My Story and The Plan

Hi, my name is J Brian (group responds HI J BRIAN). I am FAT. I have been for most of my adult life.

I will be A Fat Boy No More.

Three years ago I started a journey to become A Fat Boy No More. And since September 2007 I have been publishing my success and failures. This Blog follows me from the day I first started my weight loss journey and it focuses on the everyday struggles that people with weight problems have.

Prepare yourself for a very real and very challenging event in my life. I commit to being as honest and as clear as I can be in the webpage to chronicle my ongoing battle with my weight. The pictures can be explicit.

After 12 years of being bigger than I should be... ok lets just be honest. I was not big I was fat. I have been over weight and muscular for most of my adult life. But the muscular part has been over shadowed by a large layer of fat on my body. I've eaten too much and I lived a sedentary life. In December 2006 I weighed 320 pounds. The morning I weighed myself and saw that I was over 300 pounds I essentially went into a deep depression that day and I am sure that I ate another 5 pounds worth of food. But that night I decided that enough was enough. My weight problem had become more than just an appearance problem it became a health problem, a self esteem problem and it was starting to affect my business and income. I had to do something. And I had to be held accountable. Technology is a good thing. I decided I had to put it out there. I started texting everyone in cell phone saying "Officially a fat ass now I weigh 300". I had been lying forever and telling people that I was 250. And no one questioned it.

The first step I took was to hit the gym and cut my calories. I looked on webmd and found out how many calories there where in a pound (3500) and decided to create this formula to determine how many calories and how much extra exercise I had to do to lose 60 pounds by May 27th. My annual trip to Key West Florida. By February I had lost 25 pounds. On a plan that was essentially the same thing that Weight Watchers teaches you. Then life hit me. After being so good I just got tired of it. I had no real support structure. And so I just relapsed because I was on a diet. Not a life change. But between March and August I essentially maintained my weight loss. In April I got a part time job working in a restaurant as a bartender. Everyone thinks I was crazy to do that but the truth is I just needed something to make me active. I needed to get off my lazy fat ass and be active. I gave up sweet tea and I stopped eating beef for the most part. I chose bison. Which taste so similar and has a familiar texture but had half the calories. Nothing else really changed.

But I did not lose the weight I wanted. When I was in Key West I looked like a beached whale and I felt horrible. I have a picture from that trip that show the folds of fat on my back. I was so depressed after that trip. So I essentially just maintained until late July when my best friend Michelle told me that a guy we both worked with a few years back had lost a lot of weight thru some medical weight loss plan.

I kinda brushed it off. I was looking into Lap Band or some other surgery. Then another friend of mine saw Brad as well and said Brad has lost a lot of weight. So I called Brad and he told me about the plan thru Emory Hospital. I went to an info session on the plan and decided to enroll.

Before you consider any type of surgery please look into medically managed weight loss. IT WORKS. Your doctor or the Bariatrics department of your local university hospital can direct you. Too many of my friends had surgery and lost a lot of weight and regained it. Even with a smaller stomach you can eat ice cream all the time and gain it back. I have a friend that just did that.

So this is what I did initially. Follow my blog posts from the beginning and see the transformation.

Remember

Don't give up today because you fucked up yesterday.

30 October 2008

UPDATE 10 30 2008

Tuesday will be election day and I expect that Barack Obama will win the office of the President.  This will be a historic event and I feel that the next 4 years will be a very difficult time for the new president.  I am going to take this opportunity to make a long term goal.  At the end of this first term.  I will maintain a weight management program to keep myself healthy.  I am not a big fan of very long term goals and I will not put an exact number on the weight goal as it will change.  My initial weight loss plan was designed to eliminate weight.  The vast majority of this weight was pure fat,  but my body composition has changed.  My fat content while higher than I want is well within an "average healthy" range.  

I am finishing a cycle of adding muscle.  I will take a 6 week break starting in two weeks were my primary focus will not be on muscle gain but on fat loss and muscle maintenance.  

18 October 2008

Maintaining weight is hard

... especially when you are trying to get bigger. My goals have changed from trying to lose weight to building muscle. While I have added significant muscle mass there is some fat gain as well. I have decided to continue my current "bulking up" plan thru the end of October and my primary monthly health focus will for November and December will be to reduce the amount of body fat.

My specific goals are to build muscle and trim fat-- this is often hard to do. My waist is smaller than it has ever been.

11 October 2008

October 11, 2009

Its been more than a year since I started my journey.  I have taken what was a weight loss program into a whole body transformation.  I have spent the last 3 months focusing on building muscle more than losing weight.  I have actually gained some weight.  I would contend that a great amount of the weight is muscle.  I will be posting some new body photos in the near future.