After losing a miraculous 20 pounds in 7 days my body decided to just stop losing weight. For 2 consecutive days I ate around 1200 calories and worked out about 2-3 hours each day with no weight loss. Talk about a demotivator.

I then ate regular food for 2 days and actually put on  4 pounds…. but, I’d also worked out wildly those 2 days and so I should have just stayed the same. It’s quite bizarre. But I’m continuing to press on with the diet and hopefully I can get down to 320 at least by August 1. i’ve got to continue to mold and work on my overall diet and workout plan until I have sufficiently figured out the right balance of carbs, fat, protein and workout.

I’ve never been more focused and despite the eye injury (Got hit by a racquetball racquet) I’m not going to be set back too far. I’m going to take the day off today and not workout, but it will be the first day in 15 that I haven’t busted my butt with at least an hour or two of cardio.

Much Love…. Eddo

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Last Monday I wondered allowed on this site if it was possible to lose 30 pounds in 10 days. I started dieting and working out something serious in an effort to see if that was an accomplishable task – it just might be.

I weighed 363.3 last Monday and 343.2 today. How you ask? By eating less and working out more.

I decided to use all my years of combined dieting success and failure knowledge to my advantage. Lowering my carbs has always seemed to work well for me but it never seemed satisfying or sustainable. Counting calories was too complicated and cumbersome. I needed a program that allowed me a tiny bit of flexibility along with long-lasting results.

I kept eating my almonds for breakfast and for dinner along with lots and lots of water and a small lunch that normally consisted of about 30 carbs and lots of protein and fat.

The body actually burns fat better as a fuel than carbs and so you would think that I would be too tired to sustain three hour workouts EVERY. SINGLE. DAY last week. But I did and the intensity only increased instead of decreasing despite the decline of my caloric intake. That includes weight lifting to insure I don’t lose muscle mass – which, I can still bench press 275 10 times and so I think my muscle mass is doing just fine.

I’ve been sure to take my vitamins and joint supplements with this regime as well and I’ve never felt better.

Some people may say, “that’s unhealthy!!!” or “It’s mostly water weight!” – but they say that only because they really don’t know their butt from a hole in the ground.

Water weight is normally stored on people who don’t exercise or diet and secondly, God created our bodies so that they would be able to store so we could use it when needed. It’s like a wharehouse full of gasoline and I’m burning it up with exercise.

Part of my plan has come from reading Wilbur Smith books where these hunters in the African bush would literally chase elephants for 20 miles in a single day jogging through rough terrain with minimal water and food. Their bodies would lose fat quickly, but they would only become more fierce.

So my goal is to lose 60 pounds by Aug. 1st and I figure if the 360 pound guy on the biggest loser can do it, so can I.

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I will let you know at the end of 10 days.

On Monday I started a diet. I’m self-employed and so I get to set my own hours and it really helps when sticking to a diet and exercise routine. South Beach always works great for me and so I thought I would give it a whirl. I got up and weighed Monday a heft 363.3 pounds. Ouch. That was what the scale said, I wasn’t in any pain myself.

I decided to go for  a long bike ride and then to eat healthy all day and by healthy I mean strict low-carb with a few almonds and very little dinner.

Tuesday I got up and weighed 360.0 – not bad I thought, but that could easily be water weight. Yesterday I repeated the day almost exactly but I added in an extra hour of cardio and some weight training.

Wednesday morning I got up and weighed 355.0 – wow – that’s 8 pounds in 2 days. Would it be possible for me to lose 22 more in 8 days? I don’t see why not.

This morning I got up for the 4th day in a row and road my 14 mile bike ride. Then after I went to the gym and lifted for about 30 minutes followed by 90 minutes on the treadmill.

I’m eating almonds and water for breakfast with a spoonful of peanut butter tossed in the mix.

Lunch is an omelette with sausage (Yep, I fell off the no pork wagon) and the omelette is made with some extra egg whites and avacado, some onion and some salsa. Dinner has been almonds and cashews.

I’m wondering if I can handle a night at the gym tonight for some extra cardio? Perhaps a quick hour on the elliptical machine will do me some good. If I weigh 352 tomorrow then I am going to keep this up for the full 10 days adding more and more workouts until I have dropped 30 pounds. It might kill me, but it will be fun to see if it is possible.

