OSMOL | Week 1 – Full Disclosure

What’s all this OSMOL that I’m talking about? Well, it’s something that I came up with about a year ago. It stands for “Operation Save My Own Life,” and I actually started a separate blog about it then (which, of course, no one was reading), posted to it for about two weeks, and then gave up. It was a simple weight-loss blog and was originally designed to give me motivation to lose the weight I’d put on in the past few years. Again, that blog had maybe two readers (not a whole lot of motivation there, huh?). Well, it’s time that I finally got serious about this weight issue again (thanks in part to motivation from Bobbi and Heather) and, since this blog actually has an audience (trust me, I have the stats to prove it…hehe…), I figured it might be a good place to turn OSMOL into a weekly feature here so people can watch what I’ve been up to weight-wise and hold me accountable.

So, in the nature of full disclosure (and since this is the introductory entry), I’ll give you guys and gals the basic outlines of my “weight story.”

I guess my weight story really starts in high school where I was athletic (co-captain of varsity baseball and soccer), active, and pretty much always hovering around 185 pounds. Now, for 6 foot 3 inches, 185 is a nice weight. Maybe even a little too on the thin side. High school was good. Very good.Then, I went away to the University of Scranton for two years and discovered the Freshman Fifty. Yeah, that’s right… I didn’t say Freshman Fifteen… I said Freshman Fifty. I remember my roommate and I ordering pizzas every Sunday night and watching wrestling on our 15″ TV. Yup, I said pizzas. Plural. One for each of us. The roommate was one of the skinniest kids I’ve ever seen so it didn’t really effect him, but I ballooooooooned up to about 255 pounds or so after my first two years of college.

After spending two years in Scranton, I decided it was time to come back and finish my BA at Rutgers here in central NJ. Eventually, I also made the choice to try to lose some of that Scranton weight.

It was brutal. I was working out like crazy and being insanely meticulous about my food intake, etc. I would wake up at 5am, hit the gym, go to school, go to work, go back to school for a film screening (I majored in English and Cinema Studies), go running, then hit the gym one more time before sleep. I was about as close to crazy as you can get. But I’m an obsessive personality… that’s how I work. All that work paid off, though, when I actually got down to 180 pounds, which at 6’3″ was way too skinny, but I was healthier than I’d ever been.

About six months later, when I started dating my (eventual) wife, I was at about 185 pounds and in damn good shape. I was happy, healthy, and still very active. Then, I got lazy. And lazier. And lazier. And even more lazy…

Before I knew it, I was back up to around 240 or so. I was heavy but nothing crazy. I even dieted some more (clearly, “diets” don’t work…) and lost about 20 pounds before gaining it all, back, plus some. By the time we got married (October 28, 2006), I was 265 pounds. I hate my wedding pictures and the way I look in them. I hate that my gorgeous wife had to take pictures with her tubby hubby on her wedding day. She’d never say that, of course, but that’s how I felt, even if I never showed it.

In the year and a half or so, since the wedding, I’ve gained about 15 more pounds. My highest weight was 280 and right now I’m about 277. The time is NOW for me to start losing this weight. Obviously, I’ve lost the weight before and I know a lot of the tips and tricks to get me there. I know what it will take. I just need to actually do it this time.

I now work from home full time and I know that can only lead me to gain even more more weight if I don’t do something about it. It’s time for me to get meticulous and a little crazy again. Food journals, working out, eating right… the whole nine yards. It’s time for me to save my own life. I don’t want to feel heavy anymore. Physically heavy. I’m ready to be light and active again, and I want to live a long life with my wonderful wife.

Operation Save My Own Life is in full effect, people. My ultimate goal is to be 215 pounds again by October 28, 2008. I know that I can pull that off if I work hard. If I lose more than that, so be it, but I’d be happy and healthy at 215. What a great anniversary present that would be for the both of us, right?

In the coming weeks and months, I plan to update this blog with all my progress (weigh-in posts every Friday) as well as some tips and advice along the way, but the main OSMOL posts will be on Weigh-In Fridays. Anytime you see that little OSMOL logo on a post, you know it’s an OSMOL post.

Wish me luck, ya’ll… I’m gonna need it. I’m currently about 277 pounds. Let the fun begin!!