Hey I'm Crabby

Well hello there!! To be perfectly honest I have NEVER blogged before so I sure hope I'm doing this right! I guess I will start with a little introduction of myself. My real name, believe it or not, is not crabby, it's Christian. My last name (Crabtree) is why everyone started calling me Crabby. As you can see from the pictures, at the start I was 6 feet, 366 lbs of pure fun lovin'!! I say "was" because I've lost 8lbs in my first week of using FIXX, FORM and exercise to change my lifestyle. I'm originally from Ohio and moved to Utah about 5 years ago. I've always been a "big" kid, but now it's just getting out of hand. I'm getting a little older...yes 27 is a little older and my body and recovery is starting to slow down. I can't do everything like I used to be able to and I'm worried that things could get worse from here. My family (mother's side) has a long history of health problems including heart attacks and high blood pressure. My mother had a heart attack in her 30's and it's scary knowing that the 30's for me are just around the corner. My mom is ok (hi mom!) but our family is always concerned about weight. I could go on and on about the negative aspects of being big, but i'm sure any of you reading this already know them. I'm just soooo excited to be losing and working hard towards my goal.

I want to make smaller goals first because I get discouraged if my goals are too big (no pun intended). So for now, I want to be down under 330lbs by the middle of October. I feel like if I share my goals with others, they can help me drive to reach my goal! I figure that's about 3 lbs a week consistently from now until October 15th and should be an attainable goal. You may wonder why I want to be down by that date and I'll tell you. I am a volleyball FREAK!! I love volleyball and play for Utah Valley University. This is my senior year and I am on the JV team right now. Even at my size, I've been the starting setter for the past 2 years and don't want to lose that spot. Mid October is when we have our tryouts so I want it to be the new Crabby that shows up. The season matches won't actually start until Mid January, but this is my goal for now. I'm sure once we get to October, I'll make another goal for the start of the season.

The first week was amazing, I followed plan and lost the weight. At the beginning of week 2 I left on vacation for Phoenix. I had a blast yes, but I didn't lose any weight. To be honest I left the pills at home. I still maintained my weight, but lost a little ground that I will catch up on. I'm back on track again now nearing the end of this week. I've found, in my many years of trying to lose weight, that the faster you can get into a rhythm and groove of making healthy living a habit, the faster you can lose weight and be more conscious about what you're eating and when. A huge help for me is spreading all my food out throughout the day. I eat about 7 meals a day one every 2 hours or so. My big meal is my lunch and I snack before and after it. For me, depending on the day, I will take one FORM pill at lunch and another at dinner. Other days I will just take one pill with dinner (the smaller meal). Also a huge help to me has been not eating any starches after 2:30 p.m. The reason I do this is 1. my nutritionist friend told me not to and 2. well...my nutritionist friend told me not to!! I figured I should listen to him since my own nutrition recently hasn't been doing me any good haha! Well I'm gonna run back to work now. I'll hop on later tonight or tomorrow and let you know what's going on! ~~>Christian