loveisgreaterthan[dot]com

yeah, the video below this post doesn’t lie. i’m back, baby.

as promised, here’s what i’m thinking the future holds for me. back to 2,000 calories a day. once the weather starts to break, back to exercising. i wish it were more complicated, but it’s really not.

my new goal is to be under 300 pounds for christmas. i realize that isn’t exactly shooting for the stars, but for now… considering i weigh 366, i’ll be happy with that.

that’s it! new weigh-in day is wednesdays. i don’t know what next wednesday will hold, as i am too much of a cheapskate to throw away any food i already have in the house. my transition to eating well again will take a few days. tonight i had the last pizza i’ll have for a while… sad.

so, here we go… wish me luck.

i’m back baby. with a vengeance.

first of all, i know it’s been a while. as you can imagine, the cruise set me back big time. i’m working on a great post that will talk all about the cruise, the food they have, and what it looks like. look for that in a few days.

also, as a lot of you know, i have been working pretty closely in the past doing some freelance work with a guy named pete thomas. for those keen individuals, you may remember pete thomas as the guy who won $100,000 on the second season of the biggest loser for losing the most weight while at home. he lost 183 pounds, and has kept it off. he’s been quite an inspiration to me.

i wanted to let you guys and gals know, that if you live in, around, or even in the general vicinity of detroit, michigan… pete thomas is now working with nbc and bl4 productions to help cast a team for the upcoming sixth season of the biggest loser. it’s going to be a couples season again, and a casting call will be held at gardner white furniture, 45300 Hayes Rd. Macomb, MI 48044 on saturday, march 22nd from 10am - 4pm.

if you are interested, check out the flier attached here for more information.

{cross-blogged on fatbloggers.net}

found a great list of fifty easy ways to lose weight. there are quite a few really good things in there, some of my favorites:

53. Passionately kiss your partner 10 times a day. According to the 1991 Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex, a passionate kiss burns 6.4 calories per minute. Ten minutes a day of kissing equates to about 23,000 calories — or eight pounds — a year!

13. Serve your dinner restaurant style (food on the plates) rather than family style (food served in bowls and on platters on the table). When your plate is empty, you’re finished; there’s no reaching for seconds.

18. Avoid white foods. There is some scientific legitimacy to today’s lower-carb diets: Large amounts of simple carbohydrates from white flour and added sugar can wreak havoc on your blood sugar and lead to weight gain. But you shouldn’t toss out the baby with the bathwater. While avoiding sugar, white rice, and white flour, you should eat plenty of whole grain breads and brown rice. One Harvard study of 74,000 women found that those who ate more than two daily servings of whole grains were 49 percent less likely to be overweight than those who ate the white stuff.

25. Eat slowly and calmly. Put your fork or spoon down between every bite. Sip water frequently. Intersperse your eating with stories for your dining partner of the amusing things that happened during your day. Your brain lags your stomach by about 20 minutes when it comes to satiety (fullness) signals. If you eat slowly enough, your brain will catch up to tell you that you are no longer in need of food.

26. Eat only when you hear your stomach growling. It’s stunning how often we eat out of boredom, nervousness, habit, or frustration — so often, in fact, that many of us have actually forgotten what physical hunger feels like. Next time, wait until your stomach is growling before you reach for food. If you’re hankering for a specific food, it’s probably a craving, not hunger. If you’d eat anything you could get your hands on, chances are you’re truly hungry.

the whole thing is well worth a read, so go check it out.

starting 2008 weight: 364
this week’s weigh-in: 358.6
total weight loss this week: .2 pounds

well, my laziness finally caught up to me. only lost two-tenths of a pound this week. it hasn’t helped that i’ve been sick most of these last few days, but i am not making excuses. honestly, i almost didn’t even post this because i’m just so sick of it.

i’m sick of trying to live up to this… what seems to be impossible, standard i’ve set for myself. i’m sick of feeling obligated to tell the world (by my own commitment) of my failure, and i’m sick of not having the intelligence, willpower, courage, whatever you want to call it, to do what’s right.

for crying out loud, it’s not like we’re talking about cocaine or some other hard drug… it’s one slice of pizza, one chip, one order of chinese food, one cookie, one decision…

and i know, what is considered as a habit to junkies (smoking, drugs) can be also be attributed to people who are obese and their food, but you know what, i don’t care about that. i should and can be stronger than that. i will not sit here and blame my failures on “addiction.” why? because i’ve succeeded in the past. big-time. it wasn’t too long ago i was losing between 6-10 pounds a week. it wasn’t a fluke, and i haven’t hit a plateau, so don’t come to me with that crap. i worked my tail off and watched every single calorie that went into my body.

