Click here to view the embedded video.

I want my own divine inspiration. Maybe it is all me. Maybe I just need to work it up. Raise my standards like Tony says.

Seems so hard. Is life supposed to be hard?

I find myself with more and more questions on the sense of what makes sense.

I am nervous because a lot of the christian paradigms are starting to not make since to me anymore. I love God. I want what is right and good. I want a higher purposes. But I am just trying to wade through all the noise that is thrown around and just find some truth. That seems the hardest thing to place sometimes.

Be who you are.

I have responsibilities…. There is a type of guy in my head I want to be. And I feel my apathy getting the better of me. I feel addicted to this apathy. This sluggishness is in my marrow. How do you fight something in your marrow? Condition yourself for easiest effort.

When did it change? When did it change from living life with some grit and focus…feeling it in your body…in your being…… changed to being something your saving yourself from the pain and inconvenience it now brings.

When did our inconveniences change? When did living life start to become inconvenient. Who sold us on this idea? No…. really? Who sold us on this idea that it is too hard to be in control. It is too hard to think for ourselves outside of the demands that are placed on us by responsibilities. You might as well be dead. You’re not living. You’re not breathing. You’re not thinking. You’re not fighting.

We all feel like sleeping beauty…victim of whatever that stops us in our tracks. But some of us get to comfortable. We enjoy sleeping and it is just to bright outside anyway.

You slow down. And you slow down…. and you slow down.

And you turn off the engine that drives you inside. You turn it off and you rust. Weeds start to grow around you. Things start getting into your life you never wanted to invite in. You have this taste and this desire inside of you still but it’s too hard to get this ol’ rusty soul cranked up. I have been sittin for a while and maybe next time. Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe sometime, maybe, maybe, sometime, sometime.

……..

………….

………………   Then you just stop talking about it all together.

You know when you scrape the hell out of the bowl/plate/whatever until you decide your done.

You ever do that to yourself? Where you just feel so addicted to food that you’re leaving no crumbs?

Savor life.

If only we can savor all of life like that! That is what I think. This craving, this desire to savor that is designed in us….. we need to not slap ourselves on the hand.

Life isn’t catholic school with Nun’s, ruler in hand, ready to attack any attempt of enjoyment. Reward yourself by expanding your palate of pleasures in life.

Oral pleasures don’t make a satisfied life. Remind yourself. What feels better than looking good in your bathing suit on a beautiful soon coming summer day? What feels better than being able to pick your kid up and put him on your shoulders in celebration of the big game win? What feels better than being able to walk down the aisle feeling comfortable in your skin? What feels better than……..? A satisfied life is an active one daring to live.

Savor Life.

Have you been living life lately? Come back to life. The invitation is there. It always has been.

Smile. Today is your day. Take ownership of it. Enjoy it with a newspaper and OJ  in the morning watching the sunrise crest the landscape. Do something today that you haven’t made time for. Get out of the house, turn up the music, drive somewhere till you find something worth discovering.

You remember all those desires you have in that heart of yours? Quit living solely off the pleasures of your diet. That isn’t living. Earn your obituary. Let something more be said of you. Have more to say for yourself. Respond to life instead of reacting with food.

Criminals and Fat People have something in common… you live long enough in your prison you become afraid to leave it’s safety. But you were never meant for a prison.  You’re better than this. Don’t lie to yourself, prisons aren’t safe there a death sentence. Get out before it takes the life you were meant to live away from you. Your youth had more ambitions! Challenge yourself. Choose to look at life with a more fulfilling lens. Capture your thoughts and choose life.

Put down the fatty scrape.

I know it may be scary, but find who you are again. You can do it. Your life is waiting on you. The skies the limits. That’s what makes humanity so special.

Download “Good Life” by One Republic and turn it up. Now smile and repeat after me.

“_(your full name)__  ………. Welcome Back!”

Savor Life.

