Today is the day I truly make a life-style change

Hi everyone,

** Sorry for the long rant to follow! I'd love to everyones experiences and connect with as many of you as possible **

I've been using MFP off and on for over a year just to keep track of calories. I never used the forums until I posted about a week ago about an issue I have with food. I wanted to post a thread here to introduce myself and hopefully connect with others to share the joys and pains of the journey.

I'm a 25 year old guy currently living in Canada (though I'm American). I never had weight issues as a kid/teenager because I competed very seriously in martial arts and was training about 30 hours a week. Long-story short I suffered a series of injuries that made it so I could not compete anymore and I put on a lot of weight very fast. Throughout college, my weight was up and do. I would let it get out of control, not working out and eating everything in sight, then I would go the complete opposite route by working out 5 days a week and eating incredibly healthy. My weight fluctuated between 210 and 240 in my four years.

Before I joined my job, I decided to get in shape and got to 215 (which I looked better than when I was 210 because I had done some strength training) and entered my job at a decent weight (though I knew I had to lose some more weight). My job is very demanding and throughout the next year and a half, I ballooned up to nearly 260 lbs. At this time I was also making my move to Canada with the same company and thought why not complete the new change with another new change. Again, long-story short, I exercised my tail off, ate incredibly healthy, even did a round of P90x. At my lowest (last August), I was around 205lbs and in the best shape of my life.

But just as preceding time where I lost a bunch of weight, I started to slowly put it back on. My cheat meal would turn into a couple which would turn into a week which would turn into a couple weeks, all of which where I wasn't exercising either. Needless to say after some more yo-yoing, I put on about 20 of those lbs I lost.

About a week ago, I decided to post to the forums here about my issue with food - which is my main issue. A lot of you said some very encouraging words and in that week I really did some soul searching to figure out what was it that kept me coming back to eating like crap. I like working out. I actually do like eating healthy. It makes me feel great. But for some reason, I always come back to crap foods. I think while I said I was in it for the long-haul before, I just wasn't committed to a life-style change. It was always ok I'll push real hard than its ok if I let go a bit.

When I dropped over 50lbs a year ago, there were some days that I did eat a bad meal or two. But I was able to control it. The next day, back to the healthy eating and working out. The catalyst for me falling off was when I had a week long vacation followed by a mini-vacation in a span of 2 weeks. I let myself go completely - I actually made it a point not to eat anything healthy because I was on "vacation" If it was truly a life-style change, sure, maybe I would eat more generously on vacation. Everyone does. But I wouldn't stuff myself like a kid's piñata while avoiding healthy foods like the plague.

So here I am now, realizing now what has to be done. This time I'm not dieting. I'm not overstuffing myself when I go on vacation. I'm making a change that will impact everyday of my life for as long as I live. I know there will be hills and mountains to climb and I will fall down from time to time. But I won't ever fall off the cliff again. Not this time.

Thanatos