Not long ago, my wife and I ran in Warrior Dash and I posted about that here.
I remember when we started the race. We were toward the back of the crowd of hundreds. Everybody started moving forward slowly, walking, then speeding up to a light jog. Thoughts ran through my mind of "this is 3 miles", "you've NEVER ran that far", and "you've never even TRAVELED that far on foot in your adult life".
So I wondered if I'd make it. Would I end up walking the entire way? Or most of it?
See I didn't know what lay ahead of me as far as that challenge went. I'd never done it before and there was doubt. Sure I'd had success up to that point with improving my health. Losing 70lbs while maintaining my muscle isn't anything to sneeze at.
However with that race being so new, I wondered if my previous successes added up to enough punch with which knock this new challenger out.
But as you know we did finish.
We had a blast and if I had it to do over again, I'd sign up in a heartbeat (in fact we're already planning to go again in MO next year and perhaps also in KC).
Fast forward to yesterday. I began a new challenge.
It's one of my 90-Day Challenges, the ones I promote. I promote that because its been a tool to keep myself on track with improving my health and fitness. Having said that, I'm very excited to say that I'm nearing my ultimate goal (of weight-loss anyway) that will put me in line with the BMI charts, standardized weight-charts, etc
These last 90 days, this challenge, this time in my life is the time, the moment to wrestle this old enemy of mine to the ground and make him submit. It's been a long fight .. years .. and there are many deep feeling tied up in this. Heck, things that have haunted me since grade-school.
Well I'm 90-day aways from putting it all behind me, instead of it always walking beside me.
Now up until recently I wasn't a fan of things like those government charts and BMI guidelines. In the back of my mind though I knew I was a fat person, telling myself that those charts were skewed, in order to justify my continued bad lifestyle and poor health choices.
After a lot of research in how to calculate my lean-body-mass, etc though I found my goal weight and body fat.
Danged if those freakin' charts weren't right in my case. Sigh.
So the goal over this last 90-days is 28.8 lbs to go. I'm on the backside of losing the last of my larger-than-should-be backside.
Another excuse I used to use is .. "well I should just love ME like I am and live my life, fat or not".
Let me share how I was lying to myself there.
Listen up.
I was right in thinking it shouldn't be about me "looking good" and that I should accept myself where how I am.
However I realized that it can't end there or one of these two things would happen:
1) I would have a lesser quality of life than I deserve.
2) I would not not live as long as I could otherwise.
See how easy and straightforward that is?
For a LONG time I convinced myself I couldn't afford to eat healthier.
Bullcrap.
See I realized that I had the choice of either paying more for healthy food now or I could continue to eat garbage and then pay for high medical bills later in life.
More easy, straightforward logic there.
The thing is, if you're in a boat similar to the one I was in, I encourage you to climb out of it. Get HONEST with yourself about the two issues above that I numbered. Be honest with yourself about how you feel each day in your own skin.
- If you have kids, can you keep up with them? If not, why not? Don't give me that bull about being old. That's hooey and an internal script we read to ourselves to give us an excuse to sit on the couch.
- When was the last time you tried to "play", really play in the yard .. .like tag? Or just sprint around a little bit?
- When was the last time you looked at exercise as fun (like you did when you were a kid) instead of a chore? I challenge you to NOT go to a gym, stay away from those silly gym machines and start to master exercising with your bodyweight .. learn to MOVE again.
That's another thing that has happened to me is that I want to help others that felt the way I did ... that there was no more hope. There IS hope. Chances are that your body is not so broken-down and fat that you can't get your health back. Your body was designed to fix itself; you just have to give it an environment in which to thrive.
So as I keep writing new posts, feel free to comment, email, whatever you like. Or if you just want to read my story as I open up and share more, then stay tuned.
It's gonna be a brutally honest share-a-thon :)
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