It’s about to get real up in here…. I feel gross. Lately I have started to feel more and more out of shape and disgusting. I have held at 6 feet tall and around 240-250 pounds for quite some time, but in the last few months I have seen that swell to 270. The morning that I got on the scale and saw 270 was a turning point for me…. apparently that was the bridge too far. I look at pictures of myself and wonder who the heck I am looking at. That certainly is NOT the person I have seen there in the past.
I was a championship athlete in high school making the varsity swim team in 6th grade and making it to the state meet 5 times. I still hold a couple of school records in swimming and I have played at least one sport year round; golfing, tennis, swimming, baseball, soccer, golf, track, football, basketball, roller hockey, biking; anything and everything I could get signed up for. I was in perpetual motion for over a decade.
But now, as a father with three kids, a wife, and a full time job, my fitness has taken a backseat to diaper changes, house cleaning, yard mowing, and all the other things that sap away our time. As I have aged and my priorities changed, my jobs and positions have moved me further and further from my days of perpetual motion and more and more into the desk riddled mash up of human flab that I am now while I managed computer networks and television studios.
I am not visually obese, I have quite a lot of muscle mass, I have just carefully packed it away under a few layers of insulating fat to hide it and protect it. I’m also big boned; yeah, HUGE bones. I’m talking brontosaurus bones. MASSIVE BONES. That’s some of it too.
**The following images may be too graphic for some to view as they may find them disturbing….. viewer discretion is advised.**
The extra weight I am carrying on the front of my body has caused me to start having upper body issues and back problems. By the end of most days I have pain and cramping in my upper back and my lower back is just wrecked from sitting in a chair all day. I have a vertebrae in my back that has slid forward quite a bit and so the more weight I carry in my stomach the more my back starts to hurt as it pinches down on my spinal cord. The only solution that I feel I have is to try and lower my weight while strengthening my core, back, and upper body. I was told by a doctor that the more overweight I get the more likely it is that an accident could cause that disk to slip and damage my spinal cord, potentially paralyzing me for life.
My job does not help much since I am an audio and video production specialist for a school board who maintains production facilities and more for 46 schools in central Florida. This means that I am 8-10 hours a day in a chair leaning over an editing tablet working in Photoshop, in a school carrying heavy things between my truck and a closet somewhere, on a ladder installing a camera.
That being said, I have set myself a goal to be UNDER 200 pounds by years end. That means that I have to lose between 60 and 70 pounds in less than 6 months. Yowza! I will share recipes that I find that are good, workouts that I try, what is working and what isn’t, music choices (since roughly 70% of any workout is the music selection), and struggles along the way. I will also be trying out various apps for tracking calories and workouts, maybe get a fit bit (sponsorship now being accepted for this, I’m looking at you FitBit and Target. Those things ain’t free), and just in general sharing about this journey.
The Goal…. To feel less gross and healthier. I don’t like feeling this way anymore and want to feel like me again. Wanna come along with me on this journey?