Another Weight Loss Fail. What Happened to the Reboot?!

Oh, hi there everyone! Haven't seen you guys in a while.

So, a couple of updates since the last time we chatted.

First - I got some new glasses.

Second - I'm still... super fat.

It's been about a year since I started this weight loss journey.

I created a video asking my Facebook friends for help keeping me accountable as I attempted to lose weight and get my life back on track. I was in a bad place and knew that I had to reach out for help if I was to ever have any hope of course correcting.

And my friends showed up. They showed up in a BIG way. The video got hundreds of comments and views (lots for an internet nobody like me), and I spent the better part of the next couple of weeks talking to people about their own stories, receiving encouragement from people with similar struggles, and chatting with friends about things I could do to bring the weight down.

I was super energized to start my weight loss journey and did a pretty good job of it for a couple of months. Knowing that I was on the hook to post a weight loss update video every week was the accountability I needed to stay on the right track.

Here's the but.

But then life happened. Those of you who have struggled with weight loss know the story well.

Work got busy. We had a baby... (well, actually my wife had a baby. I just kind of stood there and watched her have a baby).

And those of you who are parents know that once you have your second kid, it isn't just twice as difficult.

It's infinity times as difficult.

The bottom line is that I now weigh even more than when I started.

My previous high was 384.4 pounds. A week ago, I hit an embarrassing 387.6 pounds.

387.6 pounds.

When I looked at that number it was definitely a sobering experience. I promised myself I would never get there again. I felt so ashamed.

Then out of the blue, a friend of mine reached out on Facebook. It was definitely a scolding kind of message. Kinda felt like it could have come from my mom. He told me that my initial video inspired him to take his health into his own hands and shed a whopping 30 pounds! And here I was sulking quietly in a corner, eating my feelings and hoping that no one would notice that I had dropped off the radar because I was too ashamed to admit how far I had fallen.

Anyway - that was the nudge I need to get back on track. And getting back on track apparently involves sharing the most intimate parts of my soul on the internet. Thanks, Tim.

I have taken the time recently to think long and hard about why I keep struggling with my weight. And I've come to conclusion my weight and propensity to overeat is just a symptom associated with a larger imbalance in my life.

I have a job that I love at a company that is doing amazing things, and I love the people that I work with. So I put in a ton of hours at the office and burn 3-4 hours commuting every day. In a way it was fulfilling, but it was putting a whole lot of strain on my family life and I wasn't leaving a lot of margin to work on my own mental or physical health.

Focus Area #1: Achieve More Balance

My commitment for this year is to take some drastic measures to bring more balance into my life. More to come on that in a future post.

Focus Area #2: Break Up with Food Dependency

The second thing I'm committing to is being more intentional about breaking down this really unhealthy relationship I have with food. There have been so many times that I've found myself eating not because I was hungry, but because I just desperately wanted to feel better. I think the answer there is to fill that void with relationships instead of food, which will require a lot more intentionality on my part to create more room in my life for others.

Focus Area #3: Set Concrete, Time-Bound Goals

Finally, I know that one thing that was holding me back was the lack of concrete, time-bound goals. Not just in the area of weight loss, but in all aspects of my life. It's not enough to say "I want to lose weight." You have to break it down and put a box around it — I want to lose 200 pounds in 2 years, which translates to .28 pounds per day.

Rebooting the Reboot

Rather than continue to sit and sulk, I'm going to start over again. We're rebooting the reboot.

And since my own life is a testament to the fact that weight loss success is about so much more than just nutrition and exercise, I'll be expanding the scope of what we talk about on project-reboot.com to include discussions on how to achieve life that is more balanced overall.