It Is Better To Look Good Than To Feel Good?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/better-look-good-than-feel-michael-harrington
Author: Mike Inspires Me
I love life. At one time, however, I had given up on it. I once weighed over 400 pounds and had lost my will to live.
One day I decided to change all of that for good. I took control of my life and my health. In 11 short months I lost over 200 pounds all on my own. Ever since then I have been helping others by sharing my stories and wisdom.
What My Dad and Muscle Cars Taught Me About Health
My dad was a muscle car guy. All my life I remember him tinkering, tuning, tearing down and building big V8 engine cars. The rumble of those loud engines was in his blood. He took pride in those vehicles and special care with maintaining and fixing them up.
He taught me the value in using quality parts and regular maintenance. He didn’t like using cheap oil and low grade gas as he told me that using it affected performance and led to problems with the engine later on.
Contrast this care he took for his vehicles with how he looked after his own health. Unlike his vehicles, he treated his body poorly by eating unhealthy foods, smoking cigarettes, and drinking alcohol. He was a bit of a bad boy and not much of a follower.
I remember when synthetic motor oil started becoming popular. He began to read up on it and started using it in his vehicles despite the fact that it was much more expensive to use. He understood that the synthetic oils were better for wear and tear on car motors. He invested his money and time into fixing his vehicles, yet he continued to neglect and abuse his own body. As the years went on, this neglect began to take it’s toll on his health.
I became a car guy like my dad. Also like my dad, I neglected my own health. I wasn’t much of a drinker and I didn’t smoke, but I ate poorly. I struggled with my weight for years. With that came a host of other health issues such as pre-diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and gastric reflux. To make matters worse, I had lost my will to live.
Why is it that we would put so much effort into fixing our cars, but invest very little into our health? Part of it may have been denial about the consequences. Some of it may have been learned behaviors.
As the years went on, my dad developed COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease aka “emphysema”) from the smoking, yet he continued to smoke. Then he got colon cancer. He had surgery to remove part of his colon to remove the cancer. A few years later he developed lung cancer and had his left lung removed. Despite years of trying to quit, he continued to smoke with his one COPD-weakened lung. I guess he figured he had nothing to lose at that point.
The guy I once thought of as cool as the “Fonz” was now reduced to a shell of a man. The cancer weakened him day-by-day, eating away at his life to the point that he could no longer take care of his cars. His pride and joy ’65 Comet sat neglected in his garage as his health was slipping away too.
He became too weak to drive his cars. My brother and I took turns taking him for rides so he could enjoy his vehicles. Eventually his condition worsened to the point that he needed to be in a nursing facility. I would come by and visit him as often as I could. When I visited I would drive up close to the side of the building where his room was and rev up the engine to my Mustang. That was my way of letting him know I was there, much like he would do when I was a kid.
He originally went to the facility for rehabilitation. Soon after it became apparent that he was in end-stage. He was in denial about his condition telling me about how he was going to get better so he could go back home and help my mom around the house and do some work on her Jeep. Eventually he started to realize that he was not getting better. He asked my mom if he was going to die.
One day we brought him home to celebrate my wife’s birthday. My brother picked him up in his Ford Crown Victoria. He was quite weak but made it up the stairs both outside and in the house. When it was time for him to go back to the facility for his meds and treatment, he was too weak to get back down the stairs to the car. We had no way of getting him outside, so I had to pick him up like a baby and carry him down the stairs. The man who had been a tough-as-nails truck driver and car guy was now cradled in my arms like a child as I carried him down the stairs. The man who once carried me as a child.
Slowly I made it down the outside stairs as my mom and family looked on sobbing, trying to hide it from him.
I set him into his car, so my brother could drive him back to the facility.
Two weeks later my brother, my dad’s best friend and I were there when he died. As he struggled gripping my brother and his friend’s hands, I saw regret in his eyes. I am certain that he wished he had taken better care of his health. He was 63 years old.
Afterwards I told my mom that we need to learn something from his poor health habits. I wasn’t going to let his death be in vain. At the time I was 40 years old and I weighed over 400 pounds. My health was in jeopardy and I realized that if I didn’t do something about it, I would likely die early too.
