The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.

The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.

In one of my favorite movies, Sylvester Stallone reprises his iconic role as Rocky Balboa. During one of the film’s most memorable scenes he confronts his son, who has allowed living in the “shadow” of Rocky to become an excuse for why he is not succeeding in the way that he wants. Rocky launches into an iconic speech explaining that the world can be tough, but “it’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forwards”.

My weight loss journey has been a lot like that. In fact, life seemed to get harder the longer I continued to lose weight. Even now, I’ve been consistently losing weight for almost a year and I am still having “tough days” which push me and try me. There are days when I want to fall back into old patterns of eating for comfort, and it would be so easy.

So why haven’t I given in and had a “cheat meal”? After 11 months, I can honestly say I have not had a single meal where I have broken down and eaten something outside of my profile for eating. People have asked how I have accomplished that. It comes down to one simple statement:

It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it to blow an 11-month track record for something that might taste good at the moment but that will leave a sour aftertaste long after it’s gone. It’s not worth it to put a question in my head as to my willpower. It’s not worth it because after eating something with high carbohydrates I will probably feel bloated, stupid and annoyed at myself.

The truth is, even when it looks like it, it wouldn’t be worth it.

For me, my weight loss is not just about losing weight or “getting into shape”. My weight loss is linked to much more. My weight loss is linked to transforming my life, becoming who I should be, transforming not just my waistline but my worldview and experiencing life at a whole new level.

When I keep that in mind, then the rest of it fades away. So far I have not forsaken when I want the long term for what looks good in the short term. I have my eye focused on my long-term goals. Does that mean I don’t have tough days? Absolutely not. As I write this, today has been one of those days where it seems that if it can go wrong, it’s going to try to.

But as Rocky reminds me, it’s not how hard I can get, it’s how hard I can get hit.

Sometimes you can’t punch back at life in the way you want to. All you can do is double down your efforts and continue to do what you know will work, even when it takes time, when what you really want is to be able to strike back at the universe and all its unfairness. Truth is, that gets you nowhere. Repaying frustration with anger would wound you twice. You have to move beyond, focus on who you can help and who you can serve, and then just double down and go for it.

The universe doesn’t play fair. Mother nature plays dirty, and sometimes Murphy just doesn’t know when to quit.

But if you keep your eye on the prize, and learn to keep punching even after you have been hit harder than you can ever imagine, eventually you’ll arrive at where you want to be.

Stall Warning

Source.

When you fly a plane, if you try to climb too fast or you change your angle of attack (how aggressively the wing attacks the air) too suddenly, you create a stall. Depending upon your plane, you will get a nasty buzzing noise or the computer freaks out and starts yelling at you.

Unfortunately, stalls are also a part of weight loss, but they don’t come with a warning. They can happen after you try something specifically stupid, like pushing yourself too hard to hit a target. Possibly someone you know (or are reading about) has done this recently. Possibly someone who looks a lot like me.

Yes, I was stupid. In my race to make 230 lbs on January 1 (which I managed, which got me hundred pounds weight loss in eight months) I kind of pushed it a little hard. Unfortunately, the human body doesn’t play fair, and doesn’t give mulligans.

So I have spent the last two weeks at around 230 pounds. It’s frustrating to get on the scale and see that it really hasn’t moved, but I also realize that this is my body paying me back. I pushed hard for something, and I got it, but there is a cost with pushing that hard.

So I’m trying to be good, trying to stay hydrated and making sure I eat enough. It’s funny, in my ninth month of doing this, I am struggling to eat enough calories each day. Other than occasional psychological cravings for certain foods (Golden Double Stuf Oreos are particular repeat offender) I am really not interested in eating.

Part of that may be stress. Some of you may know, some of you may not, but I am no longer a part of the team at Price Chiropractic Center. I now have my own small practice which I am looking to expand. There is a lot of stress that comes with that, a lot of fear and a lot of action in spite of fear. Unfortunately, stress releases a lovely little hormone in our bodies called cortisol, and cortisol causes you to gain weight, or at least makes it very difficult to lose it.

So I realize between my shenanigans up to January 1, and the added stress load since December 30, weight loss for me right now is going to be a little bit difficult.

