A short video to start off my day today:
You may ask how I loaded a riding lawn mower onto a lifted pickup truck by myself. Let me show you:
That is a ratchet strap used to hold a car down in or on a trailer. I closed the hook inside the toolbox lid.
Attached the other end of the strap to the back of the lawn mower and winched it up into the truck. I'm a genius. No, not really.
I swear that lawn mower has a creepy face designed into it...
After all of that (as you saw in the video at the top), I went to my parents' house to paint the roof of my uncle's garage for weatherproofing purposes. I used an HVLP gun that I dangled from an overhanging tree branch with a rope. Again, freaking genius. No...
The paint is essentially liquid aluminum and it gets on EVERYTHING.
This is where herpes comes from...I am sure of it.
I am also a complete idiot in general because I put all of that work into the roof painting fiasco but did not take a finished picture. Of course, that may be because I had a serious case of the above picture all over my hands. Don't worry, I showered already. Onto the weight loss thing that is in the title...
Anyone who knows me is probably aware that I have lost a considerable amount of weight in a pretty short span of time. I am actually nearing the mark of having lost sixty pounds since the end of last October, which puts us right at five months. I look much different now than I did back then and that is all based on my own personal choices. The weight is still coming off and at this point I am not even "trying" to lose it. My body knows where it should be ideally and it will stop once I get there, I am sure. This would be the time for me to post a "selfie" of what I look like now, but I will not because I hate them and I am not at all into looking like a complete pillock. Once I am caught in a candid picture and you can see me in a non-staged environment, I will post it. Deal? Good. After all of the conversations, I have decided to make a list of sorts about what I have figured out over the past few months about losing weight and being healthy in general. I am not a dietitian, I have no certifications, but this is my personal experience. I do not care what you look like, and I am not judging anyone who may be offended by this post. Everyone is different and entitled to their own opinion. Here we go:
-Gimmick diets. If you have to pay for a book or subscribe to a website as a way to follow a diet, you are making things far too complicated for yourself.
-Read nutrition labels. They will tell you what is in the food you could potentially be eating. If you cannot identify most of the ingredients, or even a few of them for that matter, do not buy it. Chicken McNuggets have 37 ingredients and are mostly corn, by the way.
-Just because it is marked as "low" or "no" does not mean something is any better for you than the original product. Again, look at the label to compare EVERYTHING.
-Do not keep junk food in your house. This includes sugary cereals, processed foods, pop tarts, candy bars, most granola bars, dressings, and creamy sauces. I hear people say things like "But my kids won't eat anything else!" I was a picky eater growing up, horribly so if we are being honest but I knew when I was hungry and the picky game was just something to get over. If I needed to eat, I did, sometimes I just didn't want to. Throw out the junk food! I
-Stop drinking alcohol. I could not tell you the last time I tasted alcohol, but it was a regular happening for a long time before I stopped. A drink on occasion is probably fine for someone with huge self-control, but if we are talking about weight loss here, you can view your personal conceptions of self-control as inadmissible (sorry, but I speak from experience). Tout the health benefits all you want, but drinking alcohol for positive health reasons is always just another excuse to drink it. Once you have arrived at your goal weight or goal health, start drinking again if you want to. I have no problem with that, I just do not care for it myself anymore.
-If it is an entire meal contained it a box that you add some sort of liquid to, do not eat it.
-American Cheese is not cheese. Do not eat it.
-If you cannot get the vegetables you want fresh, get them uncooked and frozen. Eating them out of a can is a last resort. The same applies to fruit. If the fruit is in juice or syrup, you are essentially eating candy disguised as fruit.
-Granola bars are often just as sugary and horrible as a Snickers. Grab a more expensive protein bar and eat it as a meal replacement if you must, but not as a snack or dessert.
-Dessert. Just...no...
-Smoothies. Look up the nutrition information online about various smoothies. They are fruits concentrated by liquefying them in a blender and fruits have large amounts of sugar. Vegetable juicing is a better option.
-Drink water. An occasional soft drink is fine, meaning once or twice a week. But if you are knocking back a Diet Coke or energy drink everyday of the week, you can still lose weight, but your appetite will regulate much better if you stick with water.
-Do not eat out. This is a hard one, because most people in my generation eat out multiple times in a single week. Once you get yourself to where you want to be, you can start eating out again. Chili's and other chains offer lower calorie meals, but you cannot trust them. Each person working in each kitchen is going to cook the food in a slightly different way that can make a huge difference on the restaurant's health claims. I worked in the industry for a while and will tell you right now that unless you are going to a vegan restaurant, eating raw vegetables and drinking water, you cannot trust any restaurant out there when it comes to eating well. If you cook food yourself, you know exactly what went into it.
-Stop sitting. Stop making excuses about your physical activity. What many people tend to do (someone I formerly was) is tell themselves that the things they did during their work day was enough physical activity for them. Rarely, it can be, but realistically it usually is not. Unless you work in a very physical manual labor environment, this excuse holds no ground. Push yourself to get home from work and immediately change into something more suiting to exercise without sitting down first. Go right out the door and start walking. If you are married or living with someone, do not wait for them to get home to walk together, just go. They can get out on their own or you can go with them later if you do not wear yourself out the first time. Talking to someone while you walk or jog kills off your stamina as well, so going alone is ideal and makes it easier to get in the "zone" while you listen to that killer playlist on your iPod. I started walking when I came to the conclusion that I was a useless slob, which became jogging, which became running, and now I clear over ten miles at a time. Again, in five months? Yes.
-The final thing is that you have to remember this: Your decision to be healthier and/or lose weight is a decision you make for YOU, nobody else. If you go into the process with the mindset of "I am doing it for my spouse/kids/girlfriend/boyfriend/to be a chick/dude magnet, you will not make it. Think of your health state as that of an alcoholic who has yet to stop drinking. At the end of the day, that person must make the decision to do better for him/herself and nobody else. Nobody can force the bottle away from that person because they will find another way to get it. In the same way, nobody can push someone to want to make their own change. This concept is true for our health and live in general. Until you make the solid decision to be who YOU NEED TO BE FOR YOU, making an attempt would be a cry in vain.
Again, this is what I have realized on my own, and open to interpretation. You are welcome to your opinion and I pose no judgement to anyone who has decided to read this post.
Grace and Peace,
-Drew
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