Posts by jburgin

Hola! I am alive and doing quite well! :) I am sorry I slipped on the posting, life got busy and I kept meaning to, but would let it slide. I am still on my wagon and working hard at it. 8 weeks without a soda today! AND finally, after months of not seeing anything, I lost 4 lbs via the scale. Not sure what it means, but I take it as a win.

Also, I am  finally working in exercise! I take a walk at least twice a week for about an hour. It hurts the knees sometimes, but it does wonders for the brain!

I hope all else is well, I am sorry to hear of your difficulties, writestuff, I truly will be praying for you guys up there.

Supersized: Now THAT question, I can answer. :)

When I fall off the wagon, (or fail at anything in life) what got me back up was perspective. Let's face it, when you mess up once, you feel like an idiot. And that just makes things worse. What always helped me was when I looked at the big picture instead of that one failure.

Case in point: I failed alot this weekend. Ate what I shouldn't have ate. It happens. Instead of mulling over that fact, today I'm working on getting back in the groove. Regardless of all that eating, I did get some small exercise in and still haven't broken the no soda habit.

In the grand scale, I have done ok.

How can people around here be that level of support? Be the voice of reason. I've always been the type to be sympathetic to people in hard times only to a certain degree, I also try to provide perspective to a situation. That tends to help the recovery process faster.

Accountability, in all aspects, is how people succeed. It's how you do well at work, it's how your diet does well, it's even how some relationships do so well. If you are in the race with the rest of us, it should be expected of you to hold up your friends. Not carry them, but provide for them some encouragement, motivation and perspective. That is how they will succeed.

Hello, I finally have time to answer the question. :)

The main source of inspiration for me when times are hard is a single t-shirt. I have hung it up in my bathroom. Where I see it every morning and several times through out the day. There's a story behind it, of course :)

Two years (almost 3) ago, before I started this trek, I was at a conference for youth ministers in Chattanooga, TN. There was a prime time entertainment thing going in a conference room, and everybody wanted to be there. The room was small, the crowd was big. Standing room only. I get there late, and all the seats are taken. I had been having problems with my legs all week anyway....walking around downtown Chattanooga isn't exactly a fun thing for me. Anyhoo, I had extreme difficult walking and keeping up with everyone. Since the room was full and I couldn't get a seat, I just decided to leave. I walked around the convention center and putzed around doing stuff. It upset me that I was in such sorry shape. So much so that I got really ticked with myself over the whole fiasco and swore to change it.

Fast forward to the last day of the conference, everybody is getting ready to leave and I'm picking up a few final gifts for people. I walked by this table and saw this shirt. It was a purple with an artistic rendering of the conferences theme "Jump". It was really neat. I walked up to buy it, but realize they didn't have my size (at the time, I was a 3x)...I got really disappointed and about walked away. Then turned around and bought it anyway. I promised myself that one day, I would be able to wear this shirt.

And if you read my bio...I did get that small eventually. I wore that shirt with the biggest smile on my face. These days, it's back up on the hanger in my bathroom, begging me to wear it again. So that's one way I stay on the wagon.

Consistency for me = obsessiveness. If I dont' constantly live and think about a goal I'm shooting for...then it's easier for me to slip back into complacency.

Anyhoo, my week has gone ok. I've been doing a little too much compromising, but not going overboard. I'm not losing any weight...but I'm not GAINING anything either. WOOT WOOT!

And a big good news: This Sunday will be my 4th week without any soda.

So yea, things have been going ok.

hopeful31, from personal experience, I can say it isn't that bad to miss major exercise. Even multiple days in a row. You still sound like you're pretty active during the day despite not being at the gym. Activity is activity. Your body will burn "x" amount of calories just sitting idle. If you're worried about losing the mentality of doing a major workout consistently, that's understandable. But just remember that even small activities can add up to a major workout.  :)

Keep the faith! You can do it!

Good morning Wagoneers! Another wonderful morning of calorie counting and water drinking has begun for most of us. I'm being sarcastic of course. Mornings are rough around here.

Anyhoo, dropping in to share this link I found on lifehacker.com, it's a link to a website that has a grocery list template filled with categories of healthy foods you could use next time you shop. I like the concept, but don't really think it's for me. It doesn't mean I won't share the love.

http://lifehacker.com/389604/eat-healthy-with -grocery-list-templates

enjoy and have a good day

Well isn't this just a pile of oat bran flakes! (one of my least favorite foods there).

No such thing as letting a group die. If nothing else, we could probably find another place to trade messages. I know the concept of another forum is daunting and everything, but I know of a few places around here that would probably be alot easier to deal with. I'm a geek, we have our corners of the world worth living in :)

Keep us apprised, Sara. Fight the good fight and all that jazz. I'd hate to see this stop just as soon as it started.

I agree. Very good post Sara. I WISH I could be that organized. i've tried in the past, but I fell off that "wagon" as well. :)

Just an update, the car is ok. It was just an oil change, plus a slight repair due to a recall. So all is well with that. Hope everyone had a great day

thin27, you'd better be nice to the computer guy! :) Truth be told, most of my teachers love me to death, so my frustrations lie in my workload and lack of hours in the day to fix it all. The users are generally ok.

I feel good about this forum too, I'm looking forward to the good support we can give each other.

Hola everyone,

right off the bat i'm feeling awkward, being the only guy in this group it seems. hopefully more can join so I don't feel so weird :)

I'm a 27 yr old computer tech in a small south Georgia town. Always been a big fella, since middle school, but gained big time whenever I graduated High School. I maxed out at 310, and fought hard to never get that bad again. A couple of years ago, I made a big push to start a real diet and fight my weight problems. It worked out well, ate 1,300 calories a day [every day] and ran 3 miles 3 times a week. Things were looking up, I was down to 240 and enjoying all of it.

Then my knee went bad. I immediately stopped all workouts (which was stupid in hindsight) and tried to stay on my diet, but a lack of desire to do so caused me to stop. Over a year, I gained back all the weight I had lost and am now riding the 290 zone.

I'd rather not go there again, so I'm getting proactive about it. I started my diet back a week or two ago and am slowly working myself into exercise again. I don't know if I'll ever run again [my knee never feels strong enough]. but I have other ways to do cardio, so we'll see how it goes.

My goal is a little at a time, I set minor goals to have something a little realistic to look for When you are 290 lbs, telling yourself you want to be 240 again is just silly. Telling myself I want to get to 280, that's doable. Once I hit 280, I shoot for 270, so and so forth. That's how I work it out. These days it's alot hard to be good on the diet because of my lifestyle. During the day, I fix computers for a school system. It's frantic to say the least. After that, I normally am involved with my church's youth group. I am a small group leader and as well as their AV tech guy. It all adds up to frantic paces, full of frustration, and emotions tied to my eating that don't belong there. Eating these days is mainly a matter of convenience. I can barely cook, and don't keep enough food in my cupboard to make super healthy meals. (a can of tuna and some peanut butter go a long way though...not together :) )

So all in all, I just gotta get back to the pace I was running (no pun intended) before. Hopefully we could all meet our goals and help each other along the way.