About Greg
Welcome to the website! I am very glad you stopped by. Let me introduce myself and share my story with you. I am a married man from Small town, U. S. A. literally! I have two special needs boys. One son has Autism and the other one has Cerebral Palsy. My wife is an exceptional woman that keeps our small family going. We get so much going on that we let our own health and fitness go. We have had several traumatic events concerning our boys and we have medicated ourselves with food. That along with my career. I am an Electrical Engineer with an automotive company. Therefore, I find myself sitting….A lot! I get caught up in watching YouTube or something on the internet. It is too easy just to sit there and say I will do it tomorrow! I can justify it if I say I will do it tomorrow. Procrastination is a big reason I got myself where I am physically. That along with being a man of a certain age. I find that funny that people say that about a man or woman in their 40’s and 50’s. I sure am not near as active as I was in 20’s, 30’s or maybe 40’s but that I am active as far as playing golf most days. I actually walk nine holes about 5 days a week. I work the off shift and I am convinced that this is detrimental on my health and anybody who does work the graveyard shift. So I have lots of excuses on why I am over-weight. I did not start out like that though. I was always athletic; I played several sports in school and remained competitive into my later adult years. Therefore, I was the skinny kid who became the fat man. I knew I needed to lose weight but like I said, I will start tomorrow! In fact I was 185 lbs. when I graduated High School and I had ballooned up to a whopping 403 lbs. when I attended my 35th class reunion a few years ago. It was embarrassing that many people did not recognize me. I could see the shock in their eyes when I said you know me. I am Greg Stanley. But I had gotten to the point where I was in denial about my condition. I was on the borderline of High blood pressure and my cholesterol was unbalanced, my good cholesterol was bad and my bad cholesterol was good! So, I had not gotten to the POINT OF NO RETURN, yet! And in my case Denial was not just a river in Egypt!!
I started a weight loss journey where I lost 105 lbs within 4.5 months. I lost it fast! Man, I felt great!! The program I was on did not leave me hungry and it was regimented. I had a health coach helping me be accountable to myself. It was great and several people told me that I was an inspiration. That really felt good. I was getting my life back and helping people along the way and that really felt wonderful!
I was cruising along and bam!!!! Life happens!! I had a couple of traumatic events impact me and set me back. I shouldn’t say the events set me back. But the way I dealt with them really set me back. I began binging on food for a variety of reasons. I don’t drink that often anymore and don’t do drugs but my drug of choice is Food! I started eating and snacking and so on and so on. In my mind the food was and did not care what I ate. But my bane was Double Stuffed Oreos! It was so easy to sit and eat a package in a day!! I knew how many calories were in each one but I would grab a handful of 6 or 7 at a time. They are 70 calories each so let’s say I would eat 30 cookies a day. That would be 2100 calories a day! Excluding the meals that we were eating so I was probably eating close to 5,000 calories a day. A pound is 3,600 calories so needless to say the some of the weight came back on.
Now, I am starting a new. Going to begin a new weight loss and fitness journey. I am going to share with you my goals and plans on how I am going to do it. I am going to incorporate running and weight lifting on my journey. I am going to utilize the meal plan that I used before that helped me lose 100+ pounds relatively easy. I will be engaging people that are starting their own journey and together we can lose weight, get fit and be healthy. Sign up and join our community and never miss a post. I will also be doing some videos to where you can actually see how I am doing it. Sound Good! Let’s get moving!!
About Carrie
I am starting this with a confession: I have struggled to figure out how to introduce myself to you. I can list facts about myself. I am in my late 40’s, I am a Mom of two special needs boys, I am a wife and a daughter. I recently decided to become a stay at home mom. I don’t feel like that really tells you who I am or anything really about me. Over the last two weeks I have stared at a blank screen waiting for the words to magically come to me. Part of my problem is I don’t know who I am anymore. A big part of that is because when I look in a mirror I don’t even recognize myself. I don’t think our appearance defines us but when your weight has gotten so out of control that it affects how we live our lives we cannot pretend like it isn’t part of our identity.
When my husband came to me with the idea of starting this blog my first thought was it was a great idea. Immediately followed by horror and panic! The idea of pictures and videos of me looking like I currently do being posted on the internet for anyone to see and for all of eternity is mortifying.
I am not a person that struggled with weight my whole life, this is an adult problem for me. I had my children in my mid 30’s and up until that point I may have at times carried an extra 20-30 pounds but still felt comfortable in my skin. After the birth of my twins I not only did not lose the baby weight I gained an extra 40 pounds in the next year or so. My sons spent a couple of months in the NICU and the next few years were consumed by their health needs. (we will definitely talk about this more in future post.) By the time they started school I was about 80 pounds overweight. I went to a doctor and discovered diet pills. They were amazing, not only was I not hungry but I had endless energy. Over the next 8 months I lost 60 pounds and felt great. I stopped the diet pills and was able to maintain the weight loss for a few years. But slowly it started to creep back on, I gained about half of that back so I started Weight Watchers and though I didn’t lose any I stopped gaining for a while. A few more years go by and I am still a crazy busy Mom but now I am working full-time, having more responsibilities caring for my aging parents and managing my stress by finding comfort in food & wine. As I am writing this today I am probably close to 100 pounds overweight. My clothes don’t fit, I get winded doing the slightest activity, I don’t like the way I look but even more importantly I don’t like the way I feel.
In this blog I am hoping to address a lot of the issues that make me continue to struggle with getting my weight under control. Some will be obvious, like I love Mexican food and wine and sometimes indulge in both excessively. Some I will have to dig a little deeper and will be more difficult to address like why I medicate myself with food when I am stressed or depressed but I am committed to the journey and hope you will join me. I have decided now is The Time For Weight Loss.