The Battle of the Bulge

** Disclaimer - the following post is not trying to be depressing, self-indulgent or self-pitying. I'm simply putting all of this out there in the hopes that writing it all out will help me understand it all and to continually give me the motivation to do what I need to do to get healthy. Plus it puts everything in perspective since I'm going to catalogue the process on my blog so you should get all the information on the table to start with. **

So the process of getting healthy has begun. I figure if I don't really fight this now, it'll get out of my control and at that point it'll be too hard to motivate myself to do what I need to do. I've seen what the likely path is in my father.

I've tried to get into the habit of working out over the last two years or so and every time it just seems to fall apart after a while. The best I did was before Merrily We Roll Along in February of '05. I think I got down to about 185 lbs and slimmed the stomach down. Since then its been slowly creeping back up.

This time I think I'll stick with it. I got to 194 lbs on the scale and seeing that strengthened my resolve. That is the most I've ever weighed in my life. BTW, I know I'm talking about weight and some of you who read this may look at me and say I look good, that I don't seem to lose weight or that you'd love to be my weight. I can understand and even empathize with that. We all need our goals and my goal is to get back to 170, which is about where my healthy target is. The primary goal of all of this is to get healthy. Part of that process is to create goals based on weight, hence I'll be talking about weight a bunch. If this upsets anyone, I'm sorry about that.

According the CDC's page on BMI (Body Mass Index), the rating for a man with a height of 5' 11" and and a weight of 194 lbs is a 27.1 BMI, which is within the 25-29.9 BMI range of "Overweight". 30+ BMI is considered "Obese" which is 214 lbs so I'm in no immediate danger of that. The "Normal" weight classification is a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 which translates to a weight of 132.36 to 178.158 lbs. My current goal is to get to a 24 BMI which is 172 lbs.

I also understand that there are plateaus during weight loss and that can be upsetting so on advice of serveral friends I also have a handy-dandy tailor's measuring tape. This way I can measure the tummy which is what upsets me more than anything else. When I weighed 194 I also had 40 inch gut and a 39 inch waist. The semi-amusing thing is that I was still fitting into my "32-inch" waistband pants. Gotta love the American marketplace. Rather than make people realize they are getting bigger overall, they simply increase the size of a "32-inch" waist so people won't feel bad about having to go a size up. My nice 32" pants actually measure in at 36".

The other thing that has pushed me towards all this is looking at myself in pictures. I can especially see the weight in my face. I used to have a dimple in my left cheek when I smiled; not there any more. I also see it in the fit of my clothes.

So here's the deal. I'm now getting up every weekday at 5am (even on days that I have off from work, too!) to go running and do some weight training with Dani. We are both there for each other to push each other and keep each other going. She's currently documenting her path to healthy living on her blog too (link to her blog "Yellow Chevy" in the upper right hand corner).

I am running 2 miles a day at this point. I figure another week or so and I'll bump it to 2.5 miles, then to 3 miles and probably plateau there. I'm doing weights a bit to build some muscle to help increase metabolism and the definition certainly won't be something I complain about.

I've been doing this and ramping up for about two weeks now. I'm currently at 188 lbs, BMI of 26.2, a 36.5 inch waist and a 36.5 inch stomach. That's a loss of 6 lbs, 0.9 on BMI, 3.5 inches of waist and 3 inches of stomach. The goal is healthy BMI of 24 with a weight of 172 and a nice flat stomach. With a healthy slow loss of 2 lbs per week that means that I should be able to make it to my target weight in 8 weeks by the time school starts August 19th. In addition to working out I will also be trying to watch what I eat, how often I do fast food, and how big my portion sizes are when I make food and eat out. I will indulge from time to time simply because if you have a craving, its better to just let yourself have a bit of a reward and then get back on track than to deny yourself until you break down and binge and lose all motivation to go back to healthy eating. I'm making sure to have a light breakfast every morning and a sensible lunch and dinner.

So that's the plan folks. Operation Stress Out and Buy The Condo is finished. Time to start Operation Be Healthy and Look Good. I'll post updates about the battle every monday which is weigh in/measuring day.