I emailed Stick from Ireland to tell him that I was inspired by his journey to lose weight, exercise, and become more healthy uber alles. I was inspired for a number of reasons, but chief among those was his determination to make this the last time he struggled with weight. As I've gotten older I've definitely found that it's harder and harder to lose the extra 5 lbs that I put on over the holidays, so I know that I have to change things now before it becomes impossible. I've been roughly the same size for most of my adult life, never tipping over 280, but always hovering around 265. When I returned home from Ireland I was at a breaking point. I had gained 5 lbs despite walking more than 4 miles a day and working my ass off in the shop. For that hard work I had a few cups of Guinness, and ate all the good cheese I could get my hands on. After I stepped off the scale the morning after I returned I knew I had to make actual, serious, changes to what, and how much, I eat on a daily basis. In the early 2000 I had a very successful run at healthiness using weight watchers. I joined as a favor to my old man, something we did together as an experiment. What's so successful about their plan, as they widely advertise, is that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. The commercials show folks enjoying a beer with their pizza alongside the image of their fat pants. What I found in the long run is that I had no idea what I was consuming just that I was meeting a goal for 'points'. In the long run that system doesn't lead to independence and a true balancing of your diet, rather it forces you to continue paying them to tell you how many points you should consume in a day. My old man joined up again recently, and I told him that I would work along side him but not on their system.

I looked over stick's 1800 calorie diet, and adopted many of the suggestions, but the biggest help has come from a site Dr. Chop stumbled upon one afternoon while researching how to eat better. The USDA's Supertracker is a great tool to track your consumption of calories, your activity level, and your weight / measurements. What's different about this and other commercial tracking programs is that you can easily see what food groups you eat the most of, and how much sodium, oil, saturated fats and empty calories you are consuming without too much trouble. The site is a little clunky, but it's free. What I found is that I never get enough vegetable. ever. I ate too many processed grains, and wasn't drinking enough water. I need at least two pieces of fruit a day in some form, and that protein is easier to fulfill than I thought. In short, I was eating all wrong. Over the last three weeks we've sought to get as much vegetable into our diets as possible.

My overall goal is far more modest than Stick's. I'm hoping to be at 240 by the beginning of March, and I'm aiming on staying there for 4 months before I resume losing weight. Yes, I need to drop a few more pounds than that, but I want to change my eating habits permanently. I've recently begun a couch to 5k program. Progress is slow as I've never really jogged before, but I'm still hanging with it.