I've decided that I'm going to use iz-us as my personal space to log my wieght loss/fitness escapades. And for those of my friends, as well. So yeah. With that, we have the new focus of iz-us in a nutshell.

So, let's introduce you to me, or at least tell you where I stand in the fitness context. As anyone reading here probably knows, I'm Jason. I've always been overweight, since I was in like 3rd grade. It probably had to do with my love of Pepsi and Cheez-its for like, my entire life. About 18 months ago I started working out since there was a gym at my old job, and lost a decent amount of weight. I was eating big hamburgers for dinner every night and the only concern I had for my diet was no fast food and no soda.

Then I lost my job, and my gym membership. My weight went to hell again, and this February I reached a breaking point. My XXL shirts were feeling snug, and I saw pictures of myself and I looked ROUND. I decided I needed to rejoin the gym, expensive or not. So I did that. In early March, I got the nerve to weigh in. 309 pounds! It was a pretty big shock. I did NOT expect to weigh that much. So for while, I lazily "watched" what I ate, drank Coke C2 instead of regular, etc. In the beginning of June, I decided to take it really seriously. I cut soda out completely except for no-calorie drinks. I joined up with My Food Diary and started seriously monitoring what I eat. I realized I was still making some mistakes in how I eat, and made changes accordingly. As of June 1st, I was 296 pounds.

I am currently eating 1400-1600 calories a day, with a splurge day once a week where I go over by up to 1000 calories. I exercise 3+ days a week, with an alternating upper lower workout routine and 30-45 minutes of cardio in every workout.

I have been more or less in this routine since June 1st, I am never hungry with the way I eat. I replaced process white flour with whole wheat. Added fruits and veggies to my meals. Limit my red meat and base my meals around lean protien (chicken, turkey, fish) The hardest part was CHEESE! I am a cheese lover. I'll smother things in it. And limiting that has been my hardest part so far, and it's why my saturated fat goal is a hard one to meet every day.

So what has all of this done for me? Today, I weigh 272.2 pounds. I have a long term goal of 205 pounds, and my short term goal is 250 by Oct 22nd (my 24th birthday). I am starting up kickboxing and jiu-jitsu in 2 weeks so that should help my conditioning even more, plus give me an incentive to keep myself in shape.

So here we are. Iz-us is the place where I can banish all the silly gushing about dieting, exercise, protien bars and weight loss shit and people can read it if they want to. I'll probably get others to post here too, my brother's tale of weight GAIN will be a nice counterpoint to mine.

A winner iz-us!