Cold Wet Nose

Today’s my birthday… yippee! Not only that, but today also marks a week since I met my (original) weight-loss goal. It’s been some 45 weeks, 500+ miles, and 55+ pounds. So this year, “basic fitness” is my gift to myself.

I wish I could say losing all that weight was tough or easy, or something like that… but actually it just sorta happened. It started when I finally realized that I was just inside the “obese” category (according to BMI). I knew I needed to get out of that group, through the “overweight” category, and into the “normal” range.

And so, like any good project, I started by gathering a bit of information. It seems that there’s this theory going around that “diet and exercise” is a great way to lose weight… so I thought I’d give it a shot.

For the “diet” part, I found a good book that laid out how nutrition works, how the body processes foods, and then made some recommendations. Honestly, I think the key to success on this facet was the selection of one book. I’m sure there are both better and worse books out there, but by picking one source I didn’t have to reconcile multiple theories by myself…

For the “exercise” part, I pretty much have to blame my wife for getting me started on that. She dragged me out to start running a couple times a week. At first it was much more walking then running, but it really didn’t take long (1 month or so) before I was running more then I was walking. It certainly wasn’t easy for either one of use those first couple months, but it’s become a habit now… just part of the routine, like taking out the trash.

As far as sticking to the “diet and exercise” program… well… that’s was excel is for. It didn’t take long to start showing a trend in weight loss and that gave me hope most every day. Some days I went up in weight, mostly I went down, but either way I had to record it. And now, I’ve got a pretty cool looking chart to show for it. And more importantly, I’m a member of the “normal range” once again.

Yippie!

(I’m not about to start pushing my program on anyone else, and my results are just that… mine. If you want to know what book I used, or more info on how I run, just ask. I need a good excuse to share a pint with someone anyhow.)

Tags: diet, exercise, weight loss

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.