Mission 44

Hello, friends! When I first began this blog, I imagined that it would be a daily record of this whole experience that I call Mission 44 . I wanted to share successes and record how I achieved them. I wanted to create something that was a reference that I could look to when I needed encouragement and direction, while at the same time serving as a tool for others who were looking for a way to lose weight and wanted to see how I finally managed to do it after failing so many times. My blog has not achieved those things...yet. My daily checklist has the word "blog" on it. It is almost never checked off. It also has the word "stretch" on it, and that doesn't get checked off either. These are two things that I aspire to. I will try to stretch every night beginning in Phase 4, which is about two weeks away. The daily blogging, however, is not going to happen. Sitting down and writing takes too much time, and to be a fiction writer and a daily blogger while being...

Yesterday I won Mindblown, phase two of Mission 44. Below are the phase one (Project 43) and phase two charts side by side: I meant to create a post about this yesterday but ran out of time before we left the house. It was the first day of Spring Break for my wife and our little one and they decided that they wanted to spend the day at Animal Kingdom, so off we went. It was a nice day and the park was not overly crowded, and we got to ride on the Kilimanjaro Safari, Primeval Whirl, and both of the rides in Pandora. The Safari was special because it was the third day that the new baby giraffe was in the open and my wife got a great picture of him with his family. The most rewarding part of the day, even more than the satisfaction of achieving the goal (which I had already accomplished the day before), was riding Avatar Flight of Passage. We have tried for Fast Passes for this ride ever since it opened and never have any luck. Yesterday we decided we would brave the line and ride...

Maybe I shouldn't say bad news. It's more like anticlimactic news. If you've been watching the national weather reports, you've probably seen this: Photo credit: GOES-East/NOAA The "eye" of this bomb cyclone is over Denver in this image. That is where my doctor is located right now . I didn't know this when creating the last post , where I wrote about going to my yearly physical tomorrow and blowing his mind with my progress. I'm concerned for his safety over anything. I would never want my doctor (or anyone else) to attempt to travel during a weather event like this. I've lived the last 25 years in an area that gets rolled by hurricanes on a regular basis and it's best to stay put during severe weather. I'm happy to report that his office called and told me he is doing just that. My appointment has been rescheduled to April 8th and I'll will report on the results as soon as it's done. In the meantime, I want to share thi...

As I write this, I am in the 43rd hour of a 48-hour fast. I have attempted this feat a few other times during Mission 44 but I have never made it to the end of the journey. I am determined to get there this time. Fasting is not something that I use as a quick-fix to lose a bunch of weight. It's an important tool that's meant to help rid my cells of the glucose or glycogen or whatever garbage is saturating them and causing symptoms of type 2 diabetes. Dr. Jason Fung presents intermittent fasting in The Diabetes Code , the book I'm using to guide my weight-loss during Mission 44. While I was completing Project 43 I would fast from about 7 pm to 11 am the next day, every day, and I've maintained a similar schedule during Mindblown. I didn't think that I would ever want to try one of the 48-hour fasts Dr. Fung recommends. I didn't really think I would need to, either, and I saw it as more of a nuclear option than anything else. At the end of Project 43 I sudden...

It's getting late and I don't have a lot of time, so it will be a quick post to share that my second DietBet game was finalized today and I won $17.16. My wife and I were at brunch when we found out. I don't usually take food pictures but she documents everything for posterity on Facebook. This was my reward for winning the second DietBet game so the notification was perfectly timed. Really I won $7.16. The initial investment was a ten-dollar bet that I got back as part of the prize. That $7.16 profit was a million bucks in my eyes, though. Losing 4% of my body weight in a month isn't an easy task and this success is incredibly valuable. There were a lot of times during February that I wasn't sure I would make the goal, mainly because of plateaus. The key to getting through was accountability. I want to get into this topic in some depth, so I am going to write longer posts tomorrow and the next day. Until then, I used my winnings to join the newest game hos...

Sorry, friends. I didn't think I would ever go three weeks between posts. What am I saying? I went almost five years between posts before resuming this blog in January! This was a big month, and it required all of my extra time. Here's what happened: My daughter finished building a very ambitious science fair project. If you're a parent with a kid who loves to enter the science fair, then you already know how much of your time their project takes up. The result was awesome, though: second place in all of Orange County for middle school engineering. The only project that beat hers was named the Best-in-Fair. The same overachieving child from above decided she wanted to set a new personal record for selling Girl Scout cookies. Again: her project, my time. (Please note: I loved all of the time I spent with her on both of these things, I just didn't realize how much of it they would take. Going forward, my February calendar will always be clear to allow for these two...

