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My wife was sharing pictures from years past with my son on the weekend and I couldn’t help but remember the time when I had more hair and looked so youthful. However I did notice that I actually weigh less now at 33 years old than I did when I was 20 and am quite surprised that I let myself get so heavy 5+ years ago.
I was always someone who had little portion control and when eating I would consume as many plates in front of me as possible, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to tell you that when I first moved to Arizona and ordered at Jack in the Box I could eat 2 Jumbo Jacks, 2 Tacos and a large fries in one sitting. Sure enough this food consumption did catch up with me but it was slow and subtle and took years to add on.
I did lose most of the weight almost three years ago when I had reached my heaviest at 207 pounds and was wearing a size 40 waist pants. I did wind up losing about 50 pounds over the next 48 months and was a trim 158 pounds a year and half ago.
Then I started neglecting my portion control again and started eating more than I should, 6 weeks ago I was up to 185 so decided to add my membership to the LA Fitness here in Casa Grande, and I also started working out more at home and trying to keep my calories to no more than 2000 per day while adding more lean protein and less carbohydrates and fat. Fat accounts for 8 calories per gram, so fatty content always has more calories than protein and grain based foods.
Photo back in 2005
Photo in February 2011
The good thing is by 5 weeks later, I weighed in at 174 pounds and probably only about 9 pounds away from reaching my target goal of 165. I was a little too bony at 158 (what my wife says) and wanted to put on more lean muscle mass figuring 165 would be about right.
It requires constant effort to lose weight and make sure I don’t consume too much food, I enjoyed eating and live for eating. I haven’t had pepperoni in about 5 weeks which is something I used to snack on at least 3x per week. To further assist with my fitness goals and focus I started up Weight Loss Belts blog where I was putting The Flex Belt to a trial as I was sent one to review by the company.
The belt is actually really good at tightening ab muscles and combined with diet and exercise I really feel my stomach stronger just after 1 week of using it consistently and you can read my journal about it over there.
One thing I am intent on is trying to make sure my kids don’t develop and adopt bad eating habits and translate that into adult hood, it is important as parents to make sure we set examples for children and obesity is an epidemic in this country and contributes to much of the health care costs and expenses in this Nation. I know from experience how hard it is to have willpower and force yourself to leave food on your plate when eating out at a restaurant instead of feeling compelled to eat everything on the plate and I still don’t make good choices, but I try to offset them by order a side of broccoli instead of fries if I order a burger.
-Justin Germino
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