Week 12 Day 6: 50 Pound Detox

So this is day 6 of our 1 week detox and it’s going very well!

We had cheated a few times last weekend so my weight was at a high of 351 on Monday. Today my weight is 338! This detox has allowed me to lose 13 lbs so far this week!

That brings me to some good news…I have now lost just over 50 lbs!!!

I'm feeling good about myself and each day I feel like I’m coming out of some long dream. I’m waking up to my real life.

Exercise Update
What am I doing for exercise so far? Well I try to get 6000 steps per day, I have been trying to go swimming with my wife more often and finally I’m doing ab exercises (as per 4HB) 2 times per week.

-Ian

Week 12 Day 1: 100 Pound Detox

Since we have had trouble staying of program for the last few weeks we have been put on a special one week detox!

There is a new girl at the weight loss clinic that the company ships around to train staff. She also specializes in rapid weight loss! I'm very excited about this because she herself has lost 100 lbs!! It's nice to be getting info and advice from someone that has lost a lot of weight because you feel they understand you. If I have 150 lbs to lose and someone that has only lost 20 or 30 lbs is advising me I get in a mood...”Who are you to give me advice small fry!?!”

The excitement of being on the program has come back!

She has predicted about a 15 lbs loss for me and about 8 lbs loss for my wife in one week!

So what's the deal?

Well, first we had to spend MORE money to get extra supplements we don't have. Some to give us energy some to stimulate the thyroid and some to help clean the bowels.

Second, she cut our calories per day and gave us special meal plans. The meals are easy and good for on the go like chicken salad or smoothies. Our snacks are gone but we can still eat all the freedom food we want. Peppers, broccoli, asparagus, cucumbers, spinach and the other veggies low in natural sugars. If we are still hungry we're allowed to add a protein smoothie as a snack but I think we're trying to avoid that.

Third, she has recommended at least a 20 minute walk each day. We should lose a lot of weight without it but the loss should be very impressive with the walk each day.

Today was a first full day on detox and I'm already excited for our Wednesday appointment to see how much we lose!

Week 2 - Day 4: 5000 Steps

 So I wanted to tell you about the exercise the program is having us do…not much right now.

For the first week they didn’t want us doing much at all as we did the detox phase of the program. This is because after a day or two we would feel tired and possibly have headaches or a foggy brain. The toxins in our bodies were being released at this point helping to improve our liver function and the function of our body in general. They really stressed the need to drink a lot of water during this phase to help flush our systems.

Not really a fun time and certainly not a good time to begin a hard core exercise routine. I spent too much time trying not to give in to my chocolate and ice cream addictions in no way would I have had the ability to concentrate on exercise.

This week as we started phase to we started taking metabolism boosting vitamins, we got pedometers and a Yoga DVD. The vitamins are giving us our energy back thank goodness! They didn’t tell us to start using the Yoga DVD yet but they did tell us to use the pedometers.

My pedometer reading today!

5000 steps per day is the first goal they gave us. Sounds like I lot and my wife though she would have trouble getting to that but I thought it wouldn’t really be that hard. Well it turns out my wife is getting 6000 to 7000 steps per day easy making me look very bad. I’m barely getting over 4000 steps on days we don’t go shopping and just under 5000 on shopping days.

I have decided I need to add some extra steps somehow:

• Short walk a lunch time
• Short walk during my 15min brakes
• Short walk right after work because I have about 5-10min I have to kill so I don’t show up to soon to pick up my wife from her work.

If anyone has any simple ideas please post a comment!

Today I feel good but at our visit to the clinic today I only lost 1lbs and my wife stayed the same. I think maybe it’s our activity level and maybe a few small changes we can make in our food. I’m trying to avoid any changes to our food so more activity would be better.

Have a great day,

Ian

First Week Update

The first week and a half was HELL!

Sorry for not keeping you updated on a daily bases as was my plan but if you read on you will see why the long period between posts.

The First few days were crazy!

