Phase 2 Diet Plan: Motivation

I wrote this a few weeks ago, before I started to notice that I was feeling a little better.

Not much going on right now, so I think I'll document a little of my weight loss plan.

Phase 1, which is now complete, was a short fast to create a psychological break between the old way and the new way. It was only a couple of days and was really pretty easy.

In addition to losing weight in the coming months, I also want to improve my aerobic health and my heart. That means I'm going to have to exercise. I can't do that right now.

The main problem, as I have mentioned before, is my knees. If you've ever wondered what it's like to weigh 400 pounds, the answer is that it's painful. My knees hurt all the time. If I make several trips up and down the stairs, or if I spend an hour or two wandering around the Home Depot, I'll feel it in my knees the next day. I tried taking a few brisk walks to exercise my heart (it doesn't take much to hit my target pulse rate) and my legs hurt for days.

Now you might think that my knees probably hurt a lot back when I weighed 300 pounds too, but they didn't, not like this. Oh, I could make them hurt if I overworked them, but climbing stairs didn't hurt. A brisk walk didn't hurt. Standing didn't hurt.

I need to make that pain go away.

Phase 2 of my diet plan, currently underway, is a crash diet to lose weight very quickly. The goal is to lose enough weight that the joint pain stops. Then I can gradually start to exercise.

I'm guessing that this will happen when my weight is down below 350 pounds, although it wouldn't surprise me if I have to get down to 300 to undo the damage. That's not running weight, or even jogging weight. Brisk walks, swimming, and treadmill maybe. Running will probably not be reasonable possible until I'm down below 250.

In any case, the real end of phase 2 is not when I hit some target weight, but when I can exercise. That's the sort of thing where I have to keep trying now and then until it feels right. Once I can exercise every day without joint pain, phase 2 will be over.