Willpowerthru is BACK BABY

This post is about my current weight loss, but it’s like one of those inane recipe websites where the actual recipe is down at the bottom and you have to learn about the chef’s grandma’s house in Kansas and what part of the marinade is “just my favorite because my daughter and I learned how to make it together becau—” OH MY GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP AND TELL ME HOW HOT THE OVEN NEEDS TO BE RIGHT NOW.

A lot of things have changed in 5 years since my last post. I pretty much took the sign from the universe that my hips suck as permission to be a big ole piece of shit, topping out at 340.40 pounds. One of the funniest men to ever grace this dumb planet, Chris Farley, was 296 when he died. Fucking yikes.

Back then the hip specialist I went to back in 2017 told me I have a torn labrum in my hip.

The doctor tells me it’s not really going to get any worse, but it’s also not going to get any better. So there’s just been hip pain every time I’ve tried to walk for extended periods of time and I really inflamed it when I was walking miles and miles and miles back in 2017. He also let me know that I have pistol grip hips which sounds so much more badass than it is.

All this means for yours truly is that I’ll be looking at a hip replacement in my 50’s rather than maybe my 60’s or 70’s. FUN!

Knowing that my hips suck should just have been a wake up call that I need to put less stress on them overall (lose wieght), or at least get to a place where I was more mentally healthy so that I could prioritize my health over the needs of others (therepy). Instead I tried different things over the years to try to lose some pounds like juicing, fasting, calorie counting. Then I tried to cope with that not going well by drinking myself to sleep a lot of nights, which I’m not sure if you know this, isn’t great.

I was pretty depressed about that shit for a while, but through actually going to a therapist I’ve put myself in a position to do something about everything (I’ll get to that here soon I swear).

Turns out I’m a completely self-aware ego driven narcissist with low self esteem and a drinking problem, histrionic tendencies involving conflation and exaggeration, and severe ADHD. This is my diagnosis, not my therapist’s. It’s a smorgasbord of terrible. I copied and pasted the definitions of these things in my journal and highlighted the parts that I do have and crossed out the ones I don’t and it looks something like this:

Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and lack of consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding.

Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a mental health disorder that includes a combination of persistent problems, such as difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity and impulsive behavior. Adult ADHD can lead to unstable relationships, poor work or school performance, low self-esteem, and other problems.

Problem Drinking is described as missing important events in favor of drinking, experiencing a strong personality shift with alcohol (anger, violence, depression, etc.), excessive spending after drinking, conflicts with friends or family members while drinking or as a result of drinking.

By talking with a professional therapy person lady doctor, I’ve been able to figure out where a lot of this stuff comes from and how to get better at managing it. I’m on ADHD meds, and I’m attempting to curb my impulsive behavior as much as possible. The issue I thought that I’d run into is by curbing impulsive behavior I’d start to shut down charity events and doing things for others as much and that was terrifying to think about. I started the damn charity after drinking some beers and announcing that I was doing it randomly and impulsively and now we’ve donated over 100 thousand dollars to charity. I think I was always looking at impulsive decisions like that as my easy out if it failed. “Well shit, I mean how was that possibly going to work in the first place? I came up with that and did it in a freakin day” Fortunately, most impulsive charity events have turned out just fine and we’re doing our SIXTH Inappropriate Trivia event in June which I really am looking forward to.

That’s enough of a digression into my bullshit. Here’s what’s going on right now. I decided that I was going to finally try to lose weight the correct way. Completely changing my habits and focusing only on my eating. In order to hold myself accountable, I created a weight loss challenge for anyone that wanted in. We started back on March 15th. 24 people ended up signing up. The deal is we weighed in then, and we’ll weigh in August 1st. Over the course of 5 months there will be a weigh in every 3 weeks to make sure that everyone has lost at least 2 pounds since their last weigh in for accountability purposes. It was free for everyone to sign up. Oh yeah, and if at the end any single one of the 24 people beats me in percentage of body weight lost, I’m going to pay them $500.00. I’ve individually bet 24 people. If everyone beats me, I’d be paying out $12,000.00.

So far, I’m losing to one person. As of the first weigh in (3 weeks in) I was down 20 pounds or 6 point whatever percent. My friend Mo is down 7 point whatever percent of her body weight. If the challenge was over, I’d owe her $500.00. I would be beat the other 23 contestants. That feels good so far, but it’s SO far from over. I love the competitive nature of this, and it’s been fairly easy to change my habits after the first 10 days or so. Those first 10 days sucked just trying to remember what I was doing. “Oh yeah, you can’t just pull into Taco Bell and get food” or “Nope you aren’t drinking tonight.”

One thing I’m LOVING about this is the shift from just beating me (that’s still front and center, of course) to the all out losing weight as a group thing that I’m going to try to further stoke. I posted this graphic of all of us in the challege after the first weigh in as we had collectively lost 191 pounds, or the exact weight of one Josh Hartnett.

As of today’s writing, it is day 26 and I’m down 26 pounds. I haven’t worked out hardly at all. One treadmill session, one jump rope attempt, a few basketball games with the kids I mentor at the high school, a few walks with the dogs. This has all been done by amending my eating and drinking.

So here’s the jump to the recipe part of this. This is exactly what I’ve been doing for the last 26 days:

20 days of the 26 days:

1. Eat one meal of exactly 420 calories between 5am and 12pm
   • This is a meal consisting of 4 eggs, spinach, onions, and jimmy dean turkey sausage crumbles and Frank’s Red Hot – this is a large enough meal that it keeps me full until the next one
     
2. Eat one meal of exactly 530 calories between 12pm and 5pm
   • This is meal consisting of 97% fat free turkey breast, mixed veggies, roma tomatoes, corn, mexican seasoning, and Frank’s Red Hot – it’s a version of taco soup and it makes about 3 full cups so the volume is incredible for the calories and it feels like I’m overeating but I’m not.
     
