being that guy since 1982

Most of my life, I’ve been a big dude. I started gaining weight when I was in 3rd grade. This weight gain was due to the following:

• Being a lazy ass
• Not playing sports/going outside regularly
• Eating horribly

Every year or so, I would probably go on to gain about 10+ pounds of non-growing-up weight. It continued all the way through my senior year of High School where I’m pretty sure I topped off at over 300lbs. After my senior year, I knew something had to change.

My parents for some reason thought I had a thyroid problem and that’s why I gained so much weight because they never thought I actually ate horribly. Truth time, I ate horribly. If horribly is Twill and I going to Taco Bell, KFC and every other horrible place under the sun many summers in a row followed up by playing video games all day and all night, then ya, I was horrible. So they made me to go to the doctor. I always hated going to the doctor cause I had to weigh in. That was always pretty embarrassing for me… you know because I was a whale. So after visiting the doctor, what was the result? Well it wasn’t a thyroid problem, it was a Jon Mossie needs to stop being such a lazy ass that eats horribly problem.

I started eating better, and this helped me get down to the 280 mark. For the next 4-5 years I would hover right around that mark (275-280). I wasn’t eating horribly, but I still wasn’t eating great. I would have my nights of fast food, etc, but it wasn’t an all the time thing. I also started eating less throughout the day, as in frequency. I started actually realizing that sitting down to a nutty bar and watching tv wasn’t the best decision. This span is also the time of Carly, and she got me turned on to diet pop, which I drank as an alternative to the many regular pops I used to drink.

But then I drank a lot of beer. I mean A LOT. This span also includes my years of beer bonging at the lake and getting drunk multiple times throughout the week. This obviously had much to do with weight not dropping off. So now while I wasn’t as bad as my senior year of high school, I’m still big. The problem is, that even though I can look at before and after pictures of myself now, when I looked in the mirror I wasn’t seeing it really. Maybe it was acceptance, or maybe I just didn’t care, but it was just me as I saw it. Laziness kicked back in, and I didn’t do anything about it. I was doing just enough to stay the same. 

That is until January of 2008. Call it a new years resolution, call it spring break motivation, or call it anything you want, it was time for an actual change.

Together, Twill and I decided to start eating better first. We bought better food, and started with that route. We had given up working out in our make shift gym room a while back and he decided he wanted to go back to a gym. At first, I was still feeling rather lazy and just wanted to fix things by eating better. It was delivering results, but nothing I could track, and the results weren’t very fast. But then it happened.

Xtreme Fitness mailed out flyers about a deal to get back in shape for the new year. I showed Twill and within a week we both decided to go sign up. I added the option to do what’s called ActivTrax. This program is designed to generate workouts for you based on what your goals are, where you currently are on a fitness level and how often you will be at the gym. I committed to 5 times a week. I committed and I stayed strong. I hit the gym everyday to make it a routine, only missing when I was sick, or just physically unable to make it there.

I didn’t see results immediately, but it seems other people did. I kept getting comments at work that I was looking slimmer. My pants started feeling looser and I eventually had to order new pairs. Before I went on Spring Break, I went out and had to get new clothes so I would have things that fit me when I was there. When Spring Break hit, I had noticed the results, and I had lost 30 pounds.  I went on Spring Break in March and started working out at the end of January ‘08. 30 pounds in that amount of time left me with a huge feeling of success. When we were at Spring Break, I felt as though I needed to get back to the gym. This is something that made me proud to feel. I had made a positive routine that my body wanted me to keep doing.

Thinking I had gained back about every pound I lost while I was on Spring Break, I weighed myself to find that I actually stayed the same. Another good feeling. When we got back, it was back to hitting the gym and eating the right foods.

So what was I really doing? The biggest answer, not being such a lazy ass. But here’s a little of what I was doing:

• Eating around 1500 calories a day
• Working out 5 times a week
  • 20 minutes of cardio (usually biking)
  • Muscle group specific resistance training
  • 180 various crunches

Eating right and exercising. Two core things that I have heard my entire life growing up that I didn’t motivate myself enough to do… until now.

As of this post (1/14/09) I weigh in at roughly 190 lbs. This is a 90lbs weight loss from January ‘08. The weight isn’t dropping off nearly as quickly as it used to, but I feel great. I have much more energy, flexibility, strength, endurance, and confidence.

Having recently become a manager at Best Buy in July of ‘08, my gym time has been cut back. However, eating right has helped me keep maintain my weight loss as well as running around like my head is cut off at work.

There are still problems with what I’m doing. My biggest obstacle is undoing all the damage I have done to my body over the years. A big waist doesn’t decrease that quickly, it’s something that is going to take a longer road to do. Plus, there is the extra skin that has built up over the years of weight gain. Talk about fucking gross. Also, that drinking thing. I still do it. I still drink a good amount of beer and other liquor. It’s one of my worst vices right now. And it’s affecting my weight loss. The cool thing? I was able to lose all this weight and still be able to maintain my social life as it was. I should stop drinking altogether, but as Twill and I have said to each other many time, we just aren’t ready to do that.

 

Slowly but surely I am turning what used to be flabby fat into more defined  muscle. Already I need to replace the new clothes I just bought and get an entire new wardrobe.. but I couldn’t be happier about it.