So in 2014 I embarked on a journey resulting in my losing over 200 pounds in 11 months. More than mere weight loss, this was my triumph over the adversities in my life.
Today I live a sustainable healthy lifestyle focused on putting quality fuel in my body and regular exercise maintenance much like my dad and I did with our cars. My one solace for losing my dad is that I was able to save my own life by the lessons I learned from his habits both with health and with our cars.
Health is an investment in your future.
I Stopped Chasing The Scale
At one point in my health journey I had become obsessed with my weight. I had lost 205 pounds, more than half of my starting body weight, yet I felt that I still had more to lose. I pushed myself over the next several months, weighing myself daily (okay, sometimes twice), watching every single calorie that came into my body. I managed to lose another 5 pounds bringing me to 194 pounds, my lowest adult body weight. However, my eating disorder was getting out of control the more I pushed, and my metabolism was wrecked. I hit the wall after almost a year and a half.
I had lost quite a bit of muscle mass with my weight loss. I felt weak in my upper body and my friends and family kept telling me, “Don’t get too skinny!” I remember how that use to make me so mad when people said that to me. I sometimes responded, “You’re worried about me getting too skinny, where were you when I was over 400 pounds?!” Looking back I can see I was in denial about how much weight I had lost. I was most likely experiencing body dysmorphia.
I remember I was riding home from work when I told my wife it was time for me to stop my plan for a bit. I was in tears as I told her that I was scared to death that I would lose everything that I worked so hard to do. But I also knew that I couldn’t go on pushing myself any longer without a break.
For 2 weeks I stopped tracking my food intake and stopped all exercise except for my walks during my work lunchtime. The first day or so was hard mentally, but I persisted. I even went to a Chinese buffet and ate whatever I wanted (within reason). I knew this was dangerous for a person like me with a binge eating disorder, but it was something I had been craving.
During the break I did a lot of thinking about my next steps afterwards. This was the critical point where most people fail: Not planning for the long-term. From the beginning I knew at some point I was going to reach my goal weight and have to some toning and building. So I wrote out a body building plan with some help from a friend. He also reminded me, “Buddy, you have to eat more when you’re building.” As you can imagine, I was a bit apprehensive about that.
I bought protein supplements and began my new routine. I gained weight quickly, both muscle and fat… I didn’t want to stop weight lifting, so I read up on techniques body builders use to build muscle and cut fat. I experimented with intermittent fasting and carb cycling, sometimes losing weight, but quickly gaining it back when I stopped the cycles. It was getting monotonous. Soon it became a living hell for me again, checking my weight often, and kicking myself each time I realized I was gaining.
Many people were amazed to find out that I wasn’t happy after losing all of that weight. Most of them cannot even imagine what it is like to try to maintain it.
At some point I met some people involved in the Health At Every Size movement. I did a lot of reading on the subject and began to realize that it was far more important for me to be healthy overall than worrying about reaching a perfect body and weight. Also around this time a lot of press came out about contestants from the Biggest Loser gaining weight back after the show. Reading up more on the subject I wrote an article of my own called, “The Biggest Loser Effect: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back“. Back then my focus was more on the fact that I believed that many of the contestants had not changed their lifestyles after losing all of the weight. Fact or not for them, I was struggling too.
So I decided that I needed to stop struggling altogether. Weighing myself and being disappointed was stressing me out every day. I needed to:
Stop Chasing The Scale!
So I stopped weighing myself and continued to maintain an overall healthy lifestyle. Some of my smaller clothes got a little tighter, partially because I gained some fat, but I was also getting a lot more muscle mass from the body building. Freeing myself from the scale was such a relief. Most of all, I feel better now.
I admit that I am still frustrated with some of the fat around my abdomen, some of which may be skin leftover from years of morbid obesity, but over time I am getting accepting that it is not worth all of the stress to try to get rid of it. I am extremely fit overall, eating healthy and getting regular exercise almost every day.
I have said it since the beginning that this is a health journey and I continue to learn more each day. At one point in my life all I could think about was losing all of the weight and being normal. I had no idea all of the things I would experience along the way, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. With a lot of hard work and introspection we can become free from the prisons we created for ourselves. True happiness comes from within, not from the world around us.
