Hey there again everyone. Today's topic of discussion: exercise/weight loss and the journey involved with each. After the post, feel free to join the discussion in the comments.
Weight loss. It is a big topic of discussion. This is something that everyone deals with. I'm in my current battle. Now I have always been heavier throughout my life. I had noticed early on, during the early years of schooling. I noticed that I wasn't as fast as some of my classmates. I had noticed during the physical tests that I couldn't do any pull ups. It's not like I ate a lot. I was always outside playing as a kid. I was in sports. I was a catcher in baseball. I was a football player. I don't know why I was, and never understood. I know that genetics plays a part in everything that makes us up. I'm not entirely sure if weight and/or obesity are affected by our genetic code. I had wondered throughout life, but never worried too much about it. Then high school hit. Through the summer practices in football, we were requires to log our weight throughout the day. Mainly it was for the coaches to see if anyone was losing too much weight due to the heavy practice schedule. But I was able to see the weight of my peers. From here, I made half hearted attempts to lose the weight I wanted to, and to get in shape. They all failed because I wasn't serious about it. Everything kinda quited until the second half of my freshman year in college. Here, I joined the Ultimate Team. Once again, the self conscience thought regards their head. I would go running maybe once every two weeks (when not at practice), but never stuck to anything. I didn't eat healthy at all. There weren't many changes, maybe some more stamina, but not much. It repeated until my junior year, but didn't kick into gear until my senior year. Junior year, I developed a routine with the help of my friend, Laura. We would regularly eat dinner together, and sometimes lunches. It helped me settle into a consistent feel of my days. It was around this time, I met Cody. He played Ultimate with us. He was smaller, but built. We had connected through our history of wrestling in high school. We became friends during my final years at college. Cody and I started working out together. We would go to the gym after Ultimate practice and dinner. We would do interval sprints on the track (small indoor one, each lap was 1/8 mile), and some weight work. He taught me an ab workout that was killer. I was finally seeing some sort of results. I felt good. I was looking good. We kept this up. This ended when my time was up in Peoria. It was after here when I fell.off the wagon, so to speak. Over the next six years, I gained and gained weight. It was never super out of control. It came to a head when I was reading 310+ lbs. I took small steps to try and negate this. Nothing really worked, and if it did, I never stuck to it. Everything changed, January 6, 2015. Cynthia was born. Here is where everything changed. Being a father has helped me out on my journey more than anything else. I slowly started to notice my jeans fit better. My shirt were not as tight. I had lost 45+ lbs since she was born. She has helped inspire me to keep this going. I don't want to be that father who can't play with his daughter because of his weight.
To this end, I have picked up running again. I'm going to be cha going up my running routine here. I can do the distance fairly decent (by distance, I mean 1-3 miles), but not shirt distance. I am going to work on a system of interval sprints. I also have plans to work in an ab workout routine to help slim down even more.
I have found that this has started because of a reason. A strong reason to accomplish my goals. I often take my dogs on a run as motivation. I want to tire them out. They enjoy the runs, probably more than I do. That's okay though. They look to be in great shape also.
So what are your thoughts on exercise? Are you on a current journey of your own? What inspires you? Tell your story in the comments.
