I have been "overweight" or whatever other descriptive you care to use to call me fat, most all of my life with occasional spurts of weight loss. I've been up and down the scale several times, (mostly up) and have gained and lost over 300+ pounds in my life. However, I've begun to see myself as more than just a "fat" person...it gets easier to take on a different outlook when one doesn't fight for every breath, or have joints scream in pain everytime you move.
For the story of what got me to this point please click on the page:
"How did I get here?"
It occurs to me that dieting is a lot like the T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L. principal I learned from the author Robert A. Heinlein. To wit: “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!
We as people who are watching our weight… (Up or down – your choice!), cannot expect to get something for nothing. As Americans we have been conditioned, especially over the last couple of decades to get everything NOW!
But of course it DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY IN WEIGHT LOSS!!
So starting in February 2010, I began a weight loss program that included excercise. They STRONGLY recommended attempting to burn 2,000 calories a week! The excercise I chose primarily consisited of walking. At 379 pounds, the only walking I was doing up to that point, was to the refrigerator and then back to the recliner!
So I walked.
I walked many, many days and the miles racked up, the stamina increased, and the weight began to come off.
I walked in the snow, the rain, the blistering heat & humidity...I walked.
I walked until my feet hurt and bled(not recommended), I didn't realise my shoes were rubbing blisters into my feet until I got home!
As I walked down at the river path in our city I witnessed the trees and plants come out of hibernation, bud and then bloom! I had never seen Spring's progress on a daily basis before!! What a neat experience!
Gradually my feet toughened up and my distances and speed increased.
It gave me a lot of free time to think about my life, my weight loss experience, my family...my goals. I don't think I ever thought so much in my life! I guess that's why the smoke rolled out my ears!
I also began walking with my wife every day once school let out...it was nice to connect with her on a daily basis that way.
By mid-July 2010, I had lost about 85-90 pounds and my wife and decided we would join a gym to include some weight training to tone up, and some different exercises to change it up from just walking.
As of this writing (mid-August 2010) friend wife and I have been working out at the gym now for about a month. We don’t set records by any means, but we are making progress.
Our gym has a contest running to attempt to exercise in miles what the recent *R.A.G.B.R.A.I. event did in miles across the state of Iowa. In two weeks my wife has either walked on the tread mill or used the elliptical to go over 20 miles and I’m just behind her with 19.75 miles!
Feeling better is one of the MAJOR benefits of losing weight and exercising. I didn't know how bad I felt till I started feeling better!
…when I stop and think about how IMPOSSIBLE setting a pace of 3.5 MPH on the elliptical for an hour used to be, and how it’s “normal” now, it blows my mind!
That I could do any activity without stopping for an hour… (Ahem…besides eating)…has been nothing that I could ever imagine before.
I didn’t dare to dream that big!
My wife and I are total opposites on so many things, yet this is something we get to do together! We take walks and talk about stuff…. we’re (re)connecting and we talk far more now than when we would sit silently across the table from one another at a restaurant eating, which used to be “normal”.
Small bites add up! My morbid obesity can attest to that.
The flipside, however, works too!
“Small bites” in the area of small decisions to eat lower calorie choices, exercise an extra 5 minutes, call a friend or mentor to get refocused, use self talk and encourage yourself that you can stick to this plan, that you’re not really that hungry, going and looking in the closet and finding the clothes that are too big now can keep you going….and the results can be stunningly BIG!
Dear reader, I am not the exception; this is nothing new…you can do it, I can do it!
[By the way, I need to hear it as much (OR MORE) than anyone!!!!!]
Can I love myself enough to make the choices necessary to feel better?
Can you?
What would I pay for a new lease on life?
How much would you pay?
What are you paying now by being overweight and unhealthy?
I had sometimes resorted to walking with a cane to ease the joint pain!!
There is a whole new world out there that I either didn’t care about or my mind was so sluggish with too much food I didn’t recognize its existence!
Losing hope is a terrible thing!
Finding something that I didn’t even know was missing is “SHAZAAM” time!
So yes, it’s tempting to skip the hour at the gym 5-6 nights a week. I always feel better afterwards though.
ALWAYS!
I have never been sorry for the time I’ve spent at the gym, and I've never been sorry for the food that I didn't eat!
So I'll continue to work through these heavy thoughts and attempt to let them motivate me to lighter living.
It’s beginning to be the new “normal”.
*(Des Moines) Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.
MORE TO COME.....