This is when the WHY is so important. Anyone who has heard me speak on weight loss will tell you that I have a firm belief that you need a WHY, as well as a HOW.

Whenever people ask me about weight loss, they invariably ask me how I did it. I always tell than that asking HOW is the wrong question. The most important question is WHY did I do it.

If you’re not motivated to lose weight, it doesn’t matter how you could lose weight, because you are not going to. You have to be motivated, you have to want it, and then you have to build that want, turning it into a desire, into a hunger, into a determination, and finally into an obsession.

You don’t lose 100 pounds of weight without getting determined. There have been many times in the last 8 ½ months where I could have failed. I haven’t. I have stayed on this new way of eating, even to the frustration of friends and family. And I stay on that because I have a very strong WHY.

So even in this stall, which is frustrating and probably a result of my going for it, I’m staying focused and determined.

Hopefully I’ll break through this stall soon, but if it lasts a while, so be it.

Next goal is 200. Hoping to be there by May 1.

Food is fuel – not fun

Food is fuel – not fun (with apologies to Bruce the shark in Finding Nemo).

Someone recently asked me what I eat. As I thought about it, I realized that I tend to eat a lot of the same things. Holly, my wife, has been very supportive of my lifestyle change, but I know it has been hard on her as she has felt like she can’t make a lot of the foods that she wants to make for me.

In conversation with someone, I was able to finally explain clearly what I feel about food at this point.

Food is fuel – not fun.

I use that analogy very specifically. For the longest time, I have used food for a source of comfort, and something to look forward to. In the past, foods like pizza, pasta, soda, milk and bread have been a staple of my life, and I have enjoyed eating them.

So why change how I was eating? Because for me, they were the wrong type of fuel.

Let me explain it like this.

If you inherited a really nice car, and that car ran on premium unleaded, what kind of fuel would you put in it?

You could put premium gasoline, or economy gasoline…or you could try any number of fuels like alcohol, aviation gas, kerosene, jet fuel or even diesel.

Sounds stupid right – you know what your car needs to run smoothly and without risking damage to the components, so that’s what you put in it… right?

Why is your body any different? You wouldn’t put a lower efficiency fuel in your car, so why would you put a lower efficiency fuel in your body.

So yes, I do eat a diet that is probably less varied than other people. And yes, there are times when I would like to indulge in something that would probably taste really good.

So why don’t I – simply because I have a WHY.

In my mind, I have a very specific set of reasons as to why I am eating and living the way I do.

For me, weight loss is not just about looking better, although that’s part of it, but it’s a small part. The WHY for my weight loss involves serving my family in the way I would like to. It involves having more energy to be able to do the things that I need to do for them. It involves being able to increase my income, and finally give them the lives I want them to have.

Whatever your reason to change your life, the intensity of your WHY has to be stronger than the difficulty of the HOW, so you can achieve the WHAT that is going to make all the difference to the quality of your life.

So I choose to fuel my body for performance and function, and not focus on the emotional aspect of eating. Focusing on how food made me feel emotionally is a big part of what resulted in me weighing 340 lbs.

If I can find some enjoyment in food along the way, fantastic. Great benefit, but it’s not the overriding factor in what I choose to eat.

Sometimes I get tired of eating the same kind of foods – so what? It’s just fuel. If I can change it up and make it less boring within the parameters of my food program – then great, let’s do that.

But I will not sacrifice my progress or my possibilities in the future just to appease how I feel emotionally. That’s not what food is about.

Food is fuel, not fun.

So if you find yourself reluctant to make a change that you know you need to, chances are it’s because food is an emotional decision in your life, not a physiological one.

Ask yourself – what foods am I unwilling to give up? Then try to decide why that is. Because if you are making emotional decisions about food, my guess is that you are probably struggling with self control over the things that you eat.

Emotional eating is dangerous, since it allows us to avoid confronting the problems that we want to ignore, and increases our weight at the cost of our health.

Emotional eating, coupled with a diet that is high in carbohydrates, is a sure fire way to end up dealing with obesity, diabetes and death.

