My new life quest - a healthier me.

I know its January and everyone makes some silly New Year’s resolution (a tradition that still continues to baffle me but that rant isn't for this post) but I started a new life quest about 6 weeks before Jan 1 to lose the weight I gained since my daughter was born. Roughly, between being a new father and traveling 5 days a week for work, I packed on 35 lbs.

I'm proud to report that after 7 weeks I have gone from 232.4 lbs to 209.6 lbs, down 5.2 inches of my stomach, down 3.6 inches of my upper leg, and up 2.1 inches on my upper arms.

Before I get into how I've kept myself on course, you will notice I refer to this as a quest. Let's be honest it is, call it a goal or a New Year's resolution or whatever. I'm a geek and I like geeky stuff, I prefer to think of it as a new quest in my life. Luke became a Jedi, Bilbo goes to steal a dragon's treasure, Mario saves the princess, and I’m trying to get healthy. Like all quests it will have an end, that's when the next life quest begins.

Since everyone is always looking for that miracle diet, I thought I'd expand on how I did that.

1 - Accountability - everyone lies to themselves that it’s not as bad as it really is, get over that and be honest with yourself. I was medically obese and now I can fix that. Getting into the green, or ideal BMI, is going to take a lot of effort and honestly I don't care what my weight is, for now it’s a great way to see my progress. If you are the type of person who finds it hard to stay motivated find some good friends who will help you along the way, and if they are the type of friends who pull you back into you're old ways find some new friends at the gym or online. Me, I'm the type of person who is self-driven, but common a little praise and encouragement goes along way. I get my accountability electronically through a Fitbit Force, more on that later.

2 - Put the fork down - every diet, fitness program, scientist, and mother knows that weight loss\gain happens in the kitchen (or in my case Subway), if you put trash in you will only get trash back. I eat that bowl of ice cream, or full plate of rice from the hibachi, and that's ok as long as you do it in moderation. There are a million diet plans or fitness programs out there and each one has the same basis under it, you can't get any better, faster, stronger, skinnier, or bulkier unless you eat not only the right stuff but the right amount of stuff.

3 - Forget cheat days - this actually came as a piece of advice to me and I like it. You want ice cream, eat it. Beer and chicken wings while watching the big game enjoy yourself. If you consider it a cheat you've assigned blame and guilt to the action and now you feel bad for doing it. What's the point of working out and getting in shape if life is going to suck? Now this is goes with "Put the fork down" you can't do beer and chicken wings every night and expect to lose 5 lbs a month.

4 - Track everything - believe it or not your body burns a lot of calories during routine stuff. Check this out! This link shows how many calories you burn doing normal stuff, from washing dishes to yoga and cross fit; this will show you just how much you are really doing. I know its blank but scroll to the bottom put in your weight and the duration and it will give you the numbers. Now that's nice and great, I burned eleventeen-thirty calories doing the dishes last night, I can have cookies! Now comes the flip side, you have to track your food too, and yes that mini Nutter Butter is only 10 calories but you still have to track it, even lettuce and spinach have caloric values. Once you see just how much you eat in a day, I can bet you will want to change it. I went from eating 2200+ calories a day to usually 1200 - 1500, and I stay full longer by eating the right foods. This ties in 100% to Accountability be honest with yourself. Don't know how much you're eating? Get a measuring cup and scale, cost you like maybe $20.

5 - Use the right tools - Kind of like Batman's utility belt. This is a no brainier to me, but I'm a tech geek and I like gadgets. I use a Fitbit Force and it’s linked to my account in MyFitnessPal. The Fitbit tracks my movements throughout the day, yes it’s an overgrown pedometer hush I like it!, and puts it all online in a nifty easy to follow display. You can set various goals on steps, distance, calories and it gives you a red, yellow, green status. MyFitnessPal is a calorie tracker, with a great community behind it. I use it to track my food and it and my Fitbit account send data back and forth quite quickly actually. Both have iPhone (and probably android) apps so I can do it anywhere. My wife does Weight Watchers, and just added a Fitbit to her utility belt. My goals are set up as 10000 steps and 5 miles 3x a week. Because it constantly updates I always know where I am and I have a better chance at hitting them.

Bonus - Side quests!!!! - All great fantasy based books and games have side quests, something that helps the life quest but isn't required. There are my 2-4 week goals or challenges. You always see people posting 30 day plank or push-up challenges, those are what I'm talking about. Don't confuse these with milestones (i.e. I want to run a mini so a 5k would be a mile stone). A side quest should never do anything that makes your main quest harder.

These are the 5 things that have helped me along. If you read all that and you liked something let me know. I'm getting into the harder part of my quest so I'll be posting more fitness related stuff.