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I’m not sure if I posted on here about trying e-Harmony again in December of last year, but  I did. Surprisingly I was matched with very few women and the ones I was matched with weren’t a match at all.

What is it about online dating services that makes me feel like I am bargain basement shopping? It’s like I have this selection of women served up before me that are last year’s models or returned items that someone else didn’t want. I know what you are thinking: Harsh Much! But it’s true.

I’ve been trying Match.com for a month now and it seems that everyone they are matching me with is divorced. When did people start getting divorced in their twenties?

I’m probably being too judgmental or even unrealistic cause I know there are some amazing divorced women out there, but I sort of want to be my wife’s first husband. When someone has already been married then I feel like “Hey, you already had your turn, let some the rest of us have a shot!”

Match.com gives me 5 new matches a day and most of the time I can look at their profile and tell if we would actually be a good match. I have talked to a couple of girls through email and I can’t help but be bored.

One girl said, “It’s torture for me to get to know someone through email.” And I wanted to respond back, “If that is the case, then you should give me a good reason to want to meet you in person. Be interesting. Be funny. Be witty. Charming. SOMETHING!” Snore.

I have a tendency to quickly write out a long email that gives insights into who I am and what I am looking for without coming right out and saying it. I ask important questions up front like, “Were you ever a dude?” and “Are you a Wiccan?” It’s important to get these questions out of the way at the beginning instead of finding out on the third or fourth date and you’ve already french kissed on the front steps of her lair.

I promise that I am not hardened or set in my ways, but the last 4-6 relationships, the girls I took out from e-Harmony, Wilbur Smith novels and the 33 years I have lived on this Earth have wizened me and enhanced my bullcraptometer.  Online dating services allow people to put their best foot forward on an online profile but I think it also attracts people that fall into these categories:

• Desperate
• Shallow
• Married
• Divorced
• Perverts
• Crazies
• Hopeless Romantics
• Gold Diggers

I’m sure that makes me sound jaded, but I’m just drawing a conclusion based on my own personal experience and observation. But I also believe that in every field full of weeds you can find a beautiful wild flower… Somewhere in this great wide world there is a woman who will understand my heart and see me for who I am – flawed, but awesome.  She’s out there somewhere and I plan to find her.

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Weight Watchers seems to be working – slowly but surely. My goal this month was just to lose 8-10 pounds. If I can do that consistently for 12 months then I will be able to lose around 100 pounds and reach my goal weight of 265 by the end of the year.

The hardest part is keeping up with all the food I eat. A banana here and apple there a container of pudding every now and then followed by a piece of string cheese. Every single item counts, every delicious calorie, every teaspoon of olive oil – it all adds up.

The best thing about Weight Watchers is that I haven’t been all that great at staying within my point limits. On occasion I go over or there are days when I blow it altogether, but I think my diet is more balanced now and I eat a more fruit and vegetables than I ever have. I also love that I don’t have to deny myself food at a party or an event. Instead, I plan for that birthday bash by using my bonus points on those days and instead of having three pieces of cake I just have 1 and a half!

I’d like to lose 3 more pounds by January 31… but if I don’t I still feel pretty successful and this is new for me since my whole life I’ve measured my weightloss success by dropping huge amounts of weight in an unrealistic amount of time. If you’ve tried every diet on the planet, I encourage you to try this one. It might change your life.

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If you are in this area and you are looking for a great personal trainer, I recommend Pamela Micks. She does Kettlebell Classes as well as 1:1 fitness sessions. She actually competes in fitness competitions and is fun to train with.

Real Body Fitness

Pamela Micks
Certified Personal Trainer
214-536-3304
pamela@realbodyfitness.com

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When I tell people that I am training to be a football player they always ask, “Well, are you training?”

I wish that you could follow me around for a couple of days and see what my life is like. I wake up and start working immediately, then I take lunch which is usally me eating alone and reading a Wilbur Smith or Dean Koontz novel.

