A Doctor and friend of mine once told me that “You are unlikely to change until you reach a particular point in your life, and that point is Rock Bottom, then and only then will you make real change”. Though I agreed with his sentiment at the time, I had achieved so much without having to hit Rock Bottom that I didn’t completely take on what he said. This week I think I have hit that point. I knew that between my medication, my depression, and my bone idol laziness, I had gained most of the weight I had lost. I didn’t realise that I had actually found more. To date I am 140kg. Last time I was even close to this was 2007/2008 when I decided that I was going to join the Navy, and had to lose 50kg to do it.
My View
I am not proud of how I got to this point. My weekly treat of a cheat meal, became a more frequent treat throughout the week, to sweet every night, large carbohydrate meals, and generally not taking care of myself. My depression did play a role in this, as I felt the needed to have some sort of joy in my life, and food for me has always been a joy, and at times a crouch. I have rarely received a lot of joy from things such as Salad, Low Carb alternatives, or low fat, which has made dieting difficult. Some keen readers will remember my last attempt at dieting. I had mixed success. I lost over 15kg, which was great, but the way I achieved it was unattainable. I was on an Extremely Low Calorie Diet, I was consuming less then 5000kj a day. Which for a healthy weighted gentleman of my height is too little. If I am going to succeed this time, I will need to attack this in a completely different way.
Nourishment
My medication that is keeping my brain from backflipping on itself includes; Venlafaxine, Lithium, Risperdone, Seroquel, and Mirtazipine. Some of these medications have been known to increase appetite, and some have the unfortunate side effect of weight gain. As much as I would love to firmly point the finger at medication and say “Its the meds making me fat” I know that would be short sighted and naive. But I do need to keep it in mind, it does have the potential to slow the weight loss down, or cause longer then expected plateaus.
Medications
In 2007/2008, when I decided to join the Navy, I was 149kg. For my appointment to go ahead my weight had to be below 100kg for my BMI to be acceptable. I wasn’t as smart about how to loose the weight as I think I will need to be this time around. I cut ALOT out of my diet, I refused to take any lifts, escalators, or anything similar, I worked out for an hour a day, I ran to the shops for milk and bread, I would skip breakfast, lunch was generally soup, and dinner was a little as I could handle. I lost 50kg in 12 months. I joined the Navy. But I cannot lose the weight the same way again. For starters, I had a desk job then, my caloric requirement then is substantially lower than what I need now as a floor Nurse. I cannot exercise the same way as I did then. When I was working out before the Navy I had only ever broken One bone. To date, I have had 13 operations. 3 abdominal wall incisions. 2 knee operations. 4 shoulder operations. This hampers my efforts, it doesn’t stop me from working out, but I have to be smarter about it.
Team Work to make the Dream Work
So what does this all mean? I am going to restart Wednesday Weigh Day. I am going to devote to getting my arse below 100kg again. I am going to drag myself out and exercise. I am going to stop shovelling food into my face like its going out of fashion. But I need help. I need you the reader to share your healthy recipes. Your work outs. Your motivations. I need you to come not the journey with me. I need the community that we have built to rally together. Together I can, and hopefully if you come on the journey, you can lose the weight too. Let begin a journey together.
Maintain the Rage
Luke Sondergeld
Addendum
Alinta here, Luke’s wife, I too will be fully committing to this journey. Part of the reason he is in this mess is I did not commit to it with him the first time around. That stops now. No more enabling.
Maintain The Rage 
You can do this, especially as you and your wife will be as a team. That’s one heck of a medication stack! As you say, something’s are within your control and some are not. What seems to be working for me, and more recently my partner, is increasing the fruit and veg, eating less processed stuff, adding nuts, pulses and dairy. And water increase, new to me, but seems to have a positive effect. I’ve also got three home youtube exercise programmes I do, which I’m trying to do 4 times a week, a 7 min standing cardio which a use as warm up, then a 10 minute step programme and finally a 15 minute strength programme. I’m useless with tech, but I can look through my posts and find the ones with the exercise links and let you know? And some post names where I’ve written any easy healthy dinner ideas? Anyway, good luck!
