Colossus In Progress

Thanks SkyGirl. It's one of those things that seem so obvious in hindsight but at the time I didn't realise just how much my dissatisfaction with my life was affecting my weight.

After years of failed attempts, followed by a year of solid work and much inspiration from the Rebellion I have finally hit my goal weight. I think the big difference this time, as opposed to all my other attempts, was the fact that I recognised that my core problem wasn't that I was fat, it was that I was unhappy with my life. Trying to lose weight without dealing with the other issues in my life was just trying to treat the symptom without dealing with the disease, so the weight always came back. This time, over the course of a year, I left a decently well paid job that had good career prospects that was making me miserable to fly across the world from Brisbane to London. I forced myself into situations outside my comfort zone and as a result have made more friends in the past 5 months than I have in the preceeding 10 years. I've even been lucky enough to meet one person who I feel very close to. As a result I have gone from a little over 140kg at my heaviest, to my current weight of 95kg over the course of 12 months. I am absolutely stoked with the progress, but now it's time to kick it up a notch and start properly working out. I'm going to stay with the beginners body weight workout this week and see how far I can take this journey.

Thanks Igaduma! I know BMI isn't particularly accurate, but it was a good starting point for a goal.

An Animorphs nerd?!? God I haven't read those books in years. I may have to see if I can get my hands on some, would love to read them again after all this time. Oh, and hi and welcome and all that. Sorry, found it hard to get over that blast from the past you hit me with

Hi everyone. Although I'm not a hugely active member of the community, I am a long time stalker of the forums. I have used NerdFitness and all of its fantastic members as a source of inspiration, and knowledge, for years as I have struggled to lose weight. So this is partly a woot for me, but mostly a woot for all of you, for being such a open community that, even if I don't talk much, you still inspire me to better myself. So without further ado, here are the comparison photos of me at the end of last year, at my heaviest (141 kg or 310 pounds), versus me right now at 108.8kg (or 239 pounds). While this is definitely ongoing (the goal at the moment is 95kg or 209 pounds - the top end of a healthy BMI for my height) I am so happy with the progress I have made. Moreover I feel like, for the first time in losing weight, it's weight I can actually keep off. I've lost it by fixing what I put in my body, not by trying to up what I take out. Reasonable and sustainable calorie control is how I've gotten to this point, and I can honestly say that I can see myself being able to continue doing this for the rest of my life and keeping the weight off forever. Once again, thanks to everyone here. Not just to those people who have managed to lose weight and post fantastic progress reports, but also to those people who post when they are struggling and to those people who try new things and let people know what works and doesn't work for them. Thanks to everyone who makes up this amazing community.

Hey Bearlee, The fact that you've managed to lose so much already is a great inspiration, and I'm sure you'll just keep losing more and more. Let us know when you post a challenge thread or a battle log so I can follow along!

Day five is over and it was kind of a weird one. Went to the movies with a friend to see The new Spiderman. It was... meh. Not horrendously bad but it just didn't draw you in. I found myself sitting during the movie and picking apart little things that were annoying me. At one point Peter was watching a home recording of a graduation speech and it was meant to be all emotional and inspiring and all I could think was "There was no one that was shot on a camcorder". It was a perfectly straight on, face framed, steady shot, in HD. Then they superimposed that image on a laptop screen and it just screamed fake. It also went half an hour longer than it should. Anyway, now to the good and bad of day five in terms of diet. The good: STILL NO SUGAR!! I'm actually really proud of this. Normally when I go to the movies I'd have the largest frozen coke, a large popcorn and the largest bag of skittles they have. Instead, today I went to the shops before the movie and bought a bag of Bhuja Nut mix. Not exactly paleo, but is gluten free and no sugar. I didn't have anything to drink and no popcorn. I did miss the skittles something awful though. Now the bad. I did go off the rails in terms of healthy eating yesterday. After the movie the friend and I went out and grabbed something to eat and I ended up getting KFC. I had a two piece meal (with the roll and the chips AND the potato and gravy) The one redeeming moment is that I got a bottle of water, instead of a soft drink to go with it. And... I didn't actually eat anything else yesterday. Had the night off from work (someone wanted to swap shifts so I had a short week this week) and when I got home from the movie I fell asleep on the couch watching Suckerpunch. SO now my sleeping patterns are all messed up, I'm going to have to stay awake for the next 24 hours if I want to be able to stay awake at work tomorrow night.

