while traversing a rock-strewn trail at the top of Mount Tammany in Northern New Jersey. I was lucky to make it back down. If I had experienced a greater injury, it would've take five or six big guys to carry me down.

For more on why I want to lose weight, check out the related blog post: My weight loss (and fitness) motivation (revisited). For now, though, I'll get to why I'm kickstarting this next phase of my weight loss journey with Nutrisystem. See, the first time around I lost around 80 pounds on Nutrisystem and another 85 pounds on my own; Having learned from Nutrisystem's portion and calorie control I was able to piece together a plan using regular grocery store foods that worked quite well for me (until I decided after 18 months of rigorous attention to my diet to ease up a bit and began enjoying ice cream and other treats again in a less than moderate manner). But now that I'm out of practice, Nutrisystem will help me relearn healthy portions and develop a more regulated eating pattern.

On Nutrisystem I will eat six times per day - three meals per day and snacks about two hours after each meal. The plan is based on science, creating by nutritionists. It is balanced and does not keep me from eating the kinds of foods I truly enjoy. In fact, some of their meals are quite tasty. The cost is about $260 per month (for the men's plan that I'm on), and this includes five prepackaged foods - each meal plus two snacks daily  (one of the snacks is on your own, such as yogurt or nuts) - as well as access to amazing tools that track your food and water intake and allow you to log your exercise. There is also a very active online community where you can get inspiration from others who are likewise on a weight loss and fitness journey of their own.

At that price, you have to eat what they send you. For $20 more, you get to choose what you want. It's worth it for some, but since saving money is another objective of mine, I just choose to enjoy what I get. After all, "It's your decisions, not the conditions of your life, that determine your destiny", as the great motivational communicator Anthony Robbins would say.

Today is the first day of being on the Nutrisystem plan, and I have to tell you I am pumped. I know Nutrisystem works for me, and I know that even though I will begin to feel hunger between eating events, I know that's a good thing. My stomach will begin shrinking and I'll begin to shed weight, probably quite quickly the first week and more steadily after that. I can take comfort that even though I'm feeling hunger, it's a good thing, and it will only bother me for a couple of weeks.


So that's really why I'm doing this. Hunger is a way of my body telling me it's time to eat. In our society we tend to eat simply because there is an abundance of food. But in a few weeks my new habits will take hold and my eating habits will carry me on auto pilot to finally achieving my goal of overcoming obesity once and for all.



Thanks for reading MyFitLife2Day. Follow me on Twitter @MyFitLife2Day and on Instagram @fitlifechronicles.