[Read more…]

My family went on a trip to Southern California last month to watch my oldest son Ethan in a lacrosse tournament. (He and his Utah Hoppers teammates kicked butt!) This was a pivotal time for me. Over the previous three and a half months, I was struggling with a variety of challenges and reverted back into some bad habits. I stopped focusing on health and tried to numb my frazzled feelings with food. I have a history of that not working out so well.

I stepped on the scale in the middle of the night after a 12-hour drive — having pigged out most of the vacation and quite a few times the previous months — and the scale displayed a disappointing number: 250.4. On Aug. 18, I weighed 197.2 pounds. I’d put back 53 of the 176 pounds I’d dropped over the previous year and a half. Yet again, I was proving that my body has an amazing lost-and-found system for blubber. [Read more…]

Two years ago, I stood in a changing room — JcPenney’s because they carry husky sizes — looking at myself in the full-length mirror. I was disgusted. I was angry. I was dejected. How in the heck did the cleaning crew miss that smudge on the mirror!? Joking aside, it was disheartening to look at myself, to see how I’d allowed myself to gain so much weight and lose so much hope. I was looking in a mirror. Misery was staring back at me. [Read more…]

Being a writer, I sometimes wait to give updates because I want to thoughtfully articulate my feelings in a lengthy blog. I’ll sum up my feelings today with this small statement:

I WANT TO KISS THE SCALE!!!

Oh, shoot. I can’t stop there … [Read more…]

Earlier this week, my 8-year-old son offered a prayer before our family ate dinner together. Just after we’d all said “Amen,” he blurted out, “Wait! I forgot to pray for something.” By then, his siblings were already chowing down so I asked what addendum he’d like to add to his prayer, hoping to explain that God would still listen even if he wasn’t officially praying. His answer surprised me. It wasn’t “Please help (insert sibling’s name) stop being dumb” or “Please help Santa Claus bring me a bike.” Aidan wanted to add, “Please help that Dad will go back on his program.”

[Read more…]

Have you ever done something that made you feel all tingly inside at the time only to be haunted by it later?

And in this case, I’m not actually talking about my teenage years when mooning people and pantsing friends were some of my finer achievements.

I’m not referring to deciding to have kids, either.

Let me share a passage from my old “Losing It!” weight-loss column that I wrote for the Deseret News in April 2009:

I am obese. Have been — by clinical definition, not my own — for the past 20 years.

That time period, by the way, includes all of my adulthood, plus most of my senior year in high school when I was voted “Most Likely to Own a Fast-Food Joint” and won a mouth-stuffing marshmallow contest.

Ah, those were the days. [Read more…]

I felt mixed emotions before going to my health program’s national convention last week in Dallas. While I was excited about being a Top 10 finalist for our nationwide transformation contest, I also experienced some disappointment, some sadness, some regret.

I had big goals for this convention. For the past year, I’d targeted this gathering for being the end point for reaching my goal weight. I wanted to wear a snazzy suit — something I haven’t worn in 25 years aside from my wedding tux — while being introduced on stage as a health coach leader. (I’m rewarding myself with a suit and a wood-pellet smoker when I reach my goal.) I wanted to look and feel like a million bucks. I wanted to have the weight-loss portion of my health journey in my rear-view mirror.

As my before-and-after photos show, I’ve made a TON of progress since March 2016. I’d lost 168 pounds heading into convention — down even more now! — and feel like a different person. But this is where I was struggling. I felt like I’d let myself down. I’m not where I want to be yet and, honestly, where I could have been if I’d made healthier choices the past few months. I haven’t blogged in four months and my weight loss progress has slowed down in that period.

As you can see, I still have a ways to go — about 45 pounds — to reach my goal weight. That actually caused some inner strife as I battled back and forth in my mind. [Read more…]

Ever have one of those eventful weeks where life is crazy and you think you’re going to go nuts from event overload but some pretty dang cool things happened?

Yeah, that was my week.

Here are some highlights that relate to my health journey:

• The Utah Jazz held a neat reunion for members of the 1997 team, which was the first in the organization’s history to make it to the NBA Finals. It was fun to interview some guys that I really admire, including Hall of Fame point guard John Stockton, and guys that are always entertaining and goofy like former Utah center Greg Ostertag.

One of the personal highlights was getting to shake Hall of Fame coach Jerry Sloan’s hand. He and his wife Tammy have really been supportive when they’ve seen me over the past basketball season.

Here’s the fun little conversation Sloan and I had when we saw each other: [Read more…]

I was engaged in a delightful conversation about my health journey on an airplane yesterday when my friendly seat neighbor asked a question many people wonder whether they ask or not.

“Do you have loose skin?”

So I did what you’d expect. I unbuckled the seatbelt — a More of Me to Love extender is no longer required after losing 150 pounds, thank you — and then stood up in the aisle, ripped off all of my clothes and flexed for a cabin full of awestruck passengers.

Women whistled and fanned their flushing faces. Men grunted and gave me high-fives. The captain turned on the Smoking Hot sign.

I was floating somewhere between heaven and Cloud 9. [Read more…]

There were a lot of reasons why I became 210 pounds overweight.

I had no self control or discipline. I lacked motivation. I couldn’t muster up the desire to change. I adopted an all-you-can-gorge buffet mentality anytime I was around food. I fed my ravenous emotions. I ate for sport. I ate when bored. I ate when bored at sports. I was quite depressed and, as my empty-feeling life swirled into a pit of despair, eating was the only thing that never failed to give me pleasure or comfort — temporary pleasure or comfort, of course.

The thing I lacked most? [Read more…]