Sunday, July 15, 2012

About My Fitness Pal

You can download MFP for your Android, I-Anything, or just use it straight from the website.  Its free and takes all of 2 mins to sign up.  Once you sign up you need to fill out some stuff about yourself to get started.  Age/sex/activity level/how much you want to lose (I'm sure there's more).  How much you can lose ranges from .5 to 2 lbs.  When I signed up I was 340 lbs, desk job (sorta), and put I wanted to lose 2 lbs per week.  That started me out at 2250 calories a day.  It also ask how much exercise do you plan to do.  Whats nice about MFP is that when you go out and burn off 400 calories, you can eat some or all of them back and still stay within your goal range.  Since your 2250 is setup for 2lbs, that 400 calories was just an extra bonus.  I tend to eat no more then 50% of my calories back.  If you think about it, you go for a walk so you can eat more.  To me that is a win win situation!

Up to this point in my life I had no idea what a serving of anything was.  A serving of Pringles was the can and however many pretzel rods I could fit in my hand worked to.  I don't remember on the first day if I just ate normal or accidentally went over by 421 calories.  Either or it was a HUGE learning curve for me.  The first month of MFP you will either have to manually enter your food in or use the barcode scanner,  We shop at Kroger's mainly and there hasn't been much that's not in MFP database.  If its not in there, just find something similar.  There is a local pizza place we love that serves food just like a chain joint.  I asked the owner about nutritional info but she said they just never got around to doing it.  Just find a similar food till you can really narrow down what your eating.  After a few weeks to a month you will notice you tend to eat the same things often.  Those things will be in your quick menu in order of your choice.  Very handy since I only snack on a few things mainly and eat the hell out of Subway.  Need help with MFP, just ask or visit the sites own forum that is very active.  Its great for ideas on food, exercise, and if the person who post above you is hot or not.

Day 1

Its my little ones 1st birthday party.  I'm about 340 lbs give or take a piece of cake.  I know I need to lose some weight and I've thought about it before, just never had the motivation to do it.  At the party my brother/sister-in-law showed me an app that helped them lose weight called http://www.myfitnesspal.com/  I took the hint after about the 3rd time of showing me how to use the app.  JERKS! and thanks at the same time.  lol  They had me sign up online then install the app on my android phone.  MFP (what the cool kids call it) is free!  Can't beat that price.  It's very similar to another app called Lose it.  MFP is the same concept like Weight Watchers but without all the stupid points.  I lost 50 lbs using Weight Watchers, so I'm allowed to say the points are stupid!  There I got that off my chest, I feel better now.  You put the basics age/sex/weight/how active/how much you want to lose each week (which ranges from .5 to 2 lbs) and it will spit out how many calories you can eat each day.  TBH, it's as simple as that.  They had me signed up and ready to go within 5 mins.  Now, its up to me if I really want this to work or not.  I was thinking that if I lost 15-20 lbs at least my clothes would fit better.

Leading up to Day 1.

For any journey, there has to be a day 1 with events that lead to you starting said journey.  Well for me there was a few but nothing to major.  Dec of my 8th grade year, I was 5'10 150.  I had to be 150 to make the weight limit for football.  July before the start of my freshman year at Dixie, I tipped the scales at 200 and was now 6'1.  Yes, if it wasn't tied down I ate it.  That's basically what happened all through high school.  I grad in 96 6'3 255 lbs.  Spent all of 7 days at Morehead State University after I hurt my sciatic nerve again.  It took me 6 months to a year to get over that.  Fast forward to 2002 I joined a racing team.  I was a mechanic and over the wall crew member.  Plus part time body guard (few folks know exactly what I'm talking about).  Bought a racing gokart and started to race in Middletown.  I was in the Super Heavy class which was driver/kart 400+ lbs.  By this point I was around 310-320 then with kart I was over 500 lbs on the scale.  Needless to say that was a short lived career since I ended up flipping the kart.  I opened my eyes and saw sky thinking, "hey, I shouldn't be looking at that?"  I cracked my chest with that trick.  Another 6 months and some time in rehab to fix that mistake.  By this point I'm over 330 lbs.  Crew for hire was over when a few of the members got jobs in NASCAR (teams) so I really didn't have anything to do.  Fast forward now to summer 2011.  I have 2 little kids both under the age of 3.  I have a family history that its almost easier to just say what we haven't had.  To list some majors, diabetes, high/low blood pressure, kidney failure, heart issues, and cancer to just name a few.  My father, when he hit his 58th b-day became the oldest male in our family in a direct line (his dad, g-pa, gg-pa, ggg-pa).  Issue is I'm just a bigger version of him. Finally decided, I'm tired of following in his footsteps.