I got a chuckle out of it as I think every true fatty has thought this at one time or another. I know I have. We would never do it of course but this illustrates the frustration we have with our weight. This angst of desperation building up inside, wanting more out of life.

DON"T CUT YOUR FAT OFF. Healthy Tip for the day from FMC.

Well I want to tell you fatty google guy that you are normal. Please don’t cut off your fat…. we don’t want you to actually harm yourself…. but I don’t think you wrote this to actually see if you could. I think you wrote this out of shear frustration from what fattydom is doing to your life. And I say, “Good!” We need to get some angst and frustration….. we need to use that feeling for us instead of against us. How do you do that. Sit down and write out why you want to cut your fat off. Take some time for yourself and invest back into your well being. Sit down and write out all the ways that your weight is trapping you from your desires. Write out all the ugly parts that no one sees. Write out how it pisses you off. Get it all out. Now read over it a couple of times until you read it and the whole letter resonates and articulates all of your feelings of fatness and frustration. Now write out all the things that would be different if the weight were gone. How you would feel, think and live. What differences would be your favorite.

Now look at them both side by side. Now realize that all your small choices day to day have led you to one of these papers. And I can probably bet it isn’t the one you like. So what do you do? Take the sobering moment and use this extreme thought of cutting off your fat for you and not against you. Start cutting off things from your life at the root of the issue. Your daily choices. You must change the way you live. Your career, kids, marriage, etc. is a direct reflection of your choices….. so is your fattydom. Want out of the fatty club? Then you have to choose it daily like an alcoholic chooses to not have a drink daily. Choosing to say no to destructive momentary pleasure for the pleasure of enjoying a full life. It begins with you having some personal responsibility over your choices and where they lead you.

You didn’t get here because your gut decide to revolt against your body and make you fat. This is a symptom of unhealthy choices. It hard to hear that sometimes so I applaud you if you made it this far.

One thing you know by looking at this guy. It wasn't genetics.

Want to hear the good news? The great thing about this is your not trapped to a life of addiction. As your learn and change your choices you will go from feeling the frustration of an unhealthy life to feeling the numerous rewards of a healthy life including putting the unneeded shears away Look at your list you wish your current choices led you to. Add your dreams and desires in life and start making the small changes daily to get you there.

I was talking with my Exercise Physiologist yesterday about my comprehensive workout plan. I asked him what he would say to those fat people out there wanting to get back in shape… wanting to join a gym…… but they get to the gym and they don’t know where to start. His advice? Just start something. Instead of cutting off the fat with something sharp cut off the fat with your daily choices. You know that is the only way it is going to happen. You have to decide, fight, sweat, plan, prioritize, follow through, and and and. You know what you need to do to get started…. and the good news is you don’t need to know everything to get started. You know enough to get started. No more excuses. Start walking until you figure out what you should do next. Start eating fruits, vegetables, and grilled chicken until you figure out a healthy diet that works for you and your needs. Just Start.

Quit playing dead in life. You want more out of life apparently or you wouldn’t want to get rid of the hardship that you feel is holding you back. Living starts with choosing to live every day. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow. All you can control is today. So make today count. You may not see the end result today….but today mattered just like your past days mattered to the point that your contemplating grabbing the scissors. Each Day Matters. The affects of today will reflect in your future. Let today be the day you decide to live again.

Now the questions is….. do you want your life back? Grab a pen and some paper and begin reclaiming it back. You can do it. I believe in you.

you got this Chad… you can do this.

My feet are hurting.

God I am out of shape

Maybe I should stop for a second.

NO! This is part of it. It is hard….. I just need to keep pressing through.

I can go for 30 minutes.

It’s not going to kill me to keep going for 30 minutes straight… i am sitting down for crying out loud.

Perseverance. A word neglected by us fatty’s. I was talking to a friend of mine and he asked me how the gym was going. My response… “I hate cardio…….but I am trying to get over it.”

He responded, “Yeah, well anyone who say they like it is full of it.”

“Well that makes me feel better. So it’s not just a fatty thing.”

