Greg's Weight Loss Blog

It’s been over a month since I last posted an update with photos. I was very diligent with the picture taking until I got down to the point where I started losing fat at a more conservative 1lbs/week rate. There was just really no point in posting an update since then. But I’m still tracking my progress and ultimate body composition goal based on looks so I’m going to stick with the one photo session a month plan until I get there. So here is June’s photo, taken on June 1st. It is not much lighter than May 1st, only 4.7 lbs (2.2 kg), but it clearly shows.

I’m definitely in the home stretch now. My veins are popping out on both my bicep now without flexing, my legs are getting really lean with strong definition in them, you can see details in my shoulders now, my back is certainly coming along nicely and finally I think my abs will start showing soon.

If you ask my wife she’d tell you that I not only finished my transformation but already ran the victory lap and started another race altogether which she’s not a big fan of. She thinks I’m getting way too skinny and there is just not enough meat on my bones. Well we just have to agree to disagree and hopefully once my transformation is complete in my eyes as well she’ll like the final results.

06/01/2010 Transformation Picture

As you probably know by now I had taken a photo session of my progress every four days for 6 straight months. These updates have gotten a bit tiring and I have decided to change over to a weekly progress update instead. Well guess what? I don’t think I’ll be doing that either. I just skipped last weekend, I did not really have time nor did I feel like taking pictures while I was stuffing my face with cake growing my gut. So I have decided that there will be no scheduled photo updates any more, I look pretty good as it is and the last 8 lbs will probably come off at a pretty slow pace so even a weekly update would make no sense. But I didn’t want to leave you without photos of me for too long of a time so here are some photos.

Me and my wife attended my boss’ daughter’s wedding this past weekend and for the occasion I had to get a new suit. I didn’t actually have a suit before, I had a jacket and some slacks but that was about it. I did have a tux from my wedding but for reasons that will became obvious in a moment I could not have worn that to the wedding. So we went to Banana Republic’s outlet store and got me a new suit, tie and shirts. I had to buy an entire new wardrobe pretty much in the past month and I’m very happy with it but it sure cost a pretty penny. The suit is the crown jewel of my new wardrobe and this is what I look like in it. I think I look pretty sharp if I say so myself.

I have tried to look for some recent photos of me in the monkey suit for comparison but I have failed. I could not find photos of me from recent years because I never wore one. I didn’t have one and I remember that I could not even wear the slacks that I had because they were so tight. So for the last couple of years I was wearing jeans even on holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving. I had to go all the way back to 2000 to find photos of me in a suit and even then it wasn’t trivial.

Here is me in my wedding tux from August, 2000. What a disgusting fat blob I was! I can’t even believe that my wife actually married me looking like that. She keeps telling me that she loves me fat or skinny but I’m still shocked that I looked like that on my wedding day. I distinctly remember that day. It was in the middle of August in the heat of the summer, temperature was over 95 degrees (35 C) and I was sweating my balls off in the heat. I felt very uncomfortable and unpleasant in the suit on my wedding day. I still have  the tux and the shirt I wore that day. The shirt looks like a circus tent on me and even if I would take the waist of the pants in they would still look like pants McHammer would wear, the legs are so wide and the bottom is so huge.

And if you thought I could not have looked any worse, here is a photo of me in slacks and a shirt with a tie around my neck from Christmas, 2000. My gut is huge and it’s rolling over my pants. I seriously have no idea how I could live like that. These photos just really hit home now. Looking at them makes me feel like I have wasted 10 years of my life being big. Who knows what kind of permanent damage I have caused with being this big for this long? Hopefully I still have managed to reverse most of it with my transformation and I can go on and live a happy and healthy life from now on.

So there you have it. A photo update of me in some pretty dapper suit and a walk down history lane just to compare how disgusting I had been looking for the past 10 years.

With this week’s photo I kind of cheated a little bit.

1. I took it Sunday morning instead of Saturday night
2. I took it right after I ran 10 miles
3. I’m flexing even in the relaxed photos because I needed after shots for a challenge and I wanted to look the best

So there you have it. These are my regular one week update shots but they’re not 100% realistic representation of what I had accomplished in a week as they are a bit more posed than last weeks. Even with the posing I can’t see a whole lot of difference which, considering that I was unable to exercise for 4 days and I ate close to maintenance is no surprise. My hips are actually a quarter inch wider than before and my bicep dropped to a 12.5″ size. I have lost over 2″ from my bicep in the past 2 months but they look better than ever even at the smaller size.

