Buying A New Wardrobe SUCKKKKKKSSS!!!!!

This post is pretty self-explanatory. Having been at one end of the weight spectrum, then dramatically dropping to the slimmer side is insane. Now add the factor of having to buy new clothes every few weeks or so to try and keep up. It was tough, I was going down pants sizes with the quickness. My friend Gabby began calling them fluffy jeans because they never sat completely on my butt. I'll never forget the day when I went to Macy's to try on some shirts. I'm used to going for XXXL section, which was few and far in between in that store. Then I said to myself "hey you lost some weight, let's try out the XXL stuff". Even that was too big on me. Then I went down to the XL and still wasn't fitting right. I put on a large rocawear shirt and I knew I really lost some weight. I would never dream of trying on a size large shirt and it fitting around my gut, pretty awesome I must say. But buying clothes still sucks. I have the same problem from two years ago. The fluffy jeans are coming back with a vengeance, so I gotta regroup and pony up some dough for clothes. Everything is just too damn expensive, it's all that economy's fault and they're "recovery" system my ass smh. Well whatever it takes to get me looking as good as possible, I'm soooo down!!!!!!

OMG, is that YOU??!!

So a whole year passes by, I lose 100 pounds and the whole world around you takes notice. When I got down maybe 15-20 pounds, it was mostly "hey you look different...." It kinda felt like those erectile dysfunction commercials when they say what's new with Jim. A weird comparison yes, but accurate nonetheless. Lost 50 more pounds down the road and it became "Whoooaaaaaaaaaa Vaughn what happened to you"? "You lost a lot of weight", "You look great". My friends were always in support of me getting healthy and kept me motivated. But of course, all these new "friends" came out the woodwork trying to be all comfy cozy with a brotha (we'll get to the haters in a later post). The response that I received from my family was crazy as well, esepecially from my grandmother. Her big concern was that I looked sick and I should stop losing weight. I always found that funny because there was a point in time when she thought I was too big and needed to lose weight. It's like geez I can't win with everyone. My mom was always encouraging me to get better and healthier. So whenever she saw me, she would just say how amazing I looked and how proud she was of  her son. Now being the mama's boy that I am, my heart melted a little bit when she said these things. There's NOOOO better feeling then feeling the happiness and pride your mom has in you.  I love that lady to the fullest. Anywho, I also had to deal with the backhanded compliments from everyone as well.  Foolishness like "whoa I had no idea how fat you were", "What kind of drugs are u on"?, "Your head even lost some weight too"!!! Just because I lost a huge amount of weight within in a year,    people shouldn't assume that it was due to diet pills or starvation. I simply quit junk food cold turkey and orked my black ass off!!!! Anyone who thinks otherwise, they shouldn't read this blog. No matter what happens, people are bound to form an opinion no matter how ill-informed they may be.

VICTORY!!!!

I will never forget this day as long as I live. It's the last day of the spring semester. I just finished a crazy sweaty workout. Then, I head to the scale to weigh myself. The scale was exactly at 231 pounds, which meant that I reached my goal and I lost 100 pounds in almost a whole year. In all honesty, I shed a few tears. As you can already tell I'm a gentle giant who has no problems showing his emotions. Such a joyous moment in my life. It cemented in my mind that if I really put my mind to use show dedication and discipline, ignore all of the negativity and believe in myself that I can accomplish anything that I desire. This one lesson took me 19 years to learn, but I'm glad I did

some pics from different timepoints.

Slim & Sexy Campaign in Full Effect!

(04/2008) (04/2009)

So week after week, I started noticing immediate changes in my body. Clothes were fitting a little looser on me, and my face was thinning out. My workouts started to get more intense, and added weight lifting to the regiment (I'll get to actual workout plan in a later post). I was losing about 10-15 pounds a month. That's a pretty big number for a monthly basis, but I was dedicated and focused on losing weight. I soon put the goal in my head to lose 100 pounds. There was no time limit, I just knew that I wanted to lose that much weight. Soon after, I then dubbed this entire experience the Slim & Sexy Campaign. Pretty bold title seeing as how I wasn't close to slim and didn't think of myself as being sexy but I went with it!

