Weight Loss Journal and Musings

Friday, October 25th, 2013

Yesterday I decided to walk laps around the block, and I walked around twice. Today when I went to walk (after breakfast, before lunch), they were pouring concrete at the corner of Bloomfield and Civic Center, so I walked inside the perimeter of the complex where I live. I did two laps today. (or one and a half, because I didn't go all the way around the second time.)

When I came in for lunch, there was about half the amount of leftovers as I had for lunch yesterday (pasta, veggies, and meat) so when I heated it up, it gave me an idea. If you tried to stuff a sausage and you squeezed out the other end at the same time you were stuffing the other end, then the sausage would be thicker if you stuffed more than you squeezed out. On the other hand, if you squeezed out more than you stuffed into the other end, the sausage would be skinnier.

This got me to thinking about how much food I eat in a month before I started dieting. If I could load that food onto the back of a truck, there would be a lot of food. On the other hand, if I was dieting and I loaded the equivalent amount of food onto the back of a truck, there should be a lot less food there.

If I decrease my portions and only eat three times a day, my body would have no choice but to lose weight.

Saturday, October 26th, 2013

I skipped dinner last night. Glen was going to make dinner, but since Andrew had put the chicken back in the freezer, Glen figured that it would take too long to thaw out, so he decided to skip making dinner. I decided to seize the opportunity to try something I had been thinking about.

By the time I went to bed, I wasn't even hungry. My theory is that I have so much body fat for my body to catabolize, that my body can't really go hungry when I skip a meal. When I woke up this morning, I weighed 244 pounds. Down two and a half pounds from 246.5 pounds yesterday. I think I'm going to utilize this technique in the future!

Sunday, October 27th, 2013

This morning I weighed 242.5 pounds. A couple of hours after breakfast I walked laps down Civic Center drive, turned on Bloomfield, and entered the complex through the main gate, then turned on Tomahawk Lane and did the circuit again. I did this three different times today, and didn't count my laps, but I must've done at least 8 laps or so.

I ended up skipping lunch today.

Thursday, October 31st, 2013

On Tuesday I went to see my new doctor and he decided to take me off Atenolol, because when he took two EKG's on me my heart rate was in the 30's and 40's, and the normal range is 60 to 100. He wants to see me next Tuesday to check up on me.

Yesterday I weighed 241.5 in the morning, and today I was 242. I skipped lunch today, and ate a little peanut butter as a snack.

Sunday, November 10th, 2013

I got sick on Halloween night and lost some weight, I didn't eat at all on Friday, November 1st and I went down to 234 pounds at one point. My weight bounced back up to 239.5 after I got well, and stayed there for several days.

I skipped lunch yesterday and walked 4 laps around the complex, I assume that equals one mile. When I woke up this morning, I weighed 237 pounds.

Saturday, November 16th, 2013

This morning I weighed 239 pounds, I ate a lot of food at Johnathan's birthday party last night. For the past week I've been yo-yoing between 237 pounds and 238 pounds. Yesterday I think I broke through to 236.5, but the scale kept jumping back and forth between lower numbers and 237, so I couldn't be sure.

For the past three days in a row I've been going to the gym, our bathtub is messed up, it fills up with water and the water doesn't go down, so the last time I cleaned it I didn't take a shower and worked out at the gym and took a shower there, and I've done that three days in a row.

Last night at Johnathan's birthday party, Flower said it looked like I had lost weight. I asked her how much it looked like I had lost, and she said 20 pounds. People are actually starting to notice that I'm losing weight!

Monday. November 25th, 2013

I weighed 234.5 pounds this morning. I put my clothes and shoes and socks on and weighed myself, and I was 239 pounds! I seem to be firmly under 240 pounds. This was without my jacket. My goal was to weigh less than 250 pounds with clothes on at one point, and now I've reached the next milestone of being under 240 with clothes on. My next milestone will be getting below 233 pounds, that is the lowest I've ever been when I dieted in the past.

I've lost 20 pounds since October 10th, I went from 254.5 to 234.5!

Thursday, December 12th, 2013

I weighed 230 pounds this morning. Yesterday I started doing fasted cardio before breakfast. I've been eating raw broccoli as a snack between lunch and dinner, and I love it! I'm really looking forward to my next milestone. If I can drop just one more pound, I'll be in uncharted territory, and I'm so excited to be on this weight loss journey!

Thursday, January 30th, 2014

On Friday, January 24th, I crossed over into the 220's by weighing in at 229.5 pounds. I have steadily lost weight every day since then, and weighed in at 225 this morning. Yesterday, I went to the gym and got my bodyfat measured, and I was at 27.2 percent, down from 31.1% in December.

