The Jones Family Blog

So last year (or at least for the latter half of the year) I put a big emphasis on losing weight. It wasn’t a new year’s resolution or anything, it’s just that the combination of me being at my heaviest weight ever and my wife being hooked on an endless stream of The Biggest Loser eventually got to me and I decided once and for all that I was going to be skinny if it killed me.

This wasn’t a new concept for me. I had tried it before in 2007 and lost 25 lbs in the process, but somehow I just lost the momentum and ended up gaining it all back and then some. This time, I vowed, would be different.

So, around mid May I started keeping track of my weight. At that point I was 260 lbs(!), about a pound or two shy from my absolute heaviest. At the end of the year I was (drumroll, please…) 227 lbs! That’s a net loss of 33 lbs! Not bad!

Easter 2009 vs Jan 3rd 2010

Of course, that fact is tempered somewhat by the fact that that’s 33 lbs spread over 7 and a half months. That averages out to just BARELY over a pound per week (1.03125 lbs/week to be exact). Biggest Loser I ain’t. Of course, some weeks I did better than that, and some weeks I actually gained weight. It was a slow and bumpy ride down, but I was able to maintain a consistent enough pattern that the weight steadily dropped and I made enough progress that I didn’t throw up my hands in dispair.

I’m still not what I would consider “thin”, but the past month or so especially I’ve had a lot of comments made about how much better I look, and I feel it too!

So what’s my secret? Eating less. Shocking, I know. I made sure to watch my portion sizes, pay attention to calories (as much as was reasonable), avoid snacking between meals, chose diet sodas when I could, just little things like that. No pills, no special meals, no Acai berries or whatever the newest fad is. Heck, I didn’t even really exercise outside of walking the dog. Just. Eat. Less.

There were a few tips and tools I found helpful along the way, though. One is that I weighed myself, without exception, every single morning and every single evening. Fact is that you can’t expect to measurably lose weight on a daily basis and it’s normal to fluctuate by a couple of pounds throughout the day, but at the end of the day if you’ve been over-indulging the scale will let you know. It’s a helpful and constant reality check to remind you that no, you can’t eat that triple cheeseburger and expect to get away with it.

Next was keeping a spreadsheet (like the one shown above) of my weekly progress. This let me see overall how well I was doing and gave me a good perspective on how far I had come.

I tracked my daily weight on an online tool called The Google 15, which will track your “moving weight average” over the last couple of weeks (but doesn’t store a permanent history). This was nice because it does a lot of the math for you and helps to graph where your “real” weight is, taking into account recent fluctuations and smoothing out the occasional odd spike.

But what it really comes down to is willpower and determination. Fact is if you say that you are “trying to lose weight” and then you go and eat fast food everyday you’re lying to yourself and you will end up right back where you started.  I’ve seen from personal experience that a single day of “splurging” can throw off an otherwise good week. That’s not to say I never went out: I would still go out to lunch with “the guys” occasionally and still take my wife out to dinner, but I would always see that reflected in my weekly numbers.

In any case, I’m still not done. My goal is to hit 200 lbs, and truth be told I could probably stand to be at 190 or 180. At my current rate, I’ll probably hit that sometime in June. That feels a long way off right now, but I’ll get there! You’ll see!

Wish me luck!

It has been a nice Christmas and Holiday Season. We enjoyed time with both of our families and spent time with some friends. It has also been a sad time with the passing of my Uncle Mike. I will miss him greatly. I am also very proud of my Sister-In-Law Erica. She is at the MTC right now.

I came to a funny realization the today. At some point, and I’m not entirely sure when, I started actually caring what I looked like. Like, moreso than “Dressed, combed, and don’t stink.” (That was Junior High). When I was younger appearance was little more than an annoyance, for me it was the simpler the better! Slip-on shoes? Love ‘em! T-Shirts? God’s gift to mankind! Hats? Anything to keep me away from a comb! Shorts? Yes please!

So it strikes me as painfully funny to reflect on the me-that-was compared to the last couple of years. On Monday I went shopping and didn’t hit a single non-clothing store. While there I bought more clothes than Emily. o_O I now have a “summer wardrobe”, and this excites me. When shopping I try things on rather than just look at the tag and say “should be about right…” I’m dressing in layers, simply because it looks nice. I own more button up shirts than t-shirts. I’ve worn a tie, just because I felt like it. I make a concerted effort to coordinate my clothes in the morning. I spend 10 to 15 mintues in the mornings now just doing my hair. I use “hair products”. I even caught myself worrying that my shoes didn’t match my belt…

When did that happen?!?

So Mom, just thought that you’d like to know that all of those years of dragging me through department stores trying to get me to wear ANYTHING that wasn’t slip-on, apparently they paid off. Thanks

Holy crap! Tonight we’ve had some of the worst fog I’ve EVER seen. It was so bad that at my work today you could stand at the front window and still not see the hospital right accross the street! Horrible for driving… but it looked REALLY cool!

(Sorry for the picture quality, I was just snapping these with my cellphone on the way home from the store)