The program we joined gives you massive amounts of high quality vitamins all the time but the first week is the detox phase. In detox our bodies begin to expel all the built up toxins in our body and jump start proper organ processes. This is all about getting ready for long team weight loss with a better running body.

So my wife and I have both started this program and that’s a good thing because one person without the help of their spouse will have a hard time. Grocery shopping and cooking, more grocery shopping and a lot more cooking…this is taking a very large amount of time and effort to make this kind of change. Especially when we only cooked maybe twice a week at home and the rest of the time we ate out. Fast food mainly on the way home…we love the Wendy’s Triple Baconator!

I now know what it is like to be a cave man! Anytime I’m not a work I’m shopping for food or cooking food we are spending all our time just trying to stay alive just like the cave men and hunter gatherers of the past.

To make things worse in the first few days of detox you get tired! It was so hard to keep motivated to make that next meal or snack. 8 hours of work, visit to the weight loss clinic at least 3 times per week for at least an hour for coaching, 1-2 hours of shopping after each visit to the clinic finally 1-2 hours cooking supper making snacks and lunch for the next day. By the time you’re done it’s 9 or 10 time for bed.

Being healthy and eating right is a hard job. Changes like this can’t happen overnight and especially with no help if you’re trying to lose weight on your own.

Thank god for the coaching sessions and the feeling of accountability I’m getting. We have to track all our food, wear our pedometer all day and report back to our coaches where we get weighed every time we visit and measured every week.

They help us plan our meals and print us off a shopping list for our meals. This is a great thing but when you don’t have all the basic ingredients in your home already the first few days are very expensive for shopping. We are buying strange oils and spices we would never think to buy. A big problem we had the first week was trying to buy the proper amounts. A regular person doesn’t have a metric to imperial conversion calculator on them at the store but we do now.

My wife downloaded a great app for her iPhone. Without the app we were buying very large portions of food compared to what they were allowing us to eat in the mail plans. You don’t think right…you buy what you would normally have bought thinking it would be about the same. WRONG

After a week our shopping trips are faster and cheaper because we know what we want and how much. Why pay for something you won’t use?

We are still adjusting to the lifestyle of healthy balanced eating and are 3 days into week two.

Week two we start a 28 day metabolic booster phase to help bring up our energy and burning fat faster. They are getting us to concentrate more on beginning some basic activity like trying to walk 5,000 steps per day. Nothing extreme because how many obese people you know that like or can jog 5km each morning? During the second phase we should continue to lose weight at a fast pace.

Incidentally the program we started guarantees 2lbs loss every week! For the price we paid it better work. We had a few days of buyer’s remorse about the amount of money we spent but in the end nothing else we were doing was working in fact we each gained 40-60lbs since we got married in 2010. The price is a BIG motivator for me!

Anytime I think I’m going to brake and cheat on the program I think of the money. I money we spent was the start of our savings to buy a house when we start having a family but because we’re both over weight we can’t seem to get pregnant so losing the weight and becoming more healthy is more important to us right now.

So…What did I lose in the first week?????

Monday April 25: 391lbs

Monday May 2: 375lbs

In my first week alone I lost 16lbs and my wife lost 6lbs but everyone know men lose faster and I have more to lose anyway.

We were supposed to visit the weight lose clinic tonight but we needed some sort of break in the pattern of work, clinic, cook, eat, shop, sleep, work, clinic, cook, eat, shop, sleep and so on. So tonight we came home cooked and eat only! My wife has time to visit a friend and I had time to post this blog!

Now for some parting notes:

• I feel like I have a bit more energy but nothing like wanting to run around the block.
• I can’t really notice the 16lbs loss at this point because I’m such a big guy. I don’t think I will notice till I’m down 30 or 40lbs.
• I do feel optimistic! This will work for us and that is giving me extra strength to continue.
• I will try my best to post something every day and I do plan to fill in the other pages of my blog when I get a chance.

Have a great day,

Ian