My Motivation behind this Weight Loss Contest

Posted by Simon Heseltine

Hello, and welcome to my fat fighting blog. For those who don’t know me, I’m an English / American dual citizen SEO, working for Serengeti Communications, an agency inside the Virginia side of the Washington DC beltway. I write about online marketing topics on EndlessPlain.com and SearchEngineTigers, along with the occasional post on SearchEngineLand and SearchEngineGuide.

Ok, now that’s our of the way, let’s start with a timeline to explain why I’m doing this…

• 1990 - December 9th 2006 - 240-245 lbs
• January 31st 2007 - 210 lbs
• October 28th 2007 (directly after the Marine Corps Marathon) - 198.8 lbs
• January 22nd 2008 - 216.8 lbs (the day Donna asked me if I wanted in on this contest)

You see the problem? After the marathon I stopped exercising, and fell back into bad habits. On the plus side I still fit into the smaller size clothes that I bought last year, on the down side, if I don’t do something soon that won’t be true for long. I believe that, in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I am 6′5″.

Problems & Pitfalls:

• 2 bad knees. There’s no way I can run without braces for more than a couple of miles. I’m still amazed I managed 26.2 last year.
• Cheese & bread, and let’s not mention cheese on bread.
• SES - London & SES - NYC. How can one diet and exercise while traveling and networking? Not easily.
• Vacation. I’m taking the week before SES-London to visit my family. There will be many temptations there - Chocolate Biscuits, Mr. Kipling’s exceedingly good Bramley Apple Pies, Vanilla Slices, etc, etc, etc.

Plusses

• I’m running a 1/2 marathon on March 29th, so I have to get in shape by then.
• I have at least kept up with my weekly soccer game, so I know I can do 2 hours worth of short sprinting.
• I’m a competitive person, if you think I’m going to let that kid Boykin beat me (yes, he’s younger than me, not by much, but he is), you’ve got another think coming.

So what’s my plan to fight the fat? It’s going to be a simple matter of will power. I’m going to cut back on the food, restricting myself to Weetabix in the morning, rather than stopping in to the local Giant for a muffin or bagel on the way in, and so on. I’ll set myself up with an exercise regimen, getting back into using the Bowflex and the treadmill, heading outside when I can. My target? Ideally I want to stay in the 205-208 range, but for March 31st I think I can get back to around the 200lb mark, especially with that 1/2 marathon 2 days before…

Tune in tomorrow for my starting weight…