Frustrated babbling...

So I really don’t have a point to this post, other than just to vent a little bit, possibly tell a story, fish for motivation and perhaps gain a friend or two.

WARNING: This may be long. Grab a non-fat frape, a comfortable chair, or perhaps a better idea, ignore this thread altogether.

**EDIT** This turns out to be REALLY long. You probably don’t want to read it.

My name is Eric and I live in Wisconsin with my wife and dog and we have a third daughter on the way in late December. Yay! I love my girls more than anything, and they’re a big reason why I’m trying to lose weight. Again.... For good? I hope. I’ve found myself being tired and lazy when my 8 and 4 year old just want to go, go, go and I want to go, go, go, but just can’t keep up. Will I ever keep up with my kids? No. Do I want to not feel like the slowest part of a glacier? Pretty much.

Here’s me. Just a few weeks ago I cracked the big 4-0 birthday. I have been telling myself the past year that: “I wanted to be in the best shape since high school by the time I’m 40!”

That didn’t happen.

Rewind. High school. Late 80’s. I’m a whip thin kid of around 5’11” who can barely hold up his nylon track jersey. I’m build like a coat-hanger and jealous of the muscles Mr. Salty has. I’ve always had muscular legs, and that is where most of my weight is. Senior year during track season I lost some weight and was down to 137 pounds with hardly any body fat. Fast forward a year to after my freshman year of college (Go Badgers!) and I think I was around 190 pounds, some of it being the “Freshman 15” but most of it being the fact that I filled out. I actually had shoulders and some upper body muscle instead of when I was in high school and it looked like I spent too much time in a food dehydrator.

I was really active back then and one of my jobs around that time was working at a health spa and I worked out quite a bit. I had the classic 6-pack, pecs, and the firm apple posterior that drove the ladies nuts. Well, at least that’s how it went in my head.

Enter real-world. A few years go by and I’m out in the “Oh boy, I need to buy Dockers now” world. This world involves (I’m in my mid-to-late-20’s now) a lot of office chair sitting, shovel-food into your face lunches, followed by a lot of after-work revelry at a local tavern. I’ve decided that it’s a really good idea to become about a pack-a-day smoker too. Good thinking.

One hungover January 1st morning I got on the scale and I was up to 230 pounds. I didn’t really feel or look fat, but I hated that number. Like I mentioned, I’ve always had big legs, so that makes my number higher and people are always surprised when I tell them my weight. So after that eye-rubbing morning I decided to lose weight because I really didn’t want to be 230. Being indestructible and not even 30 yet, I went about losing weight by pretty much not eating. There might have been sparse exercise in there, but nothing major.

This begins my decade long yo-yo weight program.
I think I went from 230 to about 170 in a not terribly healthy way. I was out on the town, trying to impress the ladies (not terribly often it turns out. ) and living life. I eclipse 30 years old and life begins to resemble what life is supposed to once you get out of your “oh my God I was an idiot in my 20’s” years.

My first daughter was born in 2003. I had probably gained some of the weight back prior to that since I had grown up a bit and was acting more like an adult, but looking at the pictures from when she was born I wasn’t terribly disgusting.

Not really paying that much attention to my weight running around after she was born, I’m guessing that I put on a few pounds here and there. The second baby is where all hell broke loose. I’m not terribly sure why, but with The Deuce, I really packed on the sympathy weight. My wife seemed to be always hungry and at some point I had turned into that old guy who says stuff like, “Well, we can’t throw that away” and I found myself finishing her plate, and my other daughter’s plate and probably packed on more pounds than my wife.

And they say that chivalry is dead...

So here’s a life lesson I learned that I thought I’d pass on. Never have a baby and close on a new house within 2 weeks of each other. You’re welcome.

So about a year after we had the baby, my wife has me get the treadmill out of it’s duty as laundry storage and she starts counting calories and working out. I join her, as moral support, and because I need it. I think at my heaviest point now I’m around 265 pounds. Ouch. Pert near double my high school weight. I also get to thank my relatives for the high-blood-pressure that runs in our family and I end up on medication for that. I’ve also had a CPAP for a while now do to sleep apnea, but I really think my wife can’t stand my snoring any more.

Anyway, for me at least, when I put my mind to losing weight, it tends to come off pretty quickly in spurts, with your typical periods where it plateaus. Once we start calorie calorie counting, switching to diet soda and exercising, my weight starts falling off in a hurry. In about 6 months or so (wasn’t really paying attention) I’m down to 195 pounds. I have to buy lots of new clothes, and the most shocking thing to me? I need to underwear and I need MEDIUMS! Yay!