Stay Awesome!
#stopchasingthescale #weightloss #health #obesity #diet #fitness #weightlossjourney
7 Key Things I Did To Set Myself Up For Success With My 200 lb Weight Loss
Taking on an endeavor like losing over 200 pounds is a daunting task. It is a lot more than merely going on a diet and taking on an exercise plan. For me, it meant a complete lifestyle change. In order to ensure that I had an increased chance for success, I created some tools to help in the process. Nothing new here. Most of these are common-sense.
- Made My Plan Public
I told everyone about my commitment to losing weight. This helped with two things:
– It enlisted support of others. A life-changing transformation needs all the moral support it can get from others around you.
– It made me accountable – I am a man of my word. If I tell someone I am going to do something, I do it.
Reinvented Myself / Stopped Identifying With Obesity
After struggling my entire adult life with attempts to lose weight, I realized that I had to change my life, not merely exercise and go on a diet. This had to be a commitment to a lifestyle change in order to be sustainable. Part of that included my identification with being obese. Over the years I had taken on labels like “Big Mike” and “Big Guy”. When a person identifies with labels it may influence their behavior. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Self-Motivation/Talk
This idea is a little complex and I plan to write more about it in a future article. In it’s simplest form, I do a lot of self-talk. Coaching, pushing, and motivating myself out loud even. I also try to eliminate words like “can’t” from my vocabulary. It’s amazing just how changing a word or two in a sentence can not only alter it’s entire meaning, it can drive you in the direction you need to head. For example, most obese people would say, “I want to lose weight.” It is when they can say, “I am going to lose weight,” that real change can happen.
Focused On/Association With the End Goal
I associated my losing all of the weight with winning the lottery. In other words, if someone told you that if you walk every day and cut back on what you eat gradually for a year, you will get $10 million. It is that mental association which gave me the drive to push myself when I didn’t always feel like it. All I could think about was being “normal” sized. And in the end, I found that being healthy was even better than having $10 million.
- Always Improving / Trying New Things / Adapting
My journey was a far from perfect process. I continually tweak my routines, try new exercises and eating plans, and observe the outcome. And it is a journey, not a destination. Many people focus only on the end goal of losing all of the weight, which is only part of the story. This leads me to my next point…
Focused on Sustainability
I knew that once I lost the weight I needed to focus on never going back and what it takes to do that realistically. This is the part where I have seen many people fall back. They relax and go back to their old habits. This is a life-long commitment and I learned another key thing:
I never really beat obesity, I had to learn techniques to manage it.
Another thing that keeps me going is when I discovered that inspiring others motivates me even more. It is such a reward to know that I can share my gift with others.
- Small Changes Lead to Big Results
This is one of my central principles. I knew that in order to change my behaviors and habits I had to gradually make small changes over time. I used an app to log all of my food and as I lost weight it gradually reduced my caloric needs.
But Mike, you lost 200 pounds in 11 months…
True, and I would not tell you that this is realistic for most people. What it did prove is how driven I was once I started to get momentum with my weight loss. I will expand more on this idea in future articles, but suffice it to say I learned that your body and mind need time to adapt to the changes you are making.
There were other tools I used, but the seven above were some of the more significant ones. Most of these concepts can be used for any type of change you want to make in your life, not just weight loss. Having a long-term game plan as you embark upon a life-altering change will set you up for success.
Gratitude
You were there for me at my worst
Enduring my pain with me
Supporting me when I could barely manage
Loving me when I did not love myself
When my dad was dying, you never left my side
You never made me feel bad when we had to accommodate my extreme obesity in public
You were not ashamed of me, like I was of myself
You listened to me helplessly on so many nights when I told you that I did not want to live anymore
You supported me through my life-changing transition
You always allowed me to be ME
And 
with your love, I have learned to love myself again
There are no words to express the gratitude, the love, the appreciation I have for you
Teresa, you are one of a kind
Your infectious laugh tickles me inside
A real woman and wife
Beautiful beyond compare
The brightest smile that lights up my universe
My Purple Artist
Schmoo, I love you eternally,
Bay
Weight Loss: Reality & Good News
Having lost over 200 pounds in 11 months, I have a pretty good idea around what the challenges are and what works well. I don’t think there is anything new here. Most of it is common sense.
