Week 17:
Well a busy week this week. With holidays coming up next week it has been difficult to keep up the two sessions a day at the gym while also doing 10 or 11 hour days at work. What I have learnt is that I can fit in one session and still do the long hours at work when required. Previously the gym would have been sacrificed but I am now learning to put myself first in this journey. Once the journey is finished I will continue to put myself first.
I have altered my diet this week to a non processed food diet to see if I can shift some weight a little quicker. It is very important to note though that inputting my food into the online diary is still crucial as calorie counting has been the number one reason I have lost weight. I am getting to the stage now where I can calculate approx in my head what calorie intake I am having but this is not something I want to rely on at all times.
While working out this week, I have been trying to make sure I work off at least 500 calories each session at the gym and with the assistance of my heart rate monitor watch I can be assured that this is actually happening. This will increase next week however when I am at the gym training full time….if I can!
Week 18:
Well last week was a big week. Normally I would aim to burn approx 500 calories per workout at the gym. Last week saw me on holidays and in the gym full time. My goal was to hit the gym from 9am to 5pm each day and I am proud to say that I did. Starting with 3000 calories burnt on Monday and then averaging over 2000 each day for the rest of the week. This resulted in a weight loss of almost 4kg for the week which was a great result. It also pushed me to over 40kg lost so I am very happy with that.
Unfortunately though my heel is not healing (pardon the pun) but it can’t stop me from training. With only a week or so to go in the Biggest Loser challenge I want to put myself in the position of being the individual biggest loser. Of course I have a long way to go with my overall weight loss strategy so will continue to train hard and eat right for a while yet.
A big milestone this week came courtesy of the wardrobe department at my home. I wanted to try on a pair of blue jeans which have been hanging in my closet for some years gathering cobwebs. I was wondering what to wear to the finale so I thought I had better start thinking about that. I thought it would be rude to turn up in a tent! Anyway I looked at the label and saw that they were 122cm jeans and I thought there goes that idea. So anyway I pulled them on, with ease, and did them up and there was still room to spare. Now you have to remember that I am coming off a base of 142cm pants so to expect to fit into 122cm was a bit of a dream. So they fit and the instructions were to wear something figure hugging. Well there is nothing left so now I have to go clothes shopping (yuk). So off I go to Target (my usual Big Mans department hang out) and pick out some jeans. I picked up a pair of 117cm and they fit nice and snugly. I then tried on a long sleeve shirt and it was a 3xl. I couldn’t believe it fit and it fit nicely. This is all due to the Biggest Loser Online Club and Meal Replacement products. Without them I would still be shuffling along and eating junk and moving slower.
Week 19:
At the beginning of this process I gave my journey a code name, Project Slim Jim. I hate the name Jim (derived from James, my birth name) but I always thought that this whole weight loss journey was a project and how better to communicate the project than to give it a code name, hence Project Slim Jim was borne.
Transformation. Metamorphasis. Change. Like the caterpillar turning into a butterfly, this has occurred to me during my time with The Biggest Loser Online Club Second Chance Team and through Project Slim Jim. The weigh in, in Sydney, saw me at my heaviest ever at a whopping 182kg. Most household scales go nowhere near this weight so it came as a big (pardon the pun) surprise to me. That was the point in my mind that I knew things had to change. At the start in the first week of December 2008, I was wearing a 7XL shirt pushing an 8XL. After much toil and pain and determination and a thousand other adjectives to describe my journey I am happy to say that I had to buy some 2XL shorts the other day as the shorts I was wearing at the gym were falling down every time I ran! So off to the Big Men’s department at Target I trod off as my usual store of choice. Looking through the racks of clothes I noticed that there were very little clothes short of 5XL. I thought ‘bugger’ I am in a transitional place right now where I am too small for ‘BIG MEN’S’ and too big for ‘NORMAL’ sizing. Anyhow I did eventually find some 4XL gym shorts which I thought would do me for a couple of weeks. So I picked them up and headed off to the change rooms to make sure they weren’t too small. As I was heading to the change rooms I noticed the same style shorts in the ‘NORMAL’ section and thought I would see what sizes they went up to. There was some 2XL shorts so I grabbed them just to see how far off I was from being able to wear them and maybe I should pick them up now and be able to wear them in about two months. So I check my two items with the change room attendant and in I go. I thought I would try on the 2XL’s first and wouldn’t you believe it, they fit! After I picked myself up and cleared my head I double checked that I had in fact put on the 2XL’s and indeed I had. I marched proudly back to the attendant without trying on the 4XL’s and handed them to her and said I won’t be needing those, thanks very much. I then went and collected a 2nd pair of 2XL’s and walked to the checkout with my chest out and my head high.