“Dude, It’s a human thing.”

It is part of the human condition to persevere…. I think we forget that our challenges have a breaking point and so we just quit too easily. We justify our quitting.

I was at my gym (Dekalb Medical Wellness Center) on the stair stepper and I was feeling the burn after 5 minutes much less 30. So I talk to myself. I tell myself, “No, you are not going to quit… you are going to keep going.” I want to quit. I want to make excuses. It is like I am in rehab going through the withdrawals of fattydom. But I have to press through the withdrawals. The only way to get healthy is to persevere through, not go back to the drug of apathy and uncontrolled appetite.

The bottom line is… we quit to soon. That is what keeps us where we are… miserable, fat and dying because we don’t fight for anything anymore. People don’t fight for their marriages daily. They don’t fight for their kids when it counts. They fall asleep and sign their life away in debt agreements and they cease to live. They breathe, breed, consume, make excuses, and live far lower than they are capable of and designed for. Wake up, you who sleep. Fight the mediocrity of the day that wants to enslave you. Fight for your marriage. Your family. Your identity. Your goals. Your health. Your convictions. Yourself.

Do whatever you got to do. What do you have to do? Do you have to write it out? Do you need to expose yourself and push yourself out there a bit to get back on track? Then get a blog. They are free. What do you have to do to motivate yourself. Not Motivated? Well check out my blog daily. Check Anthony Robbins blog, Check out fatladySingN’s blog. Check out Steve Pavlina’s  Blog. Don’t know what to eat? Sit with a Nutritionist. Can’t afford a nutritionist? Dekalb Medical Wellness Center has a service where a Nutritionist will go shopping with you called a Grocery Store Tour. It cost $40. Can’t afford that? Then go back and check where you are actually spending your money….. because your poor eating habits always found a way to get paid for. Resources abound. Make no mistake there will be an outcome… your choices lead to your outcome. So look around…. what choices got you there?

“But you don’t understand my story… you don’t understand my circumstances, you don’t understand I don’t have time. You don’t understand my limitations…they prevent me from…….  You don’t understand!”

Ok, get it all out. Write out all those arguments that hinder you from attaining the self progress you actually want deep inside of you. Write them out. Read them over a couple of times and make sure you get them all down on paper. Now hold them up and look at them. This is your legacy. This is how you are choosing to be remembered. Is it starting to bother you at all? Write a new legacy of things you can do versus what you can’t. Figure it out. You can do it. I believe in you. You are far more capable than anyone realizes. George Bernard Shaw says in the Maxims of Revolutionist, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Quit finding reasons to stop. Be the unreasonable man.

Fatty Pumping Iron.

Find success stories in your local gym. Be the success story in your local gym. Quit making excuses and do whatever you have to do. Quit waiting for the right circumstance. The right circumstance is right now.

What ever the challenge is get some grit and push through. You have grit inside of you. There is no way you got where you are without some grit. It takes grit to earn money and pay bills. It takes grit to have kids. It takes grit to make your own way in the world. You know this. You have done this. Start applying you grit to all areas of your life that are important to you. Not just the ones with a bill.

Perseverance. It has a breaking point.

Breathe Chad. Breathe. Push. Breathe.

Keep Going.

You can do this.

I don’t care if you hack up a lung you keep going.

Don’t Stop. I make the decision to keep moving forward.

Press Harder Chad. Pedal harder. Harder. HARDER.

Turn up my music if I have to. Avoid looking at the clock. Focus on the pushing not the countdown Chad. Focus. Push. Press. Harder. Keep Going.

And you just keep going. You make your decisions. You set the bar of what you can and can’t do.

