#last time i weighed myself i was in the 220s and i KNOW its gone up from there | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

coraloses-blog · 7 years

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The beginning...

The beginning…

I’m fat.

I have been my entire life. I’ve gone through the usual cycles of fad dieting followed by even longer periods of acceptance and eating whatever I want. I always managed to stay around 200-220 pounds, I had convinced myself that this was an acceptable weight that looked good on me.

10 months ago I moved to Austin with my boyfriend. For the first few months we lived with my parents, both of our stuffed crammed into a tiny bedroom. I was not happy. I hated my new job and I was 6 hours away from my friends and a job I loved. I moved here for an adventure and it was not working out how I hoped. I ate my feelings a lot. Pizza every night, fast food for every lunch, at least 3 cokes a day, Ice cream multiple times a week. Honestly I usually lived this way (although this was definitely more extreme) but I really didn’t think much of it. I was just living in the moment and indulging without a second thought.

In May we got our own apartment and I got a new job that I liked. I started to go out more and even made a few friends. Things were starting to look up but still my eating habits stayed the same.

2 weeks ago I decided to buy a scale to replace the one I sold when I moved here. A few coworkers had recently started to diet and have had good results so I started to maybe possibly think about dieting. The scale stayed in its box for almost a week. I really didn’t want to know how much I had gained. I liked the lie I told myself. I knew I gained weight but I convinced myself it was probably only 10 pounds or so. Living that way was comforting. It meant that I didn’t have to be responsible for what I was putting in my body. Finally, this past Wednesday I worked up some courage, unboxed the scale, stripped down “so I wouldn’t add extra weight” (lol) and stepped on.

Two hundred and fifty five pounds.

Ouch. Last I remembered I weighed 220ish. I had gained 35 pounds in 10 months. I laughed it off with my boyfriend then went into the bathroom and cried. I never thought i’d weigh this much. I know you’re probably wondering how that could be considering that I said I ate pizza, ice cream and fast food every day. But I really just didn’t think it would happen. I weighed myself a few times in 2016 and then before that I couldn’t tell you when I weighed myself. I guess in my mind I just thought my body had stayed the same. My weight gain was always slow and steady so it never seemed alarming to me.

Seeing that number was definitely a huge wake up call. I cant keep going like this. I know if I do i’ll be pushing 400 pounds in no time. So this is it. Time for change.

For the past week I’ve been cutting out carbs and sugars. I really don’t know how to diet but the way I see it I put on all this weight by eating carbs and sugars so it seems most logical that to lose it I need to do the opposite. Of course I want to lose weight but really right now I just want to feel better. For the past few months my skin has been horrible and I’ve been experiencing shortness of breath and frequent dizzy spells. I am going to the doctor for this next week so I don’t want to self diagnose but I think my diet is a major component to how I’ve been feeling. I am only 27 years old but lately I feel 50. What I’ve been eating has to be the main reason why.

So this is the beginning. The start of a major life change for me. I know I will probably make mistakes and I know I will have set backs. I have cheated a few times this past week but I wont beat myself up over it. I know I have issues with food, I know its my addiction. I’m just going to strive to do better every day.

I will be using this blog as a food/weight loss/lifestyle journal. I feel like this will help me have some accountability. Tomorrow I will be weighing myself again. I am hoping for some encouragement in the form of a few pounds lost but no matter what I am in it to win it.

#weight loss #lose weight #weightloss #lowcarb #the losers club #loseit #lose fat #health & fitness #fat loss

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therealestatesparkblog · 5 years

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Ignore This Principle and You'll Destroy Your Real Estate Career

I admit it. Im a recovering engineer. Truth be told, I should never have gone to engineering school. I didnt know myself at all. I didnt know my strengths and weaknesses, my likes and dislikes. I didnt know I was created to be an entrepreneur and certainly didnt know about the power of real estate investing. So, in my Junior year of high school, I learned that there were no degrees in parapsychology (yes, Im embarrassed to say Im serious). I wanted to do something adventurous, and thats about the time I heard about petroleum engineering. So I signed up. That was my first big career mistake. But I shouldnt lament. I enjoyed a rigorous education, and my (more valuable) MBA degree seemed easy by comparison (no calculus or physics!). And I learned an important Buffettism before Id ever heard of Warren Buffett. I hope you already know about it, in name or in practice, but if you dont practice it, youre sure to come to financial ruin. Its called the margin of safety. This post is the 7th in a series that Bryan Taylor, John Jacobus, and I affectionately call Warren Buffett is my Real Estate Mentor. We hope Buffetts wisdom impacts you as it has us. What is the Margin of Safety? The margin of safety is a principle of investing in which an investor only purchases assets when their purchase price is significantly below their estimate of intrinsic value. In other words, when the purchase price of an asset is significantly below your estimation of its intrinsic value, the difference is the margin of safety. Because investors may set a margin of safety in accordance with their own risk preferences, buying assets when this difference is present allows an investment to be made with lower downside risk. Thus sayeth Investopedia.

