Stellar Path

I woke up this morning, hopped on the scale, probably scratched myself, ambled over to the computer, logged onto PhysicsDiet, entered my weight, and then did a happy little dance in my desk chair, because my weight is now officially 341.

Yes, it took me longer than I would like, but you know what I would like? I’d like to wake up skinny tomorrow with a sore back because of sleeping on a pile of diamonds in the backseat of my Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. Not gonna happen.

Instead, I am going to rejoice that my weight is going down, no matter how slowly, and eventually, I will get to my goal weight, and all of this hard work will pay off. There are no Biggest Loser numbers in my future. There are probably no endorsement deals from weight loss companies in my future, either. But increased health and a lower weight ARE in my future, and I’m making them happen.

And I purposefully say increased health, because I’m already healthy. Yeah, I know, I’m carrying WELL over 100 pounds of extra fat that I don’t need, but it doesn’t even matter to me, because I can do things now that I could never do a year ago.

I can bench press more than twice now what I could at sixteen. I can go for an hour on the elliptical without completely dying of exertion. I can work my abs for fifteen minutes straight, and while I may be cussing my trainer the entire time, I’m doing it!

If I can do this at 341, then by my calculations, when I get to my goal weight of 180*, I expect to be able to fly and bench press small buildings.

(*Weight Goal of 180 may or may not be realistic. Stay tuned for the future to see what I eventually decided is my ideal weight.)

I’ve been in a funk for a while, and I’m finally out of it. Weight loss life is good. I wish I could promise you this is one of those blogs where you’ll see dramatic weight loss and you’ll ooh and aah as I drop dozens of pounds monthly. Not gonna happen here unless I’m in an industrial accident and lose all four of my limbs.

But you will see a guy who is chipping away at a gigantic block of fat marble to make myself into Michelangelo’s David. Preferably with a bigger penis. And with a receding hair line, because weight loss don’t fix that.

You’ll also see a guy with his very own cooking show, sponsored by no one and watched by tens of people monthly. This weekend, we are filming three.

I will finally post my video for Almond Joy Larabars. I’ll also share my recipe for Bacon Wrapped Chicken with a Cream Cheese Filling. Best chicken recipe ever.

And someday, I’ll have that Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. Because when you get to goal weight, you get a free $300,000 car, right?

A pretty exciting thing happened for me last week, and I didn’t even realize it until recently.

On May 7th, I finished walking across Nebraska!

Okay, I’m not sure that I actually deserve confetti, but I’m pretty excited about it anyway. I am now TWO states down!

I had a little trouble deciding where to walk next. Based on the map above, I decided that I am going to walk through Mississippi. I live in the South; let’s add a little color there. Mississippi is 340 miles long. At my rate of 1,900 steps per mile, it will take me 646,000 steps to cover the state. As of right now, I am 110,317 miles into Mississippi. That’s 58 miles in less than two weeks.

The above picture is of Gulf Shores in Mississippi. I’ve been to Gulf Shores in Alabama but not Mississippi. After seeing that photo, I REALLY wish I was there!

In other health and fitness news, clearly, my exercise is going great. In fact, Tina and I have TORN the gym up the last two nights. We have been on fire in the weight room. We’re lifting hard and heavy, following that up with ab work and cardio, and we’re slowly seeing results. One “sort of” side effect of lifting is that it engorges your muscles with blood and you’ll show temporary gains on the scale. However, it’s kind of nice to flex a muscle and actually feel a hard lump there instead of saggy fat, so we’re definitely going to keep working this hard for a long while. The number on the scale does not define me; it is only a general measure of my progress.

We both have wedding related goals. I want to get below 280 by October. I don’t know if that’s possible or realistic, but that’s what I’m shooting for. My most recent weight loss past would tell me that is flat out not possible. However, my first trip through weight loss land makes that extremely possible. All I can say is that I’m going to give it my very best.

I suspect I’ll be able to post my 341 weigh-in here in about two days. The weight loss is slow but steady.

My diet is always my sticking point. I love food. I even love healthy food. I haven’t yet found a way to stop mindless eating. I’ve curtailed it, yes, but eliminated… not quite there yet. Any suggestions?

This is my current night time snack. Edamame. Virtually no taste but so much fun to eat!

Video coming VERY soon, I promise. We have our tie-dyed aprons ready to go, and we are set to make Almond Joy Larabars!

What do you do to help with mindless snacking?

I weighed in last Saturday. I lost one pound. One tiny, measly, pitiful pound. I weighed in at 336.8. Over the past week, I counted my points. I worked out. I avoided overly processed foods.

Yet I still only lost one pound.

