Weight Loss Journey… The History

Kia Ora Whanau
Alex here from Costas Enterprises and this blog I’m going to tell you about my personal journey through weight loss.
NOTE: I am right at the start of my journey and part of the reason I am doing this blog and posting on Instagram is to make myself accountable. I do not have any secret to losing weight but I want to share what has been working and helping me.

Don’t have time to read?? You can listen to a copy of this post from my podcast the “Get a job and get healthy with Costas Enterprises” podcast on Spotify right here.

HISTORY

Ok before we get into to all of this I better tell you a little history of the way I was.

At my heaviest I was 149 Kg (328.45 lb’s) back in 2005. I have always been fat/ heavy/ obese/ big boned, whatever you want to call it, and I distinctly remember only starting to be fat from being five years old and without making excuses I come from a Greek family that likes to eat. I am now (as of today’s date 15 February 2020) 37 and a half years old.

I used to live the “invincible” lifestyle, what I mean is I used to eat whatever I wanted (fried chicken, pizza, chocolate, lots of bread) and I used to drink … a lot… I was never an alcoholic, although I did see someone about my drinking because I did start to get worried … well I wasn’t so much worried about my drinking but my doctor’s were given I could easily drink a whole 40 ounce (1.25 litres) of bourbon or 12 beers a night every weekend for ten years.

I have had some success in losing and keeping weight off in the past (well I dropped from 149 KG to 120 kg (264.55 lb’s) and then went back up to 130 kg’s (286.60 lb’s) which is where I was when I started this journey).

Now in the past I had tried a few diets and Yo-Yo’d more than Puff Daddy/ Sean Combs/ P-Diddy changes his name. Shoutout to the D to the A to the D-D-Y
But what I am trying to get across is that I tried a lot, but failed a lot more.

I considered and was registered for Bariatric Gastric Sleeve surgery, twice! Very quickly for those that don’t know, Gastric Sleeve surgery involves removing about 75% of your stomach, the advantage is you not only lose weight (and pretty fast), you also can also lose any diabetes effectively overnight. But it is not easy, you are effectively reduced to eating small and only certain foods for the rest of your life… a big change for someone and as always there is a risk of not actually making it through the operation. It has had a lot of success but also instances where it hasn’t been so lucky. However one of my friends, Tamara, has recently been going through this and documenting it on her Instagram and is part of my inspiration to document my journey.

The “D” word … Diabetes, I have type 2 (the one you can get because … well you think you’re invincible and eat sugar almost every day for like 20 years, well at least I did and that’s how I got it lol). I have had this for about 15 years now, I previously … like up till about 4 weeks ago didn’t control it very well. I did the bear minimum of taking my pills and the occasional insulin that I needed to have.

Part of the reason why I am taking this journey so seriously is because I started noticing how bad my control was getting.

So why are you taking this journey??? Ok I’ll be honest, 99.9999% is because I didn’t want to lose the one thing in my life that makes me happy .. no not food … although that used to be the 99.9999%.
It’s because of my partner, she saw how bad I was, we have been together for over a year and she saw (and helped me) change all other aspects of my life (I’ll delve into that I’m sure on other blogs), but the one part of my life I didn’t really try to change was my health (notice I said health and not weight … that’s the important part here).

You see something bad in yourself when you see the person you love crying because they ask you to change, you don’t and they give you the world, and all they ask is you look after yourself. Trust me this isn’t easy for me to write. I am a proud person by nature and to even admit that I was this way is hard, but if these last two paragraphs make you aware that your in this situation because your loved one shows you that they care for you and ask you to change whatever your doing that is hurting them and you do nothing .. Wake The F&*k Up and change!

NOTE: I am going to mention a book now and the link goes to Amazon.com of which I am an affiliate so id you buy something I do get a commision, but trust me if you are in the above situation you and your partner need to read The Five Love Languages and it will help you learn how to fill your partner’s “Love Tank”.

Ok that’s enough of the history, but there is more and I will expand on it a lot more in the future.

So what are you doing now? What’s Different?

So as I mentioned, My partner told me how I can fuel her Love Tank, by trying to get healthier. She made me a meal plan. I said I will follow it.

The meal plan is customized to me … because I am such a fussy eater, I don’t eat a lot of vegetables, and some of the ones I do eat are pure carbs.

If you follow weight loss and diets your will already have jumped to the conclusion of what my partner was getting me into (You were quicker than me if you guessed KETO).

For those that don’t know there are heaps of KETO recipes and diets out there and variations but the one thing I was most worried about was … what if I get a hypo(glycmic) attack??? if you or someone you know has diabetes you would understand why I worried. For those that don’t know, a KETO diet is effectively No Carbs, No/ very little sugar intake.

Now to give you an idea of why I was so worried. A normal, healthy person’s blood sugar reading should be between 4 – 6. My usual was around 23 – 24 … as you can imagine I was very worried!

I will write another blog post shortly concerning the start of my journey.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and I hope you continue to follow my journey.

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