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Losing Weight With Orlistat

Shortly before moving to America, my wife was showing off her six-pack abs and told me that she lost a total of 40 pounds.

I asked her what her secret was, to which she smiled slyly and went into the kitchen, coming back with a bottle of fat burners which was no surprise, and a package of tablets called Orlistat.

She asked me if I wanted to try some Orlistat pills to see how effective they were and she laughed as she warned me that I would have to go to the bathroom though.

I looked up Orlistat and Web MD explains that it "works by blocking the enzyme that breaks down fats in your diet. This undigested fat then passes out of your body in your bowel movement."  ...Sounds simple enough.

I joined a Facebook group of people who take Orlistat, many of whom got it via prescription, whereas we simply ordered it off Amazon. Long live Jeff Bezos!

The people in the Facebook group were not hiding the fact that they were going to the bathroom a lot and that there was a mysterious orange fatty substance coming out of them.

Well, armed with that information I took the pills and within a matter of days, I was eight pounds lighter. Eight whole pounds. In two days. That is a lot of time in losing a lot of weight in the bathroom.

I was ecstatic, it was as though I was Ponce De Leon and I had discovered the fountain of youth at last.

It was only a week before I moved to the States, so I quit taking the tablets three days prior to my flight so as not to have any emergencies or accidents on my flight.

When I finally arrived in America I looked up Orlistat and saw that it is in the weight loss supplement, Alli. I told my sister I was considering taking Alli to aid in my weight loss journey which I started last month on June 19th. 

I did not lose 8 pounds in a couple of days on Alli, but did gain a daily routine of going to the restroom. 

It has been a month since going on Alli and taking the tablets three times daily. I have lost 20 pounds.

I also started going on daily walks and try to get to the gym 4 days out of the week.

The consistent weightloss has tapered off and I have days where I gain some weight probably due to my diet and hydrating, but I will continue to take my Orlistat supplements as part of my weight loss journey.

StepBet Review

It is early, very early. 40 minutes before my Alexa alarm goes off at 4 in the morning early, but this time of day. The time before I get up, do my daily walk and get my steps in is my favorite part of the day. 

I am usually writing or drawing at this time of the day, producing some form of content.

I live in Florida now, I should be hydrating the entire time.

I made a resolution this past spring to drop from 403 pounds to 185 lbs and am giving myself two years to do so, I wanted to do it in one year but I don't know if it is completely feasible, I've never gone on a weight loss journey before. At the get-go, I followed an Instagram trend of posting the hashtag fastingforweightloss and realized quickly how very little I enjoy fasting.

So fasting as an aid to weight loss is pretty much out the window and physical activity strenuous enough to be effective is very limited simply because I get winded from basically any form of exertion I decided walking is something I can do.

My first week of walking was catastrophic, I kept having to lay down on the side of the road and make recovery breaks. Lots of concerned drivers would pull over and ask about me. I believe I became a traffic hazard and I was also concerned about police officers potentially seeing me.

So I started walking super early in the morning to be able to hide in the dark if I had to lay down, but people just started pulling over in the dark, so for two weeks I pressed on and for the past 3 days I have been able to walk my distances without having to lay down on the sidewalk which is something I call a major breakthrough.

I joined a gym 2.7 miles away from where I am staying and started walking there every morning. I looked through as many apps as I could think of for fitness or weight loss motivation and saw StepBet but didn't download it, then I saw an ad for the app on TV and downloaded the app.

The app syncs with my smartwatch to keep track of my steps.

The StepBet app is very simple and easy to use. Navigating my way to a mission was very easy and once I had signed up and synced my smartwatch step counter to the app that was pretty much it.

All I've had to do with the SrepBet app each day is make certain I have achieved my minimum number of steps each day.

Looking For Writing Jobs

Finding a platform to write on for money, an amount of money one can live off of without having to pay a high membership fee just doesn't seem all that possible.

I have decided to try my lot in life as a s

Writer. I have several disabilities that are annoying now but could potentially really stop me from doing much later in life, so im trying to find a source of income I can generate well into my 70s.