I didn’t go into a funk. I didn’t binge. I didn’t whine. But I wasn’t overly excited, either. I resolved myself to the fact that, to get down to 180, it make take me 157 weeks at one pound a week. That’s over three years. Oh well; I’ll keep hacking away at it.

I filmed a video, but I just didn’t feel like posting it. I deleted it. I wrote a very short blog post about my minimal weight loss, but I deleted it. I just didn’t feel like it. Both felt entirely too whiny to me.

I came extremely close to turning Stellar Path into just a healthy living blog instead of a weight loss blog. (I’m certainly not threatening to quit – I enjoy writing, so I’ll write even if I have absolutely no one reading my words.) Maybe I could turn Stellar Path into one of those food blogs?

But then, last night, I decided to measure my stomach. Just to see.

My stomach was 53 inches. That’s smaller than it was three weeks ago. An inch and a half smaller. And that certainly seems like it should be more than a pound difference.

I’m changing my weigh-ins around here. Most people weigh-in weekly and post their weight loss or gain on a specifc day. I’m not doing this anymore. I’m going to continue weighing in every day. I’m going to start treating each pound of this weight loss journey like the victory that it is. Each pound that I take off of my body is four sticks of butter. I’m celebrating each pound. Every time PhysicsDiet tells me my “average” weight has dropped a pound, I’ll post a celebratory post.

According to PhysicsDiet, my weight is currently 342. That’s today’s weigh-in. I’m naming this post Four Sticks of Butter, because I did lose a pound. I’ve lost a lot of pounds. And while I’ve regained some of them, some are also gone forever. And each pound is four sticks of butter that are no longer clogging my arteries or lining my muscles.

I used to weigh 403 pounds. Today, I weigh 342. That is sixty-one pounds, lost forever. (Sorry to whoever found it.) In a few days, I’ll weigh 341. A few days after that, I’ll weigh 340. When I tie the knot in October, I hope to weigh less than 300. 280 would be really nice. We’ll see.

This journey is taking me a while. I’m okay with that, and I think it will be better for me mentally to not turn every Friday or Saturday into a dreaded trip to the scale, but instead I will celebrate each pound as it is lost, whenever that happens. (Note to self: Do not get distressed if it takes more than three or four days to lose a pound.)

I’ll start posting more regularly. I’ve just been anti-blog lately. My apologies to those of you I regularly read and comment on. I’ll start getting better.

My camcorder will still be put to good use. I love to cook; I want my own cooking show on Food Network. That’ll never happen, so I’m going to have my own cooking show right here at Stellar Path. This weekend, Tina and I are making Almond Joy LaraBars.

Way back in October when I started this blog (and I know this blog is still a toddler in Blog age), I said that I’d probably talk a lot about my upcoming wedding.

Well, I think I have… maybe a handful of times, and always in passing.

So I decided that, in light of everything going on here in the South, I’d write a quick post about the wedding.

Tina and I are both pretty outdoorsy people. We like to go hiking, and we especially like caves. We live in south-central Kentucky, and we are both from counties (Hart and Barren) that are two of the three counties that have more caves per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Gotta love karst.

I actually worked as a cave tour guide at one point during my various “careers” since college. Tina is currently doing one of her Biology Internships at Lost River Cave here in Bowling Green. One of my best men, Annie, has a degree in Geology and has worked at MANY caves in the area. I even proposed to Tina in Mammoth Cave. Caves definitely have a special meaning for us.

As I’ve stated here previously, we decided to get married at Lost River Cave. It’s full of history; it was a nightclub back in the 1920s, and the canopy is both “in the cave” and still outside, so it’s kind of the best of both worlds. We’re in a cave, but we’re outdoors, but we’re kind of indoors, so… hey, this is perfect!

We are also going to be doing boat tours during the reception. Okay, we aren’t, ‘cause I can’t drive a boat, but our guests will be able to tour Lost River Cave on boats. (And it’s currently the only cave boat tour in the state of Kentucky.)

However, here in the South, we’ve had a little flooding going on. Bowling Green has gotten over twelve inches since Friday. Rivers are currently cresting their banks.

Lost River Cave is flooded. Big time. Ordinarily, this isn’t a big deal. It’s a river cave. It floods all the time. However, it has currently flooded worse than it has in the past 150 years.

To get to the cave, you have to walk down about a quarter of a mile from the visitor center to the mouth of the cave.

In the photo below, where the man with the umbrella is standing, you still have almost an eighth of a mile to walk to get to the cave.

The canopy is underwater. The cave is underwater. That beautiful crystal chandelier is underwater. No one has any idea how long it will take the water to recede, and there may be irreparable damage down there.

