End of Fifth Week

JOHN

The end of the fifth week has come and gone and I am down to 340. That's 4o pounds since I started Weight Watchers and 60 pounds since I got the 400 pound wake up call. Got a new Taylor scale that goes to 45o pounds. It works great, with only a few hiccups and it has a glass top, which even at my now more sleek weight it still scares me it might break.

Fourth Week and Finally Through the 350 Pound Barrier

JOHN

It is week number four and I am less than 350 pounds for the first time in over ten years. I weighe in at 343 pounds.

End of Third Week

JOHN

Still at 351 pounds. Got a new scale at GNC. Scale was capable of weighing up to 450 pounds but alas it was not meant to be--the scale was defective.

End of Second Week

JOHN

At the end of the second week I am down to 351 pounds. I can't believe 350 is in sight. It has been more than 10 years since I have seen 350 on a scale.

First weigh in

My first official weigh in was this morning. 274.8. I'm down 2.2 pounds this week. (6.9 pounds from my start of 281.) Slow and steady wins the race!

First Week and Success

JOHN

At the end of the first week I find a pay scale in front of our local GNC Store. and according to that I am already down to 353 pounds. YEAH! I am off to a good start.

Off and Running

JOHN

Weight Watchers has changed immensely, over the years, and what once seemed just another horrible dieting experience, only with built-in peer pressure, now looks not only like something that is do-able, but also looks like something I could comfortably continue long-term.

I don't have a scale that can weigh me at home and my current work schedule doesn't afford me the time or proximity to stop in regularly at my doctor's office or some other place that would offer me regular access to an accurate scale. So, for now, I will have to use the last known accurate weight from a doctor' appointment a few weeks ago of 380 pounds.

And, I am off and Running.

Why am I Doing This

JOHN

My wife and I got fat together. Our biggest problem stems from the fact that we have always seen ourselves as lifetime fatties. Looking back now, knowing what it really means to be fat, we realize there was a large portion of our young lives where we were never really that large, let alone fat at all. Yet we saw ourselves as fat and because of that we both eventually became the individual blobs we saw ourselves to be with our mind's eye.

Our struggle with attempting weight loss has been a difficult one to attempt together. I cannot use Nutrasweet/Aspertame without getting an instant migraine and most other sugar substitutes, if they don't cause me uncomfortable to severe side effects they cause me sensory overload issues due the common overpowering sweetness accompanying most non-nutrative sweeteners.

Then there is the fact that almost every trend diet or just dieting in general has undesirable effects on me. Either I get very ill or my body goes into starvation mode and adds fat on, rather than watching it melt away.

My wife has had various success with different diet and exercise programs that she has tried, but because she often had to try them alone or ended up having to try and continue without me, she has has little successes that usually end up to be milestones on the path to giving up one more time because it is too hard to do something that is such a drastic change alone.

Recently my wife entered into the discipline of Life Purpose Coaching. She is admirably trying to make some major changes in life direction, personality hangups, self-identity, person self-worth, etcetera. One of those changes that she determined to make and see it through to its conclusion.

Not wanting to see her fail again or be the reason she didn't have the long-term will-power to make it through the rough times, I decided to not support her from the sidelines only this time, but to join her. I have more weight to lose than she does, so it would greatly benfit me in numerous ways to walk this journey with the one person that means more than anything to me.

My wife won a three month free trial to Weight Watchers. She had the choice of in-person meeting or Weight Watchers online. She chose the online format and after looking over the program thoroughly, I decided to surprise her by letting her know that I was determined not to make her walk this road alone again--I was joining her and we were going to make it work this time.

Off to a good start

My first day went really well. I ended up under points. But the best news of all, is my husband is going to join me! So I created this new blog. Instead of blogging alone at Less of Julie, John and I will be blogging together at Thinner Together.

I'm starting off at 277 pounds. John is starting at 380. My Weight Watchers' points value is 35 per day. John's is 44 per day. We are excited to start this journey together.

Greatest Weight Loss Fear

JOHN

I have always lied to myself and everyone else about being comfortable in my skin. The truth is that I know more about myself now and who I have always been. I know that I was never as fat and ugly as I saw myself as a teenager and I wasn't the social outcast I believed myself to be. If you look at the girls who I hung out with in high school, and, more importantly the ones who hung around me, it becomes obvious that there was something about me, that I never saw, that girls found attractive or at least I possessed qualities that otherwise made me desirable.

