Inaugural

This is going to be a blog about the journey from 'before' to 'after' for the gross husk that is my body. I'm 29 years old and I weighed close to 400 pounds until I was 24 at which point I lost a bunch of weight. Right now I'm 245 but I've been as low as about 220. What I've never been is happy with how I look. After 5 years of being on and off with healthy eating and exercise I started a relatively focused lifting regiment earlier this year. I'm stronger than I've ever been but also heavier than I want to be and not close to "in shape". My diet has been all over the place... in fact I just ate 2 huge sandwiches and some chips from 7-11 at 2 AM, and this is not an uncommon occurrence. These habits have never left me wondering why I can't lose the fat I've held onto but they've left me disappointed in my decisions and looking for some way to hold myself accountable.

So tonight I start this blog. My plan with my gym buddy is to start focusing a bit more on cardio exercising, while still doing our heavy lifting, starting after thanksgiving. A month later in the new year we're gonna join a local crosssfit place. Now, I know there are plenty of bad stories about crossfit but I've been to this place before (for 2 months in 2013) and they are incredibly supportive of all level of athlete.

The blog is intended to show pictures of myself (really difficult to share but this is for me as much as anything else) from when I start to, hopefully, when I achieve some sort of goal or level of satisfaction. I'll be eating low carb. I lost over a hundred pounds eating that way and I believe it works for me. I read a paleo blog but I've never been super committed to many parts of that lifestyle and I know as a buzzword it sets off red flags for some folks as well. Suffice to say, low carb is the best descriptor for how I intend to eat going forward.

Pictures will be added soon, no matter how much it hurts. I don't intend to blog about every single thing I eat but I do want to make some reference to my diet. I don't think people ought to be terrified about going off-diet but for some people, like me, it's just amazing what we can do to ourselves when there's no check on our decisions. I can eat "snack" after snack or "meal" after meal at all hours of the day and not be slowed. I can also go days without doing anything but eating what I consider to be a healthy and reasonable diet. But the binges take too much from me, each and every time. Wasted money I don't have, calories I don't need to eat, and stress I don't need to feel. Especially not for things I don't ultimately enjoy that much anyway. (well alright, let's not be ridiculous, I enjoy it a pretty good amount).

This isn't about making myself feel bad for a once in a while treat. It's about exposing myself to how frequently those treats become binges and how many nights these binges actually occur. They aren't healthy and they can't be justified. They are extreme and unhealthy behavior, it is disordered eating, and any way I can help myself break this habit is a positive.

 I will at times be hard on myself in a lighthearted way but since I know some folks take issue with that method of weight loss I just want to outline it here. I think the title of the blog makes that pretty clear but just in case, it's now spelled out.

 My body is bloated and foul and I'd like to change that. I'm even confident that I know how. I just have to actually do it.