So we might have to look for a new wedding venue. And we’re getting married in five months. That sounds like a long time, but in wedding terms, that’s nothing.

And on top of everything else, I feel pretty selfish for worrying about my wedding when lives have been lost and there are people who have lost their homes.

Oh well. We shall see. I’ll keep you updated. And if you are in the South, please be careful.

And just so I’m ending this post with some good news, this is the car we’ll be leaving the wedding in. My dad just bought a 1923 Model T Ford Truck. Not even joking. How cool is our exit going to be?

I’m pretty excited to write this post, because I recently was given the opportunity to try out a new product that I had never heard of before called Cheribundi! The company recently contacted me and asked if I would like to try a sample of a tart cherry drink that had recently been rebranded from the name CherryPharm to Cheribundi.

Tart Cherry Drink? Free sample? Heck yeah! (I don’t know if I’ve shared, but I love almost all fruit, and cherries, especially, are one of my favorites.)

I came home last Monday to find this little box waiting for me in my mailbox.

I received their 4-pack sampler, containing the four bottles you see here.

I got two bottles of Tru Cherry (one for me, one for Tina), one bottle of Skinny Cherry (lower cal, sweeter taste), and one bottle of Whey Cherry, which is basically Tru Cherry with extra protein.

Each bottle of TruCherry has the juice of 50 cherries in it.

And one thing that greatly impressed me was the ingredient list. The ingredient list consisted of Tart Cherry Juice, Water, and Apple Juice Concentrate (as a sweetener.) Only the Whey Cherry had a longer list of ingredients, and that was due to the extra protein.

The side of the bottle reads “All-natural cheribundi: funny name, serious abundance of cherry goodness. This juice is full of nutrients, antioxidants, and the delicious taste of cherry pie. Drink it daily and you’ll not only get 2 servings of fruit, but powerful benefits no other fruit has. You’ll feel great.”

Okay, it is at this point that I become skeptical. Tastes like cherry pie? Okay, we’ll see. So I poured myself a drink after giving it a good shake.

Looks good so far. As you can see above, it’s a nice, dark, but non-cloudy color.

I took a sip. And then I proceeded to down the rest of the glass and wish I hadn’t promised Tina a bottle.

This stuff is amazing! It truly has the taste of cherry pie. You aren’t going to taste crust or anything like that, but the cherries in this bottle had that “bite” taste that cherry pie has. Amazingly delicious. Frankly, I want more.

The webpage alleges that the cherries can help with strength recovery after working out, help with sleep issues (stupid Freddy Krueger, keeping me up all night), decrease joint and back pain, and a bunch of other stuff, including avoiding diabetes and cancer. (I’m sure eating more fruits and veggies in general would help with a lot of this (as would losing weight).)

Just so it is disclaimed, I was not required to give Cheribundi a good review. I was not even required to give them any review at all. However, this stuff was so good, I am happy to do so.

The only downside? It can be a bit pricey. You can order it in bulk from CherryPharm and get it for about $2 a bottle. These are small bottles. (Each one has 130 calories.) However, if this stuff can truly help the way CherryPharm says it can, that would be well worth it. I’m thinking very seriously about ordering a two month supply and drinking a bottle everyday to see if it really will help with back and joint pain. If I do (I’m probably going to), I’ll be sure to keep you updated here.

Oh, and Freddy Krueger really doesn’t keep me up all night. I love horror movies and watch them constantly; I hardly ever have nightmares.

This is most definitely a King of the World weigh-in.

I weighed in this morning at 337.8. Yes, that’s up from last week.

Totally my fault. I know why it happened. No one to blame but myself.

And I have nowhere to go but up. So that’s where I’m going.

Next week, I’m weighing in at 333. It’ll happen.

Here’s my video this week. I tried something new. I did it while driving. The noise is because it was raining hard here in town and I drive a convertible, which is ridiculously noisy when it rains.

I’ll post again tomorrow. I don’t really have a lot to say that I didn’t express in the video.

I’m doing okay. I messed up a little, but it’s not the end of the world. In fact, this experience made me stronger. I learned from it. I’m the King of the World*.

(*Figuratively speaking. Just so you don’t think I’m all cocky or anything.)

First of all, the news that those of you who entered the Yoga mat contest are excited to learn… The winner is Tara! Congratulations Tara! Please email me jeremy@stellarpath.net to claim your prize.

I hope to be able to host giveaways like this again. If you are involved with ANY type of company, organization, or have anything to give away, please contact me. I was so pleased with my Aurorae Yoga Mat, I just had to sing their praises, and it led to me getting an extra yoga mat out there in the world. All is good.