This morning I got on the step machine for my 30 minutes of cardio. I was tired and feeling the burn and wanting to stop within 30 seconds. Then I made it to 5 minutes. I pushed myself. I coached myself. I told myself…..I kept going and then I made it to 15 minutes. I felt a breakthrough and plowed through to 20 minutes. At 22 minutes the breakthrough was gone but my resolve was stronger. 25 minutes another break through after some tough few minutes. At the 27 minute mark I decided that I was going to not settle for 30 minutes today. I was going to apply my own extra grit. I was going to do 45 minutes. I committed. Pushed myself to 32 minutes. Tired. Sweating. Aching. 35 minutes. Turn up the techno music louder. Pumping as hard as I can. Pushing through the pain 40 minutes. And then the breakthrough at 41 minutes. I was flying for the last 4 minutes pushing myself as hard as I could. I got off the machine at a little over 45 minutes feeling good. Feeling pumped. Feeling fire in my body with adrenaline. I am alert. Clear minded. Breathing. Ready not for the locker room but my upper body workout followed by crunches until I can’t do crunches any more.

I earned these numbers.

You know what I realized? That 45 minutes I never had before during my day. 45 minutes I slept away. 45 minutes I didn’t make time for. Over 5700 steps under my belt that I start my day off with. What did you start you day off with?

You can do it.

Perseverance is like a seed. Add it to your vocabulary. Water it with your life. And watch you grow. Today is the day. Today is your day. What are your going to do?

We find excuses to not exercise.

Too cold.
Too early.
Too busy.
Too much money for a membership.
I can’t afford it.
I’m not comfortable.

And then this apathy toward not staying active spills into our everyday life habits. Steve Candler spoke of a study in his book 17 Lies That Hold You Back & The Truth That Will Set You Free, a book I highly recommend,”

… there was a study done of people’s differences in energy when making a bed. The heavier the person, the more economy of movement he or she would exhibit in the making of the bed. They captured it on videotape. The heavy person would make the fewest and shortest movements around the bed, as if subconsciously trying not to exercise.

“The lighter person would move around and around the bed in a whirlwind of motion and movement. Therefore, the lighter person would expend more calories and burn more fat doing the same task. The point of the study, and of the hidden video in the bedroom, was to find out if we subconsciously conspire to keep our weight from going down. It seemed to suggest we do.

“We secretly try to keep our body fat the same as it is and to keep our metabolic set point constant. Therefore, the trick to losing weight is to raise that set point by consciously overriding the subconscious system so that we burn more and more fat until our body assigns itself a new set point and a new weight.”

Fatty goes to the gym.

So I joined a gym. I am refocusing my life because the small habits in my life support my poor health. I realized, however, that I not only have to change my diet and my exercise, but I also have to change my day and how I use my time. I have done a lot of “wanting” in my life. I want to be healthy. I want to run. I want to be there for my life. I want to have financial success. Oh how I want hard…. I disguise it and call them longings of my heart.

I have been “doing” a lot as well. I have been parking close. I have been the lazy bed maker. I have been the guy that sneaks a bite. I have been avoiding the gym. I have been pacifying myself by not pushing myself.

What I have been “doing” does not support what I want. We don’t stop and evaluate our day to day life enough. Sometimes we just need to stop and say “Is the way that I am living my life going to get me what I want?” and if there answer is “no” then we need to reevaluate how we are doing things.

So who is the gym of choice you ask for a fatty? Well I knew it needed to be close by. I don’t feel like being with a bunch of Ken and Barbie dolls so I looked around and found the best gym possible for me and my goals.  I found The Wellness Center at DeKalb Medical. The Wellness Center is an 18,000-square-foot fully-equipped fitness facility complete with an indoor pool and indoor track.

They are connected with Dekalb Medical Hospital and have a variety of programs and services in the area of fitness, lifestyle education, and integrative medicine. Everything I need. I like Dekalb Medical Wellness Center because it is more than just a gym for it’s membership fee. They focus on having resources to help you reach your goal versus just having equipment, some jocks and a cleaning crew.

I noticed as soon as I walked in that it was a place for “the rest of us”. I walked in and felt normal…which is challenging to anyone walking through the door at 530 pounds.

