Jason Beem's Blog

I got an update on FB that it’d been a year since I finally went under the 300lb mark on my weight loss. I detailed the many ups and downs of weight loss in my life with these blogs HERE and HERE .

So this morning after my walk I was 271 pounds. After losing 20 pounds last summer, getting from 280 to where I’m at now has been a very slow process. That being said, I haven’t really been too strict on the diet front. From November thru about March I pretty much stayed between 277 and 281. I recommitted a bit more in April and May and lost a few pounds each month and hence where I’m at now. What’s been good is during those plateau months and even during the last couple months of small weight losses, I’ve very rarely had the wheels fall off like they used to. I try to eat decently most of the time, but the times where I do stray from ideal eating, I tend to get back on the tracks pretty quickly. I think realizing that you don’t need new years, or a new month to start over. You can literally start over at the next meal.

The one constant continues to be exercise. I really feel good that pretty much every day I’m getting some sort of good physical activity. Since Tampa Bay Downs ended I’ve upped my yoga class attendance to 4 or 5 times a week. Then I generally do weights twice a week and walk at some point most days. Also the yoga classes I’ve been taking have gotten progressively more challenging. I’m doing one hour sculpt and flow classes which are really intense mix of cardio/weights/yoga and they’re a killer workout. Even just a year or two ago I’d have had no chance to make it through them let alone thrive through them. I’m thinking that maybe I’m going to set a fitness goal of some sort just because mostly I’ve only been exercising for weight loss. But maybe it would be fun to try something more fitness goal specific. I thought maybe it would be fun to try and pass the police fitness test or something similar. I hate running so no 5ks or stuff like that.

The thing I’m fighting mostly with this year is just being glad I’ve gotten as far as I have and not pushing through to the next stage. I think ideally I’d like to lose 30 to 35 more pounds which in some ways seems like a lot and in others seems like just a few months of hard work. I think If I can just keep stay at this pace of 20 to 30lbs a year dropped, i’ll be there in a year or two. And it won’t feel like it’s super hard. I keep reminding myself this needs to be a long term lifestyle, not just get to the goal weight and go back to how I was eating and living before.

The best part continues to be clothes, I recently got into an XL shirt for the first time in forever and that was really awesome. I’ve been in the 270s for so long now I’m really excited to try and make that scale turn to hit the 260s soon. But in due time. Anyways, thanks for reading and for all the nice notes over the last few years, it means a lot.

So I tried a little experiment today. I’ve been reading a book this week called Atomic Habits and it’s been very fascinating and kind of validating to some of the changes in my life. But one of the chapters talked about how it’s really the anticipation of (insert bad habit) that you look forward to, not the actual doing or having of it. For the holiday months and into January my bad habit was eating dessert too often during the week. There’s a particular peanut butter square at a local restaurant that I would usually stop and get twice a week. It’s soooo good and it has to be 1000 calories or more. I haven’t had that since before the Super Bowl and really haven’t had any big desserts since I started blogging about this. It feels finally like my habits on that have been broken. What I’d like to do is get to a place where I can have dessert once a week and feel ok about it. I don’t want to live without sweet foods ever again in my life. And there’s no need for that. But my problem when I do have it is that it tends to happen too much. I was eating dessert 4-5 times a week, if not more some weeks from December thru the end of January. I’m i’m lucky I only gained a couple pounds back. This last few weeks I’ve lost that back plus a little bit. I’m at 275 this morning which is about as low as I’ve been since 2012. 8 more pounds would mark my lowest as an adult. I was 267 at one point in 2012.

So I wanted to try having the dessert today and really pay attention to the anticipatory feelings, vs the feelings while eating, and the feelings afterwards. One mistake I did make in this experiment was I ate in the same place and same speed and same way I always did before. It’s amazing to watch the autopilot on so many of these habits since reading the book. So the funny part of the story was this restaurant doesn’t sell those Peanut butter squares anymore lol. So i got another piece of pie they had and it was good. I definitely noticed that the real jones for me was the lead up, the buying it, and the driving home with it. By the time it became time to eat it, I was actually kind of depressed about it. Cause i knew i was going to eat it and not enjoy it and feel bad afterwards. And that prophecy was fulfilled. I don’t know if i learned anything from the experiment other than I still like pie and i still feel like a fat loser after eating it. So just gonna try to get back to the no dessert plan tomorrow and we’ll see how it goes.

