Picture from mile 20 of the run

My teammate Jen's mom snapped this picture of me from the run. Hopefully, the Ironman CDA posts race pictures and video soon.

I'm sleepy...

I got back to LA late last night. I'm exhausted and trying to catch up with work, but I couldn't be any happier with my race on Sunday. I'll put together a race report and post it by Thursday. Thanks for the support!

On the way to Coeur D'Alene, ID

My flight leaves at 6:15 tomorrow am. I'll post more when I'm up there. For anyone that wants to track my progress, my race number is 840. On Sunday, you can go to http://www.ironman.com/events/ironman/coeurdalene to see how I do. My only goal is to finish in the day light. That should be under 14 hours. More to follow.

Blog of Lies

One of the people that ADORES me called this site my "Blog of Lies". I like it so much it just might stick. I'm gonna start posting some pictures since some of you have been asking for them. Here's me after my most recent "incident" on my bike.

Here's me and some of my teammates (Kevin, Karen, Jen, and Dean) after the Oceanside 70.3 back in March. I went 5:51 on that day.

1 week to go

Here's what I plan on doing next Sunday.

How I lost the weight

On Election day in November 2004, I weighed around 320 pounds and I had given myself gastroenteritis from trying to gain enough weight to qualify for gastric bypass surgery. I had weight related joint and skin problems and sleep apnea. I couldn't do anything without losing my breath. I was miserable and hated myself and completely uncomfortable every second of the day. Looking back on that time I believe I was trying to kill myself with food.

Fortunately, the therapist I started seeing around that time told me that she couldn't do anything for me until I dealt with my food addiction. She recommended that I go to a program called CEA-HOW. I went to my first meeting two days later and my life was saved.

CEA-HOW is an offshoot of Overeater's Anonymous. One of the main differences is that there is a food plan, which I believe is why it worked for me. I needed the discipline of the food plan to cling to like a life preserver. Defining your own abstinence like in OA doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

The #1 way this program helped me was in helping me get to the root of why I was eating compulsively. These reasons were the same reasons I drank and drugged in my 20's. I was an addict (although never a gambler; it's funny how rumors get started) and I needed help. I had white knuckled my way through quitting drugs and alcohol by turning to the food as my sole addiction. I went from 220 at the time of my marriage to 320 3 1/2 years later. Clearly, I was a mess.

In my first 45 days in the program, I lost about 40 pounds. In 4 1/2 months, I was down to 187 pounds, 3 below my goal weight. This program works, but you have to be willing to change everything about yourself to make it work. I did with a lot of help. If you feel out of control with food or any other addiction, I highly recommend getting to a meeting like CEA-HOW. It helped me.

Update

10 1/2 hours to go and we're $208 away from the $8500 fundraising goal. I'm a little concerned because it looks like $540 that was raised at our drag bingo fundraiser may fall through since we didn't get the correct credit card info. I may have to wipe that donation from the site. I really appreciate everyone's support and contributions.

Fundraising deadline this Friday!!!

It's Tuesday night and I'm headed to bed after a nice swim set. I've got a two hour ride tomorrow at 5 am. Where is all of this discipline coming from? It's now two and a half weeks until Ironman and I've never felt so confident. I'm going to rip up this course.

As it stands now, we have raised $7257 to fight blood cancers like Leukemia, Lymphoma, and Multiple Myeloma. That puts us $1243 away from my $8500 goal. If you can donate please head over to my fundraising page at http://www.active.com/donate/tntgla/MattMoline