Major Milestone: I am down to 1/8 of a ton

I haven't blogged on Back to the Well, in...well, ten months. But that doesn't mean I haven't been busy.

For the first time in five years I am back down to 250 pounds. How did I do it? Writing down everything I eat and tracking Weight Watcher points. Like Charles Barkley. Also walking and doing the eliptical.

What's next? First, 240. Then 230. After that, 220. Then 210. My ultimate goal is 208, the highest weight allowed by the Marine Corps for a man of my height and age. Why 208? That's a long story. I'll save it for another time.

So here's the plan:

• Write everything in the food journal
• Have 38 points a day
• Walk, run, lift with high reps

I'll write something more entertaining next time. For now, get ready to go out and buy my new novel, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S GUNFIGHT, coming out in May. I'll write more about that too.

Blogging and jogging for bucks

Okay, so let's make this interesting for my homies in Corporate America. It is not enough that I am slogging through the early morning fog, knees throbbing and sweat raining down, in an effort to shed unwanted pounds. (If the slow, steady tedium of diet and daily exercise is agonizing on the participant, how much more so must it be for the spectator.) To keep readers, I need to spice up this blog, add some hard numbers and inject massive doses of motivation, to make it more engaging for you -- and potentially more lucrative for me.

So I've added stats. I've started with the birth of this blog, and I am tracking the following figures:

• How many days the blog has been up


• How many posts I've published in that time


• How much weight I've lost


• How much money I've earned from people clicking on the ads


• The rate in lbs./wk I'm losing


• How much money I've earned in $/lb.

Goal-setting

My goals for this little experiment are as follows:

• Lose 60 lbs.


• Maintain a rate of 1.5 lbs/wk


• Earn, via ads, $10/lb.

The last goal seems the most ambitious, but that's where you come in. Everytime you check out my latest, ever-more-motivating entry, click on all four ads in the upper righthand corner. (You have to use the down arrow each time to get to new ads -- a usability faux pas, if you ask me.) Then send a link to the blog to everyone you know who is even remotely interested in losing weight and getting in shape -- and remind them to click on the ads. You can explain to them that it is an experiment in grassroots e-commerce.

I know $10/lb. sounds tough. But together we can do this. :-)

Round One is a Tie, Round Two Begins

So my friend and his accomplice both achieved their goals. Yes my friend managed to drop the 10 pounds and tip the scales at 255. The competition logged her second 4-pound weight loss week to exceed her goal by two pounds. Both win, the jackpot rides, and round two is under way.

This time they have five weeks over which they must maintain the rate of loss they picked for the first round. That means by August 4 my friend must lose 7.5 pounds to tip the scale at 247.5.

But while I have focused primarily on my friend, it is his opponent who we can all learn from. The keys to her success are a virtual how-to for losing weight in a way that leads to life-long maintenance. They are as follows:

• Pick a fitness regimen and stick to it -- rigorously.
• Eat a moderate, healthy meal or snack every three hours or so.
• Occasionally cut yourself some slack and enjoy the things you usually avoid.
• Be consitent. Five or six good days and one or two so-so days, over time, will get you to goal. Three or four excellent days will, over time, never be enough to undo three or four horrible days.

My friend was more than a little surprised he pulled off the tie, but he knows he's gonna have to copy his opponent's strategy if he wants to keep up with her for the long haul.

Congratulations to both!

The night before

A quick update on "my friend's" weight bet. It ends tomorrow. If he has lost 18 pounds, dropping from 275 to 257, he wins. (At least half the cash.) That means he's had to lose 10 pounds in the past four days. What it really means, is that he will have sweated off a bunch tomorrow morning.

His plan for the morning: many cotton sweats and roadwork. If it stays hot, like it is tonight, he stands an okay chance. Maybe.

Anyway, once this madness is over, he can go back to slow, steady, Point-counting weight loss.

Wish him luck. He's gonna need it.

Two Days till Weigh-In

It is Saturday morning, and my friend -- the one with the weight bet -- is sweating. Not literally yet. He had 10 pounds to lose and four days to do it. Now he has two days and no scale. (He keeps it at work.)

So what's the plan? Starve himself? No way. That'll backfire. Saturday or Sunday night will come around, and he'll snap and pizza, beer and chips will fly into his mouth like planets, stars and asteroids getting sucked into a black hole. So he's just gonna to eat light, avoiding sodium. And he's going to drink. A lot. NOT beer. Water. Probably not diet soda, either. That somehow seems to make him hungrier than drinking water. Maybe that's just psychological. Maybe it's all just psychological.

So the keys are these:

• Eat light, lots of fruits and vegies.
• Avoid sodium.
• Drink water like a big, thirsty sponge.
• Move. Walk, work around the house, jumping jacks. Anything.
• Don the sweats at 4:30 Monday morning and SWEAT.

Every bullet is key, but the last will be the clincher. He'll be going to the weigh-in pretty much blind, not knowing if he made it or not, so the morning sweatshop session will be key.

And if he loses, it's not the end of the world. He actually likes his competition and would be happy to see her succeed. But he would be even happier for her to lose all but .5 pounds of her goal and for him to exceed his by the same amount.

Either way, he's going for it.

Progress Report, 20 June

Just a quick checkin. You will notice in the graph above that, despite a little blip, I am once again on track. From a high of -- cringe -- 280, I was down to 264.5 on Monday. I have had a good week of eating with restraint and walking or jogging pretty much every morning.

I am hoping that I was able to knock off a few more pounds by this Monday and then hit the magic number of 257 by 30 June.

I have to up the intensity of the morning roadwork, but right now it seems all I can do just to be up and moving. Any motivational ideas will be taken under consideration. [In other words, feel free to comment. And click on those ads! While I can't vouch for them, I can and will readily spend any money I make from them.]