A New Direction
So it has been quite a while since I posted anything here. Not that I have ever been at a fast and furious pace of content creation, but almost a year since my last post is a bit much. Looking at the date of my last post I can begin to understand why. This blog is going to take a bit of a more personal turn. Mainly because that is what I have been working on… me.
Like a lot of people I have struggled with my weight for most of my adult life. Mostly its been a roller coaster, different diets, gyms, lose a lot, gain a lot back, rinse and repeat. I never really let it bother me too much, because for the most part I felt good, I didn’t have any health problems.
Then I turned 40…
Well if I’m being honest, it started just ahead of me turning 40. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on the first medication of my life. The blood pressure was almost definitely brought on by my weight, the highest I recorded was 308 pounds. In November of 2020, I slipped on some ice. It was not a big deal, but I did tweak my knee a little bit. This injury caused me problems for 3 months, and after it finally got better I just wasn’t the same. I had a hard time doing just about anything, getting up and down steps, getting up off the couch or bed, or just about any physical activity. My knees were killing me most of the time, and my doctor said that I most likely had arthritis in them.
So towards the end of April of 2021, I finally stepped back on a scale. I had been down around 290, but was now showing 298. I knew I was back on the path to being over 300 pounds unless I changed something. In addition, my blood pressure was getting high again, even with my medication.
I knew something had to change.
I decided to start dieting and exercising again. I set a pretty ambitious goal to get down to 220 pounds by the end of the year. For my exercise, I was just going to walk. A real benefit of working from home full time since COVID, is that it is easy to get out and walk during lunch and right after I’m done working. By the end of May I was getting up to 10,000+ steps per day.
My diet was going to be the real challenge. However, there was something different this time. I think the reason I failed to maintain all the other diets I had tried was that I just didn’t like what I was eating, and I enjoy food. At this point, I was not enjoying the food I was eating. We had been home for a year now with COVID protocols, and what I was making just wasn’t satisfying. So I took a new approach for myself. I was using the “Lose It!" app to track my calories, which I had used previously and had success with. I just decided to make all my own food, and do it healthier and better. I got a lot of insperation for what I was making from Joshua Weissman and his YouTube channel. I was making good food, that I was enjoying, and it was much healthier.
I got off to a great start. By the end of May, I was down to 276 pounds, and feeling great. Looking at the projections in the Lose It! app, I decided to change my goal to get down to 220 by my birthday in September, and if I was still feeling it do a stretch goal to get to 200 by the end of the year. Things were on track through June, but then in July I hit a bit of a plateau. At the beginning of July I was down to 262, and only lost 9 pounds that month and only another 5 since. Now I know, 14 pounds in 1 1/2 months is nothing to be ashamed of, and I’m still very happy with my progress. However, the chances of me hitting 220 pounds by my birthday are getting slimmer by the day.
What I realized is that I can’t just keep doing the same things I was doing at 290 pounds. I’m walking 15,000 to 20,000 steps per day, which for me is 8 to 10 miles. At least one of the walks I do everyday I do with my son which slows the pace down. So its taking me about 3 hours a day of exercise to get that in. If I need to do more to keep up the weightloss pace, I need to do probably 4 hours of exercise per day.
I don’t have that kind of time in my schedule.
This weekend I have decided to adjust my plan. Which is where this blog is going to come into play. I’m taking a method from my work and going to break up my exercise and diet into 1 week sprints. My Lose It! plan has me losing 2 pounds per week, which I will keep as my weekly goal. In addition, I’m going to add some exercise goals. Then each week, I will post my retrospective on how I have done.
Now, I realize that almost no one reads my blog (I see the numbers), but I’m hoping to use it as a method to keep me honest and think about what I have done each week.
There is one other exercise goal that I’m adding. Last week I started running. I have never been able to jog/run for any distance. Even back in high school when I played sports, most of what I did was shorter distance and sprints. I can probably count on my fingers the number of times that I have run 1 miles without stopping or walking. However, 2 of those times have just happened this week. I started with one of the Couch to 5K programs, but was a bit annoyed by the subscription model that most of them wanted. And I wasn’t about to pay upwards of $40 for an app that I will use for 8 weeks. So I settled on the Nike Run Club app. Their beginner series seems a bit tougher than most, but this week I ran for 22 minutes without stopping or walking. So they got me hooked.
My goals for this week:
- Weight: 246 lbs
- Complete Week 2 of NRC training plan
- 10 pushups per day