Facebook Saved My Life

Alright, now that my first ever attempt at a link bait title is out of the way let me explain a bit.

On January 1st, 2014 I weighed 258 lbs. This wasn’t the highest weight I’ve ever been, but pretty close. If things didn’t change there are very good chances that I would develop serious health issues that could very easily kill me.

Even though I knew all this I lacked the motivation to actually do anything about it. I just couldn’t seem to get myself going.

Near the end of 2013 my sister and wife showed me a group on Facebook that an acquaintance setup. It was going to be an online biggest loser type 12 week challenge. My sister was joining and wanted me to as well. After a fair amount of pressure from my wife especially I decided I would join. The rules were basically put in $25 and at the end of 12 weeks the three people who lost the highest percentage of body weight would each take home a chunk of the total money people brought in.

So I’m ashamed to admit that it wasn’t all the health benefits that I could see, the increased energy, or the potential for more happiness that motivated me, it was the fact that I wanted to win and not lose my $25.

That’s how it started out anyway. But a number people in the group were great at keeping me motivated a long the way. There was a good group of us who all kept updating each other on how we were doing. If I was having a bad day the people there would keep me on track and not let me get down. When I injured myself and I thought I was out, they reminded me that eating right accounted for a lot of the progress not just working out.

I’m certain that if I didn’t have this group of like minded people all working at the same goal, plus the added benefit of the competition aspect, that I wouldn’t have stuck with it and would still be stuck in my old ways.

I ended up coming second in the competition.

During the competition my workout routine was fairly intense, at least to me it was. It was a 12 week challenge so I started a 90 day workout routine, Jillian Michaels 90 Day Body Revolution. It comes with a meal plan and workout DVDs. I didn’t really follow the meal plan, but I did stick with the calorie intake recommendations that it made. So I was around 1200 – 1500 a day most days during the competition. There were some days that I fell off, but with the groups and my families help I stayed pretty true to those amounts.

The other modification I made was that the DVDs are meant to be one workout a day for six days a week. Most of the time I did two workouts a day. I usually did take the rest day sometime during the week though.

At first the getting up early before anyone else and doing a workout and then doing another one once the younger kids were in bed was very tough. My family helped out a lot and I ended up in a pretty good routine. My family also ended up changing their eating habits with me to an extent. Portion size especially and passing up on the wonderful deserts my wife makes was by far my biggest eating challenge.

But things didn’t end there. Being a three month competition and having seen success I was able to change my lifestyle around. I’ve built up pretty good eating habits, I have developed a love for running, I feel so much better about myself and have more energy to do things with my family that my happiness and self confidence is the highest it’s been since I can remember.

I’m not done. I still have a ways to go before I am am even not classified as overweight. But seeing as I’ve had success and I’m still on the right track I wanted to start this blog to keep track of my progress and maybe even share with other people the things I’m doing.

Most of the early posts are my statues copied and pasted from the Facebook group. They are a pretty good record about how I was feeling and stuff that happened to me along the way.

Again even though the title of this post might be a little over blown, if it weren’t for my wife and the people in this Facebook group I would not be where I am today. I am very thankful to all of them for giving me the push and help I needed to get started on this journey.