Year One

Tuesday marked one year since I made the breakthrough in meaningful weight loss, coupling exercise with diet.  I weighed in at 331 lbs, down 110 lbs in a year!  I’m especially pleased because my weight loss averaged just over 2 lbs a week, a number, I've heard, over and over, from concerned doctors and diet experts, which is a healthy rate of loss for sustainable reduction.  This is due to the fact that if you are able to constantly lose this amount over a long period of time, you are developing healthy habits that you can maintain, not for a week or a month but, for a lifetime.

At my Heaviest

In my first year of healthier habits, I've incorporated resistance training into my exercise routine, which boosts my metabolism and replaces fat with lean tissue.  I've completely changed the way I eat, leaving behind the delusional days in which I tracked my daily sweets into my food diary.  I am sticking to a schedule—up and at ‘em in the AM, beddy bye shortly after dark—and am many folds more productive.  And finally I am continuing a concerted effort to broaden my horizons by lowering my guard; trying to be less emotionally sensitive and more adventurous, in order to experience more that the world has to offer.

Down 110 lbs!

If I don’t start to look sickly before I get there, my goal is to break the 220 lbs threshold.  At that weight I would no longer be obese under the body-mass index criteria and, by continuing to exercise, I will be much leaner, and much, much healthier.  The thought is exciting and I feel like going out to sprint a mile to that end, but I realize I’m on the long track journey—the path without short cuts or easy alternative routes.  It took a year to get halfway, and I anticipate it taking at least another year, probably more.  This is the test that’ll prove whether I am a true new man, and it is a test shan't fail!