Welcome

Hey folks.

My name is Chris and I just recently got engaged. I have an incredible fiancee named Erin who means the world to me. There is no wedding date set yet, but I'd like to be in better shape than I am now for the wedding. This blog is hopefully going to be my accountability partner in living a healthy (ish) lifestyle and an incentive for me to take some of the weight off.

Currently I live in the Dominican Republic but we just got back from vacation and I put on some weight, twelve pounds over the month. That puts me at 251 lbs currently and I would like to drop to 195. That's 56 lbs. My goal for this is April 30, 2012. That's probably a significant amount of time before a wedding date, but I really want to get into good shape and keep it off.

Here is me now (above). Not too flattering. I'm a 36/38 inch waist, 38 being much more comfortable, 36 being naive and generous. My shirts are XL. I have no goal for dropping to a large in shirt size because I'm broad and don't know if a large will fit well because of that and I have ape like length arms. We'll see as we go along if I can drop to a 35 or a 34 inch waist. At 225 I could squeeze into 34/34 jeans, but that created quite the muffin top.

I'm not super active, but I can be. My goal is to get into a good workout routine. That shouldn't be too difficult, I like to be moving around. I just need to decide, commit and succeed. Simple enough eh Tony? My big problem is I like to eat. Living in the Dominican gives me a chance to eat tons of fresh fruit. I like fruit, but I like to cook. I love ethnic foods. This can be difficult in the Dominican. I also like to eat out. That'll have to go on hold for awhile. But, I like cooking and know my way around a kitchen generally well enough.

It's my hope that I can put some workouts and recipes on here that have worked. I hope too that you can find me and give me some encouragement when I'm doing well and heap scorn and shame on me when I'm not. But for now, I'm out.

Thanks,

Chris