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Thanks jmarie1974. Any help would be appreciated. It seems as though you have it all sorted out.
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no worries, leave it with me, i’ll hope to update this comment with my post names, save you scrolling through all my posts 🙂
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Thanks JMarie1974
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Hiya, okie doke – here’s the link for my lunch time salad, i don’t use diet feta cheese, i use full fat – tastes good 🙂 i don’t worry about the olives, they taste good too 😀 let me know if you have any questions. I’ll update with other stuff shortly 🙂
https://tryingtolose.food.blog/2019/07/31/31st-july-2019-food-diary-day-2/
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Thank You
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Not sure what i’m doing wrong, can’t seem to copy the link, but if you fancy giving some low impact exercises a go, there are three I use from youtube. I called the post “Exercise – sweating just thinking about it!” and posted it on 21st August. They make you sweaty, but you can do them at your own pace, minimal equipment required, not bad on our joints.
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Will check it out, thank you
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Here’s the link to my daily food, I always start with the nuts, i find they really do keep me not hungry. I try to save the egg until a couple of hours after my salad, because i’ve read protein can’t be stored in our bodies, so kind of drip feeding myself protein throughout the day 🙂 https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/164255687/posts/558. 160g fruit – mix it up as much as you can, 25ish g of natural, unsalted, unroasted nuts.
FYI – Paul , my better half, has been mirroring my food for a couple of weeks now, however he was a bit hungry, so he now makes up fat free greek yoghurt (120g) jumbo oats (40g) by mixing it up in a tub, then adds a good handful or two of frozen fruit the night before, then it’s ready for breakfast for him the next day. Paul also has 2 hard boiled eggs, whereas I have one.
I hard boil the eggs on Sunday evening (5 days worth), and also make our salads up Sunday evening (upto 4 days worth). I make the salads up straight into individual pots (you’ll need 1 litre tubs), so they don’t wilt so much. Paul also weighs out the nuts into individual tubs, so all we have to do each morning is tub up some fruit, then grab all from fridge/cupboard and go.
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/164255687/posts/558
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Awesome work the pair of you
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Thank you 🙂 it takes a bit of dedication, but when you get into the swing of preparing stuff, it doesn’t take too long at all. It’s still a working progress for me, i probably get my prep done half the time.
Here’s a bit of an informal link about fruit and veggies. It makes me realise just how much I could still be learning 🙂
https://tryingtolose.food.blog/2019/08/12/fruit-and-veg-a-day/
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Ironically meal prep is something we do quite well. It’s what we prep that’s the issue.
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definitely do give the salad a go then 🙂 it’s healthy with a bit of naughtiness (olives and full fat feta) thrown in. if it wasn’t for the difference in textures and tastes i would have become bored of it by now 🙂
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Will do
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if and when you get to a time you get on the scales but haven’t lost weight, do check out this post 🙂
https://tryingtolose.food.blog/2019/08/19/not-losing-weight-dont-give-up/
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Good read
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Here’s a post for a salmon dinner – I love salmon, heat a frying pan with a little bit of 1cal spray put in fillets skinside down and cover, cook for 7 mins on medium heat, wiggling every now and then, turn over, cover and cook for another 7 mins. done, no flourish! tastes good :). veggies and spuds cooked at 180 fan in oven for about 40 mins, shaking half way through. FYI – the original recipe called for spuds to be cooked for an hour, maybe it’s my oven, not sure, but they would have been burnt had i used that cooking time, so do keep an eye on this if you try the spuds! 3rd-sept-2019-woohoo-exercise-and-good-eating
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Allergic to Seafood, but wife may find it interesting
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ah, that’s a shame.
Portion control is a big issue for me, yet another thing I’m constantly working on. here’s a link with some useful info:
lets-talk-portion-control
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Tell me about it. I could get fat just by eating too much of what we are supposed to eat.
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