Are You Asking For a Challenge?!

Have you noticed the cruddy job market? I have. With a Master's in Public Health but no real experience outside of the classroom and my internship, it's even more difficult. Companies expect me to want to get paid for my education, which while nice is not what I expect. I realize that I have limited experience and only require an entry-level position and room to grow.

Now you're stopping me, "Hark, what's the deal? We're on a blog about being fat and how we don't want to be that anymore!"

To that I say: My career goals involve telling people to not be fat. If I can't practice what I preach, what does that say about myself and my ability to understand healthy lifestyles?

Also, another interesting career prospect, The United States Public Health Corps has a height/weight requirement. I imagine for similar reasons as outlined above. At my height, a person needs to weigh about 180 pounds. Considering I'm 246 (about I haven't weighed myself in a while, but I seem slimmer than when I weighed myself last), this can easily be achieved by the end of the year because of math.

52 weeks in a year X 1.5lbs a week = 78lbs lost

Considering my new classes of Weight Training, Walking for Weight Loss, and Fundamentals of Nutrition, I might even be able to get it done even more quickly. I've never put down a set goal for my weight, and I feel that this may help me achieve said goal more easily. I've never really held myself accountable for my health. Here's a set goal and timeline, and I'll give myself some sort of reward at the end. Every time I lose a pound, two dollars will go into a savings account. Barring financial crisis, this will be untouched until I hit my target.

So here's a challenge to my fellow Fatnicians: Determine a target weight for the next some amount of time. It can be six months, a year, or even at the end of your current diet. Put it down, make yourself accountable, plan a reward.

Set Goals - Soar Past Them

The wall behind my computer at home is a mess.  It's a scramble of index cards with numbers scribbled on them and pieces of paper with factoids printed out on them.  There are only two things that really stand out on this wall.

The first is a picture of me from the summer of 2005.  At the time, I was working in a town an hour north of Virginia Beach, VA.  I was employed with a summer camp and I worked from before the sun came up until a few hours after then sun went down.  It was one of the best times of my life, and I worked harder than I've ever worked there.  It was a lot of physical labor.  I burned more calories than I could consume.  I lost 50+ pounds that summer in a little over three months.  When I got back home, I had a tan and I was the thinnest I had been since I was 15 years old.  I had a picture taken with a friend there right before I left and it stayed buried in a box of old memories until a year ago.  After I found it, I became jealous of the guy in the picture and wanted to be like him again.  I hung the picture up on that wall and decided that I wanted to be like him.

The second thing hanging on my wall is a set of goals written on index cards.  They are all weight goals right now, but after I hit a certain point, I plan to make them more "physically oriented" goals.  With each goal that I have, I have a written time frame that I want to reach that goal by.  If I meet that goal in the time frame allotted to me, I get the reward I have set aside for myself.  These goals were written in February 2011.

Here are my current goals:

1. Reach 350 pounds.  Date - April 2011.  Reward - Steak Dinner and Movie with Wife
2. Reach 325 pounds.  Date - August 2011.  Reward - Buy New Clothes
3. Reach 300 pounds.  Date - February 2012.  Reward - Vacation with Family

As you can see, the goals are set at certain intervals.  My intervals are 2 months, 6 months, and 1 year.  I have only set the first goal to be somewhat lofty.  The rest won't actually be too hard.  I hope to meet the 2nd goal way before August.  I don't think I'll even have a problem meeting the 3rd goal before next February.

I also have an ultimate goal.  My ultimate goal is to be able to do a regular pull-up.  Some of you skinnier folks out there may be laughing or confused, but that is one lofty goal. 

My recommendation with all goal-setting is to keep it reachable.  Don't make it too easy on yourself, but also don't set it out of your grasp.  I will say that setting weight goals isn't always recommended.  Sometimes our weight will fluctuate if we have an off week, we gain muscle, or we retain water.  All of these things can throw off your results.  That's why a very common recommendation these days is for people to track their health through pictures.  I take a picture of myself once a month to track my progress as well.  I may only lose 5 pounds in one month, but it may look like even more in the pics!

Spark your weight-loss with Sparkpeople

SparkPeople.com

When I first started on my journey into diet and exercise, it was hard to find somewhere to go to keep up with it all.  As many of you know, just dieting and exercising alone without keeping track of it can quickly turn into failure.  Like a good friend of mine used to say, "A ship without a rudder is just a fancy float."

For those of you that don't already know, I had tried Weight-Watchers twice in the past.  Each time, I felt like I was paying for it and not getting any results.  I'm not saying that it doesn't work; it's just not for me.  I needed something a little stronger that made me understand my diet and exercise more, instead of just telling me what to do.

Enter SparkPeople.com, and my personal revolution.  This site is a great tool for anyone really looking to ramp up their personal health goals.  They have a tool to log what you eat that counts calories, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.  This tool also has a built-in optional meal planner that can be tuned to many custom diets like red-meat free, vegan, vegetarian, low fat, and etc.  

There is also an exercise logger on the site that helps you track everything you physically do.  The tool will tell you how many calories you have burned in the day.  This comes along with a cardio tracker and a walking tracker.  If you need ideas for your workout routine, they also have an online "personal trainer" that will show you the proper way to execute many exercises in videos.

This site does so much more, such as letting you keep track of your goals like weight-loss, water intake, slimming down, miles walked, and so much more.  This is a great place to keep motivated with your health.

The only downfalls to the site that I have noticed are some of the "extras."  They have a social side that is similar to MySpace, where they encourage you to make and maintain a page.  I felt like I didn't have the time to update my personal information on the site and then do it all again on the page.  They can sometimes encourage a little too much as well.  I got more than enough emails from them in my inbox and many personal messages from people that I had never met.  I understand that they were so motivated and inspired by the site that they wanted to motivate others, but sometimes it was a little overbearing.  Some people won't have a problem with this though, and I'm sure that the emails could be filtered a little better as well.

The best part about Sparkpeople is that it's free.  The site was started by a couple of people that used to work for eBay and decided to get out of the business and help people with their weigh-loss goals like they had done for themselves.  Since then, the site has a membership of over 9 million users who have come to them for help.  I still have a membership with them, although I don't use the site on a regular basis.  I do still like to use it when I want to track nutrition for a day or learn about some new exercise ideas.  

If you're looking for something new and awesome to try for your personal health, or need something to help you meet your goals; Sparkpeople.com a great place to check out!

A Confession to Make

When I started this blog with Josh, I may have weighed 382.4 pounds.  But I actually weighed more than that before starting the site.

What started me back on trying to lose weight and become a healthier person was this:

On October 14th, 2010, I weighed myself.  My weight on that night that scared me more than anything else was 400.7 pounds.  I lost 18.3 pounds before I ever started the blog.