I eat a cup of oatmeal with a cup and a half of water nuked in the microwave for breakfast, then I have that for lunch as well as a shot of whey protein. For dinner, I have one plate of whatever Glen cooks for dinner.

Saturday, February 1st, 2014

My weight bounced up to 226 today, I think that Costco pizza I had yesterday is the cause, I looked up the calories online and it was 700 calories. For lunch today I ate at Jack in the Box, and I spent $9 and ate over 1,000 calories. From now on I need to eat my cheat meals at Subway, because I have more control over how many calories I eat and I get full on less calories.

Sunday, February 2nd, 2014

My Cousin Anthony's girlfriend Nicole came over for the Super Bowl today, and she told me I looked like I had lost weight since the last time she had seen me. I was ten pounds lighter than I was at Johnathan's birthday party in November the last time she saw me.

Saturday, May 10th, 2014

I know I haven't checked in for a long time, but I finally got below the 220 mark. I was 215.8 pounds early this morning. For the past 6 weeks I've been losing an average of 2.2 pounds per week! Sometimes I lose less than 2 pounds and sometimes more, but I've been consistently losing weight. I'm in a May 1st through July 31st weight loss challenge at Bodybuilding.com, and because of that I was checking through my weight loss log and found that every Saturday since March 29th I've weighed less than the Saturday before. I even changed my sig there to reflect that.

I also got a new scale about a week ago, I paid $35 for it and got free shipping from Amazon. It is more accurate than my old scale. My old scale only measured to within half a pound, but my new scale measures to within a fifth of a pound. It lights up with blue digital numerals, and I can take my weight in a dark room without turning on the light, unlike my old scale. I measured my weight with the new scale, and then tried my old scale, and my old scale was half a pound heavier. My old scale had been lying to me all of this time! My new scale takes four triple A batteries, so I have to make sure I don't run out of those.

Wednesday, May 14th, 2014

I've been doing a thousand crunches every other day in sets of 50, and early this morning I had a dream that I was doing crunches and missed my first class at school because it was taking so long. I dreamt that I found an ab machine that I had never used before, and I was trying to figure out how to use it. There was some cute girl in the dream, a Hispanic chick who reminded me of a girl in my creative writing class.

Friday, May 16th, 2014

Something weird happened at the gym today. After running two and a half miles on a treadmill, I got in the pool and swam half a mile to earn a quest on Fitocracy, and when I got out of the pool and showered, when I tried to wrap my towel around me I was able to secure one end to the other! Several months ago or a year ago, I was simply too fat to accomplish this, but now I'm skinny enough that I can tie my towel around me!

Wednesday, May 21st, 2014

Today Andrew and Josh's Bubby came to get them and she saw me, and said it looked like I had lost weight. I asked her if it was noticeable, and she said "Hell yes!"

It's a good feeling when people notice my weight loss.

Tuesday, May 27th, 2014

Today I went to the clinic and the doctor and Delbert both mentioned that it looked like I had lost a significant amount if weight.

Monday, June 2nd, 2014

I weighed in really heavy this morning, at 213.6 pounds. That is exactly one pound heavier than I was a week ago, so it is really disheartening to see such a lack of progress. On Saturday night I got paid, and went to the corner store and had a pastry, chocolate milk, and a Klondike bar, and that really threw me off my diet. I didn't know one little cheat meal could throw me out of whack for this many days. I plan on fasting through lunch today, to see if that can make a difference.

Monday, June 9th, 2014

Today I weighed in at 210.4 pounds, a record low! I took a crap three times before finally getting that weight, I took my meds after crapping the first time. I need to wait to take my meds from now on unless I have to go somewhere, because I probably could've gotten a weight a fifth of a pound lower, or even more. My Body Mass Index was 28.9 this morning, I crossed over into the 28's! I measured my waist circumference, and it was 41.5 inches, so that's coming down, too!

Tuesday, June 10th, 2014

Yesterday for lunch I ate the last of the enchiladas after eating a roast beef sandwich, so since Glen wasn't cooking dinner, I skipped dinner. For my PM weigh-in last night I was 212.8, that was my lowest PM weigh-in so far, and this morning, my AM weigh-in was 209 pounds, a new record low! My body mass index was 28.7! I measured my waist with the tape measure and I think I was 41 inches, I can't wait to cross over into the 30's!

My Cousin Anthony came over to do his laundry today and he saw me and said I looked "crazy skinny" and that I had lost an incredible amount of weight since he last saw me. I've probably lost close to twenty pounds since the last time I spent a lot of time with him.

Sunday, June 15th, 2014

My Cousin Johnathan came by today and he was amazed at my weight loss. He said my face looks different, and he can really see a difference.

