I must say, this has been a difficult journey, the quest to lose 200lbs in one year.  Thanks to Looks Beauty and Wellness in Tulsa and my friends at HCG Medical for getting me started.  I even had Looks color my hair, a rusty red instead of a dirty blonde, to help build up my morale!

The biggest problem I’ve had so far with my diet isn’t whether or not I was hungry or not, but whether or not I could eat a variety of food.

With a 500 calorie a day diet (which just seems impossible) I don’t feel hungry.  I feel bored!

Because of life, being busy, etc.. I’ve found myself eating the same thing (chicken & tomatoes) day after day after day.  It’s not that I don’t love chicken or tomatoes.  I do.  It’s just that I don’t think we realize how much we crave variety.  Even if we eat at the same restaurants and order the same food.  We still get variety.  It’s rare to eat at a restaurant more than once a day!

To date I’ve lost over 30lbs… honestly this would be much more if it wasn’t for all of life’s distractions.  The HCG diet works.  I’m the problem!

Long workdays, business trips, etc.

I posted last time once I lost 20lbs.  What you didn’t see was that I ended up gaining back 5, losing it, and gaining it again, and then losing it.  I had basically plateaued.  And it’s right around then that sticking to the 500 calories a day seemed pretty impossible. (Thanksgiving!)  I wasn’t following the plan.

I told someone. I’m not just fighting my emotions.  I’m not just fighting convenience.  I’m not just fighting habit.  I’m fighting tradition (Thanksgiving Dinner, Party Food, etc) and I’m fighting nature.  Telling an overweight person to “stop eating” is like telling someone to “stop breathing.”   Though you never know with the new CO2 laws coming out!

We have a built in instinct to eat more to store up energy for the winter.  Throughout humanity, winter has almost always been a time of hardship. Requiring more work and less food to do it on.

Some people have a natural resistance to that… whether their ancestors were from warm climates, or perhaps have ancestors that were just gifted with a high metabolism, or who knows.  If someone really knew there wouldn’t be 1000 different diets… there’d be one!

My goal is to lose another 7 lbs before Christmas… which is contradictory to my goal to start becoming more sociable.  During the Christmas holidays, being sociable often involves being around very tempting food! In fact, I’ve noticed that sometimes people insist I eat, even when I’m not hungry because they’re offended if I don’t try this, that, etc.

Regarding being sociable.  Over the last few years it’s been too convenient to live behind a computer… which hurt my social life as well as impacted my weight issue.  In fact it’s just weird.  But you never realize how fast time goes by, especially when you’re living an adventure such as running your own successful internet marketing business.

At some point I had to say enough.. enough stress, enough with the 16 hour days, and enough with spending all my time with logistics instead of spending time doing what I really love…  speaking, writing, training, building and discussing Internet Marketing.

Now, I have a new life.  Now, I have the opportunity and time to start meeting people face to face and heart to heart.  Now I have the opportunity to live my dreams, and I intend to act on it.   Losing weight will go a long way towards all of those goals.  Not simply because I’ll be healthier, but because I’ll have more energy to be active in these things!

So look for me at your next holiday party.  Just don’t ask me to eat anything. Believe me, I already want to.  ;-)

- Tony Darrick Baker
33lbs less than you may remember me!

Tony Darrick Baker less 10lbs

For years I’ve been overworked, underpaid, and spending much more of my time worrying about taking care of others than I have been on taking care of myself.

Here I am today. In the last month I’ve gone from about 468lbs to 458. My goal. To lose 200lbs in 1 year.

On TV, the fat people have stashes of Twinkies, 48oz soft drinks, and eat six hamburgers at one setting.  I’m not one of those people.  I probably could eat it all, but I don’t.

I’ve never understood why I can eat the same as a skinny person and yet I gain a bunch of weight while they lose.

My diet so far today has consisted of the following:

• 1 High Protein Slim fast for breakfast
• 1 bowl of Raisin Bran Crunch w/2% skim milk.
• 7 pitted prunes as a snack
• and I’m eating an apple as I type this.
• at about 6pm I’ll have a V8 (low sodium)
• I’ve already had about 3 cans of diet pepsi.  I love the stuff.  I’m hooked.  At least it’s 0 Cal.
• Tonight I’m having chicken/n/dumplins (whole wheat) soup.  With whole wheat crackers.

Granted this isn’t the diet that got me to where I am today.

My normal workday consisted of getting to work late (oversleeping) … with no breakfast.  I’ve always hated “breakfast food.”  I would have an energy drink or soft drink… then being hungry for lunch around 1pm.. Sometimes I’d simply too busy to eat. As CEO, I was constantly “putting out fires.”

Lunch would be whatever was available, if I had lunch at all.

If I had lunch, and a little downtime,  I would often crash for a 5 to 20 minute nap.  People wondered if I had sleep apnea.  I could be working with my fingers on the mouse or keyboard and be sound asleep with just my eyes closed.

Usually I was so busy that I wouldn’t even be able to think about dinner until after work, and that was at least six or 7pm nightly. Sometimes a couple hours later.

Then I’d crash. After dinner my body would simply give out. I’d wake up an hour or so later and sometimes work until 2 or 3am in the morning and start all over.  Sometimes I’d get hungry and eat again at about 1 or 2am before falling asleep for the night.

This resulted in about 1lbs and week over a 4 to 5 year period.

I’d crave filling foods like pasta, rice, and beef or chicken.

Now I’m really not sure what to do now.

I can’t do the atkins diet… I’m pretty certain that part of the reason why I gain weight so easily is due to the hormones that people pump into cows and chickens in order to make them fatter.

This ticks me off. We’re a nation that loves hamburgers, fries and a shake. 2 of the 3 come from hormone pumped cows. If it’s not that, then it’s pizza. Who does’nt love pizza? It’s covered in cheese.

I love cheese, any kind.. philly, cottage, cheddar, moz. I like it plain, melted, stacked, drizzled, and just about any conceivable way that it is delivered.

Likewise, yogurt, ice cream, and butter… who doesn’t love butter popcorn! Studies show that even the smell of butter popcorn can make you hungry.

Obviously “The Tony Diet” is going to have to be less of what I like and more of what I don’t.

Possibly… I do like raw fruits, some raw vegetables, and for some reason I like fish.

Tony