So even though it’s hard, and boring sometimes, and frustrating, I choose to make the choice of fueling my body with what it needs, when it needs it, regardless of how I feel about it.

Food is fuel, and it can be fun, as long as it stays within the guidelines.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a wonderful day. It’s freezing cold where we are, and another winter storm is headed our way. More snow, and freezing temperatures, on top of already packed ice and crazy road conditions. Going to be a fun weekend!

Stay safe, and eat well.

An unexpected miracle…

I wrote last week about my unwanted Christmas present, when the scale showed me that I had gained weight. I was pretty sure it was water weight – but it still wasn’t what I was looking for.

When I started losing weight, I wanted to be at 250 lbs by Christmas. At the time, it seemed like a crazy goal that I could never reach.

Until I got there way earlier.

Then it was 240 by Christmas, but I achieved that early as well.

So then I wanted the big one – 100 lbs in 8 months.

When I started this journey on May 2, I weighed 330 lbs. To lose 100 lbs in 8 months, I would need to weigh 230 lbs by January 1, 2017.

It seemed impossible, but then it started to look like I could make it…and I got really hopeful..

Until last weekend. The scale showed me the bad news on Christmas day – there seemed to be no way I could reach my goal.

But I didn’t give up – I kept going, and going, and going. All through Christmas Day. Through a very stressful week at work, and through a weekend that was changing my life.

And then came the scale on Sunday. The moment of truth.

I knew there was still a chance that I could make it. When you are losing weight like I have done, there are things we call “stalls and whooshes”. A stall is when your body refuses to lose weight, hanging on as hard as it can to the weight…until it finally lets go.

And let go it did.

I stood on the scale, watching and waiting…would it work, had I made it, was I going to be rewarded for all my hard work and sacrifice...

Yes. Yes I was.

When I looked at the number I could see a 2, then a 3, and finally a 0.

I had done it.

100 lbs lost in 8 months – I weighed 230 lbs.

I can’t really tell you how it felt. It’s too hard to put into words. For just a moment, I felt at peace. I felt like a weight had been lifted from me. For one moment, the clouds had parted, and the sun shone through. I felt like I had achieved something unexpected – something magical.

Part of me wanted to cry, part of me wanted to shout, but the rest of me was at peace.

I realize weighing 230 lbs doesn’t make everything better. I am still facing huge challenges in my life as I try to move in the direction of my dreams. There are many hurdles to overcome, there is much work to be done.

Next up – Onederland. That’s the name we who have lost huge amounts of weight call that moment when the scale no longer starts with a 2, but instead begins with a 1.

My goal right now – to try and achieve that by May 1, 2017.

130 lbs in a year – 140 down from my highest.

That’s something that will require a lot of effort and a continued desire to improve.

I have come a long way, but there is still so far to go.

To all of you who have helped, supported and uplifted me – thank you. This is your victory too.

100 lbs – 8 months.

I never thought I could do it…

So what else can I achieve.

I wonder.

This post has been edited.

The Christmas present I didn’t want.

I guess I will have to settle for losing 95 lbs in 8 months and not 100. Oh well.

Seriously…Of all of the days for the scale to show me that I was up, Christmas Day was not the day I was looking for. I can honestly say that I have been “perfect” on my diet for the last 200 + days. I have not had a “cheat meal” or eaten anything that was outside of my parameters.

On Christmas Eve morning I was working with a weight loss client (yes, I am starting to do weight loss coaching) and told her how she shouldn’t base all of her energy on what the scale reads, but in trust in the process.

Those words came back hard on Christmas morning to me. Of all of the days, when there is going to be food all over the place, when no one would “judge me” for eating off of my diet, on a day when I could really use motivation, the scale shows I’m up 2 pounds.

Thanks life, good shot.

I’m happy to report that I didn’t buckle. I ate perfectly on Christmas day. Not one thing wrong. Not one candy, not one cinnamon roll, nothing. I ate exactly as I was supposed to eat. Sure, the scale doesn’t reflect it yet, but I trust the process.

When you have faith in the process, the results can’t hurt you as much. Sometimes you just have to walk in the direction of your dreams, entrusting you are doing the right things.