Yesterday was the last official day of my second DietBet game of this year. Today was the beginning of the "weigh-out," which is the two day period following the end of any DietBet game. If you wake up at the end of the game and find that you're not quite at goal when you were expecting to be, you still have a second/final day to fast or walk six miles or whatever. Here's where I was this morning: I was a little nervous about making the goal this time. First, I started the game late by almost a full week. This Kickstarter game was four weeks long, which meant I had only three weeks to lose 4% of my body weight. DietBet even warned me that it would be harder when I was registering, but I went for it anyway. I knew I was going to use my winnings from the first DietBet to pay the bet and as soon as I saw them hit my account I joined the game. Second, I wasn't as active in the community as I was in the first bet. Accountability is important, and I've noticed...

I've been back on track for the past few days. This morning I came home from my walk to discover this wonderful piece of news: After my post about backsliding I got my act together and everything started working. Exercise, diet, accountability, and commitment all fell into place and the data was moving in the right direction again. Today I measured the first "little goal" of Mindblown and crushed it. The goal was 315.6... seeing 313.2 was a very happy moment! A lot of my overall progress came thanks to an game called DietBet. At the beginning of the game I placed a $30 wager on myself to lose 4% of my body weight, and at the end of the game I won $44 for achieving my goal. I tried DietBet last year and failed, so I was skeptical about my ability to win a game this time. I looked at the games and wanted to join the biggest one but decided that the $30 would be too much to spend. My opinion changed when they emailed me a promo code for $5 off. I'm a sucker for a...

Time to own up to something: I've been backsliding, and it's starting to show up everywhere. It started on January 31st, my birthday and the last day of Project 43, and I had just crushed my first goal. That night I was tired after celebrating and I decided to not write a blog post. Maybe I felt entitled to a night off after 31 days of hard work...I don't know. So I created a placeholder post right before bed with the intent to come back the next morning and get back on track. I forgot. That left me trying to write two blog posts after 10 p.m. on February 1st. I finished the Day 31 post and was almost done with the Day 32 post but accidentally deleted it while previewing. Fortunately, I still had all of the data in the preview window so I didn't need to recreate anything. Unfortunately, you can't select and copy text from the preview window because it's an image, which meant I would have retype the whole thing. A lot of work had gone into that summary of...

I won! More to come in the edit.

Place held until I can catch up.

Yesterday was the official end of Project 43 and it was a success! I compiled a few statistics during this first phase of Mission 44, along with notes about each: Starting weight = 344.3 pounds At my December 2018 checkup, my weight was 349.9. I was wearing shoes and jeans on the scale so this really wasn't much of an improvement. Ending Weight = 316.3 pounds The goal was 319.3 pounds.  Weight Lost = 28.0 pounds This is three pounds more than my goal of 25 pounds! Miles Walked = 99 I'd had planned to walk three miles a day for a total of 93 miles during January. While I exceeded the goal, I'm disappointed that I didn't break the 100 mile mark. Days Stretched = 4 out of 31 I like to stretch before bed. Well, I say I like to, but I actually must not because I make every excuse to go to bed without stretching. I want flexibility to be part of my fitness plan but I may need a new approach. Days Journaled = 31 out of 31 Accountability is a cornerstone...

Project 43 is finished! I'm pleased to report that I lost 28 pounds in the 31 days of January and exceeded my 25 pound goal. Today is also my birthday, and it was a wonderful day to celebrate with my family. I had brunch with my daughter and went out to dinner with my wife and daughter. We wrapped up the night with dessert at Menchie's, which had a sugar-free German Chocolate and a low-carb butterscotch tonight. I had a little of both, 4 oz. total. One of the highlights of my day was introducing my little one to Back to the Future , one of my all-time favorite movies. It quickly turned into a double feature when, at the end, she asked if we could watch the rest of the trilogy. Part II wrapped tonight, Part III will come tomorrow. Today's my birthday. I'll blog more tomorrow, including a summary of Project 43, but I will leave you with a comprehensive picture for now: Mission 44 has seen a successful start. See you tomorrow for the beginning of phase two!

