It’s that one weekend of the year when America cares about horse racing for some reason.

Too good not to share

Bought some new clothes tonight. Decided to do a little comparison.

The new clothes sizes: Jeans (36), Shirt (L)

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The one set of old clothes I kept and didn’t donate: Jeans (58), Shirt (5X)

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Minor update

Been a while since I updated the old blog/twitter. You might notice I had to move over to wordpress since Posterous is shutting down (thanks, Twitter). Ah well.

The weight loss has slowed considerably over the past month, which is neither alarming nor specifically discouraging. Upon my return from New York in February, I was battling a nasty infection that I won’t go into, except to say it resulted in me spending a week bedridden, a week in the hospital, an impromptu surgery, and another week bedridden. Oh, and my kidneys failed. All of this is entirely unrelated to the weight loss and the weight loss surgery I had in August.

It’s all better now. But it resulted in me spending a fair amount of time not doing anything, not eating anything, being on IV fluids, and not working out at all. I ended up gaining about 30 pounds in water weight during my week in the hospital, but once my kidneys started functioning again it came off very quickly. Ultimately, I ended up dropping a fair amount of weight. Unfortunately, a lot of it was muscle weight.

So, for the past month or so I’ve been hovering around 230 lbs, give or take a pound depending on how much clothing I have on and which scale you believe. The good news is that the scale at the gym (the fancy one with all the handles and knobs and I think there’s a hamster in a wheel somewhere) tells me that while my weight is staying about the same, I’m losing fat and gaining muscle. In fact, over a one week period in March I lost five pounds of fat and gained five pounds of muscle.

So, here you go. Me at 230 pounds. 136 less than my pre-surgery weight, 180 less than my heaviest. The next 50 will come a lot more slowly and be a lot harder earned. Here’s to it.  (I just noticed this is a mirror image, but meh, I’m not changing it now.)

Things you don’t think about

Tomorrow, assuming the weather gods don’t smite us, we’ll be flying home from New York.In packing for this, I’m reminded of thoughts that struck me on the flight out.

There are a lot of things that people probably take for granted about being a more average size. For instance, the ability to comfortably sit in coach on an airplane. My tall friends will relate — I’m sure they dread any flight in coach where legroom is simply not available. But for me, it was always a different problem. I’m quite average in height (5’9″ or so), so legroom in coach has not been an issue. But seat width, seat belt length, seat trays, arm rests, and just about everything else was a problem.

Not anymore, thankfully. On the flight out, this was my first time flying in coach since losing over 150 pounds (not including flying Southwest where I would buy two seats for me). So, not only could I comfortably occupy my seat without encroaching on my seatmate, but I could buckle the seatbelt without an extender (and still have slack left). I could lower my tray table and have plenty of room to spare, this was a very new experience for me. But even more alarming was I could use my armrests.

Let me explain. When you’re 400+ pounds with my build, you can probably get the armrests down on each side of you, but there’s no way under current laws of physics your arms are going to make contact with them. My typical flight behavior involved an awkward crossing of my arms and hooking my fingers into something so my arms wouldn’t flail into the passengers next to me. But this time, my arms would rest comfortably on the armrests. And, I mean, actual comfort. It’s a weird thing to obsess about, but I’ve spent my entire adult life being tremendously overweight and have never had what I would describe as a normal experience on a plane. Even when I lost 100 pounds back in ’01/’02, I was still over 300 pounds, which is still a lot to be carrying around.

Anyway, that’s my bit of normalcy that I’m obsessing about these days. I think the next one will be when I can comfortably cross my legs. I can get close, but I wouldn’t describe it as comfortable or natural at the moment.

Down to 250 now. Need to go shopping for new pants, I’m swimming in the ones I bought in mid-December, and I bought them a size smaller in the hopes they’d last a couple of months.

259. For this following along at home, that’s 150 off my peak weight. 79 to go!

New Goals

As of this morning, I’ve lost about 100 pounds since my surgery on August 31.  I say about, since it varies depending on whose scale you talk to — my doctor’s scale says I passed the century mark last week, my bedroom scale this morning says I’m 2 pounds away.

My weight loss has obviously and expectedly slowed down, which has its plusses; for instance, clothing lasts me more than three weeks now.

Hitting this point has made me re-evaluate where my goals are.  Originally, my goal was to get to 200 pounds.  Honestly, I thought that was a lofty goal since I’d been over 300 lbs for pretty much my entire adult life.  But now, I see this as something that may be setting my sights a bit short.  So, instead, I’m going to shoot for what the various charts and guides say is my “ideal maximum weight”, which is 180 lbs.

Right now I sit at 268 by my bedroom scale.  When I decided I had to make a permanent change and bring my weight down once and for all, I was 409 lbs.  That’s 141 lbs down from my peak two years ago.

So what’s changed in my life?  I’m buying clothes at regular department stores, and have a much larger selection to choose from.  Back in the day, my mission was find clothing in my size, then pick out the stuff I hated the least.  It’s a pretty different situation these days, and I have to stop myself from buying too much, since it’s still going to be a short-term period on any clothing I buy.

I exercise a lot, especially compared to my old routine.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’m up at 5AM, at the gym before 6, and I do an hour of cardio and strength training in the exercise room.  Every Saturday I’m at the gym by 10 to do an hour of cardio and resistance training in the pool.  I have a heart monitor so I can monitor which zone I’m in to make my workouts more efficient and burn the most fat.

I walk faster than I used to.  I was quite the dawdler whereas now I find myself at a brisk pace.  I’m waiting on the results from the blood tests I had done last week, but I can say my blood pressure and resting heart rate have both dropped significantly.

Flying was an incredibly different experience for me.  The seat was comfortable, I had plenty of room, I could fit behind my tray, I did not need a seat belt extender (and even had slack available).  

I started keeping a food journal again this week as part of my new goals, and it turns out I’m currently eating about 1400 calories a day, which is way up from my post-surgery self.  I’m getting between 70 and 90 grams of protein a day, which is more than I thought I was getting.  My meals are still small and slow, which is good.  I enjoy about one 12 ounce beer a week — I pick out something with low carbonation that I can sip on over the course of an hour.  Otherwise the occasional glass of scotch (single malt, neat, yum) or red wine might happen in any given week.  I’m doing very well keeping on track.

I have a ton of loose skin.  I try not to get down about it, as I knew it would happen.  I look at the extra arm I have hanging under my real arm as a hard-earned trophy.  Once my weight has leveled out and I’ve kept it steady for a year, I can look into plastic surgery.  But right now, shirtless Craig is not for the faint of heart.

So, here I sit, less than 100 lbs from my new weight loss goal.  By the time I’m done, I will have lost 229 lbs from my peak weight, and will weigh less than the amount of weight gone.  It’s kind of crazy to comprehend that I will literally be less than half the man I used to be.

4.5 months post-surgery, 100 down, less than 90 to go.  Here’s to it!

As of this morning, down 70 pounds since August 24th. Chugging along.