3. Eat one meal of 800-1000 calories between 5 and 8pm
   • This is whatever I decide to preplan the day before or the day of, I’ve done Ribeye Steak and Lobster Tail, Shrimp Po Boy wraps, Peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches, turkey burgers, blue cheese grilled chicken wraps.
     
4. If i’m awake after 8pm I’ll eat one snack of 380 calories
   • This is either full fat movie theatre butter microwave pop corn or a lower calorie popcorn but then also cut up berries (straw, blue, rasp) with a drizzle of honey over them.

The other 6 days I wasn’t able to eat my home cooked stuff because I was out of town or I went to a restaurant or we were driving for an extended period so I snacked on beef jerky, protein bars, or looked up the menu before we got to the restaurant and pre-selected what I was going to eat.

This works out to be an average of 2330.00 calories per day. Previously I was eating 3,500 to 10,000 calories in a day depending on the day. Yes, 10,000 calories is actually pretty easy to do if you’re just binging and not thinking. Most of the time I’d be around 4-5,000. I look at this like I want to be 230 pounds, so that’s 2300 calories a day. That’s a gross oversimplification but when you are this fat it honestly doesn’t matter about the breakdown of carbs, fats, protein, calories burned, or anything else. That’s going to come into play when I hit 275 or so as I’ll need to burn some additional calories to keep going at a good pace on weight loss, but even if I didn’t burn those additional calories, I’d still very slowly be losing weight just be eating 2330 calories even at 275 pounds, even at 250 pounds…after that it’d probably be close to a maintaining weight. I’ll point out that it’s going to be 100000% easier if you pay attention to carbs/fats/protein/calories burned/etc because protein makes you feel fuller and carbs help you with energy for the day and fats help you feel satiated as well. It’s also going to be much easier if you do what I’m doing and you eat healthier foods to hit that 2330 rather than one McDonalds Big Breakfast Platter and 86% of a second one every day.

So that’s it. That’s my “secret” to weight loss. It’s fucking boring. I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day as many days as I can, then I eat something interesting but not super heavy for dinner, and have a light snack later on at night.

A few takeaways that have really helped me out so far:

• Don’t be afraid to go to bed. Many nights I’m in bed between 8 and 9pm, when previously I’d be up til 11 or 12 for fear that I wouldn’t be able to watch a movie or tv show I really wanted to see. Spoiler alert, those movies and shows still exist the next day, and the sleep is SO much better for all aspects of life.
• Change your routine/don’t plan your social and work life around food and drinking. I used to hit up Bdubs or Wings etc after work for a beer with different friends almost every night of the week. I do see my friends less often now, but when I do see them I have more to catch up on with them. I also used to crack open a bottle of Jack to relax on the couch pretty much every night of the week. I used to go out for huge weekend breakfasts or go out for lunch meetings. I used to join in with the office with they would order Taco Bell for lunch. I used to just swing through the drive-thru because I didn’t have a plan for what I was eating that day.
• PLAN PLAN PLAN PLAN. You can’t change anything if you don’t plan for it. What are you going to eat tomorrow? The next day? Here’s maybe something controversial…instead of going for that hour walk everyday that burns 250 calories, spend that hour meal prepping and meal planning and save 500 calories every time you eat.
• Tell people to pound sand. Politely. Every opportunity to go out drinking, every opportunity to join people for lunch, go out to dinner, etc etc etc is a decision that you have to make. Most people don’t know that you’ve changed your life for the better so they’re just offering what you’ve alwasy said yes to. You don’t need to tell them anything other than, “no thanks, I’m good”. Zero explaination needed, your true friends will completely understand, support, and be SUPER happy for you. If anyone tells you “well, I mean come on you need to have a cheat meal to stay sane” or “it’s just one drink.” Fuck that person right off. They’re either jealous you’re doing something they can’t do so they’re projecting that insecurity onto you, or they really do think they know better than you and are sincerely trying to help. Both versions are still fuck-off-able. I’ve been hit up by 4 different people regarding some pyramid scheme, multi-level marketing, cult like shake to drink or pill to take blah blah blah. Looking at you, Troy from my old job in California. “I’m so happy you’re doing this and I KNOW joining our plan will help you even more AND you can influence so many more people with your healthy lifestyle!” That means: “I’m so happy I have the opportunity to use you to make money and use your influence to make money off so many more people.” RUN.

Lastly, I was thinking about that 10,000 calories. To show you how easy it actually is, here’s an example of a Sunday funday I’ve definitely done more than once:

McDonald’s Breakfast: Big Breakfast with Hotcakes, Sausage Egg and Cheese McGriddle, Egg McMuffin, Large Sprite. 2540.00 Cal.

Wing’s Etc lunch: Larado Burger, Side of Fries, Side of Mac and Cheese, 7 boneless wings with ranch 2690 Cal

Matinee Movie: Large Popcorn, Raisinettes, Diet Coke – 1320

3 beers, 10 ounces of Jack 1050 Cal

Pizza Hut Dinner – 4 Stuffed Crust Extra Cheese Pepperoni and Sausage, 16 boneless mild wings with ranch, 1/2 an order of cinnasticks 4800 calories

Total: 12,400 calories. In. One. Day.

Now, I’m eating just slightly more than that in an entire week, so it’s decently easy to see why I’m losing weight. These changes are hopefully sustainable for the rest of my life, I really do feel different this time, but who knows, maybe I’ll fall off the wagon tomorrow and then you can go all “told ya so”. Looooove you.

Cheers!

Ben