HokieDoke - Member

HokieDoke

Joined May 2013

Posts

119

Following

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Weight History

Start Weight

220.2 lb

Lost so far: 36.2 lb

Current Weight

184.0 lb
Performance: losing 0.1 lb a week

Goal Weight

150.0 lb

Still to go: 34.0 lb

Starting weight: 220.2 lbs
Height: 5’5”

Why I’m overweight: I’m an emotional eater. It started when I was young and snacked on unhealthy snacks after school every day. When I started gaining weight, I lost confidence and ate more. Over the years, I’ve grown more comfortable in my skin, but I realize I need to get healthy.

Why do I want to get fit: It’s not really that I want to lose weight, but I want to get healthy, and I know weight loss is going to come with that. I want to repair my digestive system and build muscle (which will probably make me gain weight - but the right kind), and mostly stop stressing about calorie counting and working out.

Strategy: Update (4-1-15): It's been a while since I've updated this, but I've found that changing my diet to a Primal/gluten free/low carb diet has given me the stability with my weight that I've never been able to find before. I found out that I have some digestive issues (mostly due to being gluten intolerant for years and eating gluten - whoops!), and eating low carb and taking enzymes has been profoundly helpful! Since I'm steady with my weight the way I'm currently eating, I'm going to try to switch it up by introducing Intermittent Fasting once a week and see if that helps. I'm also going to try to introduce more strength workouts now that the weather is nice to try and build more muscle tone!

HokieDoke's Weight History

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HokieDoke's Latest Member Challenges

Finish what u start sista!

status:	Completed
ended:	28 Oct 13
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HokieDoke's Latest Posts

Detoxing Transformation Tips and Results with Focus T25 5 Day Quick Start
I just realized I didn't mention what I lost! I lost 4.6 lbs over 5 days, an inch on my waist, a half inch in my hips, and a half inch in my bust. But it looks like a lot more than that!

posted 09 Jan 2014, 14:15

Newbie Looking for Buddies :-)
Welcome to FS! If you want another buddy, feel free to shoot me a request Smile

Congrats on your decision to change your life!! The hardest part is realizing you have a problem. Now you just gotta do something about it!

posted 09 Jan 2014, 14:11

Detoxing Transformation Tips and Results with Focus T25 5 Day Quick Start
Here's my pictures!

You can do it too! Have a healthy day! I'll post more pictures as I complete my transformation!

How about you? Did you have a strange experience with detoxing? Anything you think I left off of the list? I hope this helped! Thanks for reading!

posted 09 Jan 2014, 14:01

Detoxing Transformation Tips and Results with Focus T25 5 Day Quick Start
Well, it wasn't easy, and it takes a lot of dedication, but I did it. I completely the 5 day Quick Start. I've written this document as a motivational tool to summarize my journey, writing down tips and strategies that really helped me reach my goal. Hopefully this helps motivate some of you and contains information you didn't know about detoxing. I'm pretty blunt and I do curse a little bit, just as a warning. Also, I want to mention that I am not a doctor or medical professional, but I've done a lot of research on this topic, and I'm mostly going to talk about my personal experiences with detoxing.

Summary of before Detox:----------------------------------------

My workout buddy, Syl90, and I purchased T25 in early December 2013. At the time, I was 220.2 lbs, bloated, unhealthy, and tired all of the time. My clothes didn't fit, but the straw that broke the camel's back were stretch marks. I've always been a chubby kid, but since I've been overweight for about the same weight for a long time, it's been a while since I'd gotten new stretch marks. Also, they would always be in the same place, like between my legs, or on my love handles. But one day I looked down and saw that I had a new set of stretch marks in a new place: my gut. They were dark red, ugly, and, worst of all, permanent. That was the last straw. Those stretch marks would be with me the rest of my life. Sure, one day I could pass them off as pregnancy stretch marks, assuming that one day I could get pregnant. The way things were, I was at a really unhealthy weight for that kind of thing, and though I'm not looking to start a family any time soon, I wanted to get my life together so that, one day, when I did decide to start a family, I would be in control, and I would be able to set a good example for my children.

We both were incredibly toxic, and had a significant amount of weight to lose, so we decided to do the 5-day quick start, which consists of a meal plan with 1100 calories a day for 5 days of clean and low sodium recipes (low sodium being something I've never tried before), with workouts on top of it.