When I get off work I like to relax for about 30 minutes after I change into my workout clothes. I like to eat before working out and so I find some food in the house or I go and pick somehting up. I then go to the gym. If I ride my bike to the gym then I don’t do cardio at the gym, I just lift until my arms hurt – until the pain in my rotator cuffs is so unbearable that I have to hug myself to deal with the pain. I do curls and back exercises until exhaustion. When I try to do one more rep of anything my triceps, biceps or back muscles immediately Charlie Horse and I know it’s time to stop.

In the morning I eat Kashi high-protein, high-fiber cereal. I drink 50 grams of a low-carb protien drink. I take fish-oil tablets that are supposed to help the joints. At night I drink a Nitric Oxide beverage that tastes like diet fruit punch cough syrup called Nano Vapor.

What’s in naNO Vapor?

naNO Vapor™ delivers clinically advanced anabolic growth factors, a unique neuro-amplifying matrix, cutting-edge thermogenic compounds, potent cell volumizing complexes, and a never-before-seen combination of vasodilators for a powerful, multi-angled approach to musclebuilding.

This is only the beginning. I’ve got so many more things to incorporate into my overall training plan, but I don’t want to over-do it. What I’ve learned from years of failure and success is that trying to do too much at the beginning is a sure way to incur severe burnout and I need to make this program work for me unlike any other program in the past.

One thing I also must mention – the Fish Oil Joint pills are working fantastic. After just a few days use I already feel less pain in my elbows and heels. I should have done this a long time ago, but better late than never!

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As I prepare to become the next walk-on Desperado I find that my body is rising to the challenge. Just two weeks ago I started hitting the weights really hard. Last week I wanted to see if I could bench press 135 pounds 100 times – 4 sets of 25 reps, not all at once. On the 4th set I could only do 15 before my chest screamed out in agony and my triceps started to whine like little babies.

I thrust the bar back up the rack with a clank and hugged myself. I listened to “Closer” by Ne-Yo on my iPod while I geared back up for the final 10 reps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… I pushed all the way through to 15 before I was forced to quit again.  My breath came in short gasps and so I focused on slowing it down. Deep inhalations followed by a slow exhale. I concentrated on the pounding in my chest and immediately could tell that the breathing exercises were working.

This week I added just 10 pounds. My goal is to be able to do 225 40 times non-stop by the time Desperdo tryouts get here in October. I picked up the 145 pounds and busted out 25 reps easily. The second set was even easier and is always the easiest because the muscles are warmed up. By the 3rd set I could start to feel the burn, the tearing down of muscle fibers and the build up of lactic acid. I continued to focus on my breathing and form and on the 4th and final set of 25 I pushed through with ease. 145 pounds 100 times isn’t a great feat, but what is great is to see how quickly my body is responding to the torture I am putting it through. Now it’s time to up the ante…

With just 2 months of training to go I have to increase my running, improve my diet, start taking post-workout recovery shakes, ice my joints, cool down in the hot tub and sauna, and if I really want to get serious I will start on a regimen of creatine and a host of other MuscleTech supplements that taste and smell awful but that over time I have found that they actually do work.

Last night I am talking to Attic Monkey about all of this and I tell him, “Dude, just imagine how much easier it would be to be a full time athlete. I’m doing all of this on top of working 40 hours a week at work, what if all I had to do was workout 4 hours a day, then work on recovery and then when I go home that time is mine, the workouts are done because the workouts were, well, Work.”

This little conversation only inspired me more. What if I could become a paid athlete for just a few years? After that I would like to tour the states as a motivational speaker. I would publish a book on eating and exercise and then of course I would write an Autobiography about my experience and how I went from Corporate America, to being a Fat Mavs ManiAAC dancer to being a Dallas Desperado.

So people keep asking me, “What have you been up to lately?” Well, pretty much working, working out, and taking care of my body and my house. What have you been up to?

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Heather lasted just 8 days on the detox. Makes me feel better than I made it 18 days, but people, let me tell you, it’s harder than you’d think.

My roommate is about to start another detox, he’s the one that told me about this one in the first place. His new one comes with a bunch of pills and powder that look really cool. It will be fun living with a guinea pig while he goes through this.

