While I technically have lost more weight than Jim, he has lost his the old fashioned way. He made a very deliberate decision last July, just before my gastric bypass surgery, that he wanted to lose weight as well. Weighing in at about 325 pounds, he didn’t feel he was a good candidate for the weight loss surgery, and attending my gastric bypass support group meetings convinced him of that. Most of the people in my group have used surgery as a tool to get down to about 300 pounds, so he felt fairly svelte sitting among us all.
Anyway, the first thing he did was cut out soda. Entirely. No diet soda, no regular soda, no baking soda (okay, there maybe a line somewhere). I honestly didn’t think he could do it, because a 2 litre bottle of soda in this house shook for it’s very life, knowing that in just two large Texas tea buckets, it would be gone. A case of 24 cans had a life span of less than 48 hours once it crossed our threshold.
Never a big sweet eater, he started to cut back on things like nachos and salsa. You know the super big, have a party, invite Brazil sized bags of nachos – so big even Sam’s Club doesn’t carry them because they take up too much room in the warehouse? If they were lucky, they lasted an evening and the crushed, broken remnants were stored in Jim’s desk drawer for those nacho emergencies at 2 AM.
He really watches what he eats now, and snacks more on nuts, occasionally pretzels dipped in cream cheese, and pieces of cheese. Lunch for him now is usually a turkey – no cheese – sandwich on whole wheat bread; mustard instead of mayo; and a bowl of soup. He watches his dinners, leaning on lean proteins and small portions of starches. Even on our Thursday night trip to the diner at midnight when I pick him up at the airport, he orders the sauteed crabcakes, skips the melted butter, and then eats the veggie sides, takes home at least half of the crabcakes, and has lunch of the leftovers the next day.
Then, when he got the gig in Milwaukee, the first thing he did was join the YMCA and hire a personal trainer. He works out three nights a week, has joined the volleyball team at the customer’s site, and goes to bed at a decent hour each night instead of sitting up until the wee hours of the morning, binging.
All this brings him down to 265 pounds as of this morning. He has lost about half the amount of weight I have in the same amount of time, but he has worked harder at it – changing so many of his habits and so much of his lifestyle. Add to that the fact that he goes to a tanning salon and bought cute man style underpants, and he’s just a dollar bill away from being a Chippendale dancer 🙂
I’m really proud of him. Not that I’m not proud of myself – and anyone who has had WLS will tell you this is no walk in the park – but he really has worked hard and I feel so glad for him that he is seeing such great results. It’s certainly motivation to keep him going, keep him losing, and keep him working out. There’s a new spring in his step, and I’m so happy for him.