Get Your Mind Right!!!

For anyone just starting out in trying to lose weight, one major component needs to occur before anything can get accomplished. YOU HAVE TO BE IN THE RIGHT MINDSET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  As you can see from the bold/italic/underline emphasis that I take this quite seriously. A lot of people may want to lose weight but the head games start playing immediately, I know this all too well. "Can I do this"? "you can't lose weight", "You're gonna be fat and die". Those are just a few examples of what was going on in my head when I started my weight-loss journey. Had no clue what to do, didn't know if it was possible. You always see those before/after commercials and weight-loss shows and think "man I could never be like that" It's all bullshit!!! Eliminate "can't" and "don't" from your vocabulary asap. Weight-loss is possible, you the individual just needs a positive outlook and drag your ass to the gym, even when you really really really don't wanna go. Tell you the truth I hate working out in general. I could be sleeping or eating, anything sounds better than going to the gym. But I know that if i want to maintain my weight and be healthy, it's just something I have to do, it's in the daily routine I call my life. So suck it up and get your mind right!!

Hell Has A New Name. . . . . The GYM!!!!!!

Ok so once I got to school, I made sure that I made some time to start hitting the gym. I had no type of plan, no type of routine. I just went in there and hoped for the best. The first day was complete torture. For one thing, I almost broke every bone in my body. It took me a while to get the hang of the stairmaster, I looked like a damn fool on this machine and yup people were laughing at me *cough* douchebags *cough*. But anywho, after a few tries I finally the thing to working. Then it was on to pushups and..... yeah it was shaking my head kind of moment. That first day, I did about five, in total. I put it in my head that I couldn't anymore than that, so I went back to my dorm. The next morning, my entire body ached, I honestly never felt that way before in my life. But as the saying says "no pain, no gain" and I kept it moving. The new plan was to step my cardio game up, then worry about the lifting weights part later. There was no set goal, I just wanted to lose as much weight as I possibly could so I wouldn't die. Of course I wanted to be healthy, but the fear of dying really put things into perspective for me. So I kept it moving...

Now What?

After that fateful trip to the doctors, I proclaimed to myself that I was going to lose weight and get healthy. I wanted to be around for quite some time, and I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. Once I put my mind onto the concept of eating healthy, the next thing was to follow through. There was no definite diet plan or anything, I just quit the junk food cold turkey which proved to be easier said than done. Food was truly a drug to me and kicking old habits was a tough task. My mom was there to help me all the way. She had lost some weight a year or two before my ordeal, so knew how hard it would be for me to change. A lot of our family members are overweight and have the same medical issues that I was close to getting. We started out simple at first. She stopped making rice and potatoes with every meal. Grilled chicken and whatever vegetables that were in the freezer were my lunch and dinner that month. She also put me onto crystal light and drinking more water in general. With these subtle changes, I lost about ten pounds before returning to school. Once i did get back, I knew I had ro make myself useful and just start going to the gym. *sigh this is my favorite part*