05/01/2010 Transformation Picture

Believe it or not, this is the 6 month anniversary of me starting this transformation. I have come a long long way from the ugly 237 lbs (107.5 kg) fat guy. And for the past 6 months I have taken a photo of my transformation status every 4 days without missing any one of them. But this streak of photos is coming to and end with this set. Am I done? No, I’m not. Is it redundant to take this many photos? Yes, it probably is. Does it take a whole lot of time to take and process these photos? Absolutely yes.

So with this, I’m presenting the last installment of my 4-day photo update. I think 6 months is a good place to end this part of my transformation. But don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that I will no longer post photos of me in my briefs! Oh no! You don’t get away from these beauties that easily! It just means I’m switching to a weekly schedule instead and I’ll take them every Saturday from now on. And this new schedule will follow on until I am officially done with my transformation.

This set is just as good as the last set, I think. I’m looking pretty lean even if not as defined as I did in the last set. My dimensions are holding steady, this time my thigh measurement has dropped 0.25″ but that’s about it.

04/24/2010 Transformation Picture

And here is the very first photo I have posted on this blog on 10/26/2009 that has started it all. I’m 66 lbs (30 kg) heavier in this photo. If you enlarge either one hit the left/right arrows on your keyboard to alternate the before/after shot. Pretty shocking! At least it was to me.

10/26/2009 Transformation Picture

I really like today’s photos. All the bloating is gone from the last one and there is no signs of water retention from the excess sodium over the weekend either. All in all I think this is the best set of pictures so far which is great as it shows I’m still heading in the right direction. As far as measurements go, my neck is now a 14.25″ which means Medium dress shirts fit me very nicely now with plenty of room around the neck. Other than this, there is not much else to report.

04/20/2010 Transformation Picture

Here is another installment of “Greg in his underwear”. This picture looks worse than the last one and there is a reason for it. I was carb loading in this picture meaning I was eating excess amounts of carbohydrates on Friday. The reason was that I have a race on Saturday and I wanted my glycogen stores to be at least somewhat full so I would stand a better chance at running a decent race pace. When you load up with carbohydrates the muscles also tend to absorb water along with the glycogen so they look fuller and I look bigger. This is why my abdomen area looks less defined and this is why I look overall more pudgy than I did in the last set of photos. My measurements are very close to the last set, I’m down to 12.75″ on the flexed bicep which is another 0.25″ lost and my chest is down to 38.50″, another half an inch dropped. Everything else is the same as it was 4 days ago.

04/16/2010 Transformation Picture

I took the 4 day photos again. As far as looks go, they’re close to the last set with a bit more definition going on pretty much everywhere. I can see it in the triceps, hams, back and abs. It is true, that the closer you get to lean the quicker you see the changes in definition. I still have about 8 lbs (3.5 kg) to go but I think these last 8 lbs will be the most interesting in terms of visual change. My measurements haven’t changed much. I have also done a 3-point caliper measurement on myself and I’m coming in at 14% with it. I’m getting better at using the caliper and getting more consistent results. It’ clear to me at this point that my BF scale is more of a BS scale. The scale is telling me I’m still 20.6% BF but there is no way that it’s even remotely correct.

04/12/2010 Transformation Picture

Well this photo update didn’t quite make it on the site in time (the date is set back, but it wasn’t posted until much later). I’ve been extremely busy but I still managed to take the pictures on 4/8/10 just as I promised to myself, but they never quite made it on the blog the same day. These pictures are actually looking pretty darn good now! My ribcage is starting to show more and more, I can see more and more veins, even in my upper legs now. As far as dimensions go, everything is down from the last set by 0.25-0.5″ which is great. I’ll just have to keep at it for the final 10 lbs to go. I’m getting so close, I can almost taste it!

04/08/2010 Transformation Picture

Tonight’s update is just a quick one, I already wrote most of the week’s happening in my weekly update. I didn’t even shave for this set of photos, this weekend, while a nice three day one, was way too hectic and didn’t get a whole lot done. I did get the pictures taken tonight. I think they don’t look as good as the last set, it seems to alternate between good and bad weeks, but today’s 45 degree flexed shot turned out alright. As far as my dimensions go, I haven’t changed one bit in the last 4 days at least not on the 0.25″ resolution scale that I’m operating on, everything reads the same.

04/04/2010 Transformation Picture

Here is your chance to get a glimpse at my 15% body fat body again! Not a whole heck of a lot of changes from last time as usual. I feel great, the love handles are smaller again and this morning I started to feel a bit of my abs when I flexed them so I can confirm that they are indeed there under the fat and hopefully they will soon show through. My measurements are practically the same as before, nothing worth mentioning.

03/31/2010 Transformation Picture