We have come to the end of this blog series but certainly not the end of the weight loss journey.  On this last post I need to thank the players of the game who have been there throughout this journey and those that are on their own adventure right beside me:

The Crew

Without The Crew there would be no journey to speak of.  Jennifer, Samantha, Anna, and Nick are there rocking it out with me on a regular basis.

The Trainers

Without the trainers I wouldn’t know what direction I was going in or have the fun I have had in this process.  Special thanks to the following:

To Zumba instructor extraordinaire Tim Wilburn.  Not only does he rock the Zumba class but he can put you through “The Hawk” series and you will wish you were doing Zumba!  His class are always amazing and he knows how to keep you moving.

Alyssa Lawson and Andrea Pennington who are normally the Body Pump instructors when we get in class.  They’ll keep you on track and keep you going through the hour class.  Alyssa also does the training for HIIT and Spin which are excellent classes where you can pour the sweat.

Becca Thomas and Stacy Sayre keep you going in Body Pump as well.  I have not been in very many of their classes but they are always entertaining and fun!

Thank You

Thank you for reading through this 4 part blog series.  I hope my journey can give you some motivation to start your own.  Remember, you have to do it for yourself and not anyone else.  When you are ready, I assure you, the tools and people are there for you.

Have you missed any of the series?  Click below to navigate to any part you have missed:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

So what changed on March 21?  The tools were brought into play that would help change the way I worked out.  They didn’t all come at once but that was the day things started to change.

The Gym

The first tool was the gym.  March 21 was my first day there on a week trial membership.  I really enjoyed the machines and enjoyed the atmosphere.  By the end of the week I was hooked on what I could accomplish there.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t get a workout at home but being with a group of people who are striving for the same thing is a great motivator.  As Emerson said, in a much more poetic way, you are what you put into your mind and the places you put yourself.  The gym was where my transformation would take shape.

“A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know many people feel like going to the gym is a chore.  I know the feeling myself.  There are days where I have to push myself to go.  But, the feeling that comes after a great workout, seeing the results on a scale, or the accomplishment of a non-scale victory is worth it.  So is the knowing that I am doing things now to make the lives of my whole family better for the future by conditioning myself and making my body stronger.

On April 12 my next tool would come along.  A group of us decided to give BODYPUMP a try.  This was my first look into group fitness. Let me say up front – nobody cares what you do or look like in class.  That seems to be what keeps people from walking in the room and the others in there are coming to class for many of the same reasons you are.

BODYPUMP has helped me lean down, build up muscle, and lose weight.

Later in April I would finally walk into a Zumba class.  My wife had tried for months to get me to give it a go and I just wouldn’t budge.  After some teaching of the moves at home I went to class where a blast was had!  I really enjoy Zumba and all of the people in there.  Your instructor can really make or break class and ours is phenomenal.

There are many activity trackers on the market today.  You wear these throughout the day and then sync them with your computer or phone.   They will give you some insight into your activity for the day.

I decided to give fitbit a try after some research.  While there are graphs and other data that you can use with it my main reason for wearing one was to see how many steps I was taking during the day.  It helped me to build the amount of activity I was doing.  I could see when I had not walked enough and needed to get out of the chair.  fitbit helped to keep my mind on being active instead of sedentary which was a great motivator.

I know I know.  Calories counting sucks.  But, it worked wonders for me doing it.  myfitnesspal allows you to scan packages and add the counts with a few clicks.  While it isn’t always accurate it isn’t far off.  99% of the time the calories match what the package says and you are good to go.

When you setup your account you put in how much you want to lose and in what amount of time.  From there it gives you how many calories you can eat in a day and lose the weight you are wanting by your goal date.

The app also syncs with your fitbit data so you get credit for the extra activity you do.  If you do an hour of Zumba you might, for example, get 300 extra calories for the day but still be heading to your goal  because it factors in your activity, your calorie count, how many calories you are allotted per day and the approximate amount of calories you lost due to your increased activity.

Those are the tools that I have used in my weight loss journey with success.  Tools are only half the help though!  Next up we will meet the players in the game that helped tremendously…

Have you missed any of the series? Click below to navigate to any part you have missed:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The quickest change I could make was what I was drinking. A lot of our calories come in liquid form and can cause some quick weight gain (source: Mayo Clinic).  I swapped out the sweet tea and Mountain Dew for water.  I got a few of the big bottles of water and refilled them throughout the day.  This made a significant change in weight on it’s own.

About three weeks after I started this process a bit of a wrench was thrown into the fun.  I was in the area of the “Do Not Use” order from the Elk River Chemical Spill (see WV Water Crisis) that began on January 9, 2014.  I wasn’t buying bottled water, I was refilling bottles in the tap.  Now I was unable to do this among the other thousand things that had to be thought about during and after the chemical spill.

I started doing some workouts during this time but now we couldn’t shower in our homes.  This makes for an interesting time after you have done a workout.  Workouts were put on hold, consuming water was cut back, and we had to eat so frozen dinners and fast food came into play.  This certainly put a hamper on the weight loss.

On January 21st I had a routine going with the water situation and was drinking more water again.  I was able to cut back on the higher calorie drinks I had been consuming.

It wouldn’t be until February 24th before I started working out again.  Keep in mind that I had not been doing much exersize to begin with so I was starting all over.  The at home workouts were sporadic to say the least.  However, things would get kicked up a notch and change my life on March 21.

Have you missed any of the series? Click below to navigate to any part you have missed:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Yep.  I managed to lose 50+ pounds in the last 6 months.  This wasn’t the first time I attempted to lose weight but, for the first time ever, I had a huge motivator that allowed myself to take the massive action that was needed to make a lasting change.  Why am I writing about it?  Because I get asked how I did it.  I hope what I have done can help you find your own path to where you want to be.

How did I get here?  Well, I ate more calories than what my body needed and I didn’t have a very physical life style.  This is the reason that every expert on the planet tries to tell us causes weight gain and we are all like “nah, I burn more calories than that!”  A huge number of calories comes from the liquids that we drink.  This was where I was getting most of mine – the never ending pop binge.  I was drinking several of these a day.  While food was a part of it the drinks played a much larger role.

I tried cutting back on the drinks here and there but never committed to giving them up.  I tried different forms of exersize to combat the intake of calories and found moderate success with them (walking and DDPYoga).  However, I still lacked that switch that my brain needed to make all of this a lasting change.

On December 19, 2013 that switch was thrown.  I was visiting my doctor for a routine checkup.  There was a bit of concern about my blood pressure at the start of my appointment but it was still low enough for them to think that it may have been nervousness.  By the end of the appointment it was still elevated.  On top of the normal discussion about how I should lose weight we were now talking about my blood pressure.  He gave me a deadline.  I had a few weeks to get to work on dropping some pounds, which he thought would lower my blood pressure, or we were going to be talking about taking pills to control it.  I was not about to start taking pills for something that was within my own control.  My major motivator had been put into play and I understood it was time to get serious.

Have you missed any of the series? Click below to navigate to any part you have missed:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4