So this is it, it is happening I have made it real.  I have decided to compete in the News-Herald Lighten Up 2011 contest.  No matter what I say or do for the next 6 months I have to push myself to reach my goal.  That goal is to lose 100 pounds, to reach a weight between 190-200 pounds.  Now in the past 2 years I have lost up to 120 pounds but was unable to reach my final goal.  This is why I figured I needed to put more pressure on myself to lose the last half.  People have always asked me how i lost the weight.  To be honest it, for me it was easy I just started to work out at the Y (west branch) and jog around my neighborhood.  I started to work out and push a little harder every week the pounds started to come off.  Then it was cycle effect.  Pounds off leads to working out harder which of course leads to more pounds off.  That was not the only thing that was changing.   Few pounds off lead to lots of pounds off the visible changes accrued.  Now when I started at 395 and lost 10-15 pounds I always said it is like throwing a chair off the Titanic.  Once I hit 50 pounds then it was like the whole lido deck.  Then mentally I started to feel better and started to create little goals to achieve.  When I got to 278 and 15 months of working out a funny thing happened.  I slowed up, I figured, I got this.  I can ease off the pedal and stop working so hard.  That was April 2010, and since i have put on 30 pounds and starting to get down on myself.  So around Thanksgiving I thought I could flip a switch, start it back up again.  This time I find it a lot harder so I wanted to change it up a little, find a challenge to push me and that is when my wife showed me the Lighten up Contest.  This brings us up to the present and now I hope this will help me achieve my goal.  To me it is not about winning a prize it is about winning a goal I set for myself over 2 years ago. 

Till next time keep pushing, keep sweating, and keep believing    

 

Tom