Writing intrigues me, technical writing disinterest me but I am willing to learn the new skillset if it means I can live off of it. 

The trouble is I have very limited funds at the moment, having just moved from Germany to America and simply don't have the disposable income to join a high fee sight in the hopes that I am good enough of a writer to be hired.

Its a gamble I can't afford. In the meantime I can swing the 5 a month bucks medium charges and have joined up and submitted work to vocal media which pays $3 something per 1,000 views.

Most search results reccomend starting a blog. So I write here on blogger even though I do have a WordPress account I prefer blogspot and have applied for AdSense approval.

I have a sneaky suspicion that even if I do get approved for AdSense on this blog I still won't generate enough income to make a living off it, but who knows. Maybe I will maybe I won't. 

But I do know this i intend on being consistent with posting on this platform.

In the meantime the hunt continues as I am on a quest for a writing job.

My Daily Routine

My weight loss journey is an all-encompassing obsession of mine, second to none. I am concerned about how I will generate an income in the near future, considering that I have been living in America for a month and still haven't found a job to support myself. , finding work is most certainly an obsession of mine that I dedicate most of my waking hours to resolving, but the weight loss efforts supersede all else.

Like Jocko Willink I wake up at four in the morning and go on walks, I walk to the gym, work out for half an hour and walk home. Up until three days ago, I was having to lay down on the sidewalk and take breaks on my walks, this was cause for great concern because the last thing in the world I want is for a cop to ask me why I am laying down on a sidewalk and the best I can answer is I have chronically sore feet, a bad back, and knee pain.

I don't think those answers would fly when it comes to impeding traffic and being a hazard to passers bye. And I hazard I have been. In the past couple of weeks, several drivers have actually stopped in the middle of the road and gotten out of their cars to make sure I was okay. Shame! Shame! Shame!

I've finally hit the twenty pounds lost mark of the journey and while it doesn't seem easier, I have been able to make it all the way to the gym and back without laying down. Goal accomplished!

The next twenty pounds I feel will be a struggle to lose, why? I'm not sure I just have this feeling.

It seems all I do every day is walk, work out and recover. I wake up at four every morning so that I can be back home by eight, walking the 2.7 miles to the gym takes me nearly an hour and a half each way and I workout for only half an hour, I did do a full hour in the gym but was physically demolished that day.

So I wake up, walk work out walk back and recover day in and day out for the past several weeks this has been my routine. It is boring and monotonous and each day is an epic adventure of effort because to move the nearly 400 pounds that is my body requires great effort regardless of how small the movement is. 

I revel in the fact that I have lost 20 pounds so far but wow, you'd think losing that much weight would make things so much easier, not just adding the ability to not lay down on a walk, but no the more I lose the harder it seems to be.

 

I think it's because it is real or visceral weight that I am losing and that loss is taking a toll on my body.

After I get home around 8 in the morning I shower and recover for about an hour before I scour the internet for possibilities of generating an income. 

So far I've come up with making YouTube videos on a semi-daily basis as well as opening an Etsy store and drawing. 

I am now looking at writing and paid-to-write sites and am daunted by the idea of becoming a technical writer.

In the twenty years that I lived in Germany outside of my wife and kids I never really spoke to people, my personality and the German culture simply did not mix well, I learned the language and got along with people but the Germans tended to only speak to me under official circumstances and I had no friends.

Before living in Germany I was always popular and even had people fight over who got to work with me at jobs but this was not the case for me in Germany which I think was a portion of why I gained weight, I was exceptionally lonely there.

I do not know how long I can maintain this regiment of physical activity and remain jobless, hopefully, soon things will change for me in that department. Today I applied for a writing site that looks like it pays well enough for me to afford a basic and decent lifestyle in Florida so here is hoping I have enough natural born talent to perform the tasks required of me.

Thanks for reading.

 

My Weight Loss Journey - Returning To The Original Me.

