Posted October 9th, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
As promised yesterday, I thought I’d post a little visual evidence of the progress so far. I can’t really see the difference day-to-day, because I see myself in the mirror all the time. But there’s already a noticeable difference.
This is us in Cancun at the end of June:
And this is us in the canyon yesterday:
Obviously, I still have plenty to go. I hope you weren’t expecting me to be ridiculously skinny (I did mention that I still weigh 350, right?). But I love being able to see actual progress, and I see it, especially in my face. Take a look at this comparison, with two photos from Cancun and one from yesterday:
I tried to get the faces on the same scale, based on the position of the hairline, the eyes, the nose, and the chin (the main chin, that is). Looking at those pictures from Cancun, I look terribly unhealthy. I remind myself of the fat guy in “Remember the Titans,” the guy who plays Randy on “My Name Is Earl” but before he lost 200 pounds or whatever, with the deep shadows on the eyes and stuff. And look at those chins! My face almost had no shape at 400 pounds, but that shape is starting to return.
Things like this make me happy and motivate me to keep going. Thanks for all your support.
P.S. — By the way, doesn’t Bethy look great? She’s been SO supportive of me, and it’s been benefiting her too. She’s lost 18 pounds, and while she obviously looked great before and didn’t have nearly as much to lose as I did, she looks great in these pictures from yesterday. I didn’t know you could improve on perfection, but there you have it.
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Posted October 9th, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
I wore my jeans to our photo shoot today, the first time I’d worn them in a couple months. As I put them on, I realized that they were the only pants I hadn’t worn recently. Then I realized something else: I now officially own ZERO pairs of pants or shorts that I have to unbutton to put on or take off.
Know what I love? Belts. Know who oughtta love belts? Anyone walking behind me.
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Posted October 8th, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
We’re heading up the canyon to take some family pictures today, and I’m pretty excited about it. We had family pictures taken in Cancun about three months ago, and I was hovering around 400 pounds at the time. It’s hard for me to see the day-to-day difference my weight loss has made, but seeing a picture of me 50 pounds ago and comparing it to what I see in the mirror, I can totally see it. I’ll be posting some “Before and So Far” pictures in the next day or two.
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Posted September 22nd, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
First of all, I have finally finished writing up our New York experience over on our family blog. It took two posts, which you can find here and here.
I finally weighed myself after New York, and I was right — no gain, no loss. Pretty successful vacation, all things considered. But that was a week ago. As of Saturday night, I am sitting at 359.2 pounds. That’s right, I’m below 360! That’s a total of 42.6 pounds, which is quite the accomplishment for me, and I am pretty pleased with the way things are going. I’ve been amazed at how much self-control I’ve had — at times when I used to would have slapped together some nachos or made some mac & cheese or something, I’ve instead had a small bowl of healthy cereal or a banana or a low-carb Slim-Fast or — most groundbreaking — nothing at all. Of course, it also helps your self-control when you don’t keep the crap around the house, because life’s easier when nachos aren’t an option. But I have two small kids, so there is ALWAYS mac & cheese available to be made, and I’ve been very good about not making it. (I did make it once this week for lunch, but I used whole-wheat pasta and fat-free cheese and made a very small serving, which is still an improvement.)
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Posted September 15th, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
Well, the New York trip was a success, both in that it was amazingly fun and wonderful, and in that I didn’t do anything stupid food-wise. Our biggest problem was that we never had time to eat until late at night, and we all know that eating late at night is the worst thing you can do (especially when the only thing available is Papa John’s pizza). I also only had half a hot dog at the game Friday night, but then the game got rained out so we went back to the stadium on Saturday, and we each had a whole hot dog. But still, one-and-a-half hot dogs and a few late-night slices of pizza aren’t bad over the course of a three-day vacation, especially when you consider the 8,000 miles we walked. So while I haven’t weighed myself yet, I expect that I came home roughly the same weight as when I left, which is good enough for me.
By the way, I could totally see myself living in New York. Not forever, and probably not if I had a stupid job I had to go to, but when I am wealthily retired, I would LOVE to live for a year or two in Manhattan, and just spend my time going to Broadway shows, using my season tickets to the New Yankee Stadium, and learning how to spit. It is a wonderful city where no one obeys traffic signals, random black dudes shove their hardcore rap CDs into your hands and then ask for donations (all the while flirting with your wife and signing her CD “To Babycakes”) even though they totally KNOW you’re a white dude from Utah, and crazy cowboys run around playing guitar in nothing but briefs and a cowboy hat. I will be posting more on our family blog about our experience (and there’s already some there about “Wicked” and the Yankee game), probably later tonight.
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Posted September 12th, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
Well, we’re in New York, and today we headed over to Times Square, among other places. For some crazy reason, we ended up spending quite a while in both the M&M store and the Hershey’s store. I guess we’re gluttons for punishment — which is better than other kinds of gluttony the situation could have inspired, I guess. We walked out with only the three little sample chocolates they gave us for buying a t-shirt, so I guess that’s a little victory.
