Family, podcasting, geekiness, and exercise are helping Jason move closer to his weight loss goal

September 24 2006 

Jason Tucker - Co-host of GeekFit.com Podcast

City & country: Whittier, California, USA
Age: 28
Weight before diet: 260 lbs.
Weight now: 243 lbs.
Target weight: 225 lbs.

Jason isn't following any particular weight loss plan. Instead, he's achieving his goal to lose weight through a combination of motivating factors. Here, he talks about how family, friends, and his love for the Internet are helping him get rid of his extra weight.

-What finally made you decide to start with a weight loss program?
Having my first baby with my wife Jennifer. She has 2 kids from a previous marriage but for some reason having a child of my "own" really struck a cord with me. My father died when I was 5 of heart failure and I didn't want that to happen to me or my wife and kids too. I took the initiative and began making changes in my life. My best friend Steven Klassen who lives in Washington kept telling me about his success with his weightloss and that motivated me to get on the bandwagon. To reinforce my motivation I combined my love for the Internet with this new goal and started a podcast with Steve to help ourselves and others to lose weight.

-What type of weight loss program are you following?
I'm not following a specific weightloss plan, I'm just making educated changes to the way I do things with my life. I'm doing research on ways to improve my food intake and make healthier choices. I'm going to the gym regularly and tracking my fitness and nutrition with 2 different websites. Traineo.com and SparkPeople.com.

-Why did you choose this weight loss method?
I'm not good with 'following the rules' and I didn't want to limit myself to a specific cookie cut plan. I'm using the Internet community to help drive my weight loss by doing good research and listening to other success stories. I've seen what these 'fad diets' do to people and I think what I'm doing is working for me.

-How long have you been on this weight loss method?
I began with my weight loss in the middle of the month of February of this year, 2006 that week we launched GeekFit.

-What kinds of physical activities do you like doing to help you lose weight and stay fit?
For the first few months I was waking up and working out 3-5 times a week Monday thru Friday. I have since changed to working out later at night before going to bed (I'm not much of a morning person ,this works for me). I rotate cardio 2-3 times a week and Circuit training 2-3 times a week. Later I'll introduce some free weights once I learn how to use them :)

-What were the most difficult obstacles you had to overcome or are still overcoming?
Getting to the gym and staying for a full hour and staying away from sweets. I still like diet sodas and try to work in as much water as a replacement.

-How do you keep yourself motivated?
It's two things really:
 1. I really want to be there for my kids when they get older.
 2. Geekfit.com Podcast. Doing a show weekly with my co-host Steven (who has lost 100 lbs. so far) is motivation itself. Our podcast is very loose and is geared towards the typical guy or gal that sits at the computer all day. We talk about all sorts of things related to fitness and health (with a little of tech thrown in to keep people like me listening). I'm happy to see people respond via email, voicemails and comments on our blog telling us a job well done and how the site has helped them. It's great to know we're motivating the community and really making an impact in people's lives.

-Do you have any weight loss tips for our readers?
Start simple. I took 1 week and evaluated what I was eating and what I was doing physically then I started changing things one thing at a time. Figure out what works for you then start applying some techniques that are known to work. Try to work out daily or at least 3-4 times a week and whatever you do, don't get scared of the plateaus or lack of change that is occurring, sometimes a change can't be seen physically and will take some time to surface.

-Do you think it will be easy to fall back into your old lifestyle pattern? How do you prevent this from happening?
I'd imagine it would be easy to fall back into my old pattern. What keeps me going is trying to find fun and entertaining things to keep me motivated. I think my podcast and tracking using Traineo.com and keeping things geek centric are what entice me to continue. I get bored when my mind isn't stimulated and geeky things usually fix that.

-Do you have a favorite Web site or blog that helps or inspires you to lose weight?
GeekFit.com: my podcast, which is listed on
iTunes as well as via RSS feed.

Traineo is a great Web2.0-style website created by great programmers who really listen to their users and make changes to fit their needs.

SparkPeople, where we have a GeekFit sparkteam.

Fat Guy Radio: People like Russ who love to share where they are at in their weightloss and are good-hearted people who don't mind sharing information with others.