WW and the gym

So yesterday, Monday, I went and made 2 steps in my attempt to lose weight - I joined Weight Watchers (online - I'm not going to meetings) and I joined a gym. Holly (my wife - you'll hear more about her later) was on WW back in the day and it worked for her. Me, I'm a little skeptical, but I'm going to try and work the plan. The hardest thing for me is going to be be portion control. It really hurts me to leave food on my plate when I've paid good money for it.

I also joined a gym. I joined a 24 hour place near Maison Dumas in the South Loop. It's pretty cool, although I've already almost left OPD (the daughter) in kid care. More on that after my first real trip and my first meeting with Issac, the TRAINER.

I know that this is for the best, but hell, it's going to be hard. If people have any thoughts, they can bring them here.

cya later

How this all started...

As I've said earlier, I'm a big boy. I'm the healthiest fat guy in the world. I have great cholesterol, I'm not diabetic and my blood pressure is only slightly elevated. So what. So I'm tired of being a big guy - tired of automatically asking for the seat belt extender on planes; tired of searching a new room for the chair that's not too delicate so I don't break it. Tired of buying clothes at Casual Male XL (otherwise known as Mellon Tall and Fat - Back to School).

So I sent out an e-mail to some of my fraternity Brothers (I'm a member of Phi Kappa Psi - Chapter advisor for 2 chapters and I've helped start 3 groups in IL) who were also big guys and suggested a bet. We'll all get on the scale and whoever loses the most weight, percentage wise, will each get $100 from each person. For me it was simple-hit the trigger of my vice - gambling (one of my vices, but it would be bad to use food as a reward and porn wouldn't have gone over well with the 1 female in the bet) and I'll lose weight. So there are 8 of us, so winner takes home $700 profit. The contest goes from now until the open of GAC in late July, so I think I can get it done.

The weigh in was really funny. Guys were trying to bulk up before the weigh in, eating far too much food and just throwing it down their gullets like we were feeding a goose for pate.

Let's get it started

Welcome! This is to be the first of many entries as I talk about my life and about things that I think are important - if you think that just sounds like it's my soapbox, you're right, but you can respond if you like and we can debate once and a while as well.

While I'll probably talk about a variety of topics (Baseball, coaching kids, college basketball, golf - gotta love that guy Eldrick - , poker, politics, shoes, clothes and my views on the American Fraternity) the bulk of what I write about will be about my quest to lose weight. You see, I'm fat. Not need a forklift to move fat, or breaking chairs fat (even though I've done that, but not for a while), but I'm a big boy. I'm not going to tell you my weight, at least for now, but i will tell you my successes and my failures. I'll talk about what works for me and the fun of trying to figure out how to get the things I love (gummi bears anyone??) and still get to my goal weight of 199. Really its not about a goal weight, but about a goal size: I want to be able to buy pants at the Gap!

So with that being said, here we go. I hope you come along for the ride and feel free to comment.