Here are some of my observations:
The Challenges
- It takes work
Most people don’t like that 4-letter word, “work”. We live in a world which encourages quick-fixes and immediate gratification. You can lose weight quickly by doing fad diets and lots of exercise. But real, sustainable weight loss comes with having a plan for the future. The work I am referring to here is less about what you do at the dinner table or in they gym, but the work it takes in your mind. - There is no “magic” pill, special diet, surgical procedure, nor exercise to solve it
Yes, my friends, I have tried many of them myself, with some temporary success. What I realized about myself was that I was not learning anything about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So, if you ever want to get off that merry-go-round of gaining and losing, you have to look at what kind of life you want for yourself and what it takes to get there and stay there realistically.
The Good News
- You can learn techniques to manage obesity
At one point I stated that I had “beaten” my obesity demon. What I have come to learn is that it never really went away. It still comes back and I have learned techniques to manage it. Most are pretty simple and take some time to master. And remember, this is a journey, not a destination. - Taking your time versus struggling for years works better
I supposed I could be called out on this one…But, Mike, you lost over 200 pounds in 11 months!…
Yes, I did, and later I will expand on how that happened, why, and my observations around the pros/cons. Suffice it to say that this amount of weight lost, coupled with the time in which I lost it, may not be reasonable for most people. One thing that happens is that your body and your mind need time to adjust to change. For the longest time after I lost the weight, I still felt like I was over 400 pounds, which led to other challenges as you can imagine. I have read and spoken to others on this, and it is common, especially with a rapid loss.
- Inside each of us is the power to do far more than we think we can
So… Back when I was over 400 pounds if I had told you that I was going to lose over 200 pounds in 11 months, you might have told me I was crazy or warned me of the hazards. Well, I did do it and I know others who have as well, and even more weight. Again, I am not advocating this, but what kept me going, drove me to my goal, was the fact that it was possible. I know many people who tell me they “can’t” because of reasons a, b, or c… Well, I am telling you that if you want something bad enough, and getting there is possible (and, of course, safe), you can do it. And I can help coach people how to get to that mindset and learn to coach themselves.
In the coming months I plan to expand on each of the observations listed above, as well as other ones, to unveil the mystery of “how the heck did you (I) do it??” My techniques come from learning from years of struggling, personal observations, research, and common sense.
Use the contact form on my website at www.mikeinspiresme.com to reach to me. This will also allow you to receive notices, tips, and other tidbits around health and weight loss. I promise not to share your information, nor send you spam!
400 Pounds and Lost The Will To Live: How I Took My Life Back
Originally posted on Linkedin on May 1, 2015
I can’t imagine that many of you have any idea of what it is like to be so obese that you cannot fit into a booth at a restaurant. But you may know of someone who is.
I was that guy
Back in June 2014 I weighed over 400 pounds. I was miserable and I didn’t care about living anymore. I felt that I had no hope for ever losing all of this weight, nor did I know how I was going to do it.
Any BMI ≥ 35 or 40 is severe obesity
A BMI of ≥ 35 or 40–44.9 or 49.9 is morbid obesity
A BMI of ≥ 45 or 50 is super obese*
I was not lazy, nor did I want to be in this condition. In fact, I have been fairly active most of my adult life. I have heard people say some very short-sighted things about people who are obese.
She just needs to get off her butt and just get some exercise.
I don’t understand why he keeps dieting and then gaining it all back.
Ugh. Look how fat that guy is.
That last statement was one I had heard walking back to my office. The person who said it appeared to be mentally ill, though I get the feeling that she was just saying what many people were thinking. No matter how much I try to shrug off those type of comments, I allowed them to affect me. Perhaps even infect me.
I already felt ashamed of myself and my body. This shame carried over to every aspect of my life and was holding me back. All of that fat was weighing me down not only physically, but smothering my ability to enjoy life.
I had tried most diets, exercise plans, weight loss groups, diet pills/patches… you name it. None of these tactics gave me any long-term results. I needed to do something different.