I also recently got a free sample of Cheribundi in the mail, and I’ll be reviewing that on Sunday. (Quick note – awesome stuff. I want more!)

I am immensely frustrated with myself right now. I had a slightly stressful episode yesterday, and in the grand scheme of things, it was very frickin’ slight. I have worked jobs in the past where I’ve been absolutely lambasted in court by lawyers and judges, I have had to go into filthy, frightening homes to protect abused children, and I have had to stand up to bullies in every shape and size imaginable in the professional social work world. I guess that’s what you get when you go into a mental health field. I’m currently in the educational field, and while the working conditions are WAY better, there are still lots of stresses. If you work in nonprofits, you often have to deal with the dregs of society. Ugly to say, but it’s true.

(Just so no one misinterprets, I have also met many wonderful people who were just trying to do the best they could on what little they had to make it day to day. Those people were the reason I stayed (and continue to stay) in this field I’ve chosen for as long as I have. Lord knows it isn’t the money.)

So anyway, my point with this little diatribe – I know how people act, I know how people think, and I can handle pretty much anything. I have literally been cussed in court. I have been threatened in jail cells (while I was working, not imprisoned – just so we’re clear). I have had kids spit on me and draw blood during attacks before when I was trying to hold back on my restraint hold so I didn’t hurt the kid. (I’m also a hemophiliac, so it doesn’t take much to make me bleed, but I digress.) However, despite all of this, I still have expectations for how people should act. I try to be a nice guy. At my inner core, I really think I am.

So when people aren’t nice to me, it usually throws me for a loop. It happens all the time; usually, it doesn’t bother me. There have been a few incidents in the past little bit that did, and I’m not sure why.

I’m trying the whole “therapist heal thyself” bit, and I’ve made some progress. A big part of it is that I still care what people think about me, which I know is immensely stupid. But knowing one thing and feeling something else can be two different things. So that’s one of the things I’m working on that I hope will let me find a bit more peace in my life. I have to learn to stop caring what people think of me. 95% of the time, I am EXCELLENT at this.

I know there are places where people don’t like me. Heck, I supervise a staff, and I know for a fact, almost everyone dislikes their boss. But the fact is, I am almost always in control of my emotions, I know how people think (three degrees and over a decade of experience in mental health gives one a pretty good insight into human nature), and I’ve usually got a good handle on almost everything.

Almost. I usually understand most people, and I understand their motivations for why they do things. Even if it is things that I don’t like, I still get it.

I usually get me. I know why I became obese. I know why I used to binge eat. I know it’s something I’ll struggle with forever. I’m struggling right now. Because last night, I binged.

I binged bad. Two donuts, a bag of Doritos, an ice cream sundae, cheese fries, and chicken fingers.

Probably 2,500 calories worth of food. At least. Maybe more.

In my mind, I rationalized it by saying, “Oh, you haven’t had more than 1,000 calories all day you were so busy at work. You can eat more tonight.”

Wrong. Wrong for me on so many levels. This is a BIG setback for me.

I don’t want to be trite, but I’m not going to beat myself up over this. I’m making a public announcement that I did it, I’m letting it go, I’m owning my mistake, and I’m moving on.

May will be a new month. May will be a fresh start.

I’m reevaluating EVERYTHING today. Where do I want to be? Who do I want to be? Where do I want to go? How am I getting there? What stands in my way, and how can I react next time in place of bingeing?

I’ll post details in my video weigh-in tomorrow. I know I’ve gained; there is no way I couldn’t have. That’s okay. I’m not focused on that right now.

I have to get healthy, physically and mentally.

And just so this post isn’t a total downer, here’s a picture of a binge-eating hamster.

That’s kinda what I felt like last night. Only it wasn’t a carrot three times the size of my head. It was Doritos.

Have a good Friday night, folks. I’m going to see A Nightmare on Elm Street tonight, too. I’ll let you know how it is. Sweet dreams.

I am having a VERY rough diet week. If I gain this week, I can’t shrug and say, “Doh dee doh, don’t know why this one happened.” I’ll have to say, “Yeah… I haven’t weighed or measured my food, and I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten WAY too late and WAY too much.”

I seem to have lost my fire and passion. Tina has, too, and I think we’re currently feeding off of each other’s lack of enthusiasm. But it’s fire and passion for eating healthy. Not for exercise. We’re still going to the gym. We went for a C25K run around our neighborhood just last night, and it felt good.

We’ve recommitted to doing this right TODAY. I’m not changing my weigh-in date or anything. Whatever I weigh Saturday is my weight for the week, good bad or ugly. I’ll just have to chalk the month of April up to a standstill and backtrack, weight wise, but that’s okay, because I’m not in a contest. I’m not eligible to win $250,000 and have confetti rain down on me from the Biggest Loser Stage. I’m just trying to live a healthier, longer life with Tina.

