[toulouse]

Hi all,
For the first time in my 34 years of life, I'm glad to offer my personnal experience as a proof that loosing weight can be easy and fun. "easy" depends on many factors. I used to weight 328 lbs and I now 215. I have lost more than 110 pounds by doing the simplest thing: long and fast walks. I had this great opportunity to live for more than 2 years in Toulouse, FRANCE as a Canadian. It took me one year to start facing the facts. My father came to visit me in France and felt sorry for me, the way I was walking with hard breath, and couldn't help to lend a tear a two. He told me that he had stopped smoking for weeks now and I was soo proud of him that I challenged him: "if you keep your promise NEVER to smoke anymore, I'll keep mine and start loosing weight". Very cheerful news for him, he gladly agreed. So we made a pack and it took me months to start facing my promise : I remember watching episodes of LOST with ... of course : 6 bars of chocolate , peanuts and chocolate milk.... AFTER a supersized BigMac at Mcdonald's (YES ! Imagine McDonald's In France !!!). How can you resist the food (alias the emotion) while watching such a great and THRILLING show ? :-)

Later, I went to a medical center (june 26th), a routine check required for the work permit and though I had exagerate all these months and I'd pay the price with a 340 maybe 350 something pounds. Relief was I when I realized my weight was 146 Kilo (precisely 321.2 pounds). I can't imagine how anybody would be relief with such a weight but I was ! And not because I have worked hard on my weight. So I started to do some biking to work during this summer for 20 to 25 minutes each way. Now , some of you know that you start loosing fat after 25 minutes. So basically, I was only loosing water but improving my cardio. Thanks to God, my bike got stolen twice (someone was really trying to tell me something...).
The second time, I was so furious that I decided to start walking. No way they can steel my legs !

So I decide to walk to work, which took at first exactly 1 hour and 5 minutes (fast pace, or at least the fastest I could walk). Then 50 minutes.
From that moment, combining the fact that I've written down every day my weight on mornings - a little obsessive should you say- I have lost a tremendous amount of weight: 59 pounds in 4 months.

I would just like to encourage all of you who decide to lose weight by walking. Fast walks are amazinly great for your body. Get yourself a mp3 player and play the music that makes you want to dance, to run, to jump and use that as a focus to keep walking to work. Also, more importantly : buy a good pair of shoes. Don't be cheap if you can pay one. Hill, no hill, you will lose weight: my itinirary to work was on a complete flat level.

Now, this been said, anybody knows how these guys in "The biggest looser" are able to maintain their skin from falling ? Have they all got operation ?
I really need some help on that area. Especially on the upper body (chest and bellow). Thank for your advise and for reading.

ps: I've couldn't picked up a better nickname : Toulouse came from an inside jock from my father and my uncles saying as a slogan : "at Toulouse , there's nothing *to lose*".
I can think of tons of jokes to make: they were WRONG : I was the biggest loser there ! :-)
"To live in Toulouse is to lose it all"
"I lived in Toulouse to loose the fat" and so on.