Fat Man UnleashedA Weight Loss Blog with Fitness, Health, and Diet Tips

Health Bloggers Unleashed Contest Winner, and Water47 lbs LOSTso farJune 8, 2008 by Israel Lagares | 7 comments

Guess what? It’s time for another fat man video blog. In this vlog I mention the Health Blogger Unleashed Contest winner and rant about drinking water. Back in April I announced the first ever Health Bloggers Unleashed Contest. There were some good submissions, not many, but the ones submitted were good.

The winner is Lisa Newton from Iowa Avenue and Healthy Lifestyle Bloggers. She wrote a great post titled “Is your Food Worth its Weight in Exercise.” It was picked up by a few sites which brought in some decent traffic. I loved it! Thanks Lisa. She is the lucky winner of a Fat Man Unleashed shirt, a free one year subscription to any magazine of her choice, a one month banner ad on FMU, and a site review. Man, I gave away a lot of stuff. I guess Lisa got lucky!

As far as drinking water, well, drink it. But don’t drink too much. Your body usually tells you when enough is enough. I normally just check the color of my urine: If it’s clear I drink less water. It also depends on whether I am having a tough exercise day. Either way just make sure you drink enough.

Enough blabbering, watch the video below.

RSS subscribers, watch the video blog here.

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Seeing is Believing with WeightView47 lbs LOSTso farJune 3, 2008 by Israel Lagares | 21 comments

WeightView is a digital and personalized motivational tool that uses the power of visualization to help to achieve weight loss success! The site basically works like this: You submit your before photo, they send you back an after photo. You then use that as your motivation. Sounds pretty simple to me.

My first impression of WeightView is that it is a genuinely useful program. Looking at their results page shows many individuals that have submitted their before photos for editing. In one video interview a lady mentions how it actually helped her stay motivated, leading to weight loss. WeightView clearly states that “Seeing is Believing.” This is something that I strongly believe in. It’s the reason I have my old in-shape photos on my fridge and why I have my in-shape before pictures on my about page. I’ve actually considered PhotoShop-ing some photos.

They are clearly proud of the number of people that use their service, which is an impressive 60,000 and growing! That’s a lot of photo editing. I took the time to submit an old picture of my heavier days and am pleased to say that it only took them about 12 hours to turn around a digitally altered after photo. Here it is:

It’s supposed to be me 50 lbs lighter. It’s not ideally how I would want to look, but it’s a damn good start. To be honest, it’s uncannily close to how my real after 50 lb loss picture looks. The See Results section shows all of the folks that have tried the free service. Some are more stunning then others. I would like to see a member page where a member can add their REAL after photo. That would be cool.

Speaking of which, the site needs a more social aspect to it. With all of the press they have been getting, it would be a much stickier site if they had some form of user interaction on the site. As it stands right now a user submits their photo then leaves the site only to return when they get an email saying their photo is ready. Then they leave forever after saving the photo to their computer or printing it. There is no real reason to stay, unless you are curious how the site is evolving or want to submit another before photo.

The viral nature of the site is slightly touched upon with the tell-a-friend feature, but they need way more user/community interaction. Possibly adding a forum or some other social network type of functionality would help take the site to the next level. This would also help cover some of the costs of the site and the free nature of it. I’m not saying to charge for the service, free is good. What I am saying is that with more traffic they can turn themselves into a weight loss social network of sorts and make money from their traffic. Aside from some banners, they are relying on the online shop where you can find diets and other weight loss solutions and aesthetic products. You can find them all at the WeightView Mall.

Ultimately a website like this can only do so much, it is up to YOU to take action to lose weight. WeightView is a great motivator and could be all you need to get started losing weight and getting in shape. It’s a useful website presenting an innovative idea: the power of self-motivation through your own modified images, picturing yourself with considerably less weight.

Fake it till you make it, right? What do you think of the site? Have you heard of it or uploaded your own before photo?

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It’s Not Your Fault You Regained The Weight47 lbs LOSTso farJune 1, 2008 by Dr. Kal | 22 comments

I was reading this article in the Los Angeles Times.

The article tries to explain why it is so difficult for people to keep the weight off once they have lost it. In the article they discuss many reasons it is difficult to keep the pounds off including:

• The human body’s yearn to be at its fatter weight
• The physical adaptations of the human body
• Lack of exercise
• Not eating certain foods
• Metabolism
• Appetite hormones
• Signals from the internal organs

Soon they are going to blame the Hare Krishnas.

Why You Can’t Keep The Pounds Off

People can’t keep the pounds off because they are impatient and unrealistic. Most people trying to lose weight start some ultra-strict diet or exercise program. Some even chose to have weight loss surgery or get liposuction.

They lose the weight very quickly. They become content. Then they go back to living the way they were before they lost the weight. Then they are amazed that they regained all of the weight. Are you kidding me?

People can’t keep the pounds off because they expect permanent results from temporary changes.

How To Keep The Pounds Off

To lose weight and keep it off:

• Be patient
• Aim to lose ½ a pound or 1 pound a week
• Only adopt lifestyle changes that you can maintain for the rest of your LIFE
• Plan to cheat occasionally
• Expect to fail occasionally
• Get help from family and friends
• Understand that it is a lifelong battle
• Understand that you can NEVER go back to the way you used to live

Big temporary lifestyle changes lead to fast temporary weight loss. Small permanent lifestyle changes lead to slow permanent weight loss. The choice is your.

Let me get off my soap box before someone knocks me off.

I have no problem with the Hare Krishnas. Some of my best friends are Hare Krishnas. Not really, but it’s the politically correct thing to say.

Dr. Kalvin Chinyere is a physician, weight-loss expert and ex-fat man. He is also the creator of the Don’t Go Broke Weight Loss Plan and the main contributor at Dr. Kal’s Blog.

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