Weighed in at 276.0 this morning after yoga class and I’m sure some of that loss was sweat as it was a warm class! I so have enjoyed the benefits that yoga has given me the last few months since I started doing it regularly. The things I’ve noticed the most are strength in my shoulders and so much more openness and flexibility in my hips and legs. Today was my 32nd 1 hour class. The first day I went in there I was so nervous and I was absolutely wrecked when class was over. It was so hard. But I’m happy I’ve stuck with it. Feeling good about my food choices for the most part over the weekend and started today out with a homemade protein shake with frozen strawberries and bananas, some protein powder, greek yogurt and a tiny spoonful of peanut butter. Delicious and filling and probably 450 calories and over 40 grams of protein.

Yoga tomorrow and going to try and keep up with the late night walks as I’ve been doing. Very excited on Thursday to go to my first spring training game of the spring! Yay!

Still plugging away at trying to make better decisions and for the most part doing a good job of it. My weight the last few mornings has been 277 or 278, which is basically back to where i’ve been the last several months. So i’m happy that in these last few weeks i’ve gotten down a bit from 282 on super bowl, but mostly just trying to get my habits back to being good. This particular weight just feels like such a plateau at this point and it’s hard because I know there really isn’t much further to go. But I also think that attitude is what’s contributing to the apathy about finishing the weight loss. I’ve always kind of lived my life in this “just good enough” kind of way. I was always a B student. I’ve always been a B level person. Good, but never excellent. I keep reminding myself that if I just perform good habits and routine that eventually the weight will start to come off again. Maybe it’s time to play with some different meal combinations and choices just to change things up? I do think my habits of eating the same things quite often probably lead my body to adapting a bit to that.

Was feeling a bit down about things yesterday. One of the big things I’ve tried to work on during this whole weight loss has been self-esteem. I do think as a whole it’s improved, but my core feeling about myself tends to be one of disappointment and rejection. Which I thought by age 43 I’d have moved past. I mean this is the only life and body I’ll ever have, so I better learn to love it. Time is ticking away lol.

Just got back from a monday morning yoga class and had a great sweat. I weighed 276.8 just now which I’m very happy about but i’m sure a good chunk of that loss was water sweated out. Regardless I’m very happy about the food and exercise decisions I’ve made over the weekend and looking to build on that for the remainder of the week. Plus the weather is back to sunny so evening walks are back in play after three nights of rain! I’m going to get my eyes dialated today so I’m going to have to take it easy around the house and already have my meals planned out so hoping I can stick to that. I’ve gotten rid of potentially bad snacks that were in the house. I’ve kind of learned if they’re in here, then i’ll eat them lol.

Winding down the weekend and a week since kind of trying to start this little re-start to my weight loss. I feel like this weekend I made good food choices all around. Saturday in particular I executed my eating plan the entire day. I went and saw a movie after work and didn’t eat anything at the theater or afterwards so that was good. It’s been raining this weekend so I didn’t walk at night last night but going to go on the treadmill at the gym to start off my sunday. Will do a weigh in later this morning and see where we’re at. I was 279.4 yesterday. Right now I’m fine if the weight stays in the same ballpark as I’m mostly just wanting to create patterns of change that I know will lead to results as time goes by. So feeling good about things this weekend. Too often I let the scale dictate my mood and that’s just not a winning formula. The difference between 279.4 and 281 or 282 is hardly anything yet when the scale was 282 last week I felt down. I try and remember it’s just a number and was an indicator for me I needed to tighten things up a bit, it’s not a reflection of me as a person.

Weigh in this morning after Yoga class was 279.2. Yesterday went pretty well with a very good breakfast and lunch. Dinner once again I probably ate a little more than I wanted to. I had a planned out portion and went through it and was still very hungry so i had some popcorn and more water and that helped satisfy me. Mostly just wanting to focus on more planning and execution of that plan. I want to just get back to my good habit I’ve mostly kept. I was doing that for the most part recently but just was allowing in too many extra snack and sweet calories and that was in my opinion causing the plateau and even the minor gain of 3lbs over the last month.

