Going in a New Direction...

Ok.... obviously its been 9 months since I've posted to this blog. My Body for Life efforts fizzled out about the time of my last entry. Between work and family, I was doing a poor job of getting to the gym and I was not happy with my weight loss efforts. Actually taking the review course for my PE exam had the worst effect on my workouts because it took me away from my usual routine for 4 weeks and I never got back into it 100%.

In retrospect, I was never totally satisfied with BFL because I was never able to lose body fat at a rate greater than I was gaining muscle so my net weight loss through my BFL efforts was less than 10 pounds. On a good note though, I did lose quite a bit of body fat and I did shrink in size. The only problem was I didn't want to be a buff guy who weighed 250 lbs, I wanted to weigh closer to 200 pounds. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to lose the body fat, I just wanted some weight off too. The nutrition part of BFL was my shortcoming and the reason for my limited success.

I was going to start a weight loss program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (link) in January but my co-worker who was going to do the program with me dropped out the day before our physical and the mandatory classes were going to be a little difficult to work around my work schedule.

In the first 8 month since then, I made half-hearted attempt at doing the Weight Watchers points plan with exercise to lose weight. I was able to get maybe 5 or 6 pounds off but have pretty much leveled off the last month or two. So the frustration set back again one more time…

I looked at the weight loss program offered by Baptist Health (link) in Little Rock earlier this summer but never followed through. They called a few weeks ago about an informational session for their upcoming class.

Since I have been frustrated with my previous efforts at weight loss I figure now is the time to get some help. I signed up with the program and have my initial physical exam today. My program will start on Tuesday August 29th.

The program has 2 different options: Decision Free and Healthy Solutions diet. The Decision Free diet is where you are on shakes and meal replacements exclusively. The Health Solutions uses a combination of shakes, meal replacements and fruits and vegetables. The shakes, bars and meals are supplied by Health Management Resources Corporation (link). The company literature claims the average weight loss with the Decision Free diet is 60 pounds over a 13 week program and with the Health Solutions diet the average weight loss is 24.7 lbs over the same time period. One think I like about this diet over the UAMS diet is that I can have solid food on the Decision Free Diet. I have to have 5 shakes a day as a minimum but I can have bars and entrees so I do not go hungry as well. With the UAMS diet, you’re pretty much limited to the shakes…

Since I want to lose 57 pounds, I decided to go for the Decision Free diet just for simplicity as well. My goals are to weight 200 pounds by Thansgiving and to be able to inseam size down to 34 (currently 38).

I know I need serious help with nutrition so I can keep this weight off after I lose it as well. I am hoping the classes will give me those tools.

I want to use this blog as part of my accountability for the diet. I am serious about losing the weight this time and since I am forking out some big bucks for this program, I should be well motivated.

I am thinking off the top of my head but right now, I think will post my weekly statistics on my weight, loss for the week, loss to date, BMI and measurements. I will probably post several times a week as well with updates on my progress and exercise too…

Ok, here are my pre-diet statistics:
Weight: 257.6 lbs
BMI: 35.9

Goal Weight: 200 lbs
Goal BMI: 28

I will update with my measurements when I get those done (maybe tonight).

As I lose more weight, I want to start being more active. I want to run more with a goal of running the Little Rock Half Marathon in March 2007. I’ll have to look at the training schedules and see how that pans out because I haven’t run in about a year so I know I’ll need to build myself back up plus buy a new heart rate monitor…