I think it was Thoreau who said that, but maybe he stole it from somebody else as well.

I don’t think I’m going to reach 230 pounds by New Year’s Day, which was my original goal. I would love to, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop. This process isn’t over until I weigh 180 pounds. Do I have to tweak it along the way, obviously.

But I know that the supposedly 2 pounds that I gained over the last week is nothing but water weight, and that as long as I am true to the process, everything else will work the way it is supposed to do.

For now, I have to be a good example for the people and coaching, and continue to fight even though the scale took a shot at me. Like Rocky said, "it’s not how hard you hit, but how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forwards."

Because the reality of it is…I only lose if I quit. All I have to do is keep working and I’m winning.

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas day or Happy Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate, or not. Hang in there, stay strong and eat well.

Your life deserves it. :)

This post has been edited.

Struggling through the Season

After losing 100 lbs, you'd think that I was on cruise mode. You’d think that I was locked in and safe.

Honestly…no.

Yes, I have eaten “clean” (not off my diet) for 232 consecutive days. That’s right – 232 days. Only twice have I gone over my calories. Once on my son’s graduation, and once on my birthday. Even then, I still ate the foods that work for my eating lifestyle, just in a little larger proportions.

People who have talked to me about my weight loss tell me that they couldn’t do it, and how proud they are of me for being so strong.

Truth is, I thought by now it would be a little easier. But it’s not...

Making changes in your life is never easy. It affects those around you in ways that is easy to overlook. My wife, who loves to cook, has had to endure 232 days of not cooking the kinds of foods that she loves. I think she feels like she is being forced into a ketogenic diet by default, and I know she is struggling with that, even though she tries not to show it.

And the holidays don’t make it any easier. Thanksgiving was especially tough. Being surrounded by family who were eating foods I love, while I ate turkey, ham and stir fried broccoli, was hard.

Now, moving into the Christmas season, I’m faced with even more temptation and pressures.

How do my choices affect those around me…should I have one meal that is not the best for my weight loss…what do we do with all the food that kind people invariably bring as gifts?

One meal would not change anything. Realistically, I could fast the whole day and eat one meal of anything and it wouldn’t significantly change my life.

But I must confess that I am incredibly reluctant to do so…because I am afraid. I am afraid that if I break one time, it will be easier for the next time. And the next, and the next and the next.

I think I’m getting some kind of an idea of how an alcoholic feels. One coke would be too many, and two would never be enough.

I’m trying right now to get to 230 lbs by new years day. That would be 100 lbs lost in 8 months, and 110 lbs overall.

It still feel weird to think of how much I have lost. How much I have changed physically.

And how much I am trying to change mentally.

Truth is, I’m still that 340 lb guy, desperately trying to lose weight, afraid that one wrong move will screw it all up. I’m still ashamed of how I look. I get that it’s better than it was, but it’s still not good enough, and I tremble to think that it may never be.

I have so many goals left to reach – so much of a life to change. Losing weight is only a step on the journey. An important step, a critical step, but it’s not the destination, it’s just a toll booth on the highway.

So I struggle…every day.

I struggle to fight against the negative self talk and the fears that drove me to use food as my drug.

I struggle against the angry teenager who still haunts my soul with his feelings of never being good enough, never fitting in, never feeling whole.

I struggle with the burdens I place on those around me as I try to become the person I feel I owe them.

Mostly, I just fight, because it’s all I can do right now.

I fight for my self esteem, for my hopes for the future and for my dream that I can feel like a “whole, complete and accepted person”. I fight to achieve the life I owe my family. I fight to find a pathway into the future that is better than the past.

But honestly, I think I fight most of all for peace. Peace in my soul, for I have known so little of it lately.

Tony Robbins once said that fat people were just people who were wearing their pain on the outside.

What I’ve found is that as the weight comes off, you have to deal with the pain and struggles that you were suppressing.

And that’s not easy.

But I struggle, and I fight and for today, that has to be enough, because it's honestly all I have.

To those of you who have supported me on this journey, I thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.

While I have to fight this myself, it’s easier with good people in my corner.

What does it mean to you?

