33 and counting
*WARNING: The following entry contains a fat man with enough hair to make a grizzly bear blush shirtless. While neither obscene nor considered indecent, if you find such sights unpleasant, you have been warned.*
So as some of you guys know, way back in 2011, I had jaw surgery. I had a very serious underbite, to the point that, on top of slurring my speech, it caused breathing problems, eating problems, and if left unrepaired, would grind my teeth down prematurely and give me chronic migraines, so both of my jaws were broken and repositioned. I spent time with my jaw wired, and about three months relearning how to eat and how to talk, still on doctor’s orders not to do any exercising of any sort to keep the stitches from popping out.
I don’t have the talent to be a professional athlete, but I love competing, so I’d always be playing sports and pickup games in high school. I wasn’t a pinnacle of health, but I was still in good shape, around 210 lbs., and faster than you’d expect a man of my height and weight to be.
Unfortunately, that time without exercise sapped me of almost all my energy and muscle. As soon as I got the okay from the doctor to exercise again, instead of easing back and rebuilding myself, I decided to rocket right into a pickup softball game with my buddies later that day, and was dumb enough to take my usual position back in centerfield instead of asking for something like first base or pitcher where I wouldn’t be running around much. Long story short, I spent a significant amount of time lying on my back after the game, completely exhausted. I also had a sore right leg, which I figured was just being out-of-shape.
That right leg soreness lingered whenever I’d exercise, so I just figured I’d need to exercise is a bit more strenuously to get it back into shape. This was a very bad decision, to put it lightly. The pain got worse, more frequent, and spread over more of my leg, and once the school year ended, I made an appointment with a doctor, and a few X-rays later, I learned that the pain wasn’t because I was out-of-shape, it was because I had a stress fracture in my tibia that probably first started as fairly minor injury from that softball game. Because of my treatment of it though, by the time I got the diagnosis, the doctor said that it was bad enough that it was a miracle I hadn’t had a more serious fracture as a result of it yet.
So, cue two months stuck in a walking boot. This also meant that I missed out on the intramural flag football because it’s hard to play football in a walking boot, which really hurt since I had been putting together a team with my friends.
How does any of this relate to my weight loss? Well, part of relearning to eat after my jaw surgery was eating only soft foods for a long time, which destroyed all of my good eating habits. Then between the surgery and the boot, every single one of my good exercise habits disappeared too. As a result, I was eating worse, eating more, and doing nothing to work it off. I went from a fit 210 to an unhealthy 248.
Once I got out of the boot, I was determined to do two things: Take it slow this time so I’d never have to wear it again - something that seems to be going well so far, if the intramural softball championship is any indicator - and get down to a healthy weight. I was determined I wouldn’t let myself get over 250 lbs.
The first photos I took one year ago today, the first day I decided to start losing weight. I haven’t done anything drastic, I’ve mainly just cut down my proportions(Especially on lunch, which is less a meal and more to tide me over until dinner now), turned regular unhealthy meals into occasional treats, cut out a ton of snacking, and eliminated any drinks other than water and protein shakes. Not even gatorade or milk, just clean, healthy water(Which I’d consume copiously; I’m one of those weirdos that drinks before every bite of food, and I go through more in a day than most people probably do in a month. I bought one of those 24-packs of 16 oz. waterbottles once, and I got through all of it in a week just drinking normally).
Exercise hasn’t been anything strenuous, 30 minutes on an exercise bike when time permits, the tension exercises the doctor gave me to build up my leg, and at least 60 sit-ups and push-ups a week, split up into ten rep intervals spread across the week so I don’t strain anything.
As of this morning, I’m down to 215 lbs. I feel happier, healthier, lighter, faster, and my mind even seems clearer and more efficient too. My goal is to get down to 200 lbs., then start building myself back up(As slim as my belly’s gotten, my chest is still boobs instead of pecs, and my arms are still chicken wings). I’m proud of 33 lbs. in a year though, especially considering that I feel stronger, meaning I’ve added muscle, so I’ve probably burned a lot more fat than 33 lbs.
So why am I sharing this? Mainly because there’s not a lot of stuff like this. There’s a lot of weight-loss encouragement, but almost all of it is either from subscription-based diet, some radical change in lifestyle, or some miracle drug weight loss supplement. There’s nothing that tells people “You can get healthy without buying our meal plan or our vitamins and hiring our personal trainer!”. All of it is commercialized to try and make money off of people that need genuine help and encouragement, not placebo effect vitamins and a former NFL player that doesn’t know fitness beyond what his coaches told him yelling at them.
I’m not going to lie, it’s not easy, and it’s not quick. You have to work at it, you have to want to do it, and you have to be patient. I didn’t see any real changes until a few months ago when I looked at those old photos from last year. It’s a gradual thing. But it’s not as hard as you think it is, and it’s not as slow as you think it is.
I had every excuse in the book not to lose weight. I had injuries that kept me form exercising, I had a busy schedule that kept me from exercising, I had a sedentary workload that kept me in a chair, I had a college dining hall with really unhealthy food options, I have an underactive thyroid, which not only makes it difficult to lose weight and easy to gain it but also makes it had to develop muscle and makes you fatigue easily, I have a ton of stress in my life(Stress is proven to negatively impact weight loss), I have insomnia(Sleep deprivation also negatively impacts weight loss), I’m a large man from a family of large people, if you can think of an excuse for why someone can’t lose weight, I have it. And I still lost a decent amount of weight in one year.
If you’re happy with your body, if you’re happy with your weight, then that’s great. Ultimately, that’s the most important thing. Being comfortable with your body and your health is more important than anything else with it. But I wasn’t happy with my body or with my health. I got discouraged a lot, because everyone else I knew was either fat and happy being such, or naturally thin and healthy. But I kept working, and I got results, and I want to show those results for other people who, like me, felt alone and discouraged because everyone else they knew was happy with their body, and everyone else they knew was either further along than them, or happy being overweight, which there’s nothing wrong with, but when you see people you like enjoying something that you’re trying to cut out, it’s hard to resist joining in.
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