New Beginning.....Again

50 lbs lighter by December 25th 2015. A simple statement, but the hardest thing in the world. Yes, here we go again. I'm going to make another attempt at not only losing weight, but changing my lifestyle forever; redefining my life and changing a core piece of myself. I've attempted it over and over and over again over the last 11 years of my life and have struggled with my weight as long as I can remember. Being the fat guy has become a part of me, an identifier for others just as much as how I identify myself. Anyone who has been overweight for any period of time knows how this goes: we will start again next Monday, just one more pizza, just one more weekend. These Next Mondays stretch into years of failed weight loss attempts. Sometimes you'll lose weight for months, sometimes you'll reach the lowest weight you've been in years, but it always ends in one seemingly inevitable truth: failure.


For many this leads to a terrible loop: failure breeds more failure until you are simply too tired to even try again. You say you'll lose weight and people just stare at you even while saying encouraging things, but you can see in their eyes they've lost faith in you and the worst part is you can't blame them because you lost faith in you.

It doesn't have to be that way though. You hear it in every aspect of life that it's the person who kept getting up no matter how many times they are knocked down that ultimately succeeds. The funny thing is you often hear about how that person succeeded and they'll tell you how many times they messed up, but they don't like to go into failure, because who wants to read an inspirational weight loss tale about how many times they ate themselves clean off the wagon?

I've ran this blog for a while now, look back through the posts and you'll see passion, some decent posts and words from a person who is a past me who thought that their time would be the time they would lose every pound. That's embarrassing, it's not something I want to read myself let alone share with others. I contemplated deleting every post before this one and starting fresh. Than I realized that I needed to see those failures, I needed to own them and accept them and move past them and just maybe someone out there needs to see them also.

I don't know if anyone but myself will ever read these words. I don't know if this will be yet another failure in a giant pile of failures. It would be a lie to tell you that I'm any more passionate than I've felt before, any more committed than the past Daniel that typed all these other posts. What I can say for certain is that I've finally decided to acknowledge my failures, truly acknowledge them, and forgive myself in an attempt to move past them. I will give myself a fresh start because I need it, not just to look better without a shirt on, but for my health and for my family. I should be on blood pressure medication, I'm probably borderline Type 2 diabetic, I have constant horrible heartburn, and I can't sleep on my back without feeling like I'm going to strangle myself with my weight. I can't sleep well, I can barely breathe and I know it's all tied to my weight. I am MORBIDLY OBESE and I have to change this time, I don't have a choice.

I'll check in on another post today with my starting weight and follow up at least once a week with my new weigh in and sprinkle posts here and there on good AND bad days. Will I fail? I don't know. However, I'm going to do absolutely everything in my power to make sure I don't and I know that I'm going to have bad days and maybe even bad weeks, but I'm resolved to finally make a difference no matter what it takes. I hope I lose the weight and I hope I can look back at past Daniel and give him a hearty pat on the imaginary back. I guess I'll find out in time and I hope you'll join me while I do.