I’ve been asked in many ways about the state of the-diet. I’ve put off an update until I had chosen a direction to go with it since I’m now in a different stage of the diet than I was before.
It took me about 20 weeks to get close to my goal. I never actually reached the numerical goal I had set (180 pounds), but I was happy to have gotten where I did (185 pounds). Then we moved which made my dieting posts screech to a halt.
Since then I have gotten settled into our new home and dealing with everything that brings. On November 1st I joined the gym for the first time in my life. Eliza and I got 1-year memberships and since then we have been getting to the gym on a regular basis (except this week since I’ve been sick).
I suppose the gym, and those that joined with us, have been my support system rather than the Web, and so I was not keeping up with updates. However I feel as though I might have been leaving all of you in the dark when you were just getting started on your journey, and so I’m sorry about that.
When we started the diet, it was all of you that really helped me to be successful. My wife and my friends played large roles in my losing weight, but those of you that joined the diet had a profound effect on me. A sense of not being alone in my plight nor my delight of incremental loses. Every-time I had a failure on my diet I was picked up by nice comments about how all of you have had similar hardships. Or, when I did really well I was congratulated. This was vital to my success.
So, to pick up the ball once again, I’ve decided to start cataloging the process that happens after you "reach" your goal. The process of maintenance and making sure that the same thing that happened before (to get me as fat as I was) does not happen again. And since I’ve joined the gym, I’ll throw in an update on that front too. I will start keeping a catalog of my progress of cardio, lifting weights, and general activity through the winter months.
To help keep this thing growing a little I will try to keep up my evangelical work on how the diet has succeeded for me – but for those of you still trying to lose weight I asked that you also keep everyone else involved in your progress. This ship has far more than one captain. Every single one of us has made a decision to be on the diet and as such we should all try our best to keep each other on point with that decision.
I sincerely appreciate all of you that have "called me out" on not keeping up-to-date with this. Hopefully I can do a much better job in the near, and distant future. I’ll start by updating the diet pages over the weekend with the latest information. If you have changed your URL, gotten a Flickr account, or anything else – send me an email and I’ll get it updated for you.
I really need all of you who have participated on the diet to help me out. Help me to get this thing going again and really to keep it going. If I miss a week or two (or if any of us do) let us all try to pick up the slack where we can. This diet is not something that stops just because the scale reads a certain number, this will continue for our entire lives. Thanks in advance for anything you can do.
A note about prizes since I was asked where all the prizes are. The diet pages, as I said before, are grossly out-of-date. The Diet Channel has decided to give anyone that wants a diet a diet if they will take their posts and put them on their site. So, no contest really – but they would like you to tell you story on their site. If you want more information on this let me know and I will provide it as best as I can. They also made the diet a success and we don’t want to forget about them.
Oh! Don’t forget to join the Flickr group, if you have not already. It is free, and if you don’t have a blog it is a quick way to post your progress. If you are reading about the diet for the first time, and want to join, send me an email and I will put you on the list of dieters.
[tags]the-diet, diet, gym, flickr, dieting, the diet channel[/tags]
[slug]dec06-diet-update[/slug]
