I've always be keen on writing and even in my teen and college years I kept journals. In one journal near the end of high school I wrote about who I'd be and where I'd be and what I'd be doing when I turned really old, you know, like geritol guzzlin' 40.
Well, I've pasted the 40 milestone and there's a lot of stuff I've got going on, good and bad, that I didn't anticipate back when I was 17. Like what, you ask? Well, for one thing, I assumed I'd always be in excellent health, physically fit and strong. Stop laughing - it's not funny!
After 23 years of constantly decreasing physical activity, an ever-slowing metabolism and a chosen lifestyle that exalted fast food and rich food over healthy food, my body has turned to mush. Ugh.
Over the past 5 or 6 years I've been meaning to get back into shape and to that end I've done the Atkins diet, had a stretch of 6 months where I ran regularly and participated in about 6 or 7 5K runs for charity and forked over gobs of cash to the park district, Bally's, Lifetime Fitness and a whole slew of other gyms that never actual saw me in their facilities.
I've gone from 170 lbs in 1987 to about 250 lbs by the beginnig of 2010. Over the years I've weighed less than 250 lbs but I always seem to come back to this weight whenever I'm not on a diet or on a work out stint. And until recently, I felt comfortable with how I felt and looked.
That's right, until recently. That is to say, some things have changed in my outlook. My kids are old enough to know that I'm overweight (in their toddler days they saw their Dad as "big and strong"). I want to ride bikes, play soccer and generally run around with them but my current state of health just doesn't make that possible. I'm also at that age where peers are having heart attacks and suffering from diabetes and hypertension. These circumstances are motivating me to try once again to get into shape.
I know that I can still get strong and fit even though I'm past 40. I started making some efforts at the beginning of the year and its carried through the first 7 weeks of 2010. No, it's not about a new year's resolution. This year, unlike most others in the recent past, I didn't even think about making a resolution to get fit in 2010. I think that's good because my new year's resolutions never work out. No, this motivation seems to be coming from somewhere else and I'm going to leverage that motivation and hopefully make enough gains and losses physically to sustain the motivation and make it a positive and healthy new lifestyle.
One thing that I want to do is hold myself accountable. That's what this blog is about. I want to write about my efforts. I want to document the diet and the exercise. I want to chronicle the good and the bad hurts and generally watch myself as I try to get back into shape. I love to write and so I'm going to write about this journey!
That is what this blog is about for me!
