Inauguration

Good day, everyone.

As I sit here typing, at my desk at work, I'm trying to figure out what to write. I have spent a long time just staring at the screen trying to figure out what to type.

I guess it's just indicative of my mood in general. I have known for quite a while now that I have to start somewhere. It's a matter of where to start.

My name is Silas. In 2004, I weighed 336.4 pounds. That's a very large amount of weight. It's "The Biggest Loser" kind of weight. So Sara (my wife) and I joined Weight Watchers. In about 9 months, I lost a total of 131.2 pounds. I bottomed out at 205.2. Officially, that is. I believe that I made it all the way to 203, just never at an official weigh-in.

Then the work trips started. Then Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas kicked in. And excuse after excuse later, I had gained 20 pounds. Then 30. And at that point, I was running 25-35 miles per week. Well, if you gain 30 pounds, it starts to seriously affect your knees.

Did you know that every footfall impacts your knees and feet with three times your body weight? Well, it's true. Can you imagine pounding your knees with 90 pounds of extra force for 10 miles on a long run?

Yeah, well, I can. And the effects are not pretty. Needless to say I had to lay off for a couple of weeks. No serious or lasting damage done, at least not physically, but the damage that WAS done is bad enough.

I truly believe that before I lost the weight I had an undiagnosed eating disorder - binge eating disorder. It was nice to be out from under such a thing. I didn't mind skipping the cookies, going light on desserts, and eating so much more fruits and vegetables. I had the mokey off my back for the first time.

I finally felt comfortable in my own skin.

Now...well, it's time for the stark reality to set in again that yes, this is something that I am going to have to fight for the rest of my life. I thought, back when things were going so well, that I could cheat a little bit. That it wouldn't matter if I wasn't careful.

Obviously, as I sit here with my waist hurting from my pants being too tight, and my shirt bulging in what I belive to be in a rather unsightly fashion. I am up around a total of 60 pounds. This year. That's just over a pound per week. And frankly, I'm lucky not to be up further.

You see, I'm back to most of my old habits. I'm back to getting WAY TOO MUCH CRAP in the mornings. I'm back to munching on junk food all day long. I'm back to the old weight gaining habits. And I am no longer comfortable in my own skin.

I had joined a weight-loss forum for Weight Watchers people just after starting. And I started a blog (silascrutherton.journalspace.com) - the original Journal of a Fat Loser. It helped me. It really did.

As part of the forum, I posted a question - what makes the difference between people who lose weight and keep it off, and those who lose weight and the put it back on. Oh, there was a lot of postulating, lots of neat ideas tossed around. I asked the question so that I would not be just another statistic.

Well, here I am. It's statistic time. I'm back to the old habits. About the only thing that I do RIGHT now is that the soda I drink is diet soda.

Big frickin' deal.

Anyway, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being the fat guy. Oh, I still don't look TOO terribly fat. I look rather average, considering that MOST people who are overweight look obese. But I really hate this life that I'm living. So it's time to start over again.

I have lots of ideas on how to get this done. I need to somehow get back to the mentality that I had before.

So far, this is what I have come up with:

1) Write down everything that I eat. I think that part of my problem is the lackadaisical fashion in which I take my eating every day. Starting RIGHT NOW (read: tomorrow, because I won't be eating more today...) I am going to be writing it all down. The first section of this journal is going to be about food logs.

2) The exercise has to start again. Running has been such a great thing for me. I was well over 350 miles into the marathon training that I had started before I had to quit. I don't know if the dream of a marathon is going to come true ever, but I do know this - I am going to be running in the Rex E. Lee Run for Cancer this spring. Last year, I did the 10K. This next year, I am giong to beat my time. The second part of this journal is my race times and goals.

3) This one is really secondary to the running goal. It is my Mille Bornes project. Mille Bornes is a fun card game. The name is French. I believe it means "1000 Millestones" or something to that effect - meaning 1000 miles.

I am going to run for 1000 miles. No, dummy, not without stopping. But over the course of the next few years (I will take more than one, less than three) I'm going to run for 1000 miles. So the third part of this is going to be the Mille Bornes project.

4) I got a new camera recently. It's a Nikon D80. My brother got one recently, too. He showed me how to make a stop-action film from a bunch of pictures. Kind of a neat concept, eh?

Here is what I'm going to attempt to do. Over the next 6 months or so, I am going to go down to my basement and take a picture of myself. I'm going to put the camera on the tripod, and draw a circle around each of the feet of the tripod on the concrete floor in my unfinished room. Then I'm going to draw feet marks for myself where I'm going to stand. Then I'll take off my shirt and wear shorts for the picture. If I do this every morning for 6 months, or for however long it takes me to get back to my goal weight of 210 (I am a big man...) and then put them together into a stop action video...the effect could be just plain incredible.

I'm considering doing the same thing for running, too. I will take one picture for each mile that I run and then put THEM into a video. The first video is just one picture every morning for weight loss, and the second video will be a picture every mile for 1000 miles.

Ambitious? Yes. Hard to accomplish? Yep. Probable failure? Absolutely. But am I going to try?

You bet your bitty.

Look for the video. Eventually. So the fourth section of this journal (the most likely to fall by the wayside, by the way) is going to be about the video that I'm going to make of myself.

5) Finally, this has to be done with the help of my family. Sara is going to want to do some of it with me. Not the running, she hates that, but definately the exercise and food goals. I am not going to be able to do this in a vacuum.

So look for changes over the next week or so. Then there might be a bit of a down couple of weeks, as I take a Christmas vacation. I still plan to keep up with the goals, because I cannot wait until after Christmas to start. I'd be up over 270 if I did that. Not acceptable.

Anyway, it has begun. The very first thing to do in any project is to set the goals and write them down. It's done.

And I'm feeling something again that I haven't felt in well over a year.

Hope.

-Silas