that’s how you lose weight. you cannot do it without sweat and sacrifice. if you think you can lose weight and eat whatever you want and in whatever portion you want, you’re a moron who probably is making people who come up with these ridiculous diets rich. really, this is the most simple and true form of weight loss in the world; find out how many calories your body burns in a day, eat less than that (way less if you can, but no less than 1600 if you’re male), burn some calories on top of that by exercising (which in turn raises your metabolism so you lose even more weight) = weight loss. period, end of story. nothing else really matters. someone needs to pay me for that advice. all these people that talk about carbs, fat, sugar, organic, raw, vegan… it’s all built on the same principle i mentioned above. 3,500 calories is a pound. that’s all you need to know.

people want to tell me i set myself up for failure, because i made it too difficult on myself. “counting every single calorie is crazy” they say… well, for three months of my life it wasn’t crazy and i was achieving crazy results. i don’t believe for a second that it cannot be achieved again… i just need to find my way back to that point. somewhere along the line i became lost, i forgot about the fire within to change my life. the tinder and the wood (the knowledge) is still there… i know what i must do, i just need to find the motivation (fire) to do it again.

so i guess the question is…

anyone got a match?

[cross-blogged at fatbloggers]

• watching shawshank redemption. i’ve seen this movie so many times i’ve lost count, but it’s still good every time.
• i haven’t ate a single thing yet today. i feel like i should. it’s not that i feel like i can’t eat, i just don’t really have any desire. for whatever reason, zoup! sounds really good. i must have saw a commercial or something, because i have never ate their food (or in this case, soup) before.
• really looking forward to patrick henry hughes coming back to cedarcreek in february. he will be speaking/performing just two weeks after his “extreme home makeover” appears on national television. should be a great weekend.
• i hope i feel better tomorrow morning when i wake up, i really can’t afford to stay sick for much longer.
• god bless my wife, i think she had a tougher night than i did and she still managed to go to work today. good for her, but i’m a wimp.
• really wanting to get out and take some pictures… i’m feeling the urge
• hillary signed papers saying she wouldn’t campaign or appear on the ballot in michigan or florida… yet she did both anyway. great start on building trust.
• edwards dropped out, should be interesting to see who he endorses (along with his 56 delegates). i think the kennedy endorsement of obama would shield him a bit if edwards decided to endorse hillary, but i don’t see that happening. edwards was too much of a “change” candidate to endorse someone whom he often referred to as the “status-quo.”
• i really can’t wait till super-tuesday.
• about three weeks till i’ll be in the carribbean on a cruise. looks like i’m going to miss my goal getting to 320 by february. that saddens me.
• i really wish i could afford a treadmill/bike/elliptical… some form of exercise inside.
• i really wish i could afford (and have the tenacity to use) a gym membership.
• this last weekend at church was outstanding. we showed a dave ramsey video for our message. i love dave ramsey… i long for the day when i can shout “i’m debt-free!”
• ryanne’s and my previous landlords finally mailed out our deposit check back to us. unfortunately, they forgot to take out the $315 we owed them for the remainder of december’s rent… so the check is roughly twice as much as it should be for. does it make me an awful person that i seriously thought about cashing it and just not saying anything?
• we did end up calling and letting them know the problem though… haven’t heard back yet.

i have been trying over the course of the last six months or so to arrange a time and place for me and an old friend/roommate of mine to meet up. we were friends during my “heyday” if you will, and i lived with him for probably two-four years. my memory is a little hazy, because time really wasn’t that big of a deal back then. i had no plan, no future to really consider… life really was just a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of existence.

anyway, i wanted to meet up with him, not only because it’s been over a year since we’ve seen each other, but also because he was the keeper of “the server.” see, i was even a computer geek back then (albeit, on the PC side). the house we lived in was completely wired, which was a big deal back in those days, and we had a server in the basement we kept all of our pictures, mp3’s (all legally downloaded… of course) of which numbered in the tens of thousands, games (all legally purchased, of course), movies (all legally purchased, of course)… so on and so forth.

i figured if anyone would have some old pictures of me, it’d be him.

so i finally hooked up with him through myspace, gave him my ftp information, and as of today i have six hundred pictures for my perusal. it’s a really interesting thing, looking through all these old pictures that represent a different time in my life. don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of things about that time in my life i’m not proud of, that being said… all those things formed me into who i am today. therefore, i regret none of it. i cannot be sure i would be where i am today if i went back and changed a darn thing. so, these pictures, while not all of them are warm and fuzzy, most of them are things i look at and chuckle, smile, and remember some really good times with some good friends that i have unfortunately grown apart from.

i wanted to share one picture in particular today. not because of any sentimental value it holds with me and my friends of those days, rather… because it shows a very very different me. it’s pertinent, because of the amount of weight i am trying to lose. this picture was taken of me eight years ago, in 2000. my best guess is i weighed somewhere between 250-300 pounds at the time. at this stage of my life, i could still fit into xxl shirts, and oddly enough people still made fun of me for being fat. this humors me, because i would KILL to get back down to that weight (the low end, 250) right now!

anyway, here’s the picture. it’s good for me to see something like this and know where i came from, and now i’m sharing it with you all…