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. ~ Tony Robbins
I think Henry Ford originally said something similar to the quote above. One thing I admire about guys like Henry and Tony is that they challenge what the rest of the world tells us to do. I well realized that I needed to do something different in order to get healthy, lose all the weight, and make it permanent. I was being told to consider weight loss surgery, take pills, do crazy exercise routines, and to go on a diet.
Ugh. Been there. Done that.
I wasn’t about to be another guy who lost a bunch of weight, yet again, only to gain it back and more (I’ve been that guy many times). So I decided to embark on a journey to get healthy on my own using the wealth of knowledge I have gathered through the years.
There’s a way to do it better – find it. ~ Thomas A. Edison
What I learned was that for me, diets and intense exercise routines did not work. I was not losing very much weight, feeling deprived, and usually giving up. So what was going to work for long term? Making small changes gradually over time so that my body and mind could adjust. I needed to reinvent myself.
I needed a “Mike-over“
(See my other related posts, Small Changes Lead to Big Results, Reinventing Yourself: Meet a Brand New You, and Inspiring Others – Gives You Fuel)
What I realized about myself was that I had no idea how much food I was eating. I had a lot of what I call “food vampires”, little bits of snacking (or lots) throughout the day, that I was not paying attention to, but were sucking the life out of me.
I remember times that my wife was running late to pick me up, so I would run over to the sushi place around the corner from my job and have two sushi rolls for a “snack”. Back then I thought sushi isn’t that bad. It’s just fish and rice… low in fat… But high in calories! The average roll has about 350-500 calories. And I was eating two before having dinner. That’s an additional 700-1000 calories!(I know you smart folks can do addition)
I did not get up over 400 pounds in a short period of time. It was gradual since my early adulthood, building up each time I lost weight and gained back even more. I need to do the reverse of what I had done to get fat.
I needed to get “unfat“
This is a concept that I came up with regarding the process I needed to go through both physically and mentally in order to carefully remove all of the toxic matter in my body and mind.
I decided to use an app which allowed me to track all of my food intake and exercise. In addition it allowed me to gradually reduce my intake over time so that the change was small and my body (and mind) to have time to adjust.
For my exercise I started with very moderate weight training and walking. I gradually increased over time as I lost weight to the point of daily walking.
Walking gives me several advantages as an exercise:
- It’s easy and can be done almost anywhere
- It’s FREE
- Lower intensity is better for fat burning
- It has replaced my stress eating urge
- It’s sustainable for the long-term
So, almost 11 months later, I have lost around 190 pounds and vastly improved both my physical and mental health. I feel better than I had in 20 years.
I walk every day at least an hour. I have a new found love for hiking. I could not wait for winter to be over (I live in the Northeastern United States) so I could get out and enjoy nature. I find that walking in nature brings me back to life.
I love my life now and can’t wait to get out and try new things!
I took my life back!
*From Wikipedia’s Classification of Obesity
Check out my other articles:
Small Changes Lead to Big Results
Reinventing Yourself: Meet a Brand New You
Inspiring Others – Gives You Fuel (featured in LinkedIn’s “What Inspires Me” section)
Reinventing Yourself: Meet a Brand New You
Originally posted on Linkedin on Apr 8, 2015
People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now. – Eminem
Can we change who we are today?
When I started my health and weight loss journey last year, I didn’t realize it would eventually lead to reinventing myself.
The concept of reinventing one’s self is not new. You can find articles written by Entrepreneur magazine to Psychology Today on the subject.
Being in my forties and 403 pounds, I was atime bomb with regard to my health. I was pre-diabetic, developed high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and a host of other obesity-related conditions.
Compound this with other complications like not being able to fit in a restaurant booth and needing a special “big man’s” chair at work. I was often stressed out, embarrassed, and felt hopeless.
So I took action to change all of that.
In retrospect it all makes sense. I had to reinvent myself in order to make these changes permanent. The old me had many bad habits, poor self-esteem, and was not confident in my abilities. All of these things were holding me back and my health was in jeopardy.
I asked myself:
What kind of quality of life do I want for my remaining years?
I won’t get into the specifics of what motivated me and what changes I had made in this post. In short, I realized that I needed to slowly undo all of the years bad habits by monitoring and gradually reducing my food intake and maintain regular, sustainable physical activity (primarily walking and weight training).
