Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

I know so many people get stressed this time of year about overeating. There are so many opportunities to overeat during the holidays, that it's easy to binge on the wrong foods. I thought I would offer some tips on what has worked for me when I'm in a setting with lots of junk food.

If it were four years ago, I would think nothing of downing a plate of Christmas cookies in one sitting. I have a big appetite and I had difficulty stopping at just one cookie. So what's changed for me that I'm able to have better control? Healthy eating.

I haven't had my body fat checked since the beginning of October. My trainer suggested I wait two months before I have it tested again. The last time it was checked, it was at 13.24 percent. I'm hoping it will be lower when I have it checked again in the first week of December.

I've been continuing my strength training, working out five times a week. My weight was expected to drop a few pounds, in order to get to a lower percentage. My waist size has gone down to around 32, which means I've achieved the same weight as high school. I tried on a few pairs of 32 pants, one fit but the other one didn't. I still fit into size 34 so I don't have to buy new clothes.  I can't believe that I could fit into size 44, it just amazes me when I look at those pants! I keep them as a reminder of how far I've come.

When I was asked to share my weight loss journey for this blog, I thought it would be a fairly simple task. I started seriously tracking my weight in April when I was 270 lbs and 6 months later am at 220 lbs. This weight loss was achieved largely through diet changes using a nutrition system. My wife had lost a lot of weight by eating clean but was coming up short on energy and we decided to get on a protein shake based nutritional system which helped her with her energy, and me with my weight. 

On the surface, that is what has happened. If you are a facebook friend, that is what you could see from the various pictures and status updates shared over the last few months.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, you were probably like me at one time. I would always try one diet after another and never get anywhere. If I lost weight, it wouldn't last and I would have to find another diet that worked.

So how did I finally lose over 150 pounds and keep it off for almost three years now? Well, believe it or not, I didn't focus on losing weight when I finally succeeded.

Well over a year ago I was fed up with my weight.  I had grown fat and lazy.  Laziness was further perpetuated through the programming my brain had undergone with the years of poor eating and neglect.  I was addicted to sugar and fatty foods and eating the way I did sent me spiraling into depression which often then made it easy to be lazy. It ensured a self fulling prophecy of health failure since like any addition the substance (food in this case) tricks the brain into satisfying itself but with destructive results.

I woke up to what was happening and decided to try and lose weight.  Knowing well it was going to take a lifestyle change I cut sugar out of my diet and ate a high protein / low carb diet and lost over 40+ lbs.  However with the rising costs of food, having a family that has no dietary restrictions and having a disposition that proved to be weaker than I first thought, I fell back into my old routine of addictive sugar/fatty diet and gained my weight back.  Cost of food was really the breaking point since it is very expensive if you want to move completely away from eating processed foods.