Related: What Interviewing 100+ Investors on Failure Taught Me About Losing Money What Sayeth Warren Buffett? Well, if youre driving a truck across a bridge that holdsit says it holds 10,000 poundsand youve got a 9,800-pound vehicle, you know, if the bridge is about six inches above the crevice that it covers, you may feel OK. But if its, you know, over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety, in terms of only driving a 4,000-pound truck, or something, across. So it depends on the nature of the underlying risk. Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 1997 This really did remind me of engineering school. When designing drilling rigs or bridges, we had to design all of the components to withstand all of the forces that could be involved. When all the calculations were done, we had to slap on a margin of safety or safety factor. If the safety factor was 3.2, we had to make it 220% stronger than it needed to be. (That would mean a margin of safety of 2.2, but that is getting technical.) To a 19-year-old punk, this seemed like a needless waste. Wait the biggest semi-truck allowed on this road weighs 80,000 pounds. But we have to design the bridge to withstand 256,000 pounds? Isnt that a huge waste? (I didnt know that one in four U.S. bridges failed in the 1800s.) Thirty-six years later, this makes a lot of sense. But it didnt then. I hadnt thought of this engineering term when making investments, but the widely-read Buffett connected the dots for me. The margin of safety is a key concept for us to understand when making an investment in something that has inherent unknowns. Which is every investment I can think of. The margin of safety is a risk management concept that forces us to think about our purchase price relative to our estimate of intrinsic value. Using non-financial examples, like Buffetts bridge, really drives the point home for me. Having a margin of safety is an intuitive concept when deciding to cross a bridge (unless youre a daredevil), but can be more difficult to see when studying, say, a pro forma analysis of a potential investment. So, What Does This Mean for Real Estate Investors? Real estate has numerous unknowns. Your floating debt may change based on unpredictable factors. Your local economy may suffer layoffs. Your property manager may make bad decisions. Your turnaround plan may suffer from unforeseen tariffs on raw materials. The list goes on. The challenge is to not focus on accurately calculating a margin of safety for all of these unknowns. You just cant do this effectively. (Check out this earlier article on becoming a billionaire by being approximately right on a few key variables.) The key is to purchase real estate at a price that allows for a safety net in the event that some random combination of these currently unknown events occur. Related: 3 Ways to Reduce Risk in Your Real Estate Portfolio Some Practical Examples Ensuring that your investment property has adequate debt service coverage (DSC) is a great example why building in a margin of safety is crucial. You must ensure that your cash flow is sufficient to cover your debt obligations. But should you simply make sure that it covers it by just 100%? Or should you make sure that you cover debt service by more than 100%? You know the answer. You dont want to risk some unknown occurrence which would increase your operating expenses and leave you unable to pay your mortgage. Thats a good way to learn a very hard lesson in real estate. Youll be glad to know your banker wont allow this to happen. They insist on a margin of safety of at least 25% (debt service coverage ratio of 1.25xyou should aim for much higher than this). Another great example is forecasting occupancy and rent rates on multifamily properties. You can easily find data that shows average occupancy and rent rates for comparable properties. When you do, should you simply use those averages for your forecasting purposes? No. When applying a margin of safety, youll want to forecast your occupancy below market averages and the same for rent rates. This is often described as being conservative, but really youre adding a margin of safety in the event your property suffers low occupancy or your forecasted rent rates are not happening. Your investors will thank you, trust me.

Why Im Not Investing in Multifamily Right Now As the author of an arrogantly titled book on multifamily investing, Im frequently asked why Im not (or why Im rarely) investing in multifamily right now. And why our company has expanded to self-storage and mobile home parks. Its a fair question that deserves an answer. My response involves the margin of safety. As Ive said in several recent BiggerPockets posts, most anyone in the multifamily world knows prices are crazy overheated right now. Yet there are still plenty of eager buyers, seemingly eager to overpay. I have some theories on why this is happening, and some insightful commenters on my last post added some more. This is obviously continuing to drive prices higher. I hope youre not one of these overzealous buyers, but if you are, I urge you to STOP IT! My firm is still reviewing multifamily opportunities, but we believe that most of them will be on the other side of a market correction. Correction? When? That would require a crystal ball to predict. And those who live by a crystal ball are destined to eat ground glass. Buffett wont even predict the timing of these downturns. But he has learned to act appropriately at each point in the cycle. And thats what we must do, too. I was at a large conference in Miami two weeks ago, and one of Americas most famous multifamily syndicators challenged my thinking. He has been incredibly successful during this nearly decade-long run-up in prices, and hes earned the right to be heard. He said, Dont worry about overpaying for multifamily. Just find a great property in a great location. He went on to explain his reasons. (Im not naming him because I didnt catch the exact quote, and I dont want to make him look bad.) My friends, my mind drifted quickly to Mr. Buffett, who has been massively successful since about the year this guy was born. Through many recessions, wars and more, Buffett has amassed one of historys most enviable fortunes. And hes given us his wisdom all along the way. Would Warren Buffett ever say this? Would he say, Im fine with consistently overpaying for companies I buy? Not on your life. Buffett clearly looks for companies that are undervalued, with latent potential that is yet unrealized. Buffett had the guts to buy financial equities when the financial markets were in a free fall in 2008. Buffett has consistently said no to buying at the top of the market. Buffett lives by the margin of safety. We would do well to do likewise.

What about you? How do you factor in a margin of safety when investing in real estate? Comment below! https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/ignore-principle-youll-destroy-real-estate-career/

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