Hello, and welcome to Baker by the Pound! I’m David Baker, and this is my (hopefully successful) weight loss journal.
You can read about my entire background in the “about me” section once it’s written. But long story short, I’ve been a big guy my entire life, and frankly I’m just sort of tired of it. There wasn’t a big defining moment to start this journey, just something that deep down I know that I have to do.
My goal with this journal is to show an accurate portrayal of my weight loss journey. Most other blogs I see out there are from personal trainers, or people that have already completed their journey. Many of them make it seem easy or try to sell you something, they talk a little bit about bad days and fluctuations, but while the negative days have more impact in the moment, people tend to remember things positively in retrospect, especially in a case like this when they’re successful.
My current journey:
– In June 2014, a coworker convinced me to join his gym, Orange Theory Fitness. It’s sort of a hybrid workout using High Intensity Interval Training using heart rate monitors to keep you within certain zones. This is all a combination between treadmill, rowing machines, and floor exercises consisting mostly of body weight movements, strap work, and some dumbbell exercises.
To be honest, I thought the concept is just the latest iteration of a fad. It’s much pricier than a typical gym membership, and you have to sign up for classes, you can’t just go and workout.
But learning more about it, classes are capped and there’s a trainer leading the sessions that get to know you. So while it costs more than a typical gym membership, it costs less than hiring a trainer at the gym. Also, each workout is different focusing on either endurance, strength, or power.
The variety is cool and I liked having somewhat attention while allowing myself to do things at my own pace. Going by heart rate means you aren’t competing with anyone else, you go as hard as it takes you to get to that heart rate on that day, that’s pretty cool.
– After the first workout, I wanted to die. But I knew after so many failed attempts my whole life to get in shape that this might be special, and I took a picture of myself knowing there will be more to come.
As you can see, there was some noticeable progress. I have no clue how much my weight changed because I was still too afraid to step on the scale.
– Once I had the courage to step on the scale, it was 286.4. I couldn’t believe that I let myself get to that point, if I had to guess I would have told someone I was in the 275 range, that’s just embarrassing
This continued the next few months until I worked my way down to 282.2 in September. Progress was slow, but it was there, about 1 lb a week during that time I weighed myself.
– Unfortunately, once September hit, I got extremely busy with weddings, work trips, as well as an increase in workload while I was in town. There was a period of 2 months where I wasn’t in town for a full work week. That amount of stress got to me hard and I fell off the wagon, real hard.
My workout log has a giant blank space between 9/20 and 11/22. 2 Full months off the workout wagon, added stress, and emotional eating.
The same story that’s happened my entire life repeated itself. Either I’ll hurt myself, or get stressed and stop working out, and that’s the end of that unsuccessful journey.
To be continued in the next post.