What I have discovered is that my journey was more than just a reinvention of myself with a finite end, I am constantly evolving… ever improving.
Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign it. –Anthony J. D’Angelo
This journey has been one of learning and self-awareness. Much like the Agile methodologies I have learned from Software Development projects, I am regularly taking checkpoints on my progress, assessing what works well, and taking action on things on which I can improve.
To date I have lost around 182 pounds and my outlook on life is positive. I have become more motivated in other areas of my life, taking on new challenges both at home and work, and become a mentor and inspiration to others. I no longer feel hopeless, handle stress much better (walking instead of stress eating), andreally enjoy my new life.
I am healthier, confident, and ready to take on the world!
Get ready for Mike 2.0…
New in this version:
Improved overall health
Brand-new look
Faster processor speed
Check out my other articles:
Small Changes Lead to Big Results
Inspiring Others – Gives You Fuel (featured in LinkedIn’s “What Inspires Me” section)
400 Pounds and Lost the Will to Live: How I took My Life Back
Small Changes Lead to Big Results
Originally posted on Linkedin on Mar 31, 2015
I have to take a step back to reflect on some of the changes I have made in my life over the past 10 months. Since June 2014 I have lost around 178 pounds. I was 403 pounds when I started.Yes, you are reading that correct. And, I might add, I have accomplished this all without surgery, being ill, dieting or crazy exercise routines. I have done this by simply keeping track of what I eat and getting moderate exercise, primarily walking. The results have far exceeded what I had dreamed. I plan on sharing more about this as each day it seems that people want to know my “secret”. The answer is that I have no secret, it is just laser-like persistence and patience.
What I want to share here is that I have learned the power of making small changes to produce large results over time. We live in a society of immediate gratification. Everyone wants their quick fix, whether it is for material things like the latest cell phone, or large life-altering changes like I have made. Having fluctated in my weight over the past 20 plus years, trying every form of diet, extreme exercise routines, weight loss groups, pills… I have learned a few things about myself. In order to get healthier and lose all of this weight permanently, I had to change my habits gradually. For the purpose of this post I won’t get into what motivated me, but with the help of a tool to help me track my food intake and exercise I was able to make the change in small steps.
The part I underestimated was the other pieces of my life (and others’) that have been affected by this change. Obviously I have greatly improved my overall health having eliminated gastric reflux, I am no longer pre-diabetic, and on my way to improving a host of other co-morbidities (sleep apnea, edema, etc.). What has been just as amazing to me is the mental piece and how people are reacting to me. Needless to say I feel fantastic. This has been spilling over to other areas of my life- in my home I have been more motivated to do things I have been putting off for years, been more calm overall, and I have plans to do some exciting things this year like ride a roller coaster and perhaps take a martial arts class.
I knew that my wife, kids, mom and other family members would be relieved to see me get healthier. I have even inspired a few family members to start taking care of their own health. Even more amazing to me is how I have been inspiring other people, some of whom I barely know, to take charge of their health. My bus driver, who I hadn’t seen in over a year, was so astounded he went home and told his wife all about what I have done. My exercise mentor, who I have looked up to for years, told me that I am inspiring him! And, for the first time I can ever remember in my adult life, a person commented to me about how I was in “good shape…” Me? The man that once weighed over 400 pounds? Unbelievable!
I have so much more to share, and I do plan on writing more. I have never really been a blogger or writer, but I think this is the best medium to get the word out to those who have been asking me questions. Literally every single day someone comes up to me, telling me how fantastic I look now, but even more so wants to know my “secret”. The challenge is that the world we live in today expects the easy way to lose weight (pills, latest fad diet, Biggest Loser show…). Again, the secret for me was simple, make small changes to lead to big results. This can be applied to just about any large task you want to take on. And I plan on shaking up the world…
Check out my other articles:
Reinventing Yourself: Meet a Brand New You
Inspiring Others – Gives You Fuel (featured in LinkedIn’s “What Inspires Me” section)
400 Pounds and Lost the Will to Live: How I took My Life Back
Mike Harrington - Healthy Living Advocate 