Sorry About The Lazy

Yesterday I started a thread which is now closed. I called people lazy for not including exercise in their weight loss plan, and also called them a lump on a log if they did not include the exercise.

I would like to apologize for this and say that "I am the one who was a lazy lump on a log" up until about 7 months ago when I discovered activity trackers.

I was in my early thirties when I got out of the army back in 1989. A couple years after that a drunk driver ran a stop sign and broadsided my car doing about 70mph. He hit right on my door and smashed the side of my car in about a third of the way in. I sustained a collapsed left lung, broken left rib cage, a ruptured spleen, a ruptured diaphragm, my stomach was pushed through my diaphragm into my chest, and both shoulders were partially dislocated.

Before this happened I was still working out to stay in shape and never had a problem maintaining a healthy weight because I was at a good fitness level. After they put me all back together, removed my spleen, and inflated my left lung, they told me I could not exercise for at least a year so my injuries could fully heal. For almost 2 months I couldn't even wipe my own butt, or walk up 2 or 3 steps. I couldn't get up or lay down by myself. My family members had to help me do everything.

I eventually healed up enough to get back to work, any I was in industrial maintenance, so my job was very physical which allowed my do stay in fairly decent shape, but not good enough. I started putting on a little weight over the next year, and after the year passed and I was allowed to work out again, I just got "lazy".

At that point I was probably about 10 pounds over weight. over the years that followed I probably put on another 10 to 20 pounds. I made a career change at about 40 and became a computer programmer, so my job went from a very active job to sitting on my butt all day, and then going home and sitting on my butt until bed time. My weight started going out of control. I still ate the same as I always have, but it was the total lack of activity that caused this problem.

A few years ago I was diagnosed with diverticulitis, and my colon was abscessed. Over the next couple years of trying to control the attacks with diet, I was hospitalized several times, and it got to the point that I had to have surgery. I had to get pulmonary and cardiac clearances for the surgery, and during those tests they told me that I had COPD, and there was a small part at the bottom of my heart that was slightly enlarged, and that I probably had a mini heart attack at some point. I have also had problems with blood clots in my lungs and liver, and am currently on blood thinners.

All of this made me start thinking about my weight and my health, and if I keep going like this, and keep smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day, I am not going to be around much longer. At this point I'm 57 years old, 5'8", and 225 pound of lump on a log, and too lazy to get up off my butt and do something about it.

after a year of sitting on my lazy butt thinking about it, I discovered activity trackers. They looked like a gimmick to my, but I was still curious about them, so I went and picked one up just to try it. I set it up with the app, and set it to lose 1 pound per week, and set the step goal to 5,000 steps a day to start. I started logging my food and trying to get my 5,000 steps a day in. the steps were hard at first because I got winded walking up a couple flights of stairs, and my feet and shins were killing me when I started trying to walk around my apartment complex at a fast pace. But I kept pushing myself a little at a time. Once I got to 1 mile and it became easy, I bumped it up to 1.5, then 2. Now I can do 3 miles easy at about a 4mph pace. I started getting bored with just walking so I went out and bought a bicycle. I started doing about 3 miles on that, and slowly worked my way up. I can now do 10 miles at a cardio pace with no problem.

I log my food for the most part, but I think the increased activity helped more. As I said, I never really changed my diet, but it was the total lack of activity that caused me to gain all that weight. I have been losing about a pound a week since I started using the activity tracker, and it made it so easy because I didn't have to keep records of everything, or do any math. The tracker takes care of all of that, and I'm too much of a "lazy lump on as log" to do it myself. It tracks my calories burned and automatically adds them to the calories I can eat. It automatically deducts the calories to lose whatever I set to lose per week. All I have to do is scan my food in (or search for a similar food if there is no way to scan it), and it keeps track of the rest for me.

I have lost over 30 pounds so far over the past 7 months, and although I am more aware of what I eat, and have been learning more about nutrition along the way, I still attribute most of the success to the increased activity, and the activity tracker is a very motivational tool too. The one I have now vibrates on my wrist if I have been inactive for too long, and reminds me to get up off my "lazy lump on a log" butt, and take at least 200 steps. My goal now is 10,000 steps a day and I have been making that consistently (except for an abscessed tooth I had a few weeks back, so I only made about 7,000 for a couple days).

I feel so much better now, and never realized how bad I felt all the time because I was so used to feeling bad all the time, and I feel that fitness level is just as important (if not more) than diet alone. And I am not saying you have to exercise like crazy either, just increase your activity to what is comfortable for you gradually.

I started watching this forum more and saw thread after thread after thread of people struggling to lose weight and many gave the impression (to me) of just counting calories without increased activity. It inspired me to start that thread, and I know I called people 'lazy lumps on a log", but I meant it to be motivational because that's the way they did it back when I was in the army, and it seemed to work. And, I include myself in the lazy lump on as log category as well, because that is what caused me to gain all that weight and become so out of shape.

Anyway, I fully understand if you do not accept my apology, and I chose a bad way in trying to help.