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| 02 February 2010
Thirty-something and thirty-something pounds overweight. That is where I found myself sometime in 2008. I felt fat, pathetic and embarrassed. It was particularly bad when I found myself at the pool or the lake with my family. Remember that scene from the third Die Hard movie where Bruce Willis had to walk down the street with that sign strapped to him? That is what I felt like except my sign would have said “I LOVE Beer, McDonalds, candy, and Anything Deep Fried in Fat!” Not that I do not love those things now, who doesn’t? It is just that I had decided that I wanted to be in shape. I was John McClain, and my body fat was my German villain that was leaving me stupid riddles all over town in the form of $0.99 menu items. So, I started looking for ways to get in shape.
I decided to start running. It worked out o.k., but I found myself in a lot of pain after running. I would do 1-2 miles every morning before work, and the next day my feet would be killing me. I would ignore the pain, and hit the streets again the next morning. The pain just kept getting worse, and I decided I needed to do something else. We joined the local YMCA. This worked out pretty good for a while. I was going to the gym after work and doing 30 minutes on the treadmill and then using the weight machines for thirty minutes. I wasn’t making any real progress on the treadmill though. I could barely get to 2.5 miles in thirty minutes. I decided to sign up for a 5K. I thought that signing up for a race would motivate me to push myself further and get to 3 miles in my 30 minute time. It worked for a while. I ran a handful of 5K’s, and even finished them in 28 minutes or less. Although I had made progress, I wasn’t losing any weight, and that discouraged me. Eventually I just fell right back into my old routine. Looking back now, I realize that I hadn’t changed my diet at all, and that was probably a big problem. As my trainers say now, “You can’t out train a shitty diet!”
