Day 1: Version 4.0: 4th Time's A Charm!

Day 1

The Stats:

Male

57 years old

6'5"

303 lbs

303 lbs?  Wow.

How in the hell did I get here?

The Backstory:

I hate exercise.  Always have.  Even as a young kid, I would always have rather been reading a good book than doing anything else.  I played with the kids in the neighborhood, I played sports, but I always preferred my quiet, alone time.

I was blessed with a fast metabolism, and was naturally lean until I hit my mid 30s.  This was me at age 7.  

Check out that 6-pack!

I graduated high school standing 6'5", weighing 164 lbs, and wearing 29" waist Levis (36" inseam.)  Try finding those in 1976!

At 21, I weighed 180 lbs, and wore 30/36 Levis.  Of all the sports I'd played as a kid, the one I'd enjoyed most was running.  I ran cross country in high school, and after high school, ran regularly with a few friends; probably 20 miles per week.  I was in pretty good shape.  Here I am at a club on Halloween:  

(I'm the one dressed as a member of The Village People, not the one in the diaper)

By age 25, I weighed 190 lbs, and wore 31/36 Levis.  In the pic below, I'm playing with my niece.  After having (inevitably) reverted back to my sedentary state for a few years, I'd been running every day again, and hitting the gym and dojo regularly.  I was probably in the best shape of my life.  

No love handles! (yet)

It was around that time that I went back to school, working full time as I went.  No time for any physical activity, but a great metabolism worked in my favor.  By age 30, I weighed 200 lbs, wore 32/36 Levis.  By this time, I'd become very involved in my career, and hadn't worked out, or ran in years.  Aside from playing in a softball league (where much beer was consumed), I was pretty much sedentary, although there was some activity dictated by my busy career, as you can see below.

(I'm the one in the blue sweater with the sweeeet mullet)

By age 33, the downhill slide had started.  I only weighed 210, but I was in horrible shape.  My Levis were 34/36, and you can see my face was beginning to get fleshy.  The 34 waist pants are a bit misleading, as by this time, there was a gut starting to hang over my belt.  Despite the fact that I was clearly hammered in this pic, alcohol wasn't really a contributing factor; I didn't drink often, or much, and never have.

Now THAT is big hair!

OK, so maybe I drank A LITTLE more frequently in those days.  What can I say?  My friends were bad influences on me.

By age 35, I was at 225, 36/36 Levis, with some serious double chin action starting, and a full-blown muffin-top over my jeans.

(my gut is sucked in so hard my eyeballs hurt)

It got progressively worse from there, and surprise, surprise, there are no more pictures!  For some reason, I'd begun seriously avoiding the camera around this time.

(OK, maybe a few more pictures, but the camera-shyness is evident)

(Or I might find them embarrassing for other reasons ................ The sweater, not Michael Bolton, mean girl!) 

I'll delve more into my backstory in later posts.  How I got here isn't as important as what I'm gonna do about it.

The Plan:

It's pretty simple:

1.  Get off my ass

2.  Eat better (and less)

3.  Cut back on The Nectar Of The Gods

(12 oz can of Mountain Dew, chilled to 38 degrees, CANNONBALLED!  Hot Damn!)

This sounds like a pretty vague plan, but I know it works.  In the Summer of 2006, I embarked on Fat Guy Walking 1.0.  I walked between 3, and 4 miles per day, ate a 12" Subway turkey sub (no cheese), with just spicy mustard, onions, and black pepper, and a couple of bowls of Special K with Red Berries each day, and limited myself to no more than 4 cans of The Nectar Of The Gods per day.

15 weeks, later I'd walked 300 miles, and lost 30lbs (293 to 263).  My blood pressure had gone from 139/82 to 118/77, my resting heart rate had gone from 84 to 60, my BMI had gone from 34.7 to 31.2, and I'd lost 3 inches off my belly at the navel.

Of course, I didn't stick with it.  I never do.  I have a great excuse (*cough* bullshit *cough*) that I'll go into in later posts, but the point here is, based on that success, I feel confident the plan I've outlined above will work, and there are reasons it's as vague as it is.  Again, I'll go into that further in later posts.

Today, I got off my ass.  I took my dog, Lily for her usual 1 mile walk  Her walks are for her, not me, so we go at her pace, with lots of stops along the way for investigating interesting smells, chasing rabbits, and cats, digging into the many mole mounds along the way to see if she can "make friends" with a varmint, etc.  Experience has taught me that walking her doesn't count as fitness/weight loss/health improvement, but it is activity, and Fat Guy Walking Rule # 1 is: "Any step taken is better than a step not taken".

I had to drop my car off for servicing today, though, and chose to use that as an opportunity for fitness, so, instead of taking the bus back home, I hoofed it; a little over 3 miles.

I also denied myself The Nectar Of The Gods several times, drinking water, instead.

It's a start.  I'm proud of it.  Now let's work on tomorrow.

Fat Guy Walking Rule #1 is: "One day at a time".