Hello ...

madbrainDotCom

Sorry, this will be a long post, and a little disjoint.

I am an extremely geeky self-taught software engineer. Yes, I know those things usually go together. Always hated PE back in school and there is still no single form of exercise I enjoy.

As a kid I back in France always had a very slim build. At age 18 I was 98 lbs with a 28" waist.
I gained 30 lbs the next year when I moved to the US.

Now at age 37, I am 162 lbs, and I wear size 36 jeans (and I finally adjusted to the imperial units, too ...).
My BMI is 26 which is overweight even in the US. But when I visit France I am definitely a fattie there

I have a bunch of medical conditions from bipolar 1, acid reflux, HIV, sleep apnea, to name just a few.
I am on 7 maintenance prescriptions. I take a few supplements as well. Probably about 12-15 pills twice a day. Which I usually take with some significant amount of food, if I don't want to throw up. I'm supposed to use a CPAP machine each night.

I really struggle with motivation on how to get the weight off. Particularly the long process.

I have a successful career. I live in a mansion on top of a hill. I have walked the neighborhood only once in 4 years because the 15% grade is so steep, and there is just nothing around but houses for miles literally and nothing to do.

I have a treadmill in my home theater, which I barely use because I'm so lazy and it is so boring. I used it yesterday which is the first time in a while. It has a built in HRM. My resting pulse is about 90 - 100 . It went to 180 as soon as I set it at 4 miles/hr or more with 5% incline. I could only sustain about 1min before going lower. I managed to stay on it for 52 mins at lower speeds and burned 414 calories. When I was 16 I had my pulse go to 250 once, as measured by the PE teacher. Cardiologist just said to exercise more. Well, it's hard to do when you hate exercise that much.

I also have a 24 hr fitness super sport membership which I haven't used in the last 14 months. My husband goes there daily but always in the early night when I'm at work so I can interact with my colleagues in India (12.5 hr time difference).

There is a gym at my office as well, which I signed up for, but have never visited yet. Almost all my coworkers except my boss are remote, either in other local offices, but mostly in India.

My family is 6000 miles away and I don't really have much of a support network. Seeing a therapist once every 2-4 weeks doesn't help with the daily grind.

Sleep has always been a huge problem. I'm a night owl. Not attending morning classes got me kicked out of HS. Somehow all the tech jobs I have held have been very tolerant of me showing up late, which has been between 3 and 7pm lately for about 2 yrs .. I sleep about 10 hrs a night, or up to 12 if I don't use the CPAP. My cats hate it even more than I do.

My favorite foods are fatty foods like duck, lamb, chocolate, red Bordeaux wine, cheese, cookies, pasta. No vegetables on that list because there is hardly any I can tolerate. My stomach usually get pretty upset afterwards when I consume any, in addition to the taste. I do like fruits like bananas, berries, grapes. I tried to work with a personal trainer years ago to create a meal plan, but it was just impossible because there were so little overlap between what I like to eat and what was permissible on the diet As a kid my diet didn't hurt too much because the portion in France were so small. But now I have gotten used to American-sized portions, and I have an American-sized body to show for it.

I have been in a nasty cycle of very long sleep, and low energy during waking hours. When I get home from work between 10pm - 2am the last thing I feel like doing is exercise. It's usually time for food in front of the home theater before sleeping at 3-6am.

How do I break this cycle ?