OK! It's a new year, a new decade, and once again, I find myself wanting to lose weight and be more active.
Again, the prime motivation is improving health. I suffer from the effects of having lived a sedentary life, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, and asthma, all symptoms of the Metabolic Syndrome, the bane of the baby boomer generation. I have a large amount of stubborn visceral and subcutaneous fat, especially in my belly, back, and chest, as well as some degree of peripheral edema in my calves. I've been a borderline diabetic for probably 20 or so years, Type II, Mellitus. I'm susceptible to colds and bronchitis, which often becomes chronic, lasting for months at a time. I have a mild heart condition, cardiomyopathy, which stems from a thickened heart muscle (i.e., atypically not as flexible or pliable as a healthy heart).
On the other hand, I'm not dead. I've always had a natural tendency to solve problems, driven by a curiosity to find out how things work, intensified by forty years of engineering. I'm compelled to understand the root cause and how to fit it. In this case, what's causing these conditions, and what does it take to make improvements or even possibly make them go away.
Truthfully, I'm attracted to the research and often struggle with the execution. The fact that I've lost the weight only to regain it, now three times in the past 13 years, illustrates that struggle.
So, what makes this year different. OK, that's another longish story.
As I said, I've gone through three, possibly four cycles of gaining and losing weight. I've always known that the solution losing weight has two components, exercise, and diet. I had a sense of how they interacted, calories in, calories out.
We start in late 2006, a couple of friends at work expressed concern to me about my health. I topped out around 275 lbs, easily 100 lbs for someone my height (source: BMI), couldn't walk up a few stairs without having to stop and catch my breath. I will always be grateful for their willingness to confront me with their concerns for me personally, which was the spark which had led me down this healthier path.
On their dare, I set up a doctor's physical, which I failed, spectacularly., and wound up with the initial diagnoses described previously. His prescription was a few pills and improving diet and exercise.
On the diet side, my wife and I chose to lean towards a low carbohydrate plan, which we had success with earlier in our lives and which would address both the weight issue and the blood sugars.
For exercise, With the help of my wife, we started a walking program. We were both in poor health. We could not walk more than 5 minutes before having to turn back to the car. Nine months later, I was able to complete a half marathon (walked it in just under 4 hours). Although happy to have succeeded, I was not impressed with my performance. Nearly passing out at the end of the race motivated me to improve on my conditioning and my time. A year later, I completed the same race, finishing strong and bettering my previous finish by 15 minutes.
I got busy at work again. The long hours and pressure did their thing. I had regained all the weight and then some, topping out around 285 lbs by August 2011. Looking for another solution, I wound up finding a local gym that specialized in Bootcamp style exercise classes. During my initial assessment, the trainers recommended using the Paleo Diet, which I did.
I stayed with the Bootcamp gym and the Paleo diet and did well. By October of 2012, I was down around 230 lbs, over 50 pounds down (4 pants sizes), and had finished two half marathons, 2012 Seattle Rock and Roll and the Portland half marathons. In both, I did my planning, pre-race preparation, finished strong, and improved my finish time. Around October or November, I decided to save some money and make my run-walk style marathoning of my only source of exercise. I signed up for two Disney races, one in January 2013 at Walt Disney World and the other later in the year, September, in Disneyland.
Dropping out of the Bootcamp gym has been a valuable lesson learned. Don't muck with success. I did not factor how significant a role the gym coaches played in keeping me accountable for my diet.
I continued to train and stayed motivated, but my dietary habits started a slow decline. I did not do as well as I had hoped in Orlando. I did not finish strong and, my finish time was slower than Portland, only three months earlier. I wound up skipping the Rock and Roll in June. I forget why. By September, my training regime was sliding, and I had gained about 20 pounds. Anaheim proved to be my Waterloo. I barely finished ahead of the sweeper crews and wound up in the Emergency Room for extremely low blood pressure, with possible renal and cardio failures indicated in blood tests.
Upon returning home, the doctors cleared me of heart and kidney problems; the most significant casualty was my motivation. I stopped training and did not do the next race (January 2014 WDW, even though I had already paid and had planned the trip).
So, back to work, and I gained back all the weight and more by 2016, nearly 290 lbs. This time I thought I'd focus primarily on a diet, lose weight, and then start training again. I did the 30/10 Diet, a somewhat tightly supervised meal replacement program. The diet consisted of a limited meal plan, mostly of packets of protein power meals and drinks, and weekly weigh-in and accountability sessions. Much to my surprise, this worked. In no time (about six months), I lost about 50 pounds and was down below 240 (again).
So, what happened then? It's April 2017. I retired. As part of my retirement, I had decided to eliminate sources of stress, one of which had been continuously watching watch what I eat. Believe it or not, it only took six months to gain all that weight back. Thanks in part to several long vacations, I bounced back up to nearly 280 before I decided to try something else.
And so we have the next lesson learned, once you're fat, fat is your natural state (more on this later). There's something wrong with your metabolism if you can gain such significant amounts of weight so easily, so quickly. But it's real and needs to be continuously managed.
So, I found another gym. It's February 2018. This time I thought I'd try weight training. For a year, I got nowhere, no weight loss (in fact, I gained weight), and no quantifiable strength gain. Fortunately, I was able to use one of the lessons learned earlier, and instead of dropping out of the gym, I sought advice. At the start of 2019, I set a goal to lose 40 lbs by the end of the year. With the guidance and counseling of my coaches, I was able to lose 40 pounds by August and saw measurable strength improvements, thanks to adjustments to my training regime and a dietary plan focused on macronutrient percentages (IIFYM, If It Fits Your Macros), and limiting calories.
By August, I was down to 240. Currently, I'm sitting slightly above 250 So, why do I want to lose more.
Basically, at 250, I'm still very fat, obese. Yet I have this vision of a thinner me. I'm a big believer in the power of visualizing your future. I want to be 180. It seems impossible, especially given what I've learned recently. But if I want it bad enough, I'll do it.
And that's where I am, on the blocks, ready to go. Let's do this.
Ready. Set. Go!
For my next journal entry, I'll cover my plan, diet, exercise, and I'll lay out a schedule for accountability. I'll also hope to summarize some of the reasoning behind my thinking, formulating the basis for this next strategy.