A Major Personal Milestone
When I stepped on the scale in the locker room today before my workout, I weighed 164 pounds. For the past month or so, I’ve weighed 165 pounds or less fully dressed. Before that, I was “stuck” at 167 pounds for what seemed like forever. The significance of weighing 165 pounds is that it is exactly what I weighed in college. It’s only two pounds, but it’s a major psychological barrier. Intellectually, I know that my clothes and other accessories are much heaver that what I had back then, and that I actually weigh less than in my college days. Yet I still yearned to see 165 or less on the dial. Without clothes, my weight fluctuates between 155 and 157 which is 3-5 pounds lighter than my college days. It’s a long way from the day I weighed 260. That was one of the most preventable, depressing days in my life. I say “preventable depressing” because I have been more depressed over things beyond my control.
At the time, I coached my son’s pee-wee wresting team and had access to a nice balance scale like in a doctor’s office. It was miserable sliding the big weight to 250 when, for most of my life, it was on 150 or 200. The next day, I went on a diet. I got down to 225 pounds and stopped, so I decided to take up running to get the rest of the weight off. Like most of my major accomplishments, I could never have done it without California Girl. She came out and “ran” with me three days a week. I really appreciated her support in the early days when I could not “run” half-way around the block without stopping. I could not have done it without her. Slowly but surely, the weight came off as I got in better and better shape. Now I workout (run and lift weights) every day and don’t even think about it. I’ve gone from not being able to run a quarter of a mile to running 6-8 miles a day.
I am never going back to being heavy. I have bad memories from that time in my life that I don’t wish to relive (or recount here). Plus, when I gained weight, I never thought how hard it would be to lose. Now, I know what it takes and I don’t plan on putting myself in that position again.
Well done – that’s fantastic!
I always have to get the calculator out with this sort of thing, though, because we express weight in stones. (So I have to divide by 14 to make any sense of it.)
you ROCK!!! good job
Ed/SK: Thanks. I am proud that I did something for myself despite all of the other things going on around me. It was too easy to become focused on work and children and forget about myself. I think now I’ve got the discipline to strike a good balance.
Sometime when you can’t think of something to write — tell what you do for your workout. I’ve been at it for 5 months, 2 1/2 hours most days and because of a health problem am having a really hard time. Do you vary your workout from day to day? I been told that the body adapts to a given routine – hence no progress. I can’t run, but do walk 2 1/2 miles + other things. Just interested. Rosie
Rosie: I’m going out of town on business for a couple of days next week. I’m sure that I’ll have some time then when I’m just sitting around in the airport and at the hotel.