How to Successfully Detox:-----------------------------------------

We started the Quick Start on 12/2/13, and let me just make a disclaimer: the Quick Start is HELL. I hate it when I read online that people are like 'oh, it's good' or 'it's so easy.' It was not easy. The first day was hard, and after that it just got worse. I can honestly say I wouldn't have made it through without my workout buddy. We warned everyone around us that we were doing the quick start, and they rightfully avoided us.

Now that I've made the disclaimer, I follow it up with this: If you have a significant amount of weight loss to lose DO THE QUICK START. It will be 5 days of hell, but you'll be amazed at how big portion sizes seem after the quick start. I went from a 2000-2500 calorie a day person to 'Wow 1500 calories is a lot!' Also, just so that you don't feel alone, here's a little bit of the pain I went through. I found it really frustrating to look online and find that everyone found this easy, so here's some peace of mind from someone who also doesn't think this is easy.

Now, here's how we did our detox. We followed the meal plan provided in the Focus T25 program for the most part, making substitutions for things we didn't like (after doing this for about 1.5 years, it's getting easier and easier to make these substitutions). Therefore, we were eating 1100 calories a day, roughly 50 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 20 percent fat. We also were eating low sodium, less than 2300 mg a day, and aiming for less than 2000. We were eating whole grains, lean proteins, lots of fruits and veggies, and the good fats (mono- and polyunsaturated are best). We were also hydrating a ridiculous amount. We followed the recommended workout plan, doing a T25 workout every day. We also cut out caffeine and alcohol completely except for the tiny amount of caffeine in tea.

It was pretty hard, but here are some tips to a successful detox:

- Drink water, water, and more water!! A good estimate for how many ounces of water you should drink a day is your weight in pounds divided by two. So, I started this detox at a weight of 220 lbs, so I needed to drink 110 oz of water a day while detoxing. Also, while detoxing, you shouldn't go below 70 or 80 oz of water, and you should go above 140 oz of water. A good rule of thumb is that you should drink enough that you have to urinate every 1 to 2 hours.

- Drink filtered water. Not everything you drink has to be filtered, but make sure that at least 80 percent of what you drink is filtered.

- Eat organic when you can afford it. This will help keep the new toxins entering your body to a minimum.

- Drink tea. Now is your chance to develop a taste for unsweetened tea! Drink green tea or detox tea, but a couple of cups a day helped my detox buddy and I out! Also, more water is being consumed, so yay! If you must sweeten your tea, sweeten it with stevia or a small amount of honey. No chemical sweeteners!

- Sweat every day! If you aren't up to doing strenuous workouts yet, do some power walking or swimming to make sure you are getting your heart rate up every day!

- Avoid being around chemicals. Try not to use harsh chemicals when cleaning around the house, and make sure the area you clean is well ventilated if you must clean.

- Get a good night's sleep! Your body does a lot of detoxification while you're sleeping, so make sure you get at least 8 hours a night!

- Have a detox buddy! I wouldn't have been able to do it without my detox buddy. There were times where she was the only person in the world I didn't hate because she was going through the same thing I was! If you don't have a buddy, talk to someone online, or yell in your car, or do something to get rid of your frustration!

- Sign up for a dieting website! There are several free ones, but the most important thing you're looking for is a means of counting calories and seeing exactly what you're eating! I personally use fatsecret.com, but MyFitnessPal is also a great website, and they're both free.

- Keep a journal. Log exactly how you're feeling through your detox. This is a powerful motivational tool later on. When you feel like slacking off, read your journal and remember how much detoxing sucks, and you'll feel more in control!

- Take before pictures and measurements! Taking pictures saved my sanity, and I am 100 percent telling the truth. It's important to take measurements, but my measurements didn't show much of a difference between my before and after. But WOW you could see a difference in my pictures! The fact that I could noticeably see a difference in my body was a great motivational tool! Take the following pictures: front shot, arms down; front shot, arms and abs flexed; left side shot arms down (don't suck in your abs!); right side shot arms down (don't suck in your abs!); back shot, arms down; back shot, arms and back flexed; Front twist pose, abs flexed. I will show my before and after pictures for all of these poses so you can see what they look like! This also leads to my next tip....

- Take after pictures and measurements! This is your reward for all of your hard work! Look how different you look without all of those toxins in your fat!! Always be sure to measure yourself first thing in the morning, right after you've gone to the bathroom for the most accurate measurements!

