The Weight Loss Post

FaceBook folks know I've lost 50 pounds since last September, and I'm pretty happy about it. I figure I should mention it here for posterity's sake.

It all started last July when my now-ex-wife and I split up. I weighed over 225 pounds at the time. The night I left her, I went to a Motel 6. My hotel room was on the third floor, and there was no elevator. The first weekend there I ran up and down the stairs a lot, and my caloric intake dropped drastically. In fact, it consisted primarily of Tullamore Dew. I managed to lose a few pounds there right away.

A couple weeks later, I was in an efficiency apartment, down a very few pounds, and while I had lost some weight, I was still eating like crap, drinking a fifth of whiskey every two or three days, and avoiding exercise because I had some really bad experiences with it.

Specifically, I went to the gym, got on an elliptical, and within a couple of minutes had nearly died. I hadn't done any cardio in years, and years, and then some more years. It sucked. It sucked hard.

August, 2012... Fuck the Eliptical

So my approach wasn't very organized at all. I was losing some weight because I wasn't really eating, but I wasn't moving at all either, and I wasn't very happy. Over the last 12 years, I had packed on weight every time my ex did, because why not? She was overweight, and I kind of didn't give a shit what I looked like. There was a lot of psychic damage there on my part that I hadn't even noticed while I was in that relationship.

When I left and got seriously focused on my Work, I found myself unable to really look at myself in the mirror for long. When I did, it was only for the briefest of moments, and never at the whole of me all at once. Ye gods. The trauma.

Das Me, 24 September, 2012

Eventually, I met someone who was able to help me see there were better ways to live than what I was doing at the time. I went on what I called the "Babalon diet," and in a couple of weeks had dropped from 222 to 219. Not bad, not difficult, and for the first time in forever I felt really good about the idea of losing weight. It wasn't a bummer. It sounded fine. I was single, had just met a beautiful woman who lived on the beach, and damn, I wanted to look good with her come Spring.

So I started working out. Almost every day. The first week I managed to burn 125 calories a day, I think, without killing myself. It took me about 20 minutes to burn that many. The first day, it about fucking killed me. The second was immediately better. By the third day, I was having a whole lot of fun. I had discovered that working out got be really stoned after fifteen minutes or so. The next week I increased the difficulty and duration of my workouts, and I started to see some chartable progress. I kept up the basic pace, ate sensibly, started to lose some weight. I kept track, and this was my first month:

Up and down daily, but overall down 6.6 pounds at the end of the month. Not really drastic, but though I hadn't lost a lot of weight overall, I had lost visible inches, and I felt pretty good about myself. I kept going, and started experimenting more with my diet and exercise patterns, and it paid off. I wasn't losing a lot of weight quickly, but I started melting. Slowly, but surely.

October 2012, RO at Crucible
Suit's Starting to Get Too Big

After the first month or so, I started increasing the amount of my exercise. I went from 30 minutes of cardio to 45, and then to a full hour. And I started using the weight machines at my local YMCA. We had a really good set of machines there. I liked them a lot. I kept losing weight, and ate less, and drank, well... as often, but in less quantities. And the weight kept coming off.

November 2012, taken on a visit to Atlanta

And I looked better, felt better, and kept enjoying the scale more and more...

And the mirror more and more...

January, 2013

The next few months passed, and my weight loss decreased. I went from the machines to free weights, and bro, I even lift. I cut back form the hour of cardio a day as I started increasing my larger muscle mass, and I do a half hour now, three times a week usually, and we go on long walks on the beach and swim on the days it isn't raining.

We modified the diet a bit, and then we modified it again. We're tweaking our intake and recipes regularly. I outlined a weight loss booklet that I plan on e-publishing for a while, and eventually will include in the overall Applied Hermetics book I have planned. That will have a list of the foods we eat, and the exercise I've done to end up where I'm at today.

This morning when I weighed myself, I was at 171, down over 50 pounds from the 225 pounds I weighed when I began. I look better, I feel better, I'd last longer than a minute in a zombie apocalypse.

I'm not where I want to be yet. My initial target was 175 pounds, and when I started geting close I realized I hadn't really had any idea what I would look like at 175. I am now aiming for 160-165, and I'm focusing on sculpting my body shape now with targeted workouts rather than just melting off the outer layers of fat. It's fun. I look in the mirror and see new muscles changing the way I look, and I'm all smiles. It's kind of funny, and a lot of fun.

So... the magic part...

I didn't do much magic to lose this weight. I did some, early on, but not a lot. There are no Hermetic Rites of Awesome Magical Weight Loss I'm going to sell anyone, because honestly, I'd be lying to you if I said that's what did it for me.

Nevertheless, my weight loss is entirely the result of the magic I was doing at the beginning, and have continued to do to this day. I did magic to  pursue the Kingdom of God, here on Earth. I went through the spheres on a hard core quest to eliminate all that stood between me and my Source, me and my full potential as a human being. I was after blood, and lust, and life, and above all else, the JOY of existence. I went through every heaven, and returned to the Earth in power! I created my world as I saw fit.

And the weight loss... that was a part of it, but mostly a side effect of me learning what it means to be a creator god, made in the image of god, immortal soul of awesome power and potential in a mortal form capable of amazing and intense pleasures. The weight loss is an expression of my happiness, my joy.

I put together a set of pics of myself changing since last August, except for February because I apparently deleted all the pic of me from that month. The first was taken my first week after I left my ex. The last was taken a week or so ago, but is how I look today. I lost a half a pound since then, but yeah, das me today. You'll note I got rid of the hipster glasses, but don't worry, I discovered the hipster filter on my phone's camera...

It's been an amazing transformation for me, and the outer form I wear is totally reflective of the effectiveness of the stuff I do.

Success. Proof.

Do magic.