Recently I was teaching a small group of 14 year olds about how they can learn to analyze a situation more intelligently. While I don’t know if they got the concept I was trying to get across, I hope that somewhere in their minds they stored this simple phrase…

“It’s never the event – it’s always the interpretation”.

I hope that it will come back to them at a time when they need it most in their lives. I sincerely believe that’s why we teach youth – it’s not that they will understand it right now, but at some point in the future they will see a situation and interpret it as we have taught them to do. Life will provide the example, but how we interpret that example makes all the difference in our lives. We teach kids so that the interpretation is loaded into the subconscious, so they can make the correct interpretation of the event when it occurs.

However, even knowing this truth, as adults we still jump to a conclusion when something happens, not realizing that we might have an option to redefine what the event means to us, so we can make it more empowering.

To some people, the idea that you can redefine your interpretation of an action or an event seems ridiculous. These are the kinds of people who I think of as “reaction machines”. They perceive an event or a situation, and they react to it (either emotionally or physically) without thinking. Have you ever done that on occasion – my guess is that you have, because we all have. Especially in a tense situation, or with someone whom we have an emotional relationship, or just a professional one.

I’ve been married for 20 years now. I can honestly say in that time, we have had very few arguments, and we have never had a “fight”. I define a fight as “when two people who love each other try to hurt the other person rather than come to an agreement about a problem”. I saw too much of that as a child, watching my mother and father fight endlessly about my father’s drinking.

My mother chose to interpret his drinking, and his struggles to provide financially for his family, as an affront to her and to her children, and felt hurt and angry. Imagine the possible differences in her marriage had she been able to interpret his actions differently.

As a child, I was too young to interpret his actions with any perspective. As a young man in my 20s, I too chose to interpret his actions as those of a selfish, immature and cruel man who cared more about his own pleasure and enjoyment than he did about his family’s welfare.

Now, as a 46 year old, I have chosen to interpret his actions differently. As I have learned more about people, and they way our minds work, I have come to interpret his actions as a desperate attempt to self medicate his own pains and grief. Himself a product of a dysfunctional childhood, he struggled with his own demons, and was trying to survive as best he knew how. Did he make great choices – no, but I choose to believe that he was trying to do his best.

I don’t think how I chose to interpret his actions as a young man made any great difference to him. I’m not sure that he would care how I choose to interpret them now. We haven’t spoken in years – and I don’t expect we will ever have a meaningful conversation about it in the future, if any conversation.

But the change in my interpretation has affected me profoundly. For years I carried around anger, hatred and repulsion for him. Thoughts of him would frustrate me, cause changes in my psychology and affect my life in negative ways. When I thought about him, I felt abandoned, rejected and minimalized, like my worth was so insignificant because he didn’t care enough to be there.

I carried, and to some extent still carry, those kinds of feelings. The scars of those emotions still haunt me to this day, and I can see how the interpretation that I chose, and the emotions that came from that choice, still impact my life, and that of my family.


Imagine the changes in my life that could have occurred had I chosen a different interpretation, seen from another point of view the actions of a man who was trying, and failing, to do the right thing. Imagine if I had felt like collateral damage, rather than someone who wasn’t worth caring about. What could that have done to my sense of self worth, and to my confidence and attitudes.

As a child, you are always trying to find an answer to a situation, some kind of logical connection to make sense of the world. For me, since my father treated me poorly, I subconsciously chose to see his actions as a rejection of myself, not as a symptom of his own issues. No child wants to see their father as damaged, so I chose to think that he was trying to do the right thing, but I was somehow unworthy of his affection and his concern.

Was he trying to do the right thing, or was he just being a jerk like I described earlier – who knows? But my choice of interpretation is the greatest control I have over the situation, and it forces me to re-examine all my actions.

A mind that is awakened to the possibility of situational redefinition is a mind that has left reaction, and the dark abyss of being at the mercy of other people’s actions.

The mind that is awakened to the possibility of choosing how to redefine a situation is a mind that has struck out on a journey for that greatest of realities – a universe full of possibilities, no longer chained to the actions of others for meaning.

The mind that is awakened to these possibilities is a mind that can change the world.

And it is a mind that can know peace.