Tao of Cao

Save a Caoboi, Lose a Quarter Horse: Weight Loss Edition

I lost more than just the XXL sticker on my glasses. I also gained a neck!

Well I’m not trying to lose a real quarter horse but more of almost a quarter of a horse. A quarter horse roughly weighs about 1000 pounds. I’m on a journey to lose 208 to 258 pounds depending how I look and/or feel when I lose 208 pounds. I wish today was my official weigh in day. I’m going to jinx myself but I’m down almost 61 lbs. I’m going to go ahead and say a little bit about myself and why I started this.

When I started this new lifestyle almost 20 weeks ago, I weighed 458 pounds (let me pause for a moment for you all to gasp and become “unshocked”.) It was definitely the biggest that I have ever been. My knees hurt and I just didn’t feel good overall. When Renee and I left for Nerdtacular 2012 we said when we return home we would start our new lifestyle. We had no idea exactly what we were going to do.

We had purchased HBO when Game of Thrones had started its second season. One of the benefits of doing this is that you can DVR a lot of stuff before you got rid of it at the end of the season. One of the things we DVR’d was a documentary named “The Weight of the Nation”. It talked about obesity and the problem here in America health and weight wise. The documentary was broken up over four days because it was four hours long and each hour having its one part. It was very informative and not only did it tell us about the problem but it also gave solutions.

One of the misconceptions that I had was that if I go to the gym and work out, I could still eat like I wanted and still lose weight. I had thought that working out was the key to losing weight. Alas, I was wrong it was actually managing what I eat.

Thus began our adventure to LoseIt.com land, where we would begin to journal all our food that we would eat, log our calories, and really work in a budget. It has truly been an exciting journey for Renee and me. As of this writing, Renee herself is down almost 55 pounds after 20 weeks.

Now let’s get to the amazing part and talk about community. During our weight loss and sharing that experience with people. We are part of such a great Frogpants community that revolves around many podcasts, nerdisms, and major geekery. We have had a number of folks join us on Loseit (as of this writing we have 270 members in the group and 194 folks in the challenge) and as expected they are so supportive of each other. That makes me want to work even harder.

My plan is to periodically update here on my blog my status and insight that I have gotten. I consider this my day I finally accept the fact that I had gotten so heavy and reveal my weight. It may not seem like a big deal to many but to me it means a whole lot. I’m thankful for the people around me. I’m thankful for those that support Renee and I. I’m thankful for those that are in our lives and together we’ll all make each other a better person both physically and mentally.

November 14, 2012 - Posted by J | food, Friends, General, Tao of Cao | healthy Choices, LoseIT, WeightLoss, WellBeing