I can’t remember the last time I fit into 2XL’s and what this experience at Target has shown me and at a time when I have been needing some affirmations is that all of the hard work I am doing is paying off. At the weigh in this week I have now lost over 43kg! I remember my first week where I lost 3 point something kilo’s I remember thinking that with 87 kilo’s to lose I don’t think I can do this. But you take it day by day. I am now half way and have been re-evaluating my goal weight. I think I may have chosen a weight which won’t actually suit my height so I have reset a new goal which is now only 33kg from now. At this weight I will then evaluate whether this is the weight for me or do I need to lose a little more. At the end of the day I am much healthier and fitter and active and I now have the skills to remain this way for life.
This week I also had a training session with Conrad Makin who was visiting from Adelaide and I was very impressed with Conrad’s fitness and attitude. Well done mate.
I am really looking forward to The Biggest Loser Finale in Sydney next week and catching up with all of my Second Chance mates like Kate Smith who has inspired me so much during this journey, and also Karina Vagg who has had hurdles to climb and is still going strong. It will be great to see Mary and Karen who have done a tremendous job despite their age, showing that you can start losing weight and getting your life back on track no matter how old you are. I can’t wait to see how Alex and Jess are and the rest of the gang. It’s going to be very exciting. I can’t leave out my joy with catching up with Alison Braun and Sam Rouen again who I must say are the most amazing people who have been there and done that. They have been inspirational throughout this journey and I look forward to showing off my new 2XL butt off to them.
Finale:
The final week of the challenge was indeed that, a big challenge. I was in the gym full time and to get to Sydney for that final weigh in was a great feeling. It was the culmination of 5 months of hard yakka but it didn’t represent the end of the road for me. I always said that when I jumped on those scales it was the end of the first chapter. When my feet hit the carpet when I got off the scales that was the beginning of the 2nd chapter.
The morning of final weigh in at my gym at Goodlife Chermside (Brisbane)
As part of the diet for the final 10 days before weigh in I just ate grilled chicken or fish and green vegies 3 times a day. I ate nothing else and I craved watermelon which is my favourite fruit. Of course I knew I wouldn’t be eating anything the morning of the weigh in so I sent the producers an email asking for some watermelon to be made available for immediately after I had weighed in. Unfortunately they didn’t have any watermelon but they had a great assortment of other fruits which went down very well. Later that evening after we had all been to dinner, I still felt the insatiable desire for watermelon so I went to the local supermarket and bought some. Check out the photo!
Hmmm, watermelon!
It was gone within minutes of arriving back at the hotel room. It was the best watermelon I had had since June 1994 in Darwin.
46.1kg gone. Stage 1 completed!
The result: I weighed 182.0 kg on November 27, 2008. On April 22, 2009 I weighed in at 135.9kg. I lost 46.1kg in just under 5 months. I wasn’t sure how much I would lose in the beginning but I honestly didn’t think I would lose any so to say that I was stoked with 46.1kg is an understatement.
The taping of the finale went smoothly, albeit long (about 5 hours) and it was a relief to finally meet the guys who had taken my spot, um, I mean the other contestants. They were all amazed when I told them I had lost 46.1kg from home. They had all sacrificed and plotted and schemed and some of them didn’t lose that much weight. It was a great feeling.
Here are a couple of shots from the finale week.
Jesikah knocking the old me out
There's room for one more
The 2nd Chance Team at finale with the beautiful Alison Braun
This ends the diary section of my weight loss blog. Over the next week or so I will post an entry with some of my thoughts re attitude and healthy living tips that I picked up along the way.
Thanks for reading. If you have any questions or queries or comments I would be more than happy to respond. I would also love to hear about your challenge to get fit and lose weight. No one story is the same. Share it with me.
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