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Posted September 11th, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
This is just a shout-out to anyone reading this. Please post a comment so I know you’re reading. As I’ve said before, this blog is my own personal accountability, so the more people I know are reading, the more pressure I have. 
So if you’re reading this, tell me! And then come back and comment often. Add me to your Google Reader or whatever RSS reader you use and keep track of me! NOW!
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Posted September 11th, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
Vacations are hard when you’re trying to eat right. (They’re a lot of fun when you don’t care what you eat.) Beth, the kids, and I spent a little over a week on vacation last month, with five days at a family reunion in Arizona and a few days in California for my cousin’s wedding. Generally, when we go on vacation for a week or more, we both come back significantly heavier than when we left — usually around 7-10 pounds for me and 4-5 pounds for Beth. We like to eat out when we’re on vacation, because we don’t have Jack in the Box or In-N-Out here in Utah. We eat to alleviate the boredom that comes from sitting around houses that aren’t our own. We eat because there are NO RULES when you’re on vacation!
So this last vacation, coming as it did only ten days or so after we started this current endeavor, had us both worried. Would we stick to our goals, or would the vacation kill our momentum and be a setback for us?
Without our scale, neither of us knew for sure how we were doing. We bought a lot of healthy food to snack on. But we didn’t exercise much (treadmills are kind of bulky to take on vacation). But we resisted the urge to eat pizza when it was readily available. But I did have half of a Coldstone ice cream at a Diamondbacks game. But I didn’t even touch the ice cream at my parents’ house. So by the time we got home, we weren’t sure what to expect. Did the good outweigh (I never get tired of that pun!) the bad?
Yes, yes it did. When we stood on the scale upon our return, we were pleased to see that we had each lost a little over a pound. Sure it’s not much, especially when I had lost nearly twenty pounds in the two weeks before the vacation. But when the usual result is a gain of ten pounds, I will take a loss of one any day. It reinforced my confidence that I really can do whatever I set my mind to.
Why am I writing this now, three weeks after the fact? Because in 14 hours, Beth and I are getting on an airplane and flying to New York for a fun little weekend trip. We’ll be sitting in Yankee Stadium on Friday night — which means temptation of nachos and hot dogs. We’ll be on Broadway on Saturday to see “Wicked” — which probably means eating out at a nice restaurant. And we’ll be spending three nights in a hotel, which means cooking healthy meals won’t really be an option.
I’m not really nervous, necessarily, but I am definitely realistic enough to recognize that I need all the extra motivation I can get. So I’m posting it here, for all the world to see, and when I get back on Sunday, I will have to be accountable for what I have done over the weekend. This blog is my own personal WWJD bracelet, except it’s WWASGD (What Would A Skinny Guy Do?).
Wish me luck!
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Posted July 31st, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
Like I said in my introductory post, the first sign of trouble was when my scale started throwing an error instead of telling me how much I weighed. (In retrospect, the first sign of trouble should have been when I had to buy a scale that went up to 380 … or maybe earlier.) I didn’t find out until a visit to the doctor that I had topped 400.
Yesterday, on July 30, 2008, I stood on my scale, expecting to see “E” again. But glory be and the saints be praised, it worked! As of yesterday afternoon, I weigh 383 pounds. That’s 19 pounds in nine days, which probably seems like a lot to you skinny people out there. But at my size, two pounds a day is a perfectly healthy way to start.
I could not be more pleased. I’ve been very food-conscious over the past nine days, focusing on three things:
1) Limiting my portions.
2) Choosing healthier meals.
3) Choosing healthier snacks.
Because I’ve still been recovering from the sinus infection that sent me on that fateful doctor visit in the first place, I haven’t gotten into the exercise stuff too much yet, so my entire focus has been on the food. I have made great progress on all three of those items, and I am confident that as I continue to stay vigilant, the weight will continue to fall off. It’s not as easy as the little 1-2-3 list makes it seem, but the concept is definitely that simple.
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Posted July 31st, 2008 by Jeff J. Snider
I remember the first time I realized I weighed over 300 pounds. I was a senior in high school, and the next-largest guy on the football team weighed about 250. I was a lot bigger than everyone I knew, but I wasn’t what I thought of when I thought “300 pounds”: grossly obese, smelly, all that stuff.
After a while, 300 didn’t seem so bad. I was still a very good athlete, and I took pride in the fact that I didn’t look like I weighed 300. I could tell people I weighed 260, and they had no problem believing me. When I went to renew my driver’s license just before I turned 19, the lady at the DMV recognized that I had grown taller since I turned 16 — 5′9″ to 6′3″ — but she didn’t mention the “235″ next to “Weight.” In retrospect, she was probably just being polite, but she didn’t seem to have a problem when I put “299,” even though at that point I was around 330.
Over the years, I have accepted 300. My driver’s license still says 299 — 11 years later — but other than that, 300 has become part of who I am.
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