Tuesday, May 17, 2011

I'm Back! And how $100 might help me lose 5% of my weight



I'm Back! Yes I know it's been a shocking and shameful 5 WEEKS since I've posted, so I'm attempting to get back on the wagon:

This is literally what I think of EVERY time I hear someone's back on or off the Wagon. Thank  you Oregon Trail...
 That goes for both updating the blog, and for the whole weight loss endeavor itself. As you can probably see if you squint at the graph above, about a month ago I had gotten down to 213.8 pounds. Woohoo, everyone celebrate! Fast forward to today, and I'm back up to 218.6. Turns out losing weight is harder than I thought. Who knew?

Back to all that in a moment, but I want to give a special shout out to Doug (see the light blue line on the graph above), who's joining Chins To Chiseled, and who has also lost an amazing 14.6 pounds since the New Year (6 of it in the last month!). Which means it's now officially time for us to all say: TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF DOUGIE! (sry, inside joke, let's just say Doug likes to wear multiple layers of clothing when he's playing drums...) Doug, would love for you to share some of your tricks in the comments section below.

So back to me. Three things really derailed my weight loss in the last month, so it's these three things I'm going to focus on to get back on track:
  1. Track what I eat every day
  2. Order groceries in advance and bring lunch to work/cook at home
  3. Go to the gym
Seems pretty simple, right? The reality is that for me, losing weight is this simple, it's just sticking to the plan that's tough, especially the gym. I think signing up for a gym that involves an hour of commuting every time was a mistake, especially in Manhattan where no one should have to commute anywhere (except maybe to work). That being said, I like boxing, so I'm looking into boxing gyms that are a little more convenient.

As for groceries and tracking what I eat, these are just inconvenient repetitive things that have huge positive returns if I do them, so I think it's just time to suck it up and commit.

Lastly, I've entered into a weight loss bet. My brother Daniel and friend Ari and I are each putting up $100 to see if we can lose 5% body weight by July 1st. Cause as we all know, it's all about the Benjamins:


For me that's 11.25 pounds in 6 weeks, for Ari it's 9.25 pounds, and for Daniel it's 9.75 pounds (I'll let you do the math to figure out our actual weights). Anyone who loses the 5% gets to keep their cash AND gets the cash of the people who don't lose 5%. It's very serious stuff. Anyone who'd like to join the bet, let me know ASAP!

That's all for now, time to go look into boxing gyms and order some groceries!

----Alex

(Update about 10 minutes after I wrote this: just signed up for trial classes at a kickboxing gym that's 5 blocks from my house... tough to beat that convenience...!)
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. UnknownMay 18, 2011 at 1:31 PM

    My "secret":

    1. Learn to live with hunger and the concomitant stress. You are violating man's most primitive instinct and nothing about it is enjoyable.

    2. Run 3 miles every day. It's good for burning calories and the aforementioned stress.

    3. Eat 3 meals every day at generally the same time, of generally the same calorie content, that are generally low-fat and low-carb (but not Atkins per se). If you are a social person like me, this is by far the hardest part.

    4. Drink only coffee, diet soda and (a lot of) water.

    5. Constantly remind myself that this is just a phase, and one that I deserve for all those nights I drank to excess and passed out in a crumpled heap of failure, regret and Artichoke pizza.

    Doug

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)