I had already started my diet/exercise effort well before I committed to this Everest trip. In May 2017 at 250 pounds, I decided that I was tired of being unconfortable and needed to do something about it. I started by giving up junk food and restricting my diet to 1600-1900 calories a day. I dropped 10 pounds the first week, the next two weeks another 5 pounds each lost. I had started walking on the treadmill as well. My first walk was only 3/4 mile, not very impressive, but it was a start.

I had lost 25 pounds by time we went on our vacation to San Francisco in June. I made the mistake of going off diet while on vacation, under the impression it would make it more enjoyable; that set me back almost a month. At least the exercise before the trip made it easy for me to get around San Francisco on foot.

Things did eventually get back on track. One thing that helped me was this book: The Power of Habit. It does give you a lot to think about in terms of what drives our habits and decisions, and how programmable we really are. As an experiment, I chose Reese’s mini peanut butter cups as my reward for treadmill time; I get one for every 1/2 mile I walk. I burn about 100 calories at speed and full incline on the treadmill, and one cup is 19 calories. So even with the reward, I’m making positive calorie burning progress. And it has worked for me; I find myself wanting to get on the treadmill and looking forward to that reward. It did lose a bit of its allure when I started working out in the gym because it would be a bit odd to slam down several peanut butter cups in front of everyone right after getting off the stair master.

I hit my goal of 50 pounds by the end of 2017 (I actually lost 52 before the end of the year), followed by another 10 in January. After January, I started slightly increasing my caloric intake, so I only lost 3 pounds for February. I’m ok with that, as I figure I could lose another 10 while on my EBC trip.

So as it stands now, I’m 68 pounds lighter and went from a maxed out size 40 waist (I was closer to a 42) to a loose 35 inch waist. Below is a picture stepping from 40, 38, 36, finally to 35. I hope someone I know has stock in LL Bean.

I’m not sure I would have gotten here had I not had the incentive of the Everest Trip. I had made the deal with myself that if I didn’t lose at least 50 pounds, I was going to call the trip off and lose my deposit.