My wife is the only beautiful woman I gave a chance to pierce my shell. Shell is the only one I ever allowed close enough to discover if she really wanted more. In short my wife is the only woman who has ever expressed desire for me, physical or otherwise that I wasn't just to plain self-absorbed in my llow self-image to recognze.

This, in and of itself, is not a problem for me. I love my wife deeply and have never lost my passion and desire for her, even though we both have ballooned equally over the years. I have no desire to stray or even fantasize about the possibility of another woman's desire for me.

What I have always been scared of and have taken comfort within my obese body is that I have never had to face the temptation of another woman wanting me or desiring me erotically. There may have been those who did even still, but I kept myself convinced I was fat and ugly and undesirable, so I never rnoticed. What has scared me though was if I ever lost that negative self-image, became truly confident in myself and attracted a beautiful (or even not a beauty queen type) woman to express an erotic desire for me. I have never experienced the physical desire from anyone other than my wife, and even though I am not seeking it, not having experienced it, I have always been afraid that the experience would be so exciting and feel so good that I would ail miserably, if tested.

It has been easier to remain fat, lie about being comfortable in my skin, and declare my only real desire for weight loss was to be able to shop for clothes anywhere I chose. I would resist even the idea of weight loss for health reasons because it could still lead to the same dangeous place.

As it turned out, once we completely confessed our worst fears about getting skinny, we shared the same ultimate fear. The solution became cllear: we both needed to make the dramatic chamge in our bodies together, so that our heads would never be tempted to turn.

Today is the day

Today is the day for my journey to begin. In exactly 6 months, I will be 40. Last night I signed up for Weight Watchers Online. We shopped for fruits and veggies and snacks. I think I'm ready to go. My starting weight is 277. (Which is actually 4 pounds less than I expected!)

John's Back Story

JOHN

For all of my life I have always seen myself as the fat kid. Looking back, I can see that I was never as fat as I believed myself to be. It not only crippled my self-confidence and hinder me in forming all kinds of relationships because I feared rejection because I was fat, but it shaped my self-perception to the point that, as an adult, I eventually became the fat person I always believed myself to be growing up.

Since then, I have struggled with consistently getting larger and larger until I topped out the scales at 400 pounds. Diets have always either made me ill or caused my body to go into starvation mode and pack on fat rather than lose it. Once in a great while I would change my activity patterns and could lose 30 pounds or so, almost spontaneously, but could never get past that first weight loss surge.

Then my health began to take a downturn shortly after my 25 birthday. The new health concerns exacerbated my obesity and my obesity added greater complications to my health problems.

In 2002 I had rotator cuff repair surgery and needed to go onto an antidepressant shortly after that caused me for the first time ever to pass 359 pounds on the scale. I shot up to around 375-380 and could never seem to shake off the extra 30 pounds the medication had caused me to gain.

My health problems continued to get worse and worse, due to my ever increasing obesity and in November of 2008 I went to a doctor's appointment and discovered I had reached a milestone I had no idea whether or not I could come to terms with or back away from either--400 pounds.

I gave up all soft drinks, at home, cut almost anything pleasurable from my diet and began to really hate eating in general. I started to lose weight and then would gain it back almost as quickly as I could even think of celebrating the achievement.

Opening Day

I've decided that Wednesday, April 8th will be my starting day with Weight Watchers Online. Why did I choose April 8th? Because it is my half-birthday. On April 8th, I will be 39 1/2. Six months until 40.Today I did my couch to 5K walk/power walk. (I can't run yet, but I have to start somewhere.) I had one soda. I got a second refill, but I only had a couple of drinks from it. I dumped it out.Baby steps.

Starting over (again)

Last year I lost between 30 and 40 pounds, but then my daughter had a seizure. (She is fine.) But things went downhill from there. Over the next few weeks, I not only regained the 30 pounds, they each brought a "friend". I am now at my highest weight ever: 281. I'm definitely not going to make my goal of losing 100 pounds before my 40th birthday (October). But I'm ready to get started.I recently won a 3 month online membership to Weight Watchers. And I'm ready to start. I'll be getting set up this next week. I'm also trying to do a Couch to 5 K challenge. I may not make it in the 9 weeks suggested. But I'm starting. I'm also not doing the walk/run yet, but instead doing a walk/power walk.I'll be chronically my journey on this blog.