- Drink shakeology! I'm not getting paid to say this, but I'm recommending it from personal experience. A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with IBS, and I felt awful. I was nauseous all of the time, and going to the bathroom was painful and made me feel sick. I tried upping my fiber and taking probiotics, and that helped for a bit. But eventually I hit a plateau. I decided to try shakeology since it is said to help with weight loss and cravings, and since I've been on it, my IBS symptoms are virtually gone! Shakeology is a great way to start the day, since it is very well balanced, is high in fiber, as well as it is filled with antioxidants! Regular chocolate is my favorite Very Happy

Typical Day on the Quick Start: -----------------------------

This is a summary of my typical day on the 5 Day Quick start: Wake up (oftentimes not hungry, surprisingly!!), weigh self, be disappointed by seemingly small amount of weight lost considering sacrifices, eat breakfast (surprisingly satisfying Smile

), feel like I'm coming down with the cold, go to work, eat a snack (and be angry when it's not satisfying, though most of the recipes were yummy), work some more, pray no one tries to talk to me at work, eat lunch, be satisfied with lunch, an hour after lunch - get hit with massive hunger, be angry about hunger, leave work, go home, have a snack, go over to Syl90's house for workout, have 30 minute long ranting session about how hungry we are and how stupid other people around us are being (normally with a LOT of yelling involved), finally work up the courage to do the workout, do the T25 workout and struggle throughout the entire thing, try not to cry, drink fluids and do some more ranting before dinner, make dinner and be disappointed with dinner, have Syl90's roommate come downstairs and eat pizza in front of us, contemplate jail time and psychological trauma from killing Syl90's roommate, have burst of willpower that is just strong enough to resist the murderous impulse (because I really do like her roommate as one of my best friends down at school, and I don't really want to kill her), go home, see that roommate is having chocolate pie for dessert, contemplate murdering roommate (but I need her for rent Razz

, also she's like the best roommate I've ever had), decide to take the high road and go to bed early after sending a text to Syl90 about how roommate is eating pie (with several expletives in it), pass out an hour and 30 minutes before my usual bedtime for 9.5 hrs of sleeping time.

Yep, that was a typical day.

I am generally not an angry person, but as I was detoxing I found that my fuse was extremely short, especially when it came to people eating delicious and unhealthy food around me. It even got to the point where just the sight of food labels made me angry. I was angry at myself for getting myself into this mess, angry at other people for just doing their own thing because it was making it harder for ME to stay on track, and angry at the toxins in my body for taking their sweet time leaving my body and making me feel like crap on their way.

This is a pretty common feeling during the first few stages of getting healthy, so here's where I tell you that it DOES get better, I promise!!! The first week is the hardest!

What happens to your body when you detox: -------------

Here's where I talk a little bit about what happens when you first start burning fat, because I didn't find many resources out there. When you aren't eating cleanly, and are gaining fat, your body uses your fat to store any toxins it finds as a quick way of putting them out of sight and out of mind since it takes a lot of time and energy to process them and eliminate them from the body. Since many of us eat processed foods and are around cars, pesticides, and generalized pollution, over time, your fat becomes absolutely loaded with toxins. What's worse, is that your body's system of detoxing becomes lazy, especially since it is so much easier to just store toxins in fat than to actually process them. So, in essence you're incredibly toxic with a weaker toxin removal system.

When you start to reduce the calories you take in and work out at the same time, your body starts to burn up the fat, which releases the stored toxins. Then, when your toxin processing system tries to store them back in fat, your body is like 'nope' and you're left with toxins floating around your body unprocessed. Then, your toxin processing system (aka your liver and kidneys mostly) processes some of the toxins, but isn't fast enough to handle the massive quantities being released by your cleanse. Your body recognizes that there are a ton of toxins floating around, so while your toxin processing center is booting up, your body tries to reduce the concentration by flooding your blood vessels with water, making you feel bloated and like you're retaining water (and also reducing your initial weight loss). Over the next few days, your body releases more and more toxins from your fat, and though your toxin processing center is picking up speed, you still have a ton of toxins floating around, so you keep retaining water to try and reduce the damage the toxins will cause. But after a short while, about a week of true detoxing, working out daily, excellent hydration, and clean living, your toxin processing center will finally catch up with your rate of toxin release, and you'll finally feel normal!

I'm sorry, did I say 'normal?' Because I meant to say 'You'll feel totally reborn, in control, light as a feather, and ready to conquer anything!'

Potential symptoms you'll feel during detox: ------------

Here's where I level with you with what might happen to you during detox, so that when you inevitably have these symptoms, you think to yourself 'Hokie said this might happen, and here it is, but it goes away, I just gotta stick it out!' During Detox, you might experience:

- Reduced weight loss; This can be extremely discouraging, but this is mostly due to an increase in water weight as your body tries to dilute the toxins in your body. This should go away in a few days and the pounds will start coming off more easily!

