A little late on the update, but I have my reasons. Namely, the arrival of my baby boy!

I got my 1000 lb lift and picture, so now it's back to some volume work and try to do some fat cutting.

Not really paying attention to the scale much anymore, but since I signed up for the November challenge, I'll be keeping a closer watch.

I started this in January after a disappointing physical where I weighed in at my highest weight ever, 373 lbs

From January 8th on, I started counting calories and exercising regularly. I was eating 1300 calories a day or less over a protein shake for breakfast and 2 balanced meals for lunch and dinner. I lost 70 lbs by mid July. I went up to 1500 calories a day at the behest of my doctor, and I have gained back 10 lbs as of this morning. I'm sad now. I weighed in this morning back up to 315.4 lbs, but I haven't gained back any inches on my waist thankfully. Starting today, I'm going back down to 1300 calories a day for a few weeks to see if I can't restart my weight loss. Incredibly frustrating, but I realize that I haven't been tracking hoinestly, and I've let a few bad habits slip back in, so it's mostly my own fault.

I can tell you that I never eat back my workouts. I don't add food to my day, regardless of activity level. I do drink on weekends, but as long as I have a net weekly deficit, I thought I was ok. My problem was tracking. I was probably off by 1000 calories a week or more due to inefficient tracking. I've been much more dilligent these last 5 days, and I'm already back down 3 lbs from vigourous exercise and careful meal planning with no cheating or snacking.

I'm my own worst enemy, but I also know all my old tricks. I will do this.

Down 2.5 lbs this week, so it seems I'm back on track.

Hey big & tall men, where are you? Show me some numbers :-)

Lately the weight loss is not linear any more: a little gain one week and then a bigger drop the following week - eating at the same exact deficit and doing the exact amount of exercise. Luckily the average is decreasing.

This time was no exception: up 1 pound last week but down 5 lbs this week.

Still ended the year 50 net pounds lighter than I started 2013, so I'll call it a win

It's definitely a win! Just be proud of it, be consistent and do not let the ups and downs hinder your resolution.

Im just a knuckle dragging corectional officer, not sure what all those big fancy words are but i sure hope it comes off quickly.

Sorry if I did not explain myself: fact is I have been reading a lot about nutrition since I joined MFP.

In a nutshell glycogen is where and how our body stores the energy that comes from food - sugars to be precise. Glycogen is stored in muscles and liver and is the source of energy most often used for exercise. The fact is that with glycogen water is stored, a lot of it.

When you go on a diet and, as a consequence, you lower your carb intake, your body is not able to replenish the glycogen that your body uses, so your glycogen stores gets depleted and your body starts burning your fat for energy. With your glycogen the water that is bound to it gets used too: that is the reason why during the first week of a low carb/low cal diet you loose A LOT of weight, more than what you loose in the following weeks. It's not just fat, it's "water weight". This glycogen + water adds up to 5 lbs but can be even more in big men like us.

Unfortunately the reverse is also true: when you fall off the diet wagon and overindulge (so you eat a lot of carbs), your glycogen stores are immediately replenished, together with the water. So you can gain 5 lbs (even more for us) in a single day, but it's not a real fat gain, is "water weight" and it will come off quickly once the glycogen stores gets depleted again.

Leptin is an hormone that plays a major role in regulating our metabolism: when we diet it decreases and a chain of events cause our metabolism to slow down. If we could keep high levels of leptin during a diet we could limit this ill effect, unfortunately there are no leptin pills (it has to be injected and it's way too expensive to be commercially available), but studies have shown that a 10 to 15 days diet break with reasonably high carb intake and caloric intake at maintenence raises leptin for a while, so when we start to cut again our metabolism is a bit better than before and we should get better results.

Joined my company's Biggest Loser competition to keep myself honest and motivated during these last 3 months of winter, and I had my first weigh in today, Lost 11 lbs from last week's weigh in. Feels good. Ate clean, got to the gym every day, tracked everything I ate and drank. How's everyone else doing so far this year?

I skipped last week weigh in too because I was still recovering. This morning I was down 3 and 1/2 pounds, so that's good.

On the other hand I'm struggling with my weight training sessions: I increased the weight of all the major lifts during my diet break and now it's really hard to keep up. I guess it's true that it's hard to gain strenght (or even maintain it) during a severe caloric deficit :-)

Yes, I am keeping high protein intake but strenght progress is really, really slow nonetheless... so I upped my daily caloric intake by 200 cals and still managed to loose 2,8 lbs this week.