What…
Over the past few months I have taken a few personal growth type courses in an effort to get better focused and more things accomplished.
The most recent one was a 30 day kick in the pants group type course where you define your major 30 day goal(s) and break it down to smaller daily goals that work towards the major goals. Each day you post one thing that you are going to do for each of the four main categories of Health, Wealth, Productivity and Connectivity and then do it and then at the end you review where you began vs where you are at the end and if there are any goals you did not reach, you have to understand why not and post it.
One of my goals was to lose 20-30lbs by the end of the 30 days…
Unfortunately I did not accomplish my goals as I had hoped to. I let many things interfere with my positive mindset that I began with at the beginning of the course ultimately bringing me down from “I can do anything, Lets do this!” to “good luck with that, I can’t do anything right”. As I looked back at it and even think about it now the biggest factor was stress and how I responded to it. I responded poorly I went to comfort food and ate like crap.
The agony of defeat covered in a cheese and pepperoni pizza with a dozen wings to make the defeat more palatable. The why bother trying, aw f**k it attitude was in full swing. This did me no favors, it was a recipe for more weight gain, worse health and depression. As I crashed from the carbohydrate overload it just fed into a feeling of defeat and robbed me of all motivation and energy which just made me reach for my old friend “Carbs” again for another pick me up only to be let down again.
This went on for several weeks and then I saw the 30 day group I was in was coming to an end. All of these people in the group were reporting their progress, their new found accomplishments and success. There I sat in silence reading one post after another. I felt like such a loser, I was frustrated and upset at myself for not completing it or accomplishing my goals.
The post in the group asked to post the results and if you didn’t hit your goals why you didn’t. I began to post how everything began and how the the first week went so well then I began explaining the weeks after and what a disaster it had been. It is then that I realized my pattern I did what I have always done when stress has become too great and I fall behind , I shut down completely and bailed on it. I let myself down, the group down and the person running the group; Dan. I didn’t want to end my journey on this note but the group wasn’t going to stay open for me it was 30 days no more no less and now it was at the point of wrapping up.
I then started mulling around in my head how can I make sure to follow through and accomplish my goal of weight loss better yet how can I redeem myself? I made goals that I didn’t even make an effort towards. It is in that moment it came to me… I need to be held accountable but I also need a way to journal my progress so that I never forget this journey I never go back to old habits and I have something to go back to that I can say I DID THAT! And if I can accomplish this I can accomplish anything.
I wrote up why I didn’t hit my goal, while several things were out of my control I let others decide that. My own opinion was that a lot of what derailed me in January was out of my control but I did make the decision to eat bad. I did make the decision to let stress derail me. I asked for everyone’s opinion on two goals I have. The first being losing 100lbs in 120 days and the second being making 100k in 100 days with no prior products or anything of the like. I have a feeling my goals may have been a bit too ambitious as only about 4 people responded out of 100 views to my post. While this made me feel like an outsider looking in on the group I decided I must go through with my goals no matter what and do whatever I find will help achieve the goals. Even if I fall short and cannot lose 100lbs in 120 days I will still be much further along then if I do nothing or kept doing what I have been doing.
The Why
I need to drastically lose weight . I have allowed myself to gain almost all my weight back from 11 years ago. Currently at 351lbs I am only a few pounds shy of my heaviest weight ever in 2006 which was 356lbs. I know if I stay the weight I am it is going to have devastating consequences beyond what I am already experiencing if I do not do something about it. My legs are swollen badly, my knees hurt, my back hurts, my feet look like loaves of Italian bread and my legs look like tree stumps. I am headed for a myriad of health problems.
I am having all sorts of water retention right now, I am having gout flare ups caused by what I have been eating and my yo-yo weight loss and gain again from trying to eat right and then eating out when meals aren’t planned. Acid reflux is the worst it has been in years as I wake up some mornings with my throat feeling like i breathed fire through the night. My heartbeat is skipping more often. I get more chest discomfort yet I can’t be certain if it is gas or my heart hurting from all the stress of the weight combined with other stress.
Sometimes I go to bed scared I may not wake up the next day. I am supposed to be on a CPAP machine. They prescribed it to me to get a better nights rest but I quit using the thing 2 years ago because it would wake me up several times in the middle of the night hissing at me or the hose would get wrapped around my neck. Worse yet if the unit got pulled off my self the water could go into the airtube and it could force water down my lungs. The geniuses who built this $800+ contraption didn’t bother putting a safety shutoff or valve to prevent it from pushing water into your lungs and drowning you. Yet this is their idea of more restful sleep? I’ll PASS. To make matters worse, I am also a heart patient but contrary to popular belief it is not due to weight. I am on blood pressure pills and blood thinners.
See writing this now is liking waking up part of my brain right now… As odd as this seems the “aw f**k it” attitude has been replaced with “WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU DOING YOU IDIOT!” I guess it takes, taking a complete inventory of health issues written down to realize what I have done to myself. Sure I can blame this person or that person or situation but I could have made better decisions in hindsight. When you are in the thick of it all dealing with all the daily stuff such as work, daily chores etc. you lose yourself and you lose an inventory of everything going on. You just know you feel like crap.
It sounds stupid I know if I was reading this I would probably be saying “bull-s**t” but habits form, things become automatic and just like when you have a bad back, bad shoulder, knee or whatever joint that causes you pain you get used to just dealing with and trudge on. That’s almost what everybody’ parents instill in them, and what society does too; roll with the punches and keep on trucking. I think its a sort of acceptance you don’t want to but you just do accept things without even realizing it.
The years of fighting with my weight, physical pain, multiple operations and health issues have taken their toll on me. Most people look at me and see just an overweight guy they have no idea what I have gone through nor continue to go through on a daily basis with my health. They have no idea I had heart surgery, that I am on blood thinners for life unless I tell them. They probably walk buy and just think there’s another fat lazy guy. I have always worked so am not lazy in that regard but in my own personal health as much as it pains me to say it, they’d be right. If I was on top of my health I wouldn’t be the weight I am and as out of shape as I am.
To be honest this is not me, blogging away on the internet. Sure I have written comments on news article or Facebook etc. but I never really tell anything about myself on the internet to complete strangers. However I hope that by sharing this journey maybe I can inspire others and through inspiring them it inspires me to do more to eat better and to live better.
I’ll admit I’m going way out of my comfort zone on this but I think that is what I may need to do. It is time for change, comfortable has gotten me nothing but fat and made me lazy along with giving me a host of health problems. Comfortable is when you don’t want to acknowledge the truth or the problem it is just easier to sweep it under the carpet and convince yourself that everything is okay. Comfortable is well, non challenging, non threatening, non confrontational. It is something to be when you’re sleeping or vacationing but it is no way to be in every day life if things are not in order. So this my step to get things in order, to face these things head up, to challenge myself, to admit my faults and confront my fears and to completely change my life for the better for years to come.
Most people are striving to just survive…
I am Striving for Fit…