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Pulled from Dooce’s Website:

Yesterday was also the first day of a 21-day diet cleanse that I’ve decided to do that prohibits me from eating any sugar, gluten, caffeine, alcohol, or animal products. It’s the same cleanse that Oprah did, and when I read about how it was making her feel I became intrigued, bought the book that inspired it, Quantum Wellness, and decided immediately it was exactly what I needed in my life. I’ve been meaning to make some major changes in my life, especially since the recent chaos is only going to get more chaotic, and this book outlines some ideas as to how to take charge of the change I want to make.

They so want to be just like me.

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Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become. – Maxwell Maltz

Last night in my MIS class our Prof hit on some really great points about self-image and why people, no matter how often we try to make them change – don’t.  The importance of this information was tied into the fact that many large corporations try to implement new processess and policies only to find that they are ignored. This is especially true with “Knowledge Workers” who use their brains to do their jobs and not manual labor. Once we develop a way we like to do things, a way that has worked just fine for us, we don’t like to change it.

According to Dr. Maltz, each individual has a picture of who they are and how the world sees them. This self-image is created over time by our failures and successes and by what people have told us repeatedly about ourselves.  “Once a belief about oursevles goes into this picture it becomes truth” Maltz says ” We do not question it’s validity, but proceed to act as if it were true.”

Think about that for a moment. If you were told in the 7th grade that you weren’t good at math, were you ever good at math? I wasn’t. It always came hard for me. For most of my life I didn’t consider myself a creative person, it was only when I started to work for TI that I started to believe I was creative and only then because people told me over and over how creative I was. It took years for me to actually believe that I truly am creative and then to start nurturing and feeding that creativity.

I thought this information was interesting to note especially in the case of Americans and dieting, exercise and general health. Our teacher put a quote on the board form Maltz that said, and I’m paraprhasing, “90% of all patients with heart disease do not change their eating habits or lifestyles even after they have had heart surgery and they know that if they do not change their habits they will die.”

I had an Uncle that smoked cigarettes like a freight train. When I met him for the first time he had no voice box. He used one of those machines that you held up to a hole in your throat and when you talked it sounded like a robot or a Speak and Spell. He had gotten throat cancer and so they removed his voicebox, but he kept smoking. Later, Cancer ate up his entire face. My dad went to visit him int he hospital during his last days and he said the cancer was so bad that his face was mutilated and his lips were so swollen that they stretched back away from his teeth and he couldn’t even close his mouth.

It’s an ugly picture, but a picture that only validates Maltz’s theories about change.

As I have worked hard to diet these last few weeks, as I have struggled for self-discipline and self-control I have noticed areas where I have sabotaged my self. I have been my worst enemy at reaching my goals.

I’m always delighted to learn truths about human behavior. Understanding why I am the way that I am helps me to take better actions for change. It’s gonna be hard, but I can change.

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I actually tried to diet on Saturday, but on Sunday I was all – “Why Bother”. By Monday I had put 5 pounds back on. I don’t know if this is a result of my poor eating or my lifting weights or just a fluctuation. What I do know is that I have no plans of putting this weight back on and so I plan on doing a South Beachesque eating regimen. That means I’ll watch my caloric, carb and fat intake and only splurge for planned events – like a game night planned for June 7th at my casa. So this Detox was really just a kick-off to a healthy eating plan that I need to implement for the rest of my life and a daily budget that I have committed to. 10 dollars a day and if I need more than that I need to save from the previous day. This does not include gasoline, that is a separate budget.

A note about my tooth… I have to go back this week to have it finished, however, it should go pretty fast because have of the filling has already fallen out. There is a whole in my tooth where that temporary crap they stuff in there has cratered. The dentist said I couldn’t eat anything like caramel or chewing gum and so I didn’t. I’ve pretty much been eating nursing home soft foods for the last few days… so I blame shoddy teeth stuff, not my eating habits.

Also, if you live in the Dallas area, Kiss FM Big Money What is That? is supposed to start back up today. I’ll be posting the clues on this site if I remember to wake up before 7. However, this morning I woke up at 5:45 and went ahead and got up and now I am at Starbucks getting ready to do some work.

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