6 months ago, and today

skottyjay · May 2013

Welp. About 6 months ago my wife wanted a treadmill as she was tired of her worn out elliptical. November 7th I set up the treadmill and got a wild hair and decided to run a mile on it no matter what! I have 3 teenagers in the house and I think I wanted to prove something to them, and perhaps myself. That 1st mile was the hardest and if memory serves me correct it took me nearly 14? 15 minutes to run. I was hooked!

Most of my adult life I have been too heavy. I wouldn't say I struggled with my weight, it was other things I struggle/struggled with. I couldn't put down the food I loved. I'd rather sit idle than sweat and maybe have to take a shower afterwards. Most of all throughout my life I have struggled with discipline......thus my health/weight suffered.

I still am not sure if I like to run. I think perhaps I like that I CAN run, and DO run, but the running itself.....maybe not so much. It's not bad, but it's not easy and therefore I have really really had to force myself to be disciplined. Yuck!

I don't know if this is true for others but for me the exercise is not where I would the success of losing weight. I am not sure I do enough of that to overcome what I would naturally eat. Where the running HAS helped me lose weight and become healthy is it's very difficult to put a 500 calorie double chocolate chip muffin in my mouth knowing that those 500 calories are a half hour of running. The marriage of exercise and eating at least mentally has helped immensely. I could not have lost weight only by running nor could I have lost it just by watching my food consumption. I need/ed them both!!

I mentioned that I ran my 1st mile back in early November and now fast forward to early May and I am running several times a week (4 or 5) usually at a distance of at least a 5k. Sometimes I'll run 4 or 5 miles but usually a 5k.

I wanted desperately to say I've lost 60 pounds in 6 months but I am sitting just shy of that at about 57 or 58 pounds loss. Not that this is the best analogy considering the situation but in my mind weight loss is not a quick microwave type change. It's more of a slow crock pot.