I know some people who are doing crossfit. It sounds like it builds a tight knit community (he ignores us when we tease him about his “cult” fit). The secret greeting the other guy shared with us is hilarious and its never tiring to tempt him with food when he’s enrolled in their paleo diet course.

My own preference is to not pay the recurring monthly fee (cross fit programs in my area look like they’re over $100/month) and just buy the equipment I need. This doesn’t work for people that can’t stash the equipment, who need to be taught how to use the equipment, who can’t self motivate/workout by themselves, but it works for me and it saves money.

I may be tempted to grouse about how its another fad full of pseudo-scientific gibberish, but the perfect is the enemy of the good (one of JD’s past posts). I applaud anyone who gets up the willpower to overcome their past inertia to improve their health.

My husband is a huge work out buff and has encouraged me to be comfortable and confident in the gym – I have followed the Body for Life workout program and really like it.
I am getting ready to start P90X and then plan to do crossfit after that.

Have you read Warrior Diet? I have a post ready to run tomorrow on it, but it is a GREAT lifestyle/eating plan that we have adopted into our lives – adapting it slightly by consuming 3 green smoothies a day.
You should check out the book and Green Smoothies Adam! They’ve been amazing for our health and weight loss.
I’ve got several recipes up on my blog right now, with more ready to go over the next week.

Good luck with your challenge!

I wish them all the best, though.

I’ve worked hard to stay roughly the same size for the past 16+ years (top edge of “healthy”), and monitored a weight-loss forum for a few years, so I have a few suggestions:

1. Relying on external factors for “motivation” is like relying on a housing bubble to raise one’s net worth — too much is outside of our control.

It’s too easy to come up with excuses when we rely on something outside of us to “keep us on track”. We need to own and be in charge of this process. Share and steal all good ideas, but own the day-to-day habits. Being part of a supportive community is very helpful, but don’t turn over any responsibility to that community.

2. Health and fitness have to be part of our personal identities, and what’s important to us. If they aren’t now, change a few things at a time, finding things we love and want to do forever. It’s amazing how eventually, we become what we habitually do, both for other people, and for ourselves.

3. I agree with the previous poster who pointed out that we need concrete visions of ourselves as healthy people. I’ve met several older (80′s) folks hiking in the Sierras, so my vision for my old age is to be doing THAT in my golden years, which means I need to be healthy NOW. Also, I want my kids to be active and eat well, and I believe that I need to be active with them for that to happen. So, my concrete visions include summers filled with hiking and biking and farmer’s markets and fresh produce and winters filled with skating and skiing and homemade healthy meals.

4. When we establish better habits and set up our lives to make the healthier choices the easy choices, we set ourselves up to succeed, even when we don’t have the time or energy to worry about it. When good habits and options are in place and my environment is set up properly, I can coast on those habits when I need to.

Life happens. If we struggle every day to eat well and exercise under normal circumstances and hate every minute, what’s going to happen when life throws crises in our path? The hard stuff that’s “selfish” is the first to go, because it’s easy to excuse any effort to take care of ourselves as unimportant or too hard. If the healthy stuff is as easy or easier than the unhealthy stuff, it’s easier to justify the time and effort as a way to cope with stress.

There’s an idea of “setpoint”, which is that the weight you maintain when you eat a varied diet and exercise regularly is your natural weight.

Anna – Currently there isn’t a demonstrated, proven way to make all, or even most, fat people permanently thin. (A study of weight loss studies conducted by weight loss companies found none were effective enough of to be worth US Medicaid coverage. PDF) Even surgery has a short-term weight loss that is usually followed by regain. There’s a significant subset who end up regaining more than they lost, for a net gain. So really, saying “all these obese people should be thin” is a waste of breath.

The research on whether diets work or not is really pretty awful. I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to say studies that show that some people lose weight then gain it back over the next five years are definitive. That’s like saying people can’t stop smoking because they took it up again after their first attempt to quit. Speaking as a tobacco control researcher, we know after years of research that people usually need to quit smoking multiple times before it really takes. And it does seem clear that some people are able to make permanent changes in their weight (see the National Weight Control Registry for examples and research). Presumably moving to a country where overweight/obesity is rare would also work. I’ve known dozens of people who dropped 20-30 pounds almost immediately on moving to Europe, kept it off the entire time they lived there, then gained it all back within several months of moving back to the US. But that solution is pretty extreme.

