1 Year & 60 lbs Lighter

Thanks everyone!! Me looking younger was so not even a consideration when I started by it is nice to hear. Then again, the idea that I would be enjoying running is a complete surprise too.

Day 365 - Celebrating Being One Year Old

Blog Posted on 06/21/2013 by alienrite

Today feels much more like my birthday than my real birthday does any more. I didn't have much to do with being born and living another year is what I do for the chance to live the next. Taking a positive step a year ago and deciding to just log my food for the purpose of understanding why I couldn't control my weight transformed the way I live my life and will live the rest of my life. I wasn't miserable before and live a pretty happy life but at 44 years old, I was feeling my weight slowly stripping me of the ability to be active. Putting on socks in the morning shouldn't be something I need to worry about at age 44.

Logging my food was supposed to just be a tool where I could intellectualize what I was already eating and effectively logging with my body. I made a promise to myself that I didn't need to control my eating but I needed to be honest enough with myself to log it in MFP. Amazingly, I found myself not wanting to eat anything that I didn't want to log. I also quickly discovered that if I worked out I could eat more. On July 1, I will have completed a whole year of working out every morning before work without missing a single day. Suddenly, I am eating better and moving more and my body responded by losing fat and increasing my strength and endurance. It is so very slow but being consistent makes the little smart choices add up into a life changing event. I am now running 5 days a week and have races set up every month through August with the expectation that I will run a race at least once a month and sometimes twice year round. Before last November, I had never ran in my life and now I am a runner and enjoy the challenge of pushing myself to be stronger.

The most amazing thing has been the friends I have met here. The level of support and entertainment has made the year seem short and made signing in every day a pleasure and not a grudging task. I found it incredibly motivating to see friends succeed and struggle and sometimes fail. Being active on MFP encourages you to be active in life and participate in living. For me, this has been a soul changing experience. For those that haven't really reached out and made friends and watch them eat, exercise, recover, struggle, question, live, love and cry then I think you are missing out on a wonderful part of MFP. Weight loss is a slow process and every short cut comes with pitfalls and often time setbacks that can sling you far off track. Becoming interested and engaged in other people's struggles and successes keeps a narrative going and makes logging in every day a privilege. I am grateful for every person on my list and many that have fallen off this site.

I am at the goal weight that I picked, almost randomly, at the beginning of this year and I am comfortable with my progress. My focus is now only about 10% on fat loss, 50% on eating nutritiously, and 40% on becoming more athletic. Now that I am reasonably lean, I can better tell what my true body composition is and would like to lose another 15 lbs. over the next year. More importantly, I want to be stronger and continue to increase my vitality. I may be 45 years old but I feel like I just had my first birthday and an obligation to continue to push myself to keep growing and developing. I look forward to seeing my progress over this next year. The dramatic transformation of losing 60 lbs. of fat is gone but now I get to live a lighter and healthier lifestyle which is worth so much more than the "oh wow" photos

Keep doing the small things right every day and learn to enjoy the simply act of living fully each day.