I wasn't always 400 plus pounds. This is something I think of every time I struggle with getting up out of a chair, walking, getting out of bed, and dressing after a shower, the little things of daily life have become a struggle upon having gained the weight.

When I was younger, before being an adult, I always played outside, I was active and went fairly high up in the martial arts class I took. Then I became an adult and joined the military and after the military even though I had some residual injuries from my time in service I was active, I rode my bike almost daily and went to the gym just as often, I was fit. I took CrossFit, ran both the first Tough Mudder and the first Spartan Race in Germany, and enjoyed my health to the point of taking it for granted.

Then my family and I moved, we had three kids and the place where we were staying simply was too small and we could not find accommodations in the city where we lived, so we left Nuremberg, Germany, and moved to Wurzburg where we did find a three-room apartment, and yeah the girls have to share a room but everyone has their own space now.

I sold my bike because my knees couldn't take the pain of riding the hills of Wurzburg which is in the heart of wine country with beautiful rolling hills that have no mercy or consideration for sore knees.

Then because there was no gym nearby I quit working out, I could have continued to do workouts on YouTube, but I didn't and then the chronic back pain, bad knees, and plantar fasciitis all seemed to act as one and took me to the pain cave where I dwelt for several years, all the while slowly becoming less and less in shape but not noticing it because in my head I was still a spry 24 years old.

Then it turned out I have paranoid schizophrenia and was taken to a psych ward several times. Each time I went off the meds until the fourth time I was taken away. Then, I stayed on my medication.

In the time that I stayed on my medication, I gained two hundred pounds in roughly the span of two years. I became stagnant in my lifestyle and at a loss of what direction to take my life.

Earlier this year my wife asked me for a divorce and once I accepted it I know that I wanted to move back to America. I had lived in Germany for 20 years and made no friends.

Before living in Germany I was always somewhat popular and never at a loss for friendship or companionship, this is not to say anything against the Germans, they simply have different personalities to me and I could seem to only communicate with them in a formal capacity and setting.

Before leaving Germany last month I was sick of the side effects of being overweight and determined to lose the weight. I made my resolution on June 19th that I will not stop attempting to lose weight until I have gone from 403 pounds to 185 pounds. I figure this will take me two years.

My wife, shortly before I left for America, one day, was showing off how much weight she had lost and that her six pack had made a comeback. Curious as to how she did it I asked her what the secret was and she showed me.

She was taking fat burners with her multivitamins and a tablet called Orlistat. Bribri said the Orlistat is the main culpret of her fourty pound weight loss and she gave me a few tablets to try.

The next day I went to the bathroom like I had been doing it wrong my whole life up to that point and within three days I had lost 8 pounds.

Now that I am in America I had a look into Orlistat and saw that the weight loss supplement Alli contains Orlistat. I talked to my sister and she sent me a picture of Alli being sold on the military post where her husband is stationed. I decided if it's good enough for the troops it's good enough for me and ordered a bottle off Amazon.

Also since living Stateside I have taken up walking on a daily basis and between the daily walks and the magic of Alli, I have lost 20 pounds in a month.

I know, it's only twenty pounds and it's only been a month but in comparison to how I was feeling a month ago something has changed. I feel better, and encouraged and look forward to dropping the next twenty pounds.

Thanks for reading!

My Wieght Loss Journey

My weight loss journey started a month ago. 

I had just been asked for a divorce and decided to move back to the States rather than attempt to forge a new life for myself in Germany where I had been living for the past 20 years. 

I chose June 19th which was both Father's Day and Juneteenth this year to be the day I started to lose the weight. On that day I wished 403 pounds.

It was a combination of things, old injuries from my time in the military had flared up a few years earlier to the point I didnt feel like pushing through the pain to get a workout in. 

Where we had moved to in Germany didnt have a gym nearby and I went on three forms of anti pshychotic medications to treat my schizophrenia. 

I have been told two of those medications 💊 contribute to weight gain which makes sense because in the year and a half that I was on all three forms of medication I ballooned up by an extra 200 pounds.