After the 42-hour fast ended yesterday I was certain that the results would be short lived. The plateau had been stubborn at 324.0 and to finally break through and get to 319.6 was a huge deal for me. This morning I woke up and nervously approached the scale in the hopes that maybe the number would only move up by a pound or two, leaving me with something to work with in these last two days of Project 43. What?!? Two more down ? It's hard to explain the joy I felt at seeing this morning's number. I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner after the fast and still made progress. One of the goals of Project 43 was to learn more about my body and find the most effective ways to lose weight. This result was not something I was expecting to see. Fasting was something I was going to begin experimenting with in phase two, and I'm going to continue to test it and possibly implement it on a regular basis, but to see what it did to my phase one plateau is intriguing. Aside from the s...

What a beautiful sight. After waking up to 324.0 three days in a row, this number was a joy to behold. I know it came at the end of a 42-hour fast, and I know that it could skyrocket back up after a few meals, but for the moment I am very happy to be back on track. I am still learning how my body responds to all of these extreme measures that I'm experimenting with, so I'm hoping that I can maintain something close to this number until Thursday morning. I've since broken the fast and feel very full after two eggs, two sausage links and a cup of coffee. It was all so delicious. I have planned a lunch of fresh broccoli with dill dip, then a dinner of snapper with pesto, edamame, and zoodles. The sodium's relatively low, the carbs are low, and the calories are right on target. Tomorrow will be a field trip to Kennedy Space Center with my daughter and I have a meal plan for the day. I will not allow myself to blow this goal right at the end. The fast wasn't all ...

Today I woke up and got on the scale. 324.0 again. Plateau . It was time to go nuclear. I wasn't expecting to do a fast until phase two, but it's time to give it a shot. 27 hours in and I don't feel like writing a very detailed blog tonight. Full details tomorrow. ********************* General disclaimers:  In my posts I describe things that I am doing to reclaim my health based on what I know about myself. Please don't emulate my actions. I'm not a doctor, and when you read things in my blog they are not meant as advice to you or anyone else. They are simply a record of my own experience. Things like abandoning prescribed medicines and walking for miles while dealing with morbid obesity are bad ideas, but I'm an idiot and do them anyway. Don't be like me. Talk to your doctor before making major lifestyle changes,  please . Also, if I write about a product, service or book and provide a link to it, you should assume that I'm part of a related a...

Today I woke up to heavy rain and an even heavier me. 324.0 on the scale again . I started thinking where I could have gone wrong yesterday. Maybe I went too hard for too long on my walk and my exercise became anaerobic. Maybe I didn't eat enough calories to keep my metabolism going. Maybe it was both of these things, or maybe it was sodium. Again. I reviewed my journal and thought about where the sodium was hiding in my meal plan. Sausage patties, check . Soy sauce in my tuna salad recipe, check . The Fritos with the chili last night, check . It was everywhere, and it was driving my progress toward a plateau. Time to walk it off, one more time. I dug around in the garage and found a camping poncho that I bought a few years ago and never opened. I was a little nervous about the size on the label, though: I've been down this road before. "One size fits most" typically doesn't include me. But I opened the poncho and tried it on, and wouldn't you know i...

Yesterday I published a very short post about eating a piece of cake. Today I get to publish a long post about the consequences. Food-wise, Day 25 wasn't supposed to go the way it did. It started out really well, to be honest. I went on a four mile walk and then weighed in at 321.4, a new low for Project 43. This is the first time I've posted a photo of my tracking chart. As long as I stay below the green line, I'm on track to meet my goal. Yesterday 321.4 kept me under that green line. Today, however, I stepped on the scale to see this: No. To own this weight today would mean crossing the green line. I would be off track for the first time since starting Project 43. That was not going to happen. 324.0?! How on Earth did I get here? Probably this: And this helped: Like I said yesterday, it was my wife's birthday. So I took her out for sushi. It was an indulgence that was well planned. The ramen, however, was not. My daughter and I found ourselves in ...

Today is my wife's birthday. I had a piece of cake. My daughter made it so there was no refusing. It was good. Back to the plan tomorrow.

This journey is Mission 44. It's thirteen months long and will end on my 44th birthday, January 31, 2020. It has several phases, each with their own goals, which I will outline in a future post. The phase I am completing now is called Project 43, a one-month kickstarter phase that began on January 1 and will end on my 43rd birthday, one week from today. The goal of Project 43 is to lose 25 pounds and reduce my average blood sugar. I'm almost there. This journey had a beginning, and that beginning was December 5 of last year. It was my most recent doctor appointment, the fourth of four yearly visits that I've been requested to do since my doctor told me that I had type Type-2 diabetes back in 2015. Mission 44 wouldn't begin for several weeks, but my doctor told me something that started the wheels turning: "Your A1C is terrible. I'm going to put you on another medicine." At this point I was already on four: Metformin and Januvia to control blood suga...