Welcome!

Hello and thank you so much for checking out this little horse and pony show I like to call The Skinny Project Blog. If you have found yourself here you are either a.) drunkenly cruising the interweb, again, or b.) interested in weight loss, fitness and nutrition. Hopefully, it is reason B! In this section I would like to just write a little about myself so that you, the reader, can understand where I am coming from a little bit better.

My name is Michael, but everybody calls me Mikey. I am twenty five years old and reside in the greater Philadelphia area (actually, I’m lying… I live in Delaware, but nobody knows where that is). I am a vegetarian who eats seafood (a pescatarian). I work in the legal industry and consider my job to be pretty high stress. I LOVE to eat. I have a boyfriend, also named Michael. I am one of the few who actually enjoys working out. However, when given the choice of a bag of miniature Reese cups or a 3 mile run, I will most likely take the Reese’s cups every time. I have weighed as much as 208 pounds and as little as 117. Neither looked all that attractive on me and I have consistently had issues maintaining my weight. It seem as if I am either gaining it or losing it with no happy medium.

The purpose for this blog is that I feel that I, like many people who struggle with weight, am constantly living two lives. There is me ON a diet: low energy, psychotic, snippy, miserable, unhappy. And then there is me OFF a diet: gluttonous, lethargic, lazy, unhappy. I have come to a point where I can just no longer stand the ON/OFF way of living. I am tired of losing the twenty pounds, only to gain it all back three months later (and then some!). I am tired of the all carb, no carb, maple syrup, only grass (but all the grass you can eat) type diets, and I have tried them all. I have reached a point where I know that I just want to be able to eat healthy. I want to consistently be making healthy food choices and turn off the switch in my brain that has me living either “on” a diet, or “off”. There has to be a middle ground, and there has to be a way for me, and you, to reach a weight at which I we are all happy and, wait for it….. stay there!

Currently, I weigh around 160, and while I don’t consider myself to be “fat”, I am just not comfortable at this weight. Ideally, I would like to reach, and maintain, a weight of 140. I feel that I tend to look, and feel my best at that weight and it is within a healthy BMI range for my height of 5’10. I actually have a small build and joke that I am built like a woman. I do, in fact, have a waist and hips, much like a woman. I do wear women’s jeans and let me tell you, no pair of men’s jeans has ever fit me so well! But I digress…. I tend to gain weight first in my midsection (and of course that is the last place I lose). Because I used to be about fifty pounds heavier I do have some skin issues, and because of that will most likely never have a six pack or a totally flat stomach (no matter how skinny I get), but I have come to terms with that and have people who love me no matter what my stomach looks like.

I invite you to read along as I start my journey back to skinny, and hopefully, stay there! I know that it is going to be difficult but my god I’ve lost and gained weight so many times I’m starting to feel like the gay white male Oprah! I want this to be a journal for how to take off the weight the healthy way. I will be chronicling my daily activities, what I am eating, all the fabulous food finds I come across and also my stumbles. I don’t plan on falling off the wagon, but if I happen to I know that I can jump right back on. Every meal, every workout, everything is a decision. And it is about taking things one day, one bit, one step at a time. We all make our own choices and I hope that you will choose to follow me down this road. So without further adieu, let’s get to blogging!