I started my Membership on Monday, and by Tuesday evening I have already completed three workout sessions, worn “fatty boy shorts” and called them swimming trunks, had an aerobics bike tell me to “Pedal Faster”, worked out in my “Official Before Picture” outfit, and learned how water aerobics can be a fun, complete, and challenging workout.  Water Aerobics isn’t just for little old ladies.  It’s great for fatties, too.

Yes, I did wear my Timb's to the Gym

Right now I am doing what “I think” I should do. But within the week, I’ll be meeting a personal trainer and a nutritionist to help me along the way. In fact, I will be sitting down with Alice the Nutritionist on Thursday and I will tell you all about it.

I am changing my life, by changing my day-to-day.  You have goals. You have dreams. What can you change in your daily habits than can get you back on the path to the life you want?

PEDAL FASTER FATTY!!! Hey... I am trying here!

This is what FatManChronicles is going to be about. Taking you along for the journey back to health, back to life.  Let’s see what we can learn together.

I will be honest…. I will miss not sleeping in.

But, I will survive. Because our choices dictate where we end up in a lot of routine day-to-day life. So here I am at the butt crack of dawn with pouring rain outside my window trying to muster enough determination to roll out of bed and begin my day new and fresh and with purpose.

You know we all have excuses for what we don’t want to do. Whenever we encounter it we shield ourselves with our excuse. The only problem is we don’t realize that most people around us see right through our excuses and see it for what it is. People will come to accept the fact of how you make decisions for yourself. They will hear your excuses, watch you live out the excuse for your own reasons, and a lot of time set their value of you based on your personal standard with living with your excuses.

So many people just live out their excuses and settle with it. We tailor our lives around the excuses we make. I settled with it. I lived with excuses for myself and I found it led to areas of my life being unremarkable.

Excuses cost too much. We think we are giving an excuse for one item but we don’t realize that our decisions define our personal standard. Our choices throughout the day is a direct reflection of our personal standards. Tony Robbins says it well, “We get what we MUST have.” If you must have sleep you got to bed earlier. Some people’s “MUST” are out of wack, just look at their finances. We are not fooling anyone. We are not fooling our kids, our boss, our coworkers, etc. Most of them see right through our daily excuses and just accept us for who we choose to be or maybe don’t accept us. The only problem with that is “unremarkable” starts to creep into important relationships that we don’t want to be filled with “unremarkable”. It cost to much in the long run. Your excuses may get a free pass for the item they were intended for but don’t fool yourself, they are taking their payment in your life and most likely the areas affected most are your relationships and success towards your dreams.

It was easier for me to be ok with areas of unremarkable in my life because when I was single it was about me and no one else. I have always had big desires and dreams for myself but never seemed to fully connect the dots on why my life has added up to important areas remaining unremarkable due to my choices. I had dreams but no personal standard. You can’t get far with that combination. I was doomed to fail.

But this morning I get up and change my standard and this concept is here to greet me. Welcoming me to a new way of defining my future, by defining my personal standards by the habits, words, thoughts & actions I take on a daily basis. And I am up…… My excuse to stay in bed this morning doesn’t win today. My future wins. My health wins. My dreams win. I win.

A normal fat guy posing for a picture normally thinks of trying to get the most slimming, best looking picture of himself taken. But not so with this photo. On the contrary for an “OFFICIAL BEFORE PICTURE“ he trIes to brick it as hard as possible and be as fat and tacky as possible so when he does his reveal it can be the most dramatic difference possible. Purely for dramatic effect.

But how do you do that without getting depressed over how fat you are? You get a sense of humor and realize moving forward means as soon as you take that photo you are moving forward in health from it. You realize the only thing to be depressed over is if you stay there. You allow it to be motivation that you hang on the wall. A reminder of what you are running from and running towards. So you don’t forget.

I started searching through my own collection of photos to see if there was a photo worthy enough of the title ”The Official Before Picture“. I searched high and low and frustratingly couldn’t find a picture that would work. And then the girlfriend snapped it one day on the way out. I had decided to rock it as tacky as possible that day which explains the outfit…but what explains the tacky? I don’t know. I think I pulled it off…what do you think?