I did a chest and tricep weights workout yesterday and have been doing my late night walking so I was feeling kinda sore when I went into yoga class this morning. My yoga class on Thursdays is a mix of hot yoga, sculpt (weights/cardio) and restore (stretching) and I have a feeling I”m going to be very sore tomorrow, so tomorrow i’ll probably take a rest day from exercise. I’m feeling ok emotionally about things with food, I’m just kind of annoyed how hungry I’ve been feeling later in the day. I don’t eat that much in the midday so i’m sure that’s why, but i just can’t eat alot while announcing races cause I want to keep my airway as open as possible and not feel “full”. Usually it’s a good thing because it just means I eat less, but I think right now it’s working against me because I come home and eat a lot for dinner. 

Today just going to have a chill day, maybe do some painting and planning on making some pasta and red sauce with chicken for dinner. 

So today felt better about food and meal planning. Execution was good until dinner. I smoked some chicken wings with salt and pepper and they were delicious. I think I just ate more than I wanted to, because honestly I bought too many. They were only $5 a pound at whole foods so i figured two pounds. They were small wings so it was like 24 of them to make the two pounds. I figured I’d eat half tonight and half for dinner tomorrow night. These were small wings though so i went thru like 18 of them. Which just felt like too much. I didn’t have much of a lunch though so i’m thinking maybe i need to make lunch my bigger meal and try to eat smaller in the evening. I did have all my food between 11am and 5:30pm. A small protein smoothie after yoga at 11am, a little bowl of oatmeal and some peanut butter around 2pm and then the chicken wings. I feel like on paper it looks like a better day of eating than it feels right now because i feel like I ate so many of the wings. Tomorrow i’ll weigh in again. I have been drinking more water which has been good and tonight I took a nice walk. 

Felt pretty good about my first day of trying to get my diet back into form. I went and did my monday morning yoga class which is usually the toughest one I take during the week. My hamstrings are sore this morning, but in a good way! Breakfast was 3 eggs and some turkey sausage and lunch was some whole grain cereal and soy milk. Dinner I had rotisserie chicken and when I finished I noticed myself immediately wanting something sweet. So I did what I used to do when I was losing weight before and had a cough drop and some sugar free gum. I feel like that helps get me something sweet that’s like 5 calories and by the time I’m done with those, I’m not hungry any longer. One of my big problems is I eat too fast, so often I’ll eat an amount that makes me full, but I eat it so fast that my brain doesn’t acknowledge being full until I eat something else and then I feel stuffed. I also went out with a friend to a museum last night so walked around for much of the evening, so that replaced my normal evening/night walk for last night and was about 4000 steps. Normally at night I shoot for 50-60 minute walk which gets me about 6000 steps to finish the day.

Weigh in for Monday 2/12/24 was 280.4 pounds at 9am which is when I’ll usually try and weigh in. I know there’s fluctuations in weigh ins everyday but mostly just looking for a little progress these next few weeks. If I lose 2 to 5 pounds I’ll be very happy. 

Ok so i’m typing this during the super bowl. I’ve been kind of spinning my wheels on my weight loss for a couple months now and I really would like to re-kickstart it a little bit. So I think I’m going to try something atleast for the rest of February. I think the lowest weight I’ve gotten to is 275lbs which down from my high in 2017 of 443 is obviously a big improvement. But since Thanksgiving, I’ve basically vascillated between 277 and 281 on given days. This morning was 280. I’ve been really sticking to my exercise plan very well but I’ve been starting to eat much more poorly again. I’m not eating huge amounts, just eating too many sweets. I think in my mind i’m content with where I’m at in my weight loss and despite all the hard workouts I’m putting in, i’m just spinning my tires. Which I think i’ve been fine with. 

So for the next 18 days I’m going to try and really tighten things up. The big changes I’m going to shoot for is no sweets/desserts. As a whole I feel like my meals have remained pretty good. It’s just that I’ve been snacking far too much on non work days with stuff like peanut butter, protein bars (sugar!) and stuff like that. And I’ve been having dessert after dinner far too frequently. When I’ve lost weight it was just cause i cut all that stuff out. At some point I have to learn to just do desserts in moderation or just small/better desserts like a popsicle instead of a piece of pie or cake.

Also going to try to increase my water intake. Water is usually the only beverage I drink but I think i’ve been not drinking enough and that’s allowing me room to put more food. 

I’ve been very happy with my exercise routine recently and am going to try and continue with that. Yoga 3x per week, walks atleast 4-5 nights a week, and 2 days a week of weight lifting. Mostly I think i just want some accountability to help motivate me to get back on track.