So in fall of 2009 I’m sitting at work and I just don’t feel right. Jaw hurts, pain in my left arm, you know, the typical stuff you’ve heard all your life about heart attacks. They’re not bad, but the whole experience is just weird enough to catch my attention. I chat up an EMT at work and he isn’t terribly concerned, but suggests that I call my doctor. I get a hold of my wife who works at a clinic with our doctor and she talks to him and he tells me to either go to the ER or call 9-1-1. Well, I pretty much take his advice with a grain of salt. I have work to finish up and at that point, I actually feel better. I finish up my work, tell my boss I’m taking the afternoon off and I head up to the hospital. It was my first experience with an ER where you actually walk in and they whisk you away like on the TV shows. Turns out that you just have to mention to the lady at the desk that you’re having heart attack symptoms. They hook me up to most of the devices in the hospital and people are fawning over me like I’m a new baby. My wife comes to the ER and we end up just sitting there for a while as they run tests. I feel completely fine at this point and I tell my wife to go back to work and she does. They decide they’re going to do a chemical stress test on me and shoot some sort of nuclear goo into me so they can monitor my ticker as they rev up the RPMs of my heart with drugs. Right about that time I have what they tell me was my second heart attack of the day. This one sucked. I’m REALLY glad that I was in the hospital for this one, not at home, or in my car driving, or hiking in the woods. Well, I don’t hike in the woods, so let’s take that one off the table.

The ER doctor pretty much says, “Get your wife back here, we’re skipping the stress test and you’re going to the Cath Lab.” I can’t get a hold of my wife, I’m freaking out and I’m in serious pain. I’m hopped up on Nitro, hear comments about how beet-red I am, and they end up giving me morphine for the pain. As they’re getting me ready for the cardiologist my wife shows up and she’s freaking out like me. I have to sign two forms, one for angio, and the other for in case they have to unzip my chest. Now I’m really freaking out.

I’m hustled down the hall after a kiss from my wife and I proceed to lose track of time as I watch LCD screens and listen to the cardiologist struggle to get 4 stents into my heart. I have 2 arteries in my heart that are what he says 98% closed, and 2 that are about 95% closed and those are the 4 that he works on. I also have some that are around 70% closed that he wants to monitor. A few days in the ICU and I seem to be a lot better, and I’m now on what I call my “Old Man Medication” which consists of a blood thinner type drug, blood-pressure meds, cholesterol meds, a beta-blocker and my baby aspirin.

A year or two goes by and subsequent follow ups with the cardiologist (including a stress test or two, which suck. Bad) and things are looking good as far as my ticker is concerned.

During that time though I’ve quit exercising, ate what I wanted, and after a 2-month or so hiatus, started up smoking again. (Naughty, naughty) I slowly gained weight back and it really bothered me, but apparently not enough to do anything about it.

I think I can easily say that I didn’t have a day recently, and perhaps not a waking hour, that I didn’t think about my weight. Slowly over time, I was steeling my resolve to start losing weight. I think the big kick in the pants was watching all those skinny people in the Olympics this year that really threw me over the edge. I had a trip with my buddies from high school planned for the middle of August, and I was determined to have a lifestyle change after that. A few days before I went up north I tipped the scale at 254 and I was smoking 3 or 4 packs per week.

Fast forward 2 weeks to now. My trip came and went (and much fun was had) and my diet/exercise started. I haven’t smoked in almost 2 weeks, I’ve been calorie counting and exercising almost every night. I found the Runkeeper app last summer when I was trying to get in shape but wrecked my ankle and couldn’t do anything for 6 months. I fired up Runkeeper and made an account here at MFP. I’ve been really watching my calories for two weeks, and I’ve walked over 35 miles the past two weeks, usually for about an hour and around 3.5-4 miles. I’m trying to throw some jogging in when I can, but I figured that I’d probably be best to lose some weight first so I didn’t blow out a knee or something. I’m trying to push it, but stay within my comfort zone and not injure myself.

After my trip when I started I was 249 pounds. After the first week I was down to 246. After the second week I was up to 247. *cry*

I really know that I need to stick with it for a while, but today I really hit bottom and wanted to quit. In the past I’ve been able to shed 10 pounds easy right away in the beginning because I figured it was just my extra “easy” pounds that were the easiest to lose.

My wife, bless her, says that I’m probably gaining muscle. I really doubt that I’m gaining any sort of muscle that would offset any loss of fat, but I have had that good kind of “sore” that you get after exercise, so I’m doing something, but I’m guessing it’s marginal.

So I think I’m battling several factors.

1. Age. I’m more of a Summer Chicken now and not a Spring Chicken
2. Not smoking. Perhaps all my work is just staving off the pounds people normally get when they quit smoking.
3. My meds. I know when I’ve had my stress tests, I have to quit taking my beta-blocker so that I can elevate my heart rate. It’s probably not helping things. If I keep having issues, I will speak with my cardiologist.

I assume it’s a combination of a lot of things, but it’s really frustrating and I wanted to babble.

If you’ve actually read this, I’d like to offer you an apology.

Have a great holiday weekend!