The Next Challenge

If you know me, you know I'm a bit of a fitness failure. I have yo-yoed on my weight, my flexibility is a joke, and I have been more weak than strong for most of my life. Around two years ago I stepped on a scale and saw a number that shocked me to my core. I weighed 262 pounds. I am not a tall, or well-muscled, person so the only thing to account for this weight was fat. And it was obvious. You could see it hanging off me. I wore big clothes, so you couldn't see the full scope of how far I had let myself go, but it was obvious that I was overweight. Finally, I did something about it. After the shock of seeing that number wore off, I vowed to make changes in my life to be healthier. You see, I'm not someone who would ever expect to look fantastic, and I'm kind of ok with that. I would mostly just like to feel good, have a bit of energy, and not suffer through days with a shortness of breath or the creeping fatigue that I had wandered around with for so long.

To this end, I realized that my first step was to really look at the horrible things I put in my body on a regular basis. I was a fairly terrible eater. Tons of high-fat, processed food with little to no nutritional value. Fast food. Empty calories in the form of soda, candy, grease. A total disaster. After a bit of thought I decided that the first casualty of my new plan would be soda. I drank more than most, totaling at least two cans a day, usually closer to 5. And besides the caffeine addiction, I was deeply, horribly dependent on high fructose corn syrup. I went cold-turkey, and for a year I didn't take a sip of the stuff. After a year, I tried a Coke, my drink of choice for most of my life, and I didn't like it at all. It was as if breaking the addiction allowed my body to heal and realize that this shit was poison. These days I will have the occasional lemon-lime soda if I'm in the mood for something sweet, but it's quite rare that I do, more along the lines of how that stuff should be consumed, if you're gonna have it at all.

Having conquered one obstacle, I was ready for more. I have enough knowledge about nutrition and the body to realize that dieting was the last thing I needed. What I was looking for was a wholesale change of my relationship to food. I decided to start keeping a food diary. Thankfully, with the technology available today, it was relatively simple. I have an app on my phone, I enter the important bits, scan barcodes if possible, and track my nutrition each day. I went into this process with the understanding that if I tried to set too high a standard I would most likely fail, give up, and regress back into old habits, so I decided at first to not limit anything but I had to honestly keep track of it all. This simple process brought me to better decisions within mere days. Once you get an honest picture of what certain "foods" actually mean to your health and fitness, the decisions sort themselves out.

In conjunction with my food diary, I also decided to start running. It should be noted at this time that I positively HATE running. Always have. When I was young and fit, playing sports in school and all that, hated running then too. But the fact is that aerobic movements are the most basic, easy, efficient way to start burning the calories needed for weight loss. Knowing myself as I do, I realized once again, that I'm not the guy who will stick to a running regimen just for the sake of it, so I signed up for a race. The joke of my youth was always that I would run only when chased, so I signed up for a Zombie Run. A 5k race where you are, quite literally, chased by folks dressed and made up as zombies. I gave myself 8 months, and I downloaded a training program from the web, and with the race date in mind I started running. And it actually paid off. No surprise, really, I mean the fact is that weight loss is one thing and one thing alone: burn off more calories than you take in. And I was doing that. Between the food diary and the running, I was also doing is smartly, not starving myself and sabotaging my metabolism and not over-indulging to the point of harming my training. From the nightmare of my biggest weigh-in to the race, I lost just over forty pounds. 40. And I was feeling good. Lighter, healthier, my breath was stronger, I wasn't sore every morning when I got out of bed. Making the decision to correct that area of your life and actually accomplishing it is a pretty incredible feeling.

So I am at it again.

Since my race last October, I have put on about 7 pounds. I know these are not healthy pounds of muscle because the truth is, it got cold and I stopped running. But the weather is changing again, and it's time to set new goals. Things are a bit different this time, as I am starting from a slightly better place, therefore I am setting loftier goals. I also have a new job that is fairly physical which means I come home tired most nights and head to bed earlier than ever before in my life and I'm not sure if this is gonna help or hurt, so we'll see. But I have signed up for a Spartan Race this time. Five miles, up a ski mountain, with intense physical obstacles such as rope climbs and pulling buckets full of rocks. A friend who did this race last year said it was the hardest thing he has ever done in his life, and he's 170 pounds of nothing but muscle so the thought that I'm out of my depth is definitely there. But that's the finish line for my training and part of me can't wait to see how I do. In conjunction with this I have also signed up for a body composition challenge. When I ran the zombie race last year I only trained by running. I figured since that was really all it entailed there was no reason to mix in other disciplines. With this race there are a great many strength challenges along the way. Besides being a mud run, the obstacles are quite hardcore. I am not in shape for such things... yet. To that end I signed up for CrossFit training at a local gym (they call them boxes, but I haven't finished the kool-aid yet). It just so happened that during my trial membership they offered this body comp challenge, and it runs almost perfectly concurrent with my race schedule. Yesterday I went it for Hydrostatic Body Composition Analysis. They float you in a tub of water and do some math and wham, you have the most scientifically accurate measurement of the amount of fat on your body. This might sound daunting to some, but the truth is it was a relief for me. I like to know where I stand, and the certainty of these numbers was almost comforting because I truly believe that I'm not going to be there for long. At the end of the challenge they take the measurements again and you see how you progressed.

Just the facts:
Age - 38 (for another week or so)
Height - 5' 11 and 1/2 inches
Weight - 228 pounds
Body Fat - 24.94%
Fat Body Mass - 56.85 pounds

Supposedly the ideal for men is 15% body fat or thereabouts, which means my idea weight is about 201 pounds.  In addition, I have taken in upon myself to mark some other measurements which I am hoping will change in the next few months. All numbers are in inches:
Neck - 18
Chest - 46 1/2
Waist - 44 1/2
Hips - 40 1/2
Thigh - 25
Calf - 16 1/2
Arm - 14 1/2

This was a bit more disappointing than the fat measurements, because I do wear 36 inch waist pants and I thought my neck was 17 1/2, but again, it's just the place I'm starting now, soon to be the past. I briefly considered putting up a before picture or two on this post to go along with all these numbers, but I realize that besides being public, even those who know me are likely not want to see me so close to undressed.

So that's where I begin. Old enough to know it's gonna hurt, stupid enough to think age doesn't matter, and hopeful about where I'll be in three months. I took my first real CrossFit class today and I can only describe is as feeling like I lost a very large bar fight. Tomorrow is my first training run and I can only imagine what that's gonna feel like. But every day is a bit easier, and every time I get out of the shower and see a slightly different reflection in the mirror I'll be that much more dedicated. Wish me luck.