Last night I did Turbofire 45. I’ve been going hard all week, but I think tonight was the hardest I’ve ever went, ever since I started my weight loss journey. I finished and showered, and after drying off I realized that I was still sweating. I was trying to cool my body down while I was in the shower by turning the water on cold for 20 seconds, but I remember it didn’t even feel that cold to me, that’s how hot my body was. I even remember my hands quivering beforehand. Now here I am on the couch in my basement trying to wash my clothes, and my body does not want to move at all. Not one inch. It’s taking serious effort to lift my arms, and I can feel my workout all over my body. It’s hard to get up, it’s hard to reach for the remote. The simplest things feel so hard to do right now. I’m not sure if I’m typing this blog post with correct grammar and english I’m so exhausted lol. Tomorrow I weigh myself, so I’m hoping that all my hard work has paid off.

Also, you ever notice that after you work out real good and you’re upset about something you feel better afterwards? That happened tonight as well. I got a lot on my mind, a few problems I’m going through. It ate at me today, and I felt myself taking on my frustrations through my workout. It was making me feel better, like a punching bag. At the same time, my determination was also in the workout: determination to keep pushing because I’m so close to goal. I’m going to close here, because my brain can hardly function right now and if I keep going I’m going to be babbling.

~Taj.

I have a terrible memory, so I couldn’t tell you!

I wanted to post this Saturday, but Tumblr was down…

I was watching tv with my mom the other day and we were watching the OWN channel. There were these documentaries on of these people who weighed between 750-1000 pounds. I’m not kidding. I can’t imagine how someone would allow themselves to get that heavy. I’m not going to be ignorant and say that they need to stop eating, but I mean when you catch something like that starting to happen, seek help immediately.

I mean these people were bed ridden for years, and needed ambulances and fire trucks to come get them so they could be taken to a treatment center to get surgery. The first stage was gastric bypass, and then they would lose the weight on their own. I remember this one lady who was 900 pounds. Her BMI was in the hundreds. She had two daughters and she wanted to lose the weight for them so she could be a mom to them again. Her 13 year old had started taking after her and got heavy, but she lost the weight quick and was always very pretty. She was very mature for her age, but I guess she had to be since she had to be a role model for her 8 year old sister when their mother went for treatment. This lady was doing well after she had her gastric bypass and she was losing weight, but then she went into cardiac arrest from the shock of losing so much weight so rapidly and died. Now for those of you who understand that medical type stuff, you know they stick a needle in you to revive you or something, and for a person of average weight you can put the needle right in with no problem. But since this lady was over like 850 at the time, it was hard for the needle to get to her heart through all the layers of fat. I felt so bad for her beautiful babies. And she was a gorgeous woman too. A man who was 1000 pounds saw this lady’s story and was inspired to get right. To get him out his house (bed ridden for 4 years), they had to cut a hole in his wall. Hopefully it wasn’t too late for him.

Another person was a 16 year old who was like 700 something pounds, and this was totally the mother’s fault. She babied him, she brought him things like Burger King, she totally spoiled him. She never put her foot down. The end result was him becoming morbidly obese. He had to go have surgery (fire trucks to get him and all) and have some of the fat actually cut out of him so he could go on his way to become 200 pounds. She kept on crying and feeling guilty and finally came to the realization that this was her fault, which was justified. I remember her saying that if she could start all over again, she would have done things much differently. In the same show, another teenage boy was morbidly obese (600+ lbs.) and before he could go have this surgery, he was on strict orders to lose 30 pounds. He wasn’t even going to school anymore because he couldn’t fit in the desks. He would be eating whole pizzas, and then three burgers, stuff like that. His mother was kind enough to give him one last meal of stuff he liked before he started his diet, and she even told his younger brothers and sisters if he asked them to go get him something, don’t do it. She served him his last meal and she told him that this was it, and he said in response, “After I have my cheesecake!”

Stories like these are what make me grateful that I had the common sense to start losing weight before it was too late. I didn’t want heart disase, and I sure as hell didn’t want diabetes. Sure, 182 pounds might not seem like much to some people, but I had never been that heavy in my life, and I certainly would never allow myself to swell up to the sizes that these people were at. I saw it coming and creeping up on me slowly, and I didn’t like what I saw and I fixed it. My point is, I stopped it in its tracks, and now I’m very close to a good weight for my BMI. These people were eating themselves to death, which shows that obesity very well is an epidemic. It really shouldn’t take until you’re super morbidly obese (their term, not mine) to realize that you need to lose a couple pounds. If there’s any obese or overweight people out there reading this, please don’t wait any longer, or it could be too late. If these people can make the realization that they need to correct their weight problems, so can you.

The Truth.

Soooooo….

You’ve heard of the Freshman 15 right? Where you go to college, eat like a madman, and gain a shit ton of weight? Well i think I gained the Freshman 25.

When I got to college, I didn’t realize how rapidly I was gaining weight. My senior year of high school, I was at 138 lbs., which I don’t even remember. In January of 2011, I had gotten up to 182 lbs., the heaviest I’ve ever been. I had gone to the doctor and he told me that I did indeed need to lose weight. I listened, but then I saw a picture of myself that made that sink in. In that picture, I didn’t recognize myself. Where did the chubby face come from? The thick wrists? What the hell happened? Seeing that really hit home and I set myself on losing the weight.

I had already joined a gym, but hadn’t had much progress. I came back from there one night, and I saw my roomate doing a different workout on tv, something really high intense. I took one look and I remember my words being “Damn, maybe I need to be doing that.”  So a few nights later I told her I wanted to try it.

Several months later, here I am at 155.6 pounds. The workout I did was called Insanity, with an in your face trainer named Shaun T. My roomie and I started working out together, then I would do it on my own. And every time I worked out, I would think about how much further I was pushing myself away from the diseases in my family, looking better, etc. I broke from my old eating habits, and starting buying healthier foods. I even walked around a lot more, which was like cake since I went to college in the city. I did 1 1/2 rounds of Insanity and lost a little over 15 pounds, and now I’m on a program called Turbofire, and I LOVE it. To this day, I still give my former roomate credit on getting me started in this weight loss journey. I still have maybe 15 pounds to go, but I’m not stopping now!!

This is the pic that started it all. 182 pounds.

On this blog, I’ll be documenting my progress, my weight loss, and everything in between. Enjoy! =)