Day Four! Unfortunately no extra exercise today, just the walk to the shops. Breakfast was a 250g steak, 75g of baby spinach leaves and a stirfry containing (carrot,zucchini,grape tomatoes, capsicum, onion, garlic, mushrooms) Lunch was approx 100g of chicken with the left over stir fry Dinner was an omelette with 4 eggs, 75g spinach and 2 bacon rashers. Pretty exhausted today so I am going to cut this short and head to bed. Going to the movies with a friend when I wake up to see Amazing Spiderman 2. I wonder how badly they can butcher Spiderman this time!

I think it may be your body starting to normalise to a lower level of sugar that, for some weird reason, manifest as an early wake up call. I've noticed since giving up the sugar I've only been getting about 6 hours a night where as previously I would get 9 or so. I haven't really looked into it yet but I'm guessing it's got something to do with it.

Hey, at least you had the gumption to actually get out of bed and go to the gym. You just need to make sure your next work out is spectacular!

Uh, I know how you feel. Went into the shops yesterday and they had a 4 foot tall wall of soft drinks lining the front of the shop. They were just sitting there.... mocking me.

Day Three and I'm still alive! I think my sugar levels may be starting to normalize a bit. I had an okay nights sleep last night and I don't feel as if I tossed and turned as much. I took a more substantial lunch into work today and I didn't get quite as tired in the early hours of the morning. Downside is I feel like I didn't eat as healthy yesterday. Still a million times more healthy than what I am used to eating but not as healthy as I have been doing. There was a lot of sauces, both on the stir fry and the chicken wings I made today, so I feel like I want to try and avoid that if I can. Exercise ended up being two walks to the shops. I forgot something the first time I went and by the time I got back from the second trip it was too late to go on another walk. Still it's about 45 minutes return to the shops so I'm counting that as exercise. Food consisted of a vegie stir fry containing 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 250g of broccoli, 1 corn cob (minus the cob), 180g of mushrooms, 1 carrot and 1 zucchini. Breakfast was 3/4 of the stir fry, along with 5 three joint chicken wings and 75g of spinach rocket leaf mix. Lunch was the remainder of the stir fry, another 4 of the chicken wings and 1 kiwi fruit. Dinner was 3 eggs, 75g of spinach rocket leaf mix and 3 rashers of shortcut bacon (about 80g). Still no soft drinks and I am starting to feel less like I need them. Now it's just a matter of how much I WANT them! I'm having some pretty bad sugar cravings, but I feel like I can get through them. After all if I gave in I'd have to come here and explain to you guys how weak I am! It's kind of a catch all position. I'm actually the night (or duty) manager for the hotel. That means I deal with customer service, fire warden duties, security issues. But because we are a fairly quiet property and most of the time (after about 11pm) I have very little reason to leave the desk it falls to me to do things like double checking paperwork and reconciling accounts.

Not sure if this one has been brought up before or not but: FUCKING INFOMERCIALS!! It's not that they exist... even though when I see them show up they annoy the hell out of me. It's not that the products they advertise are garbage... I mean they are and they use all sorts of shady weasel words and misdirection to sell them. It's that they insist on using the "Actor tries to do a simple task and fails at it" cliche. Fuck you Nutribullet. It does not require a Masters from MIT to use a god damn blender!!

Sounds like you've had a great first week, keep up the excellent work!

Oh god that saying... I don't know if it is online and my internet connection is too crappy to handle Youtube right now, but look up Jimmy Carr and Aussie Charm.