Walking up and down stairs without a decent amount of incintive had essentially become out of the question. I never really fit in in Germany 🇩🇪. Nothing against the German people, they simply have a personality different to mine and I ended up, for the most part only interacting with people in an official capacity. I had no friends.

A few days before leaving the country my wife who is very physically active was showing off her figure. She had lost 40 pounds and her abs were showing.

When I asked her how she did it she showed me that along with here array of vitamins she takes on a daily basis she was taking fat burners and a tablet she called Orlistat that she had ordered off Amazon.

She gave me an Orlistat and told me to try some before I left.

The next day I blew up the bathroom like the bomb that ended World War 2. I continued to get high on her supply and had lost 8 pounds within 3 days.

Apparently Orlistat, if I remember correctly has an enzyme that binds with fats in the colon that gets expelled quick fast and in a hurry. 

Initially I had a lot of oily discharge and stayed near the porcelain throne like my life depended on it. 

I made certain to stop taking the pills three days prior to traveling to avoid soiling myself or having to go to the bathroom on the plane ride.

Once I arrived in Florida Iooked up supplements with Orlistat in it and found Alli. I'm not sponsored by or endorsing Alli weight loss tablets, its just what I found. I told my sister about Alli and she said they sell them to soldier on post where her husband is stationed. 

That gave me confidence, the fact that Alli is sold to military and passes thier standards of health and safety. So I ordered a bottle on Amazon (all hail Jeff Bezos!)

I have been taking the tablets religiously three times daily and decided to up the ante of my weightloss journey by introducing exercise.

 I ordered a scale that takes my measurements and connects with my smartphone so I could track my progress as accurately and in a detailed fashion as I wanted and then I ordered a smartwatch to keep track of my steps.

My feet hurt, they hurt a lot on most days. I have plantar fasciitis but the weight is more concerning so I decided to take up walking every day.

The first day I started walking I walked 3.2 miles to Publix and had to lay down on the sidewalk several times because of my feet and chronic back pain. 

To my dismay each time I laid down a driver would pull over, concerned that I had had a stroke or been overwhelmed by the heat and I would have to explain that I was ok, just taking a break.

This happened several times over the course of the next two weeks. Me laying down on the side of the road and drivers pulling over, some of them actually getting out of thier cars to take care of me.  

So I changed my pattern went incognito and took a page out of Jacko Willink's book and started walking at 4:30 in the morning.

There is a Crunch Fitness gym in the community where I am staying and their prices are cheap so I decided to join the gym. I can't do squats or any major back exercises but the gym is only 2.7 miles a way and I can do constant movement at the gym for about half an hour then walk back home.

Three days ago or just shy of a month since starting my weightloss journey was the first time I walked all the way to the gym and back without having to lie down. 

I count that as a major mark of progress.

I trolled a lot of apps looking for exercise and weightloss motivation and on the 18th I downloaded StepBet and entered a walking competition lasting from the 18th of July to the 28th of August. You have to walk 6 days a week as part of the challenge and going to and from the gym is perfect as I can get my steps in.

I fluctuate between 383 and 385 pounds this week in spite of continuing to take my Alli on a daily basis. The bathroom emergencies are few and far between in comparison to that first week and the numbers on the scales aren't dropping as drastically but I am taking a daily constitutional aka bathroom break of some significance on a daily basis so I measured myself and put those stats in the app for my scale.

All in all I have lost 20 pounds in a month and walking a somewhat far distance has gotten slightly easier. 

This I would consider to be a great thing. 

I am keeping progress pictures of my weightloss transformation on my OnlyFans account. Sorry no spicy pictures. So far I only have one fan and no subscribers.

Anyways thats my story about losing weight this year. Thanks for reading.

Moving To America

The first twenty years of my life I spent living outside of the United States, my parents are non-denominational Christian missionaries and they raised me in Papua New Guinea where they had found an unreached tribe, established a church, school, and built an airstrip so that the government could provide teachers and medical aid.

