Let's See if Jeff can be Skinny Again

I've heard about other people blogging about their weight loss efforts, and I'm hoping it will help me, too. With a little encouragement from my online peeps, I bet I'll be able to drop this weight like I cut it off with a sling blade. Some folks call it a kaiser blade, I call it a sling blade. OK. Enough.

My body looks like a pear. From my head down to the top of my abdomen, I look OK. Then I start to balloon out a little bit. Go down further, and I balloon out even more. From the side, I don't have too much of a gut, because the weight is all stored on my sides. That doesn't mean I don't have tons and tons of room to lose the gut.

I started to gain weight when I was a reporter. With the freedom to eat whatever I wanted... well, I ate whatever I wanted. Plus, I got home way too late at night, and ate then, rather than bringing my dinner to work with me as well as my lunch (reporters tend to work real late, in case you're scratching your head right now).

Now let's get something straight. Eating what I wanted didn't mean I was scarfing down thrice-fried chicken thighs and 55-gallon drums of Coca Cola every day. I was eating too much and I was eating too fast. Oh, a banana? It's good for me. I'll eat the whole bunch. Apples? Awesome! I'll eat three. Chicken breasts! I'll take two! Corn on the cob? Well, I can't stop at just one.

I needed to slow down and chew my food a lot more. You fill up faster that way. I don't know why I ate (and usually still eat, unfortunately) too fast. I think it may stem from my days before college when I was a favorite bullying target (which deserves a separate blog on its own). The gigantic jock types would steal food from me, and I was too scared and lanky to do anything about it. So, I ate as fast as I could so there was nothing to steal. I feel marginally better about this now that I know these guys are all still in Botetourt County, making 1/5th the money I do and cruising the high school football games for chicks a few days before their court dates for whatever misdemeanors you can imagine.

Another cause of my weight gain is my love for the taste of beer. I still believe light beer is nasty, but I was drinking way too much of the stuff I thought tasted good. Newcastle, Lowenbrau, Sam Adams... the list goes on. In retrospect, I didn't make enough money reporting to afford beer that costs $9/six pack, but there are some things that are worth a little more money.

About 17 months after being on my own, I was trying on jeans one day at Marshall's, and I got a bad case of muffin top. You all know what that is, and if it's ever happened to you, it doesn't feel good.

With heart disease and cancer in my family, I knew I had to do something. So I started trying my best to eat a lot less.

Again, understand I am not one of those people who hates vegetables. I love them. I love them raw, grilled, or steamed. I don't much care for them boiled into unrecognizable mush. I relish a great salad (but I hate iceberg lettuce, so I use field greens or spinach). I love grilled, steamed or baked fish. I love sweet potatoes baked, opened, and eaten (hold the marshmallows). I didn't grow up eating garbage. So, the food I eat isn't so much what needs to change now as much as the amount I move.

I have, however, cut back significantly on my beer intake. I have maybe one or two a week now, and it's usually a Guiness Draught, which, believe it or not, has fewer calories than all those carbonated spit-and-urine beers so many people think are so great. Liquor is a rare treat. Plus, I've axed all the excess sugar I can in my diet. Have any of you had Coke Zero? I can't believe how good that stuff is to have no calories at all. Diet Mountain Dew still has quite a bit of bite, as well, as does the Black Cherry Citrus version of Fresca. If I'm feeling totally drained from nights the baby doesn't sleep well or just plain run down, I grab a sugar-free Red Bull. I also eat fat-free ice cream now, but only maybe three nights a week. I still can't bring myself to try sugar-free, fat-free ice cream. I think that'd be like buying a Lamborghini with the V-12 removed and replaced with a four-banger from a '97 Toyota Camry. I've also discovered the glory of Jimmy Dean D-Light breakfast sandwiches which gives me some protein to smack that sluggish metabolism around. There are a few gutbomb splurges, but I will swear on a stack they are few and far between. Plus, if you don't eat something fattening every once in a while, when you find it's your only choice, you'll also find yourself binging on it when the satiety hits you.

So, the real change: exercise. I was a regular exerciser up until around November 2004, when graduate school got nuts, then finding a job after graduate school about killed me, as I decided mid-way through graduate school I would not pursue broadcast journalism, but use my degree towards a related profession. I got back on the wagon around 2006 with Weight Watchers, but then I got married to my beautiful wife, and our lives got crazy. Good, my dear Kimberly, very, very good. But crazy. I tried NutriSystem for a few weeks, but that food, no matter what they tell you on TV, is absolutely horrible. It's really the worst food I've ever had. The packaging it comes in would be more palatable. Becoming a parent also leaves little to no time to take care of yourself. But for the sake of my wife and my son, I've gotta get this weight off.

Kimberly has been nothing less than fantastically supportive. When she gets home, she lets me take an hour or so break from being a "manny" and go to the gym. Generally, I knock out about 600 calories or so with a combination of weight lifting, body weight exercises, and intense cardiovascular work on an elliptical machine. My HOA fees paid, for a while, for a personal trainer, but my community decided not to renew his contract, so I'm trying to remember the lessons he taught me.

What I'll try to do as well is post my calorie burning total after each workout on Facebook (I hope I can do that through my BlackBerry and not through a status update) and post total weight loss at the beginning of each week. I'm not going to post my current weight until I'm where I want to be. I realize that could take a year, maybe more, with my new habits. Y'all can just do the math if you're really curious about how much thunder my thighs really made. *Pause* Wow, that sounded really awful.

Anyway, I'm tagging all Facebook friends to this post because I want everyone to know this problem can happen to anyone. If currently you're at where I want to be, thank God every day for it, and pray for the strength to stay there. If you're not where you want to be, pray for the strength to get there.

Blessings, and be well.