Robs Introduction!

Hello everybody! I guess this post is to provide a bit of a back story about me, so here goes. I’ve been on the heavy side almost my entire life, dating back to kindergarten when I’d ask for an extra cookie for my invisible friend (or not so invisible on the days when I would take My Buddy™ to school). I was never incredibly active as a child, and graduated from playing right field/playing in the dirt to scorekeeper during my brief career in baseball. Size really came in to play during college, thanks to free daily access to ice cream and pizza. Raise your hand if you can or could eat a whole large Papa John's pizza plus cheese sticks on your own! This combined with an increasingly inactive lifestyle brought me to my largest weight in January of this year of 350 pounds.

When I first heard Ricky’s story on KLBJ, it inspired me to try out Workshop Fitness. After a few sessions, I determined that it was a bit too far of a drive going from north Austin to downtown during rush hour. Shortly thereafter a friend advised me of a more local trainer that did one on one sessions. I worked out with him for a while, and was doing pretty good, but I was having difficulty cracking the 300 mark. This was mainly due to poor food choices, which is eventually what led to us agreeing that until I could get my eating under control, we would keep going in circles. After that, I slowly ballooned up to 350 pounds.

Then, during my trip home for Christmas, my brother surprised me with the fact that he had been going through his own weight loss process, losing a little over 100 pounds. He did it through a program called Optifast. When I returned to Austin in January, I signed up for the program. Basically, while on the program, you are on a liquid diet with only 800 calories per day for 16 weeks. It can only be prescribed through a doctor, and you have to go in to get your vitals checked every week and your blood drawn every month. More on this program later. At the end of the program, I was down to 266 pounds and feeling good.

Afterwards, I was on my own with the food again, and while I was making smarter choices and eating healthier, those not so good habits were creeping back in. Cue the new job and that fateful morning when I discovered that Ricky, the guy who inspired my weight loss adventure, was in my training class. And the rest, as they say, is history.

180 Degrees of Ricky Update

This feels a little crazy to be writing on the blog. I left this without providing any justification of why I stopped blogging. Thankfully, that will all be explained and you will get a sneak peak into the next chapter of 180 Degrees of Ricky.
Let’s first get you up to date with how life is going right now. Currently, I am living in Austin and am engaged to my beautiful fiance Crista Sheumaker. I work for a technology company in town and also at doing a little training on the side (more on this later).
I have tried my hardest to stay at my target weight and right now I am at 245 (when I finished with Workshop Fitness I was at 240). It hasn’t been easy; my weight has fluctuated from back up to 270 pounds to as low as 235 pounds. My experiences have forced me to realize that maintaining is just as big of a challenge as losing weight was.
I still workout 4-5 times a week, either at the gym at my apartment complex or at Austin Peak Fitness, a gym that focuses on group workouts. I only went there because I bought a Groupon to try it out, but I fell in love with the trainers and they are constantly challenging what I thought I was able to do.
I received my Personal Trainer certification over a year ago through NASM, and have trained a couple friends for a little while, however training people never felt right. I also was having trouble believing gyms would hire me since I still looked overweight. When you look at trainers, you see a person who has dedicated their entire lives to fitness, where I’ve only been dedicated for a little over 2 years. My body issues seem to never go away no matter how much weight I have lost. I was losing faith in being a trainer and making that something part of my life.
So I started to think why I wanted to become a trainer and it boiled down to the fact that six trainers helped me for FREE for a YEAR and gave me my life back. This is something I want to give to others, yet I was having a difficult time finding a way to make this possible. That was until I found Rob “Undercover Boss” Dooley.
Rob is a co-worker with me and he had listened to me while I was at KLBJ, the Texas State radio station.. He was inspired by my story and even went to Workshop Fitness to train there. I will let him tell more of his story when he posts an introduction on the blog in a couple of days.
Why Rob will be writing on this blog is because I am happy to announce that I will be training Rob for the next six months. The blog will now be transformed into how I train Rob, while also allowing him a forum to write about how the weight loss plan is going. I will have much more information as the weeks progress, but our start date is set for November 1st.
Rob is looking to change his life and I want him to change mine. I will be pushing Rob where my trainers pushed me. I am looking forward to seeing how people react to the new idea on the blog. I will continue to post my weight loss too, and any updates that go along with that.

June 23rd food entry

Breakfast: protein shake and a turkey bacon sandwich on multi grain toast.



Lunch: 8 ounce steak, carrots, mashed potatoes.





Mid afternoon meal: peanut butter and jelly with chips and salsa.





Dinner: 6 ounce pork chop and peas. Forgot to take a picture.


Overall: Not the best way to start out but nothing outrageous.

THE FINISH LINE

It has been about two months since my last blog entry, and I will be the first to admit I have failed in the department of giving out updates. No excuses necessary, but I do bring exciting news.

