One year ago I quit smoking.

Awesome, right? No more stinking hair and clothes, stained fingertips, and wasted money (and the whole dying early thing). Yeah. But what is not so awesome is my weight gain. I knew I would probably gain some after losing the cigs, but I figured it was a good trade off since smoking is worse for my health than being overweight is.
So on the 1st anniversary of the day that I quit smoking (July 1st,2010) I started a new weight loss and management program.
My weight on June 30th was 212 lbs.

Officially obese with a BMI of 30.4.

Dang, it was worse than I thought.
My goal is to get to a normal a BMI, so I need to get my weight below 174 lbs. So I need to lose about 40 lbs.

Wow, ok, no problem right? I just need a good plan.
I will try to lose about 2 lbs. per week. That means I should reach my goal right around... Thanksgiving, the national holiday dedicated to over-eating.

Nice timing huh?
I came up with a there part plan:
1. Intermittent Fasting in 24 hour cycles
I have done IF before and it worked really well to allow me to lose 20 lbs. the length of the fast really hasn't been a problem for me. There is hunger involved of course, and some tiredness, but as long as I don't cheat by eating a little snack, the effects are manageable (ignorable). If I do cheat and eat a small snack during the fast, then the hunger becomes severe and irresistible. So absolutely no cheating! On fast days, it's water only. I quit my first IF program when I stopped smoking so I could focus on that goal exclusively. Now I am excited to get back into it, so I started my first fast on midnight July 1st.
2. Standing instead of sitting
This is something new I am trying. I read somewhere that when a person sits, their Lipase levels drop by 90%. I have no idea if that is true or not, but since I want to lose fat I think it is worth a try. Besides they say your chair is killing you, which seems unlikely, but I don't see how standing can bad for you except for sore feet. I been mostly standing for about a week now and my dogs have been barking every night. Dr Scholl's help but there is still some soreness.
3. Cold showers every day
This is also something new and is what lead me here to the forum and the Getting Stronger blog. I am hoping that the cold showers will result in thermogenesis and help me avoid the dreaded weight loss plateau. So far I have found the showers to be a remarkably unpleasant experience. At least they are during the shower, afterwards I feel great. My response to the cold has been the involuntary heaving breathing and flexing. I haven't tried laughing or singing yet. I ususally stay in the shower about 8 minutes, but I think I could stay longer if I wanted to. There is a threshold around 5 minutes or so when the experience changes from "OMG, what level of hell is this?" to "yeah it's cold, but not unbearably so."
Well, there's the plan, and the results so far:
week 0 212 lbs. 30.4 BMI
week 1 206 lbs. 29.6 BMI Yehaw! I not officially obese anymore!
