The New Me!
This post is quite possibly the toughest for me to write but I think it's the corner stone of why I am making this website. I am hoping that it will provide inspiration and make this journey that much more relatable. I used to be fat. Not obese, but fat. Not a little soft, just plain ol' fat. In this article, I am hoping to take you from where I was to where I am now.
This is me circa December, 2010. I haven't looked at this picture in over 2 years and it's hard even now. I was just shy of 200lbs at 5'8". Those were size 34 waist shorts.
As I said in my post "Who Am I?", I grew up playing a lot of sports. I was a pretty athletic child, so my problems didn't arise until a little later in life. So we will start in my late years of college, during my graduate degree. To put it bluntly, I stayed pretty thin in college because the majority of my money went towards tuition, rent and the "odd" alcoholic beverage. The time that I devoted to sports dramatically dropped with the odd pick up game of hockey, some ultimate frisbee and playing on the "molecular biology" soccer team... we weren't very good. As I submitted my thesis and looked towards the next step of my life, I was 5'8" (on a good day) and around 150 lbs. Then things took a turn for the worse.
I moved to America... but that's not the reason I got fat. When I moved to New York I had a 2000 VW golf, a maxed out student line of credit, two maxed out credit cards and $200 in my bank account... no joke. My company had put me up in a hotel for a month giving me some time to find an apartment. This left me with enough money for a cell phone and meals before that first cheque with my name on it came in. I don't know how many of you are aware of the cost of living in New York, but it's absurd and I dramatically under estimated my necessary income. Any salary coming out of college is nice, but when your cost of living more than decuples, there is a lot of financial stress. I spent the next year eating. Stress eating, angry eating, eating cheap foods with high calories but low nutrients, likely even sleep eating. I was in a bad place. I was incredibly unhappy, I missed my family and friends, I was struggling to meet new and social people (difficult in my line of work) and just felt lost and alone. It became a vicious cycle. The more that I would eat, the less I would want to do. The less I would go out, the less likely I would meet people. I would come home from work and just want to sit on the couch and zone out. My mood had crashed through the floor, I was irritable, negative and just shitty to be around. I can see that now... from the other side.
This is me now... after an incredible amount of work and discipline. In my opinion, the effects of food are 10 fold to that of exercise. Start by eating right and add in the exercise as you go.
A year later, quite literally, I looked in the mirror and wondered who I had become. See, the problem is, when you are that fat guy in a funk, it is sometimes difficult to remember what "normal" is. My body seemed "normal" to me, my mood seemed "normal" to me. It wasn't until I changed everything that I truly realized how much of an effect that lifestyle had on me. Case and point - I literally blamed the dryer for shrinking my clothes. Yup, that actually happens in real life. I put on a button up shirt with snaps as buttons and anytime I moved, the snaps would pop open. I even filed a complaint with my landlord: "That stupid dryer is too hot and it keeps shrinking all of my damn clothes!!". I still own that shirt to this day just as a reference to what I used to be. The day I looked in the mirror and saw what I had become, I vowed to find myself again. Let me tell you this, getting fat is great... Getting skinny sucks.
The first thing I did was to go out and get a copy of P90X. Well, let's be honest, I was still fat and lazy so I ordered it to be delivered to my door. One of the best decisions I have made. If you follow that program and I mean truly follow it, you will see differences, no questions about it. That is exactly what I needed, to see results and fast. After I started to see some results, it really motivated me to change my eating habits. That is when my life truly changed. It is amazing what eating healthy will do. Not only did I look better, which was what I was initially going for, but I felt better emotionally. It didn't hurt that personal matters, which I won't mention here, changed for the better and removed a lot of my emotional stress... unfortunately not my financial ones though. I am not going to act like I started eating fruits and vegetables overnight, this process took forever, a year at the least. Only now, 4 years later, I can truly say that I eat healthy.
I am not going to ramble on about everything that I did in order to get where I am today. That is a journey you have to take on your own. But I promise you this, you CAN do it. What I can say is that I have experimented with many different nutritional plans: "No carbs", "No dairy", "Paleo", "Raw", you name it. I like to give them all about six weeks to see their full effects (minus the raw plan, didn't make it nearly that far). I must admit that the "Paleo" diet worked best for me. That being said, as coach Matt Dixon says, there is a big difference between nutrition and fueling but I will talk about that in another blog post. On top of eating well, I enjoy my exercise. I like moving weight, I like long cardio sessions, I like to sweat. It started out being a struggle but now I crave it. If I miss two days of exercise, I feel terrible. My fiancée is the same way. We're addicted, through and through.
Last year, around this time, I was training for my first marathon with Tiff (she had already run a handful). Yes, 3 years after starting my path towards fitness, I was finally running a marathon. Like I said, the process of losing weight sucks and it is slow... but it is so good when you look back. Now, we are training to run one of the most grueling physical events on the planet and I am in the best shape of my life. I am lucky because I have something a lot of people don't, a partner in crime who is by my side through all of it. I can't emphasize how much better a three hour run is when you are with someone you love. Even if you frustrate her because you won't shut up.
When is/was your turning point? Please let us know your stories in the comments down below or via email.