For the past couple of months, trying to figure out what to write about has been a tough task. I have been talking to my editor, Sam, about how I keep running into the same struggles, and writing them would just be boring to most of the readers of this blog. I needed to find a different way to utilize my blog, and after talking with Sam, I feel that I have a good idea.

Starting June 23, I will be posting a picture of everything I eat or drink. If it is a glass of water, a handful of nuts or a cheeseburger; I will put it on my blog. I will then take all the food I have eaten for that day and calculate how many calories, grams of fat, carbs and protein I accumulated throughout the day. I will put my starting and ending weight each week, and post my weight for the final month. If I get any questions or comments, I will also try to post a response each day.

Doing this may not interest many people, but to me, it’s a great way to keep myself in check, and to give people who have been wondering what I eat to lose weight a better picture of my day-to-day habits. The idea also keeps me in better check of what I put in my body. For the past two months, I have lost a total of 8 pounds, and a main cause of that is due to my diet. I have eaten so much worse than I was in the previous months that I really have struggled to even keep off those 8 pounds I lost since April. With the last month approaching I need to re-dedicate myself to losing as much weight as possible when I have the help of all these wonderful trainers at Workshop Fitness.

DUDLEY AND BOB SPOT 4/22

9 Months

I have to first give a huge thanks to all my trainers and to the Dudley and Bob Morning Show for making this all possible.

Nine months down, three to go.

I always had a hard time picturing nine months. It’s the last leg of the race, yet I remember the day I met the trainers back in July, and the anxiety I'd built up wanting to get the process started. It seemed like so far off. Since Day One I have had the attitude that I am the only one that can slow this down and to this point I feel pretty happy with my success. So let's just see into the numbers.





I want to first show my July 23, 2009 numbers:

Neck: 17.75
Arm: 19.25
Chest: 58
Waist: 64
Hip: 63
Thigh: 28.5
Calf: 19
Weight: 370





And here are my numbers as of April 19,2010:

Neck: 15.75
Arm: 15.75
Chest: 44
Waist: 42.25
Hip: 46
Thigh: 25.25
Calf: 17.25
Weight: 254

Total inches: 63.25
Total Weight: 116

So I tweeted that I had lost 73 inches, but I forgot that we added the Waist at its smallest point about three months into the measurements.I don’t have a day one measurement for that, but I have lost 10 inches in that spot since the three-month mark.

I FEEL GREAT BY THE WAY!

Is this where I wanted to be at nine months? Not exactly, I thought I would be about 20 pounds lighter, but that number doesn’t define all the work I have done and I won’t let it hinder my progress going forward.





OTHER BIG NEWS!

I announced this on the Dudley and Bob show this morning, and now it's time to say something about it on the blog. For the past 3 months I have been playing with the idea to become a personal trainer, and I am happy to say that I will be in the next 3 months. I am currently studying for the CPT exam through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. In the next couple of weeks I will have more information about where I will be training, and how you guys can come work with me if you are interested. I am really excited about this whole new direction for my life and it would have never happened if it weren’t for the great people I have spent my life with these past months. They have guided me in becoming a much better person than I ever was and to them I am forever grateful. The trainers at Workshop Fitness gave me my life back and now I would like to return the favor helping others reach their fitness goals.

UPDATE

I am failing at my duties of keeping you guys up to date on what is going on with this weight loss journey, so let's catch everyone up to speed.

I am currently at 257 pounds, which is 113 pounds down from my original weight when I started July 23rd 2009. That equates to about 30.5 percent of my total body weight I have lost in a little over 8 months.

The first week in May I will be participating in Warrior Dash, a 4-mile obstacle course being held outside Dallas, Texas. My trainers Thomas and Jason will be in the race as well as my friends Monty and Todd. I have been preparing by doing at least an extra hour of cardio 3-5 times a week for the past month or so. I am hoping to be fewer than 250 by the time the race comes around. I am excited to see if my body can handle four miles of work, the farthest I have gone is 3 miles. It will be a great test of endurance and heart.

The diet is being tweaked on an almost week-to-week basis and it's honestly becoming almost too much to handle. Trying to keep up with how much protein, cabs and fat I am supposed to intake depending on the day can be very confusing with the workouts, actual work, and other obligations I have. I am trying to figure out what my food plan can be four months down the road. I don’t believe I can keep the regiment I am on now forever, but I feel if I modified it I could still see results-- just not as drastic as I have been seeing.

I have planned a trip to Colorado to see a good friend after the training is over to visit Fort Collins and to hike a 14,000-foot mountain. Will I make it up to the top? Not sure, but I am willing to try.

Sorry, guys, this so short but I will have more updates coming soon.