Okay, now that the whining is over, on with our regularly scheduled post.

I promised a cooking video on Sunday. I made it Saturday, but I’m just now getting around to posting it. I got so excited about the Aurorae Yoga Mat giveaway that I’m afraid everything else just took a backseat. And please, still enter and tell your friends! You have two more days to enter!

Tina and I are both huge dorks in this video, but that’s pretty appropriate, because we’re huge dorks in real life, too. (And please notice my tie-dye apron – Tina will have one next video.) But it was fun, and we’re definitely going to do it again. Hopefully, we’ll post our video on how to make Almond Joy themed LaraBars this weekend.

I think we need a name for our cooking show. Any suggestions?

As previously posted, I won an Aurorae Yoga Mat last week from Chicago Marathon Val. This is, without a doubt, the best yoga/floor exercise mat I have ever used. (I say floor exercise, too, because I use this mat for my core work that takes place, you guessed it, on the floor.)

I was so impressed with this mat that I emailed the company with my comments. I was very delighted to find out that not only was my email answered very promptly by an actual living human being, but the company is going to let me host a giveaway here at Stellar Path! I am tremendously excited, and I hope this giveaway is huge, so please, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your co-workers, tell everyone about this giveaway!

There is only ONE requirement for entry. If you don’t do this, your entries will not be accepted. However, this is a VERY easy requirement. You must either friend the company on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. (If you do both, you can have two entries!)

I am giving you a grand total of NINE different entries. You don’t have to do them all, but you MUST either add them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

For each of the following entries, you MUST leave a separate comment. I am not making this rule to difficult, but the way the winner is determined is by a Random Integer Generator, and whatever number comes up, that numbered comment is the winner. So, if one of your comments is fourth in the list, and the #4 comes up in the Random Integer Generator, then you win. But if you do all nine things in one comment box, then your nine entries are effectively one entry. Get it? Good.

Additionally, I know that some of you are already doing/have done some of the entries below. That’s okay. For instance, if you are already following me on Twitter, just post a comment along the lines of “I already follow you on Twitter – my user name is” and there you go.

Two final things – in one of your entries, please state which color Yoga mat you would like. You can see the colors at their webpage. If you don’t specify and you win, the company will send you a color of their choice. And lastly, I do have to limit this contest to participants in the United States.

1. Follow Aurorae Yoga Mats on Facebook.
2. Follow Aurorae Yoga Mats on Twitter.
3. Leave me a comment here, stating that you want to win. (This would be a good entry to let me know what color Yoga mat you’d like if you do win – that’ll be the color you get.)
4. Follow Stellar Path in Google Reader! (or other blog reading service of your choice).
5. Follow me on YouTube! My username there is JeremyRay45.
6. Leave me a comment on any of my YouTube videos, and then come back here and tell me which video you commented on.
7. Follow me on Twitter @stellarpath.
8. Tweet about this contest with this comment. “@stellarpath is giving away an @AuroraeYoga mat! #giveaway http://bit.ly/950Kb5″
9. Become a Fan of Stellar Path on Facebook!

Okay, nine super easy ways to enter. Do them all or none, but you MUST do one of the first two to be eligible to win.

This giveaway is open now, and it will run end at midnight on Thursday, April 29th. The winner will be announced on Friday!

This is most definitely a Lisa says “Meh” weigh-in.

I should be happier about it, but I just don’t know if I can be, because I’m heavier than lately. However, it is a loss, and as many people have told me, the numbers don’t define me. I’ll be happy to see how my waist size decreases over time. That may give me a better indicator of my success than the scale.

I weighed in last Friday at 339.5. I weighed in this Saturday morning at 337.1. That’s a loss of 2.4 pounds. It’s okay; I’ll take it. I could be happier, because I am seven pounds heavier than my most recent lightest, but whatever. It is what it is, and I’ll deal with it.

As I mention in the very short video this week, my arms have gone up almost two inches. I know this isn’t true muscle gain, as I’ve lifted weights four times this week, so I’m sure my arms are pumped full of blood. Still, it is a step in the right direction, and I’m happy about it, even if it does mean I’ll have to give some back next week.

I am happy to see that my waist size is 54 1/2 inches, which is half an inch down from last week. That IS good news.

As previously mentioned, this is a very short video. We’re entertaining some friends tonight, and I whipped up a short cooking video. I made grilled shrimp in a cast iron skillet, which if I don’t mind saying so myself, turned out frickin’ awesome. I hope to post that video some time tomorrow.