The Wake-Up Call

So fast forward to summer 2008. I just finished the TD program at URI and I knew for sure that I gained some weight. All I ate really were cheeseburgers and fries for lunch and dinner and then cookies and juice and whatever I had in my dorm room. When I got home, my mom scheduled for me to get a physical. I wasn’t overly concerned with anything regarding my health. Like I knew I was overweight and I wasn’t the perfect picture of health, but no problemo (or so I thought). After the doctor ran her tests and all that blahh blah blah, she came into the room to tell me and my mom what the situation was. As she went down the list, my heart sank deeper and deeper. I honestly never felt so bad before in my life. She told me that I weighed 331 pounds. All through high school people looked at me and said I had to weigh like 250 at most. I never weighed myself so I just went along with it. But to be 80 pounds OVER that prediction?? Absolutely insane. She said that I was on the fast track to getting diabetes, high cholesterol, heart issues, etc. You name it, and I probably had it. This completely threw me off. I didn’t know where to go from there. The nutritionist came in to talk to me as well and offer some healthy eating alternatives. I could hardly pay any attention to her because I was that distraught. On the way home, it was the only time that my mother and I never talked in the car, not a single word uttered. Safe to say we were both thrown a curveball of bad news that day. I remember just running into my room, and starting digging into my stash of little debbie’s. the more bites I took, the less tasty things seemed to me. Then the tears just started falling and didn’t stop for quite some time. I kept to myself for a week or two after that visit. This story is a prime example of hitting rock bottom in order to make changes in your life regarding your health. My mom had been wanting me to lose weight for years and I didn’t wanna out the effort in. It took a doctor telling that basically if I keep going at the rate that I was, an early death pretty much inevitable. You can tell someone until you’re blue in the face to change their ways, but they need to be the one to take charge and make some changes for the better. That’s exactly what I set out to do, and what a journey it’s turned out to be.

Little Debbie: My First Love

Talking about my old snacking habits got me thinking about how much I really loved little debbie snacks. Not trying to glorify junk food, but man they had some great and cheap stuf!! Let’s see we had oatmeal cream pies, fudge rounds, star crunch, zebra cakes, swiss cake rolls, nutty bars, honey buns, cosmic brownies. I used to go through these bad boys like it was nothing. I went to the store recently and saw that oatmeal cream pies were 50 cents now like what the hell is that about? Like damn debbie you’re hurting a man’s wallet nowadays, good thing I quit you when I did. But we did have some good times. Just wanted to reflect for a moment.

How'd I Get To Be So Fat??

I wish I could give some elaborate and extreme story about me getting so heavy. Some people claim to be emotional eaters: When they’re stressed they eat constantly, or not at all. This isn’t me, not in the least bit. The reason I got to 331 pounds is that I’d like to eat, plain and simple. You put some cookies in my face, you could’ve pretty much consider them gone. I was an OD snacker like nobody’s business. I remember the good ol days when I ate at least two entire packages of Double stuffed Oreo’s A DAY! Man cookies were like my crack, real talk. I was the real-life version of the cookie monster. You couldn’t stop me from getting my fix. That’s probably why I had so many cavities all that damn chocolate but it was hmm hmm good. Before I got on my health kick, I ate whatever I wanted when I wanted. In high school my daily lunch was three slices of pepperoni pizza, three sugar cookies, and a orange pineapple twister (five days a week mind you). Then I’d go home and have some fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and cornbread and of course wash it down with my sprite remix aruba jam (that sounds like a stereotype but I’m just saying). My mom tried to get me to eat healthier, so I pretended to go along with her little plan. So we would eat the grilled chicken and veggies at the table, then I would rush to my room, check under my bed, and hit up my stash of little debbies snacks. Sad but true. This kind of foolishness would go on for a few years too many……

My Purpose

Ok I’m new to this whole blogging thing so bare with a brotha. After such positive feedback from my articles on Shapefit and MSN, I decided to go more in-depth with my journey on weight loss and the benefits and burdens that come with. Whenever you see those weight loss commercials, the companies only give you the before/after shot and “how happy” life has become for these formerly overweight people (cut the crap). What they don’t talk about are the in-between struggles: The self-doubt (self-hatred even), frustration, and all the psychological bullshit that comes with being a fatass. I’m probably gonna say fatass quite a few times in my blog because I want to be as truthful as possible. I didn’t get to 331 pounds without being lazy and eating every cookie, cake, pie under the sun. I truly believe that my purpose in life is to motivate others with my stories and anecdotes on weight loss and motivate them to make the neccessary changes in their lives. So put down the cookies fatass cuz from here on out, we’re gonna get real. So stay tuned….