I normally would not post about such stuff. But I figured the extra accountability would help me out. So here goes.
Anyone that has seen me knows Im no small guy. Im about 6' tall and over the years I have added on some weight. I dont know what triggered it, maybe the fact I noticed clothes were a little tighter or that it had come to a point I just had no energy in the day and always seemed to be dragging.
This sticks out to me because I used to be in pretty good shape and I ran, ran A LOT. In fact, I used to be able to run sub 5 minute miles with 4min 47sec being my best time ever in the mile. Ive ran two miles on uneven terrain (read: not on a track) quite frequently under 12 minutes.
The point to it all to say that I was in pretty decent shape at one point in time. I biked a lot, ran a lot and was fairly active. I never weighed more than 190lbs. When I got out of the service I still remained active, ran a lot and so on. But life situations got me out of that habit and one thing lead to another and I find myself at this point in life, knowing I have got to do something.
So about the middle of week before last I weighed in and was horrified at what showed up on the scales. I dont think I have every been so disappointed and disgusted with myself in my life.
I am typically a very organized, focused and driven person. But when I got off that scale I gave things some thought and realized that even that part of me had fell away to some degree. I had gotten lazy, lost motivation to do things and so on.
I sat down with the wife and said I have got to do something about this and things have to change. If I had never had the realization then I guess life would have been grand, but now having that awareness I could not let it continue. She was very supportive and we set out to come up with a plan.
I LOVE vegetables. I just cannot put into words how much I do. Always have. I guess though I have gotten away from my diet containing as much veggies as I used to eat and replaced it with junk food, pop, and laziness. I love to cook and do spend time learning about how to prepare food in a healthy manner and balanced, I just havent put it into practice much.
So I decided that that would be where I started. I LOVE flavorful food and have learned over the years how fix foods like veggies, that are hard in most cases to keep interesting without cooking them to death, flavorful.
So to shorten the story up a bit, me and the wife are getting to bed earlier so we can get up earlier and go walking, exercise and so on. We have changed our diet to push out the less than ideal stuff and to include more veggies and lean meat like turkey and chicken.
We are now getting up at 4:30 in the morning and going walking everyday for about 15 - 20 minutes, then coming back and exercising for about the same time (We've had a total gym thing sitting in the corner forever that is finally getting used). You'd think I would be even more run down, but actually quite the opposite is true. For the first time in years Im getting a decent amount of sleep. I have had a hard time for a long time getting to bed much before midnight or later and then getting up at 5am to get ready for work. Now we are in bed about 9:00 - 9:30pm and are getting up at 4:30am. And I have to say, I have not felt this good in a LONG time.
So what I am going to do in this thread is post my progress for an extra degree of accountability because I dont want to quit on this. I NEED to do this. I will post my initial weigh in, the date and then post updates as I progress. Please be kind.
March 23, 2008
Initial starting weight: 291lbs
I weighed in this past Sunday (this is the day we set to have our splurge day and weigh in to see how we (me and the wife) were doing) and had the following results:
March 30, 2008
Weight: 281.5 lbs
So in the first week I lost nearly 10 lbs. Not too shaby I dont think. The wife is going along with me because she too wants to trim up a bit and stay active herself.
I must also give recognition to GP2003GT who I have been chatting with on IM and has been EXTREMELY helpful in giving exercise advice and such. I thank him enough for all the advice he has given and for listening to me in what I wanted to accomplish and helping me get there.
I may sticky this if there is no objections so that I can continue to track progress. My goal is to get down into the 210 lb range. Once I get there I'll turn my focus to getting into better shape with the idea of getting back into a little long distance running.