So without further ado I present to you my OFFICIAL BEFORE PICTURE.

The Official Before Picture of Chad Curtiss 02/2010

It took seven years and a journey deep within herself, but today the newest member of the Joy Fit Club weighs in at a trim 165 pounds.

Burns showed off her new figure and shared her story with Joy Fit Club founder Joy Bauer and TODAY’s Matt Lauer Monday in New York. To illustrate how much fat she lost, huge buckets filled with 410 pounds of lard were piled on risers on the stage. Next to them stood three TODAY interns — two women and one man who together weigh as much as Burns did before she lost all that weight.

The Joy Fit Club consists of men and women who have lost and kept off 100 pounds or more. All of them have done it by diet and exercise; none by surgery. Burns is the 72nd member of the club — but none of her predecessors has lost as much weight as she has.

A life of limits

“Food was my drug of choice,” the 50-year-old woman told Lauer and Bauer. It took the failed suicide attempt to force her to discover that.

At the time, the list of things Burns couldn’t do was endless. She couldn’t visit friends for fear she’d break any furniture she sat on. Couldn’t get in a car. Couldn’t go to the movies. Couldn’t attend to her own hygiene without help.

She couldn’t pick her foot up high enough to climb even one low step, couldn’t take more than two or three steps without gasping for breath. Just standing for more than a couple of minutes caused severe pain in her hips and back.

Even sleeping lying down was a near impossibility.

Burns was going through five liters of oxygen a day. She had hypertension, restrictive lung disease, sleep apnea, respiratory insufficiency, obesity hypoventilation syndrome, venous stasis insufficiency, diabetes. The right side of her enlarged heart was failing.

For years, Burns had tried every fad diet without success. But, she said, the secret to finally taking control of her body and her life came down to “working from within — from the inside out.”

Walking a long road

It didn’t happen overnight. In the letter Burns sent when she applied for membership in the Joy Fit Club, she recounted how she began losing weight by dieting alone. That took her down to 403 pounds by December 2006.

But she was still finding it very difficult to breathe. Her doctors implanted a tracheotomy tube in her throat and told her that she would have to live with it the rest of her life — unless she lost at least another 120 pounds.

“The trach was my wake-up call, as I did NOT want to have a trach tube sticking out of my throat for the rest of my life,” Burns wrote in her letter. “I knew at this moment it was ‘do or die.’ ”



Three TODAY show interns who combined weigh as much as Tammey Burns once did were able to fit into a pair of the pants she once wore. Next to them is stacked 410 pounds of lard — the amount of weight Burns lost.

The Joy Fit Club consists of men and women who have lost and kept off 100 pounds or more. All of them have done it by diet and exercise; none by surgery. Burns is the 72nd member of the club — but none of her predecessors has lost as much weight as she has.

Tammey Burns, who once could barely take a step, became a competitive race-walker.

Burns still takes thyroid medicine, she told Lauer and Bauer, and she remains diabetic, although she controls that without having to take insulin. She is considering surgery to finally remove all the excess skin left over after her weight loss.

“My perspective on life is positive and healthy,” Burns wrote. “God is taking me on an amazing journey to give hope to others.

“I am preparing for my certifications as a personal trainer and wellness coach,” she added. “I am training to be competitive in race-walking events. I cannot imagine returning to my formal dismal state, because life is an amazing adventure … if you let it be.”

“I don’t even know you, and I’m proud of you,” Lauer said with emotion. He asked

Burns what advice she has for others who have despaired of ever losing massive amounts of weight.

“Quit the fad diets,” Burns replied. “Make it a healthy lifestyle change. Work on your emotional issues, and combine exercise with a healthy lifestyle change.

“And focus on your goals — not the struggle,” she concluded.

By Mike Celizic
TODAYshow.com contributor