I'm sure someone will offer meat soon enough

Ooooh hohoho, I see what you did there.

Long time no talk my man. I just poked through your old health journals and I gotta say it's fucking stellar to see you making progress. Recently I lost 20 pounds myself, and I was aiming for 40, but a leg injury put me out the rest of the summer until school started and no I have no time to exercise l:c

Anyway! Going off of what I know, I have to ask, the stuff you've listed here...is that ALL you're eating? Because in your Day 5 journal I noticed you're either not taking in enough calories. You have to take in enough calories in order to keep your body functioning correctly, because if you don't, your body will go into a sort of panic mode where it becomes harder to lost weight. It's a sort of defense mechanism that our bodies developed in the Neolithic (read: caveman) Age so we wouldn't just burn through our precious fat when we didn't catch a meal for the day.

Ideally, you're supposed to take in at least 2000 calories a day, that's what's printed on most nutrition labels. Based on what you do everyday, you might have more or less calorie needs than others. 2000 is the level for people who work a common desk job and don't move around that much. 2200 calories is for people who have to be on their feet for the job they do everyday, and 2500 calories is for people who go to work and exercise regularly for at least a half hour, I believe.

I should take the time to say I'm not a fitness expert in any sense of the word, this is just stuff I've picked up from Men's Health and the interbutts and buddies at the gym haha. (Anyone who is an expert, feel free to point out any mistakes I make.)

Speaking of Men's Health, it's a HUGE resource for trying to lose weight. They teach you so much stuff, it's mind-boggling how much information I've picked up from that magazine. You can get them pretty cheap, like $8 and I'd strongly recommend taking a look at one. Pretty much 85% of what I know, I learned from MH.

Having said all that, I wish you luck and I can't wait to see how much you lose man! Good luck!

Whoa holy crap! A voice from my distant distant past! What's been going on buddy?

Yanno that does make a lot of sense. I really need to start finding out the caloric content on the meals I'm eating. I did find out that the package of spaghetti I was bragging to mom about being empty calories cause it was just a bag of noodles turned out to be 1600 calories if you ate it all. I freaked out. My world turned upside down. @__@

I never thought of looking in a magazine for any real resources. I KNOW I should be taking in more vitamins to be sure since I'm not eating a little bit of everything and I'm probably running low on a lot of essentials. I'm sure I'm taking in a pretty decent amount. My former boss was a raging fitness boner most of the time and said that the key to losing weight was calories. If you wanted to lose it, you took in less and burned off some. It may not be from a fitness expert but I subconsciously tried it while working at UK and... that's where my first 40 lbs fell off without realizing it. Walking half a block to work and then another half block from work to my car and only eating a little thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... and bam. Weighed myself one day and nearly screamed like a girl cause I didn't know I was losing any.

Now I set myself goals. 15 miles on the bike every night, and every so often, raise the resistances so I work off more. But believe me, I'm aware of the vitamin thingy and I really should look into that.

Thanks for the well wishes amigo! I'd call ya pup but I figure it's been a long ass time since we last spoke and you're probably older now. XD

Yeah, you gotta be careful with what you eat ahaha. Numbers can sneak up on you wicked fast if you're not careful! If they were ramen noodles I think they had a shit ton of sodium in them too, which really isn't good for your heart.

Ahhhh, then if you've lost weight without changing your diet at all, keep it the same! Just only change your diet when you stop losing weight. Your old boss was kinda right, the key to losing weight is burning more than you take in, but people sometimes don't really take in enough and the plan backfires on them. The one universal thing about fitness is that one program will not work the same for everyone. I know people who eat metric TONS of food and don't even gain a pound. I know a girl who dropped like 80 lbs, and all she did was get a puppy and start walking it every day. Sometimes it's the littlest thing that sets us off in a weight-loss freefall whereas others (like me), have to tear it up as hard as we can to make progress. What I'm trying to say is, no matter what your boss or even I say matters if what you're doing works for you. Obviously there's an exception of certain exercises that can hurt you, but yeah. It's a matter of intuition.

Goals are good! As for vitamins, I'll be honest, I don't eat enough veggies (working on it! (sorta)), so I just take a multi-vitamin every day. They pack TONS of good stuff in one horridly flavored pill but it's good for you! I recommend going to a pharmacy and looking something up. For real though, Men's Health, it will be your best friend throughout this journey!

And yeah, no one calls me pup anymore. I'm 20 :b All my friends that're still in highschool think I'm old.

Hit me up on AIM sometime! IHateColdPizza

Just had to say, from the distance I am from my monitor and the size of the font, I swear to God I thought you said she ATE a puppy and then walked every day. I was a liiiiiiittle off-put by that. XDDD

I mostly use Skype nowadays. I still have AIM but I'm on it less and less. Ironically I think my Skype and AIM name are relatively similar. I'll add you and we can discuss cold pizza! And puppy eating!

YESSSS, she feasted on poor little puppies :Y

I'm on skype as well, under jackxblue but I'm rarely ever on there if ever, as it were haha. I'm sure we'll catch each other on either one ;p