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!