Howie Long

One of my favourite Oakland Raiders of all time is Howie Long. Most of you may know him from the Fox Sunday pregame show where he's a funny, jovial guy. I choose to remember him as the big, nasty defensive tackle of my childhood team. The Raiders ran a 3-4 defense at that time and he was a disruptive force in the middle of that defense.

Why, you may be asking, am I bringing up Howie Long? Well, I've lost 75 lbs which was his number - actually 74.8 lbs but nobody wears 74.8 in any sport I'm aware of!! I now weigh 366.8 lbs and lost another 8.2 this week. I can't impress upon you enough how this has changed my life. I went grocery shopping with the family on Sunday to see all the exciting options I can choose from when I start food in a few weeks.

I'm ready for the food to start and for all the exciting recipes I've been saving to pop out from the paper. I'm ready to cook with whole wheat flour and egg substitutes. I'm excited to have turkey burgers and salad, and buy some ground turkey. I'm excited to drink Miller Genuine Draft 64 - they're not sponsoring me, but I'm for sale!! - and continuing down this path.

I learned today that there is talk of potentially changing the program down the road so that instead of shakes you would actually be eating food. I'm not sure how that would have worked for me in the beginning when I was in a different mindset. I know this is working for me so I'm pretty partial to this plan, but obviously these people know what they are doing.

I've almost lost the equivalent of my son's weight. I am losing the weight of small people, yet still have a few small kids to go. I look forward to putting my son on my back as a reminder of what life was like trying to get up the stairs and use it as motivation to never have to do it again!!

Russ