The fifth day...

I decided that the total fast is probably not too healthy to stick to for too long. I was starting to get pretty sick so my fiancee told me I needed to start eating something. I am just going to go straight to my vegan diet with an allowance of 1200 calories a day. I'm already seeing a difference in my size. It doesn't look like I have lost too much weight in the mirror, but 2XL t-shirts are starting to seem pretty big on me. I need to buy a scale. Seems kind of stupid that I don't have one, but on the other hand I don't want to obsess too much over it either. I've been slacking a bit on the exercise, mostly because I don't have a treadmill or anything at home. Walking has been kind of out of the question because of the weather. I've been thinking about getting a face mask at Dick's Sporting Goods or something that allows me to walk even when we have hail outside. Deb has been making sure that I watch the carbohydrates and eat more veggies and protein. That has been going a lot better since going vegan. My first night I ate quesadillas with soy cheese and salsa. That went really well. The meal was filling and racked up only about 320 calories. I'm trying to stick to a 300 calorie meal 100 calorie snack plan. The highest I should go in a day is 1400, but I am really trying to stick to 1200. My goal right now is to shoot between 195-220 lbs. It all depends on how I look at both sizes, and how much muscle I have when I get down to that size. I feel that when I was 230 I looked like crap, but I also had almost no muscle after the starvation. Even at 195 lbs I had way too much fat on my body with no muscle.

I feel that if I can keep this rate up that I should be at my target weight by May or June.

Day Three

Day three if fasting. It's so hard not to eat. I never realized how much food dominated my life. Everything that I do involves food in some way. Playing video games usually. involves snacking, watching television involves eating since most of my meals are in front of the tv, even driving can be difficult without picking up fast food or a bag of chips. I can always come up with some sort of excuse to eat. Since being on my fast there have been ups and downs. The tough parts are having so many cravings to eat. Commercials on television, cooking (for my fiancee and her son), some pretty bad headaches, hunger mixed together with nausea, and fatigue. The ups are it feels like my mental clarity is starting to come back. I am able to keep my train of thought going and don't blank out as often. I am hoping this will get me through school more easily now. I know I am not unintelligent but I feel like it with how foggy my thought process is.

Only four days left on the fast. Then I start my vegan diet. If people are saying that I am just going to gain all that weight back then just understand that I am really thinking this through. After the fast I am going vegan, most likely not permanently, but just to help me lose weight. After not eating, vegan sounds awesome. I would have never eaten like that before. I just am completely changing my lifestyle for the better.

My last meal

See that sandwich to the right? That is my last meal. Well, not last meal as in the last meal that I will eat in my entire life. It is the last meal that I will have in between ten to thirty days. It sounds insane, and possibly dangerous but nothing is more dangerous then how I am living now. I have a serious addiction to food. I actually have seen a counselor for it, and currently see her on a weekly basis. On top of that I have also been taking Dialectical Behavioral Training classes for the last two months. When I say addiction to food I do not mean that I just eat a lot of junk food. I mean that as I am writing this I am contemplating grabbing McDonald's before work. Depending on how I feel I would eat a double cheeseburger and fries, to the more extreme six piece chicken selects, large french fries, two double cheeseburgers, and one or two apple pies. I'll be full after the first hamburger. By the end of my meal my stomach will be bursting and I will be in an extreme amount of pain. That won't matter though, I will still eat more. The satisfaction that I get from the food greatly outweighs the health risks that eating like that carries. It is ridiculous that this is my lifestyle and it is VERY hard to admit it. Even my closest friends don't know how bad my food addiction is or the problems that it has caused. It has caused me to miss college classes, be late for work, and worst of all murdered my self esteem. The other difficulty is not having much family support. Not because they don't want to, but because they have no idea how to. My parents are skinny, my sisters are skinny, my grandparents were skinny, and so on. Not just skinny but very athletic as well. My father played Lacrosse, Ice Hockey, and Soccer. He stayed active through his entire life and has retired and lived out his dream of owning a horse farm. He does everything by himself and it is a serious amount of work. I respect my dad for the hard work that he puts in (by the way, he does all of this at 71 years old) but even more because he has never put me down for being overweight. My mother tries to support, but she has been the largest problem in contributing to my obesity (besides myself of course). Let me give you a little peek into my childhood...

My parents split up when I was five years old. It hit me pretty hard but wasn't absolutely crushing. Even at that age I understood why they were splitting up. My father constantly traveled for business. He's a biologist and has worked for several non-profits since I have known him. Most of his job involves going to fancy dinners and raising money from philanthropists who care about whatever cause he is fighting for at the time. Since he was never around I never saw my parents "in love" so the divorce didn't change much. As a young kid growing up my mom worried about my father taking me from her (she had some good reasons too) my father had threatened my mother and said he would take me instead because she wasn't a fit mother. In some ways he was right, but ultimately I love my mom. She is one of the most supportive people I have ever had in my life. Unfortunately when it came to saying "no" she failed miserably. This is probably because she wanted to keep me happy out of fear of losing me to my father. Now we get to the most relevant part...