The family moved to America around the time I turned thirteen, we lived in Georgia for about a year then the mission organization my parents are with had them move to their headquarters in Orlando, Florida. Orlando is where I went to high school, actually, I ended up being homeschooled throughout most of high school and made most of my friends and social connections at our local church which has since shut down and I no longer really know anybody who attended there, but the memories are fond and I had a fun teenage experience that you could describe as fairly wholesome.

After graduating high school in 1999 I did not know what I wanted to do with my life and one of my parent’s friends suggested I attend one of the Torchbearer Bible Schools, an international organization of Bible Schools with locations spread across the globe.

So, shortly after graduating high school in 1999, I attended Bodenseehof in Germany where all of the students called Bode2k in reference to the Y2K conspiracy theory that all of the computers were going to fail when the year turned 2000. Then I went on to study in Austria in the spring of 2000 at a school called Tauernhof in the small town of Schladming.

I came home and not much longer after that September 11th occurred and a friend of mine who had student loans asked me to join the US Army with him as part of a buddy program. Well long story short, it turned out my “buddy” didn’t get his loans forgiven by the Army and he ended up not joining, he had planned it all out and was hellbent on becoming an infantryman and really pushed selecting that MOS or Military Occupational Service, he even took me to see Black Hawk Down in order to show me how great an infantry job could be.

Before he backed out on me we did go to MEPs in Tampa, Florida together and took the ASVAB, sort of the enlisted services version of an IQ test. Before taking the test they filled us up with water and had us go through a series of physical qualifications and all the while I kept drinking every time the soldier told us to “drink water.” Needless to say by the time it was time to take the ASVAB I had had far too much water and really needed to pee, but was told I could only go to the bathroom after taking the test.

That was the fastest test I ever took, I flew through the answers and came out of the testing facility ecstatic to finally be able to relieve myself. Ultimately I scored in the high 80s and was told I could select any MOS I wanted but my buddy was still gung ho at the time about us signing up together as infantry and I didn’t particularly care so I stuck with his decision to be trained by the infantry.

My friend, let me know that his debts were not going to be covered and that he was no longer going to join the service, he went on to be a pilot and actually flew soldiers to bordering countries of combat zones later in life.

About six months after I was in the Army, serving as an Infantry Mortar I received a letter from West Point stating that I had scored in the top 1 percentile of enlisted on my ASVAB and that I could receive a full scholarship to West Point in exchange for six years of active duty service. Ultimately I decided to decline the offer because I had no interest in being in the military for ten years.

Sometimes I regret that decision, but it is what it is.

I deployed to Kosovo on a peacekeeping mission and while there America invaded Iraq, so after finishing the tour of duty in Kosovo, I went to Iraq.

The summer after I was in Iraq I went out with a group of friends who wanted to get off post and explore Germany where we were stationed. That night I met a Fraulien who would ultimately become my wife. She had no interest in living the lifestyle the military provided and I really wanted to marry her so I left the Army and started living in Germany with my new wife.

I adopted her kid and we have two daughters together. Germany is nice but never somewhere I felt at home. I always felt homesick while living there and that I was only there because I was asked to stay for the relationship.

A few months just shy of 17 years passed of living in Germany with my family when my wife asked me for a divorce. One thing was for certain, I knew I would not thrive or enjoy life living in Germany separate from my wife and kids, I simply did not fit in and did not enjoy myself there. So I decided to move back to America.

It’s been a month since living in America, I have registered with the Veteran’s Affairs Hospital here in Orlando, Florida where I am living with family until I can figure out how to get back on my feet.

I am a paranoid schizophrenic and the VA decided to take me off two of my German prescribed anti psychotic medications to get a baseline of what I need and what they feel comfortable prescribing because in the past two years that I have been taking the medication consistently I gained 200 pounds and ballooned up to 403 pounds at my heaviest.

I was still in Germany last month which was June when I determined to go on a weight loss journey starting on the 19th of that month which was both Juneteenth and Father’s Day.