- Mood swings; And I mean violent ones! Your body going through detox can be painful and frustrating, and takes an incredible amount of willpower. Take out some of your frustrations on your detox buddy, or yell into a pillow, or cry, or write a journal about what is frustrating you most, or talk to other people on a dieting site going through the same thing. Once you start eating healthy and more food again, the mood swings will disappear and you'll be amazed at your optimistic disposition!

- Hair loss; Sometimes the toxins in your body can make your hair fall out a little more than normal. This stops and your hair grows back once you're done with the initial detox!

- Bloating; This is related to the water retention, but I'm also talking about FEELING bloated, like you're as big as a house. I woke up a couple of days feeling like my face was swollen to twice the size it normally is (it didn't really swell up, but it felt tingly and huge). I called these my 'fat face' days. Then I had a laugh with my detox buddy about how absurd it all was and felt better for it!

- Headaches; Yep, you'll probably have some pretty bad headaches due to the toxins running around in your head, but drink some water and take an ibuprofen (if you must!) and they'll go away in a few days.

- Acne breakouts; When toxins are released through your pores, they can irritate your skin, and cause acne. These should clear up significantly post detox.

- Feeling like you're coming down with a cold; Toxins can make you feel like you're coming down with a cold. They can make your head feel stuffy as well and increase the mucus in your lungs (an attempt to detox through the air you exhale!!). Whatever you do, don't stop working out and eating cleanly. Drink more fluids, and if you don't feel better in a couple of days, you might actually be coming down with a cold.

- Higher blood pressure; Because your body is retaining fluids (as well as toxins putting additional stress on your body), your blood pressure might go up a little bit. It should come down after you've detoxed for a while!

- Fatigue; There's a reason I got 9.5 hours of sleep during my quick start. I was tired all of the time! It's really important to make sure you get your sleep during detox, so that your body can get work done on itself while you sleep!

- Irregular stool; One of the major ways that your body eliminates waste is through your feces, and because your body is adjusting to the change in foods, exercise, and hydration levels, you may find that you're defecating more than two times a day, or that your stool is loose or irregular. If your stool is just loose or like green or something, you're most likely fine. But if you ever see blood in your feces you should talk to your doctor; that is NOT normal, but is probably unrelated to the detox.

- Frequent urination; If you're hydrating like you should, you should be urinating every 1 to 2 hours and your urine should be mostly clear (except for 1st thing in the morning). First thing in the morning, since your body does a lot of detoxing at night, my urine was oftentimes so dark of a yellow that it was borderline brown. But this is a good thing! Every time you use the bathroom, think of all of the toxins that you're eliminating from your body and you'll feel much better!

- Hunger; This one is obvious. You're eating less, and your body is going through a kind of withdrawal. You are literally going through toxin rehab, and your body will seek its easy toxin storage method. You'll want to eat ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. I'm not lying: One time, I literally contemplated asking someone who was eating a delicious salad what it tasted like so that I could eat vicariously through them. It gets bad, but you'll be surprised by how much food 1600 calories seems like when you've been eating less for a few days!!!

- Poor workout performance; Chances are, you just started working out, and, when you feel like you're sick in a couple of days, you won't feel like working out at all. It is PARAMOUNT that you keep pushing play!! If you don't work out one day during the week (on Thursday we were so tired we could barely moved and skipped the workout that day), it won't kill you, but make sure that you're working out 80 percent of the time! Also when you work out, give it your all! Have no regrets about your work out, and you'll really see results!

How you'll feel after detox: --------------------------

Here's the good news! I have never felt more control than after I finished this quick start. People would offer me pizza and junk food, and the thought of eating them would actually nauseate me.

I felt energized, actually enjoyed eating healthier, and really started to see a change in my body! Unfortunately since FS won't let me post pictures this post, I'll post my pictures later, and I'll edit this post when I figure it out! The difference is amazing!

posted 09 Jan 2014, 13:32

HokieDoke has submitted 4 posts

HokieDoke's Recent Food & Exercise

	2 oz Roasted Salted Cashew Nuts
	1 cup chopped Broccoli
	1 serving Earth's Pride Organics Baby-Cut Carrots
	Bicycling (fast) - 15/mph
	Bicycling (very fast) - 17.5/mph
	Walking (moderate) - 3/mph