My 85+ Pound Weight Loss Journey

I have already done a quick overview in my introductory post but I though I would go a bit further into my fitness journey this year as I have had some questions and figured I would answer them all together in a post. Just to make things a bit easier.

I am a 34-year-old father of two wonderful kids with a beautiful wife that is my universe. I was pushing around 305 pounds and I knew I had to make a change not so long ago. I had to break my eating habits and all-round lack of physical activity. I owed it to my wife, son and daughter to move towards a healthier lifestyle. Most of all I owed it to myself to pick my self-off the couch and stop making excuses. I would just be a hypocrite to tell my children to eat healthy and be active, well I just sit on the couch watching Netflix eating cheese burgers.

Growing up I was skinny but come my mid twenties that is when things took a turn. To be honest I stopped all the partying and going out all night and replaced that life style with food. Pizza because my "drug" of choice and from there I just started packing on the weight. I did work out here and there but it was never really a concern to me. One of my favorite things to do at that time was load up on junk food and game on Call of Duty all night with my brothers and friends. I really became a fat mess to put it blunt.

Then change started to come when I met Jen, my wife. She is an amazing person and on a health journey as well. She has truly inspired me to get the ball rolling on a healthier living and the final push was when my son was born.

I knew I had to make the change or end up being that day that watches his son play from the park bench. There is no way I am going to allow that to happen!

Making a Change!

It was at this point when I started to do tons of research. I was working midnight's and work was slow so I had nothing but time. I had actually stumbled across an article on the Ketogenic diet and fell in love with the idea of eating bacon and losing weight! Though I thought it was too good to be true.

I mapped out my macro's and I figured I would keep it basic with doing the standard 75% fat| 20% Protein| 5% Carbs.

This was in December of 2016 when I decided I would test it out for a week. I don't remember the exact weight but I believe I was walking around 305 pounds at this time. I did a grocery hall and did a mass food prep.

First Round of Ketogenic Food Prepping

I had looked up a recipe for Keto chili. I cannot remember the site I originally found it or I would include the link but down the road here I will post the recipe. Most of the food I made at this time was just standard chicken and veggies. Again I just wanted to keep it to the basics as I was still trying to figure everything out and I was kind of skeptical at the time.

Other Food Items I picked up were:

• Avocado
• Eggs
• Butter (both salted and unsalted. I also didn't worry about getting grass-fed)
• Coconut Oil
• Chicken breast/thighs
• Bacon
• Coffee (I buy instant coffee because I'm cool like that)
• Cauliflower
• Cheese strings
• Cod

Supplements I picked up:

• Men's multivitamin
• Fish oil
• No salt (not really a supplement but got it for the added potassium)
• Magnesium
• MCT Oil

I did my food prep for the week and I jumped feet first into the Ketogenic diet. Calorie wise I didn't know what I wanted to do so I picked 1800 randomly. I figure that seemed like a good number. Again, I had no real idea what I was doing but I just wanted to make a change.

Below is a screenshot from MyFitnessPal that shows what a standard day looked like during this week.

Unbelievable Results

At the end of this week I weighted myself and I wish I had a picture to share because it was this moment when everything changed and I knew the Ketogenic diet was for me. I lost just under 10 pounds! I couldn't believe my eyes. I was just aiming for two or three pounds but this knocked me back.

Now I have read that a lot of the weight at the start of doing this diet will be water weight and bloat but the simple fact it had just knocked me under 300 pounds I was hooked. I knew at that point I have to really take this serious and if I did the results will come. There was just one issue at the time and Christmas was right there so I made the executive decision that I will start completely fresh in January. I was getting married September 23, so I made a goals list.

Goals and Checklist's

My goals were fairly straight forward. I don't believe they are that far off from many people who found themselves in a similar situation I was in. My goals were as followed:

• I wanted to document everything as I go
• I want to reach 215 before I get married September 23, 2017.
• I will limit myself on "cheat meals" to one a month at most, well sticking to my newly adapted Keto diet the rest of the time.
• I want to try one of those Zombie walks or Color Me Rad 5k runs, sometime this year.

The biggest one I wanted to hit was the goal weight of 215. It seemed like it was impossible being 305 at the time. I just knew to succeed I would have to take it a day at a time and not trying to rush it.

Now with this being said I did have a workout plan I created but I will save that for another post. I was extremely focused going into January and ready to conquer the world.

Journey Begins!

Again I did a massive grocery haul, got my wife on board and spent January 1 food prepping. We were ready for this to kick off right. I won't go through the food we picked up but here's another example of what I ate for a day.

I didn't have a cheat meal until February. It was my wife's birthday and I had to celebrate it! I figure that is a good enough reason than any to enjoy some amazing food. Now this was February 27 so I went almost two months with no bad food and being strictly Keto. I was weighing myself daily as I was addicted to the numbers I was seeing. At that point in time I have it recorded of weighing 241.1 pounds though I believe I had marked it down wrong and I was actually at 245 pounds. Again I wish I had pictures to show because I couldn't believe it.

Journey Continued On

The months went by but pretty much stayed the same good wise. I was working out fairly hard and some days would do two a days. I was feeling great but there was times I would slip up and binge eat for a day but my wife was always there to pick me back up and help me, as I was there for here. We were doing amazing.

Leading up until our wedding is when I started to close into my goal weight. It was actually in august when I hit 219 pounds. I was only four pounds from my goal weight. It was here when I started to play around with my calories. Again I was mainly keeping it at 1800 calories, regardless of how hard I was working out. I know that now I wasn't being the smartest with my calories but hey it was working.

I ramped up my calories to 2300 as I started doing Jiu Jitsu and it was the first time in any workout I felt like I needed the extra calories. I continued to lose the weight and sure enough I went into my wedding weighing 215 pounds.

It was an amazing feeling hitting my goal weight. My wife hit her goal weight as well, so everything was amazing for us.

Moving Forward

After the wedding I am not going to lie, we became a bit lazy with our diet as we hit Mexico up and ate anything and everything in sight. I figured this is our time to enjoy and live it to the fullest. We sure did, coming back home I was weighing in at 225 pounds.

Since then I have been bouncing between 215 and 223. Though just this month my wife sat down with me and we agreed to new goals in the coming year. I will be making another post about that and documenting that journey but a big thing I want to do in the coming year is get to 180 pounds. Just the thought though of getting under 200 blows me away but not to long ago I though 215 was just a dream and here I am today!

If there is anything you can take way from this or anything I have shared with Steemit is just believe in yourself and what you are doing; anything is possible. There will be times you stumble but shake it off and push forward. We all fail but in getting up, pushing forward is when the results com. It just simple takes a little effort a day and over time it adds up and the results will truly blow you away!