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

I went to Target today and tried on a pair of large shorts, I normally wear extra-large. They fit really well, and the lady that worked there said I looked like I wore a medium.

Friday, August 1st, 2014

I was out looking for Scrappy because he got out, and Chris our neighbor said she didn't even recognize me at first because I had lost so much weight.

Sunday, September 7th, 2014

At the gym today, T.J. told me it looked like I had lost about 50 pounds.

Friday, November 7th, 2014

Last week I hit a new record low of 204 pounds! I got paid on November 3rd, and I started gaining some weight since then. I went to the gym 20 days in a row, and I got on the exercise bike for 30 minutes a day during that time. I had to stop going to the gym for a few days, because I had a lot of schoolwork to do, but I plan on going back today. On Tuesday the 4th, election day, I went to Costco and got the two-year 24-Hour Fitness membership for $370 and I went over to the 24-Hour Fitness in Santa Fe Springs and got my membership. The Costco website says you can only redeem one of those membership certificates once, but at the gym I go to they let you redeem as many times as you want. I ordered a tie-dye towel from the same place where I ordered my tie-dye t-shirts, and I plan on bringing it with me to the gym when I go to the pool and the Jacuzzi.

A few days ago, I accidentally kicked Josh's football over a brick wall into somebody's backyard. They found out nobody lives there, so I got the stepladder and climbed over the wall and threw it back to Josh, and I climbed back over. In 2012, I couldn't climb over a brick wall, that's how much my strength has improved!

Tuesday, February 17th, 2015

This morning I started off the day by getting a Like from IFBB Pro Rich Gaspari at Twitter, I had responded to a question he asked yesterday about chest day, and told him that I was doing 100 pushups every morning because I don't have easy access to a gym. After taking my meds, I did 100 pushups in sets of 25, 20, and 15 before breakfast. This is day three of doing 100 pushups a day. When I got to school, they were having a health fair, so I went to the booth where they were taking people's blood pressure, and mine was 115/78 and my heart rate was 74. When I got done getting the goodies and paperwork from them they challenged me to a pushup contest with another dude, and I pumped out 23 in addition to the 100 I did earlier that morning.

When I got home, I ate a dinner of beans, Spanish brown rice, avocado, and fish and corn tortillas. Last Thursday I was walking home from the bus that dropped me off on Firestone Blvd., and I walked down Paramount toward Florence and saw some avocados on the ground. There is an avocado tree in front of an apartment building, and every day since then I have gone back and I've gotten a total of 5 avocados from there. They get ripe and drop to the ground, and some of them are too damaged to mess with, but some of them that I've found so far have tiny cracks and I washed them with soap and water and put them in a cupboard to ripen. Now I can get some essential fats in my diet, and they taste really good, just like the avocado tree that grew on the side of my Grandmother's house when I was a kid.

Since November I have gained weight steadily, but I haven't allowed my morning weight to hit 220 or higher. This morning I was 218.4 pounds, I've been watching what I eat for the most part, but I have the urge to eat cheat meals at night time. Tonight I had a bowl of Lucky Charms, but I used a protein shake because we don't have any milk. At the very least, I am mitigating my weight so I maintain instead of gaining; that isn't as good as losing the weight, but it's better than letting it skyrocket out of control.

Tuesday, March 17th, 2015

My weight has gotten to 222.2 pounds, but I'm trying to control it. I went and worked out at the 24 Hour Fitness in La Mirada on Beach Blvd. today, I had known about that gym for a long time, but hadn't gone in until today. I figured that since I'm on Spring Break, I can waste some time, since it's a longer bus ride than the 24 Hour Fitness I normally go to on Imperial Highway and Carmenita.

All the bench presses were taken, so I did dumbbell press with a weight bench using 60 pound dumbbells, then a bench press opened up and I grabbed it. There was already a 45 pound plate on each side. Prior to this, the most I had ever benched was 165 pounds. It's kind of a crazy thing, I only meant to go up to 165 or 175, but there were no 10's handy, so I put a couple of 25's (one on each side) and benched 185 pounds for 3 reps! That's an awesome personal record for me! I then did five reps at 175 and five reps at 165, then I did 5 sets at 155.

Monday, May 25th, 2015

My weight was 234 pounds this morning, my eating has gotten out of control. I ate three grilled cheese sandwiches today, (one at a time) and this got me to thinking, that diet is the major component of losing weight, so I'd better get olive oil when I get paid on the first so I can get oregano and whole grain wheat bread so I can eat that instead of using butter or margarine.

