A Journey....

Here it is. I've decided to chronicle my journey into fitness... or at least my ATTEMPT into fitness.

I'm scared to be too commital. Somewhere along the way, I've always given up. I've done better for up to 3-6ish months - and then gone back to old ways and habits. I'm wondering if I can really ever defeat myself. My thought the other night was that if ever I could defeat SELF I could conquer anything. It is ME who is my biggest foe. And that goes for many areas of my life. But that is the subject of many, many blogs! :)

Where to start...

At the beginning of the year I determined that I had to lose weight. I weighed more than I'd ever weighed in my life. OK - right here on the internet... I started the year at 358.75. Yeah, closer to 400 lbs than to 300. Depressing.

Having had the 2008 that I'd had, I was experiencing, from time to time, what I believed to be panic attacks. If I was self-diagnosing, I'd have to say it was probably a bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome. But enough of my "Jr Psychologist" - suffice it to say that I felt like crap a lot of the time. Acid reflux was my dearest friend. I was in the chiropractor's office every three weeks with back spasms, muscle adhesions, and in need of spinal adjustments and alignments. My blood pressure was a bit high. I was experiencing a lot of carpal tunnel symtoms - hands falling asleep at night - both fingers that were in the carpal tunnel and fingers that were on the nerve that goes outside your elbow (can't remember what that one's called).

So I began slowly, at my mom and dad's doing 15 or 20 minutes of tread mill a few days a week. Nothing stellar to be sure. 2.5 - 3 mph. And a little bit of nutritional change. Then the new season of Biggest Loser came on.

I've always been a fan, but did more eating ice cream while I watched than losing weight. It was always a strange combination of inspiration and depression. It was incredible to see guys - more overweight and out of shape than me transforming physically from week to week. Yet, I was always depressed that I had not been able to defeat my old foe - self.

But along came Ron. A lot of people don't like Ron. But the reason that Ron is disliked is that he has played the game PERFECTLY from beginning to his end - which will probably be this next week. His love for his son and desire to see his son, Mike, in the final has propelled him to ALMOST certain victory (watch out for Tara!). But Ron inspired me.

Bigger and older than me, Ron went to the Dr at the beginning of the show. When they did an MRI - he could hardly fit in the tube. But the results were frightening. The image showed that many of his internal organs were twice their normal size or greater. Once your skin becomes so saturated with fat - it begins to attach to your organs. Eventually, fat will shut your body down. Ron was over 400 lbs and on more than a dozen drugs - including ones for diabetes and high blood pressure.

Not only was that gross - but it was scary. Though a little smaller and 10 years younger than Ron - what did my insides look like? How close was I to killing myself.

So I joined a gym that a lot of my friends go to and began to get serious about losing weight and getting into shape. I soon began losing weight quickly.

Along the way, one of the talk radio guys I listen to decided to have his own Biggest Loser contest - complete with prizes! You make something a competition and I'm all over it! I was accepted and began going to weigh in at the radio station weekly. However, it was pretty depressing. The scale they had there was not for folks of my girth! It was a digital scale that would not even register my weight. Way to encourage fat people, Vince! So, they found another scale, but it too was inaccurate. My parents have a medical scale in their home so that I knew very accurately what I weighed. Their scale, like mine at home, didn't show anything over two weeks while I KNEW I WAS loosing weight (by the medical scale at my folk's and the gym). I figured that having them haul in a different scale every week that didn't even help me win was not very motivating - so I quit showing up for that after 2 or 3 times.

But the good news is that I did not quit on myself. Before the end of March I had lost 40 lbs. My goal was another 40 in the next 3 months.

However, lots of stuff has slowed me down a bit. Life happens. A mission trip that took me out of the gym one week and had me eating a little more than usual. A conference to Florida, etc, etc. Also, I tend to come to a place where I have quickly seen great change - and feel so much better that I become satisfied. I quit being so picky about my eating habits. I'll have a sunday at the DQ, a good bit of pizza on a night out. But you know - that's life - I'm just doing better not to eat like that all the time.

However, I've only kept going down and now - as of today - I'm at 311.75. 47 lbs down. I wish I'd done better, but in some ways I have.

I now can run 23 of 30 min at 5 mph. I'm going to the gym and burning about 600 cals on the treadmill 3-4 times a week, doing upper-body weights 2-3 times a week, and hitting a 140 degree sauna for 30 min 4 times a week.

I've changed my shape in the last month, even without losing a lot of weight. I'm down a shirt size (at least in t-shirts - probably more in dress shirts). I am probably down two pants sizes (though I haven't bought any - I just keep putting more holes in my belt). My blood pressure is normal. My resting heart rate is 62. I have much less carpal tunnel sypmtoms. My chiropractor hasn't seen me in about two months (sorry, Doc!). No more panic attacks. Better attitude. More energy. No acid reflux.

So - here it is. My whole story. Now I'm accountable. You know. Everyone knows. I'll will be a huge success - or a huge failure. It's risky.

My next goal? I am continuing toward my ultimate weight goal which is 190 lbs - however, I'd settle for 220 lbs. But in the immediate future it is a 5k run. I'm pretty close to being able to do it now in around 40-45 min - but I can do better. My plan is to run my first ever 5k on my 40th birthday, June 20. I've got 43 days to train.

The rest of my blogs will not be so long. Promise. But I will try to daily keep you up on my progress toward being able to run 5 kilometers.

Thanks for joining the journey.