Exercise

When I lived in Illinois, a friend of mine and I decided to try a bodybuilding and weightlifting program. The program was called Cybergenics, it was a six week program, and it was our first introduction to the world of supplements. With a lot of hard work, significant diet changes, and some help from Creatine Monohydrate, I managed to lose 33 pounds in 42 days. I hadn’t felt that good in a long time.

Over the years I’ve tried to stay active on and off, but I have never been as disciplined as I was over the course of that six weeks in 1997. My diet has drifted all over the landscape and my weight has fluctuated from 266 pounds at the start of Cybergenics, down to 233 at the conclusion of the program. In 2008 when I was at my heaviest, I topped out at 297 pounds. I hated the way I felt, I hated the way I looked and everything was a chore. When I weighed myself yesterday morning, I tipped the scale at 275 pounds; heavier than I was even 18 months ago when I was down to 256 (also through a lot of hard work and discipline).

The truth is I love how I feel after I work out regardless of the routine I follow. Weightlifting, biking, swimming, jogging, or tennis; I enjoy them all. The problem as I see it is there are so many things I prefer to do. I know this is a pathetic excuse, but given the choice between exercise and spending time with my family, my family wins. I admit it boils down to poor time management – instead of killing two and a half hours playing a video game or watching a movie, I should knock an hour off of that and use it to log some time on the treadmill or go for a run. You caught me, but I have been working on it since moving to our new house.

Early in the moving process one of the main criteria for the new home was I wanted to have a home gym. Michelle, my wife, was in full support of the idea and we dedicated a room for the project. She jokes about how she should get “Wife of the Year” award, and I’m the first to agree. She has been accommodating and supportive throughout the process, even volunteering to paint the room whatever color I wanted (I went with blue).

With the room completed, I’ve tried to work out three times per week with the goal of moving up to five workouts per week. The process has been a lot tougher than I anticipated and there have been some missteps here and there, but I should get there before Christmas. Next week I plan on moving to four days per week and reintroducing weightlifting to my routing. It’s only been a few months since I last lifted, so it shouldn’t be too brutal of a process to resume.

The biggest obstacle for me has always been my love of food. There are two types of food I love in particular; junk food and hearty meals. My love of junk food is almost exclusively homemade chocolate chip cookies and Red Vine licorice. When it comes to hearty meals, I have a tendency to pile on the calories when it comes to homemade food; chili, meatball subs, and stews. A few meals of these various favorites with rich desserts like cake, pies, and cookies over the course of the fall and winter and it doesn’t take long to arrive at 250+ pounds.

Moderation has never been my strong suit. The holidays are the worst time of year for me because they usher in the season of all of my favorite foods; eggnog, cherry-glazed ham, homemade bread, turkey, and more mashed potatoes. Throw in a couple of my favorite desserts like black forest cake, Christmas cookies, and sweet potato pie and the numbers on the scale get ugly in short order.

This year I am going to try something new. I am going to focus on regular exercise and balance that with being aware of what I am eating. This also includes backing off on the amount of booze I drink on weekends. I never have considered myself a heavy drinker – I have a couple (strong) cocktails on the weekends, but the mixed drinks pile on the calories (alcohol + fruit juice = high calorie sugars).

My goal throughout this process is to get more active, eat a little less, and remain focused on getting healthy and losing weight. From time to time I may post my progress here, but I don’t want to be that guy, the one that constantly pops off about how much weight I’ve lost, but writing about it here may assist in keeping me focused on this project, and it is a mountain of a project.

 

Regards,

John