My mom never had time to cook food. She was a special education teacher who spent most of her time working. She would generally come home around 7pm with a mountain of papers that she needed to have done by the next day. This meant that EVERY night was fast food/restaurant night. Sometimes she would bring me home McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's. Sometimes she would go to one of our favorite restaurants. T'J Carmody's (AWESOME Irish Pub. If you are ever in the Bennington, Vermont area go there first.), Rattlesnake Cafe (not sure if this place is still around) and various diners and pizzerias. Restaurant portions as most of you know, are much larger than the portion that you should be eating. At Carmody's I would get Shepherd's Pie, Buffalo Chicken Strips. No matter what they would come with french fries and a salad (never ate that). At the rattlesnake cafe I would get Nachos or a Hamburger and fries. Sometimes I would get both. That is where my mom had trouble saying "no". She SHOULD have told me (because I was seven) that that was far too much food to eat. Sometimes I would have her order a small pizza just for myself. When we went out to restaurants she would only eat half her meal. Instead of taking it home she would give it to me. Later on she started cooking more which was nice. The problem with that was I was so used to eating out that I still wanted to all the time. Once again she had trouble saying "no" she definitely tried, but I was a spoiled little brat. She would still cook dinner and I would eat it. We just switched the bad eating habits to after school. When my mom would pick me up from school we would go to McDonald's for an "after school snack" this was usually a super sized chicken McNuggets meal.

Fast forward to the present time. I currently have poor eating habits. Not as bad as they used to be, but still bad enough to make me feel like garbage all the time. On top of that I struggle from GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and Bi-Polar disorder. Both of those are hard to deal with, and often contribute to my poor eating habits (mostly binging during my manic episodes). I take medication though which has kept it pretty under control. I was diagnosed with both of these in 2008. I've had mood swings and manic/depressive episodes as well as anxiety issues since childhood, but they came in full swing in 2008. At first it was the panic attacks. I would start eating and get this sudden feeling like I was going to die. I ended up in the ER constantly. Eventually eating became such an issue that I just stopped. I went two weeks without anything to eat. I lost about 30 lbs in those two weeks. Then I started eating a small amount of food. Generally a few crackers were my only meal. Eventually I dropped down from 265lbs to 195lbs. I started eating again only because my mom forced me to go to the doctor, who then told me that if I didn't eat anything I would end up inpatient. I HATE going inpatient, that was the last thing that I wanted. I ate small amounts, but my weight maintained for a while. The long term damage from this is starting to take its toll. I lost so much muscle. Sometimes lifting a gallon of milk will cause my arm to uncontrollably shake because the muscle is so weak. I feel sick so often which I think is a result of the starvation. What was the worst effect? I gained the weight back. Once I could eat again it just went into a full on binge. As my wife put it "You ate like it was your job" and I really did. I was consuming about 6-7,000 calories a day. Some days I ate as much as 12,000 calories. Looking back on it makes me feel absolutely disgusted with myself. All the nice clothes that I could no longer wear had to be put back in the closet. Everyday I looked at myself in the mirror and was more and more disgusted. The final result of all of this? I was looking at myself in the mirror at 295lbs. 30lbs higher than the heaviest I had been before the starvation. About a year ago I went on a diet and lost 25lbs. I have been a consistent 270 since then. My ultimate goal is to be between 190-210lbs. I know that I can do it. I've been walking and weight lifting for the last two weeks. I feel better, but was still eating poorly.

About 4-5 months ago I saw a documentary called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". It's about a man who was seriously overweight like I am. He went on a "juice fast" and dropped a significant amount of weight. It pulled me in right away, but I abandoned the idea pretty immediately. I figured that it was just an infomercial style documentary trying to sell juicers. I am also very wary of dropping massive amounts of weight fast. My current body size is a perfect example of how that doesn't work. As I have done more research though, I have realized that many people say that the diet works great. They feel great and their bodies are operating well. I never eat fruits and vegetables. With this juice fast it forces me to eat fruits and vegetables and keeps me away from carbs. All the carbs that I have eaten have given me nothing but trouble. I feel that if I stick to this "fast" for between ten to thirty days that I can jump start my way to eating healthy. I feel that the weight won't go back on this time because I have not only learned from my past, but also have spent a great deal of time in therapy to help keep me from binge eating. Anyway haters gonna hate. I'm going to try it this way. If it fails then people can laugh at me and say "I told you so" fine, whatever. I am doing this for me and I don't care if people don't believe in me.

That is all for this evening. If you find this blog entertaining and want to hear how things are going, stick around. This blog is for me though. I want to track my progress and motivate myself by writing. Plus when I write my desire to eat dies a little bit. It is just something to keep my mind of the food.

This blog won't just have my weight loss. It will also probably have some of my political opinions tossed in, stories from work (gotta stick around for those), movies, music and more. Mostly the weight loss stuff though. Right now that is my main focus.

Nighty night.