Seventy-five
Monday, June 6th, 2005
onclick="window.open(this.href, 'popupwindow',
'width=840,height=640,scrollbars,resizable'); return false;">
src="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/images/weight-thumb.png"
alt="Weight Chart">
Well, I’ve been going on the exercise program and healthier diet for
almost a year now. So far I’ve lost 75 pounds. Let me repeat that,
seventy-five pounds. That’s
small children, heck, it could be two of them! It’s incredible that I
let myself get so overweight and I can try and point fingers at myself
but that won’t do any good now. Thinking back to when I was 16 and I
did a month of trail crew at
supposed to meet my parents the day or two after we got off the trail.
They got there a day early and I ran into them in a breezeway. I was
shocked to see them, but their expressions were of even greater
surprise as I was much thinner (all my clothes were falling off of me)
and had probably grown a little since they last saw me. I had a great
chance to keep that up and didn’t. The only explanation that matters
at this point is that I was lazy, but that’s not the case any longer.
The biggest effect this has had on me is forcing the lifestyle change
I so desperately needed. I now engage in regular physical activity
and I’m eating much healthier than before (buh-bye fast food and
frozen pizzas). Generally this is by way of the
starting to branch out with things like hiking and soon I’m going to
get a road bike to start up on that too. When I don’t do the gym I
start to feel it. I guess it could be characterized as guilt (no, not
that Catholic Guilt either) but more and more it’s that I just feel
better doing it, so I keep going.
In the last couple of months I’ve really noticed myself sliming down.
I get the feeling other people have too since that is generally the
comment that is first made. What’s really fun is seeing people after
a few months, then they really flip out. Comments have included
“Where’s the other half of you?” and “Whoa! You know I could really
stand to loose ten pounds, you’re like an inspiration.” My favorite
was from a friend visiting from the east coast that I hadn’t seen
since September of 2004. I had, however, worked with this person for
many years in New York. He said I was “…at the normal danimal
size.” That made me feel better since I was at about my current
weight for a long time, so there is some progress.
Now, not to scare anybody, but I’m going to show some pictures here.
In order to save the sanity of the masses these are small snippets
that you must click on to see the full image. First is me in November
of 2002 at Alcatraz (with Keith and Dode, taken by
'width=1024,height=682,scrollbars,resizable'); return false;">
width="567" height="30" alt="At Alcatraz" />Now here I am at work in May of 2004, shortly before my 30th birthday
and about two months before I started working out (the award is one
we won for talking toenail
fungus):
'width=768,height=512,scrollbars,resizable'); return false;">
width="567" height="30" alt="At Work" />And finally, here is one Andre
took almost a month ago when
came out for a visit. Somehow I don’t think this picture looks
like me any longer, but maybe it’s just that I’m wearing my shorts so
low. Regardless, enjoy:
width="511" height="30" alt="At Work" />Zealand in August for two weeks of
which is something I don’t even think I would have imagined myself
doing last year.
That I can goto the
day and do a non-stop 45 minute cardio workout is great for me (I even
did 10 minute miles the other day!). I’ve started doing a lot more
weight training on the off days as well which probably accounts for
the plateau in my weight loss recently, but that’s okay because I can
see the results in my muscles (another source of comments being my
muscular legs. They’ve gone from getting toned to defined recently).
For some reason I still remember something my teacher said in my
boils down to the fact that from 15-30 years of age there is
a window to make a choice on how healthy you will be. After 30 it gets
a lot harder to make the body changes that are needed. Also, after
30, you are at a higher risk for things like adult onset diabetes and
heart disease. I’m not sure how accurately I’m remembering it, but
it’s obviously made an impression on me.
I still have many pounds to go and I expect it to get harder from here
on. I do know that if it wasn’t for the encouragement of my friends
and family I wouldn’t be nearly as close as I am today. Technically
I’m still obese with a Body Mass Index of 32.1 kg/m2.
I don’t know what my target weight is supposed to be, but I’m shooting
for 195 to start with and then I’ll push it down from there. That
will be 110 pounds at that point (starting at 305 lbs.).
There are of course some good things about loosing this much weight.
The best by far has been in the clothing department for sure. Not
only did I just donate a lot of clothes that are now too big for me
(like, pants I could put on and put my arms down the sides), but I’ve
also gotten to start wearing t-shirts that I was carrying around for a
long time that were too small for me. Many of them are from college
and early at Blue Sky. This
has about tripled my t-shirt wardrobe. Of course, that also means
some t-shirts that I had been wearing are now too large, and that’s a
bummer, because some are really great.
In public I actually feel better about myself now. It used to be I
didn’t like sitting at some booths at restaurants. I just felt pressed
in and uncomfortable. That should have been a sign right there. The
other one is people that would call me “big guy” as if they knew me.
For some reason that really ticked me off, but let’s face it, I was
big. It used to happen regularly, and now it doesn’t happen at all.
Good times are ahead. I’m just too anxious to wait for all of them.