It would be nice if the Michelle Obama plan of working with fast-food companies, etc., was a solution, but if it’s not, I’d support public policy changes like junk food and soda taxes, as well as taking steps to end food deserts, promote walking, and so on. And if it turns out that making bets to lose weight and/or stay at a healthy weight works, I’ve got no problem with that either. I’ve talked to some health economists who claim it can work, although the studies supporting the idea are tiny (they’re usually expensive to run!) Best wishes to the author in finding a solution that works for him.

Yes you have smokers who never get cancer and yes you have morbidly obese people who never get diabetes, but your chances of getting either of these things or dying of a heart attack are vastly increased by those lifestyle choices (never mind people who do both).

And yes, I live in Canada too and think cigarettes and junk food should have special health taxes to counteract their expenses on the social health care system. Come to think of it, gym memberships should be deductible too

15 chacha1

Accepting being fat doesn’t mean giving up on life or not being healthy. You can eat healthy foods and be physically active while still being fat.

18 Stefanie

Thank you. It was distressing to see this post on a blog I usually love to read. Unfortunately, the comments are just what I expected (with a few exceptions .

23 Jan

It’s not about picking one “right” you, it’s about being comfortable with your body however it is and not trying to force it into a socially-acceptable shape at the expense of your physical and mental health.

26 Alexandra

Many of the diseases that are supposedly caused by fatness can actually be caused by yo-yo dieting. Also, fat people are less likely to go in for preventative care because of the prejudice faced even at doctor’s offices, which can often result in health problems later in life. Being fat is NOT analogous to smoking. That is an incredibly judgmental and prejudicial statement to make.

What’s my weight goal? no clue. I haven’t been on a scale in months. My goal in all this is to simply be healthier. If I can keep up a constant jog for 20-30 minutes then I’ve met my first short term goal. Beyond that it’s just keeping it up for longer and longer periods.

Getting back on the subject of money. This whole regimen is quite similar to even the name “Get Rich Slowly.” I went into this knowing it’s going to take a while. Just like with finances you’re not going to get rich overnight. Start out slowly, maybe only put $20/paycheck in savings. Then make it $50, then $100, up to whatever your goal is in terms of amount you want to save.

I’m a little skeptical about the overall turnaround of money for this site. There are a lot of free weight loss communities on the internet, so the draw for this site specifically is all the money you can get for losing weight. As many people have commented, having a specific motivation (winning cash in this example) makes attaining a short term goal a lot easier for most people, but based on the fee structures they are talking about, such as “guaranteeing” certain prize amounts and offering over 3x returns on the $300 challenges, without major sponsorship (which seems to currently be lacking), I’d question how they are funding all of these prizes. In my short time of poking around, it didn’t seem like they have enough active members to properly fund all of their prizes as is, and if even a moderate percentage of people achieve the various challenges, I’d wonder how they would be able to then pay the promised prize monies. I sort of feel like they are betting themselves right now, on either getting a large enough community or a sponsor willing to pay big $$, and if neither of those come through, I’d question whether or not they’d be able to uphold their promises.

Coming from Canada, I think we have a different reason for this than maybe just not liking the way fat looks or something.

We have a universal health plan that is paid for by everyone’s taxes. Just like smoking, obesity is a self-inflicted state of being that causes known health issues. These obese people in their later years will clog up our health system with issues related to diabetes, cardiac problems and a myriad of other problems. That means other sick people will have to fight over the limited resources left over.

It is just like a smoker who finally gets lung cancer – it’s very hard to sympathize with. And no, I don’t want to “accept” it.

It’s pretty flexible so I found sticking to good health clear and easy.

Good luck over the next three months!

Good luck!

You go Adam. I believe that a healthy lifestyle change is waiting for you. Take your time and get it off forever. I am thinking 160 might be the right me (bigger than most my size- but comfortable for me). Find that good place and stay there!
Good luck!

It’d be like a contest to pay off your credit cards as fast as possible. The fastest way to do it would be to cut corners and neglect paying all the rest of your bills. Obviously this is not healthy.

You’re right on track!!

To touch on this again: If you find it fun, and you have the money in your “extras” file, then it’s your decision. But it’s a money sink. File it under the “Entertainment” part of the budget if you really think it’s worthwhile.

For those naysayers, fat acceptance has nothing to do with health or not, it has to do with fighting institutional oppression against fat people and people perceived to be fat. Its about treating every person on humanely and not assuming that because someone is fat they live an “unhealthy lifestyle.”

It sounds like Adam’s find is both one more way to make people feel bad about themselves and one more way to earn money by the $40 billion diet industrial complex.