It has been a month since determining to lose the weight and I have lost exactly 20 pounds, hopefully, I can stay on only one form of medication for my schizophrenia, what I am currently on does not contribute to weight gain and I feel much more myself.

In future posts, I will write more about my weight loss journey.

In the meantime, I have been looking for ways to derive a sustainable income that is flexible with all of my doctor’s visits at the VA and the potential of dealing with manic episodes brought about by my Schizophrenia.

So far I have taken to starting a YouTube channel which I think I am mediocre at, an Etsy store, and a Patreon. I also document my weight loss journey regularly on OnlyFans but no takers yet.

So, yeah, that is me in a nutshell. Thanks for reading.

My #weightlossjourney & #etsyshop

My Etsy Shop

 So after having tried my hand at becoming an insurance salesman and realizing fairly quickly that I was probably biting off more than I could chew in terms of personal cost and time dedicated to that field of employment I decided to try my hand at becoming a content creator while I job hunt.

I started with YouTube making videos which, admittedly I'm not too good at. I think that it's that I'm not that dynamic a speaker and I'm struggling to come up with stuff I want to talk about, nevertheless I push on and try to make a video a day.

I am also pushing on to maintain my participation in my commitment to a weight loss journey which I started on June 19th, 2022, it's a month and a day since that began and I am down 20lbs. So minor victory as long as I can keep the weight off and continue dropping.

I scoured the internet, desperate to come up with a way to generate income, and landed on dropshipping, based on YouTube's algorithm suggesting videos to watch I opened a Shopify store on July 10th and steadily produced artwork for the platform. 

A family friend and my sister both told me they would not be buying off Shopify and I hadn't made any sales and wasn't getting any views on the site. They both said I needed to open an Etsy store instead, so on the 17th of July, I shut down my Shopify store and opened an account with Etsy. Naming the store DondonWoodyard to go with all of my social media profiles.

Excited, I sketched out a couple of designs and put them on Printify products which I connected to my store. My sister immediately bought all four products and I almost simultaneously received a bill from Printify. I wasn't expecting the bill and when I looked further into my Etsy account I saw that had incurred fees as well putting my first sale into a negative profit for me. I had only gone with what Printify suggested. A 40% mark-up profit and done as Etsy suggested, free shipping for any orders over $35 that combined with fees put me in the minus.

I still like Etsy but I decided that until I start making a profit I am only going to make downloadable artwork for the time being. It's the fourth day of owning the shop and I haven't sold anything since my sister made that costly order.

If you are interested in handmade artwork you can download please visit my Etsy Store.

In America For A Month Looking To Generate Income

 Well, it's been several months since my wife asked me for a divorce and to move out, I have left Germany as of last month and moved in with family in Orlando, Florida. 

It took a while to register with the Orlando VA hospital; my doctors took me off two of my anti-psychotics for schizophrenia treatments, and now I am only taking one pill daily. I feel more clear in the head and have since having gone off the other meds, lost 8 pounds.

Now that I have regular visits scheduled for the VA and an Identity card for the hospital I need a State ID to start generating some form of income.

Initially, I applied for a position as an insurance salesperson, but the more I looked into it the less appealing it seemed to me, so I backed out of that job offer. They guaranteed no cold calls and only warm leads, but I was told some people spend up to $600 dollars a week trying to generate leads, I don't think I could feel comfortable spending such a large portion of my income on trying to get numbers I could call, also I haven't lived in the US for more than a decade and am not that good on the phone and the job requires a lot of time on the phone.

So I looked further, in the meantime, I am making YouTube videos and started an Etsy store, a Patreon account and post to OnlyFans but have no followers. I am going to attempt to get this blog connected with Google AdSense so I can generate some income with it.

I have applied for several data entry jobs, unfortunately, most of them turned out to be malicious websites.

I also joined an app called StepBet and am walking for a jackpot.

Where To Find Me

 Hi, I am an NFT artist on OpenSea, if you would like to find my social media presence on other sites please click this Linktree link https://linktr.ee/dondonwoodyard