I found out Pompeian isn't a good brand, I need to get Kirkland organic extra virgin olive oil. I can get oregano at the dollar store. I have my grocery list for June made out, I just need to print it out.

Tuesday, May 26th, 2015

I weighed 232.6 this morning, and I went to the 24 Hour Fitness gym in La Mirada on Beach Blvd. I feel so out of shape compared to how I felt in October when I was under 210 pounds. When I did incline bench press today, I was so much weaker than I was a couple of months ago. It was crazy, I don't ever want to be that out of shape again. When I ran on a treadmill I only ran for half a mile, I need to gradually build up to where I was before.

December 2015

I went to the grand openings of the 24 Hour Fitness in Downey and Cerritos, they are both Supersports. I ended up becoming a member at the Cerritos branch, I will pay $39.99 per month, and double that once a year every May. I think it's worth it, because there are so many Supersports, and this amount is reasonable. One good thing about Supersport is they have towel service, you can get a big towel for showering and a smaller one to use as a sweat rag.

August 15th, 2016

In the Summer I went up to my sister Dianna's in Antelope, near Sacramento. I weighed around 221 when I left, and I came back weighing 233. My Cousin Squeenie said it looked like I lost weight, so I might have recomped while I was up there. I had been eating quinoa and tuna and olive oil while I was up there, and I was going to the gym. I regret that I didn't go to the gym every day, next summer I'm going to try to change that. I signed up for intermediate/advanced weight training on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that should keep me consistent. I bought a rice cooker at Target, so I plan on cooking quinoa.

September 15th, 2016

The last time I weighed myself, I was 226.8 pounds. I started going to the gym after school on days I don't lift weights and on weekends, I've been really consistent. I went from riding the stationary cycle 35 minutes for a little over 8 miles to 40 minutes for a little over 9 miles. I made some quinoa over the weekend, and I went to the school on a Saturday to go to the math lab, and I brought two cups of quinoa, three tablespoons of avocado oil, and two cans of tuna. I really liked it, so on Monday the 12th I brought some to school along with some fruit, and I really liked it, so I've been bringing it to school every day. Tuesday I only brought a cup and a half of quinoa and two tablespoons of avocado oil, and Wednesday I brought one cup of quinoa and one can of tuna and one tablespoon of avocado oil. The reason is I've been using MyFitnessPal and it says my calories for lunch were way too high, so I'm trying to limit what I eat and exercise more often. I'm planning on going to the gym and riding a stationary cycle before breakfast eventually, but I haven't done that yet.

October 14th, 2016

I joined the Oct/Nov 2016 weight loss thread at Bodybuilding.com that is led by Hanger, my starting weight was 226.4, and during the first weekly weigh-in on Friday October 7th, I gained weight and weighed in at 228.6, but I lost some weight this week and weighed in today at 224 pounds. I went to the park on Rives in Downey last night and ran 1.1 miles (I ran the first .55 mile, then I walked and ran the second lap), I need to start doing that more frequently. I'm hoping to lose two pounds a week from here on in. This morning I had a cup of oats with water, and the egg whites from two hard boiled eggs.

November 19th, 2016

On October 26th, I got down to 221 pounds, but I got my financial aid on October 28th and for the next week, I ate out and slipped off my diet and re-gained a lot of weight. I was at my heaviest yesterday, on November 18th, when I weighed 234.8 pounds. Yesterday I hopped back on my diet, and didn't eat any junk food, I bought some broccoli and boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cooked some Quinoa. This morning I weighed in at 233.6, so I lost a little over a pound. I need to go into the math lab today, and afterwards I plan on going to the gym. I want to be more consistent with going to the gym, for the first 12 days of November I exercised every day, but I slipped off.

One of my strategies is to go to sleep earlier in the evening, and avoid staying up late on weekends. When i stay up later at night, I get tempted to over eat.

Friday, February 24th, 2017

I went off my diet and got up to 254 pounds, but in February I got an iPad and downloaded the Loseit app. I joined Planet Fitness, and I've been consistently going to the gym. Loseit app is better than myfitnesspal, because I can subtract calories from any workout. With myfitnesspal, not every workout can be subtracted. I weighed 249.4 yesterday, and I've been consistent with my diet for five or six days, so we'll see how it goes.

Monday, November 12, 2018

I was at my Mom’s place for a month, we went to a casino and she won $117, so she gave me $60 to get a gym membership at Bishop Fitness Center and I used $7 of my own money. The initiation fee was $20, and the monthly fee was $47.

I trained most of October at that gym, and made progress. My shoulders and trapezius looked bigger. When I got home to Downey, my cousin said my shoulders looked bigger, and my other cousin Anthony said my arms looked bigger.