"Conquering Asthma" - My Success Story So Far

Hey everyone

My name is Richie and I'd like to share my fitness journey so far.

I've been overweight for most of my life. I've tried time and time again to stay consistent with my workouts and healthy eating choices; however, I never stuck to them long enough to see the results I wanted. It wasn't until last month I came to realize that I've been thinking about it all wrong. It turned out that the reason why I was always slipping was because I was focusing too hard on just the weight loss and so I ended up overworking myself. It was always about putting in the work at the gym and focusing little on recovery. I also wasn't giving my body enough energy because I was eating so little.

Due to several recent events in my life, I started to do some reflecting on what I really want out of life. What things would I want to accomplish before my youth escapes me? I'd like to travel, explore remote locations, meet new people along the way. I'd also like to "conquer" my asthma by completing some sort of physical milestone. I remember how much my friend benefited from running. He didn't have asthma like I do, but he had several other hindrances and yet overcame them. So I decided to make my new fitness goal about training. Training to run my first ever 5k!

I used to hate running. I could barely run for a minute without gasping for air and nearly vomiting. Not only did my asthma hold me back significantly, but my running form wasn't that great and my shoes were not optimal for running at all. This resulted in a very prolonged period of soreness in my feet after running. I'd be sore for about 5 days, keeping me out of the game for way too long. All of these occurrences kept me away from even considering running as an option. Until now...

After establishing my new goal to run a 5k, I decided to finally invest in some good quality running shoes along with some new running sweats. So it was time to finally start training! Stretching before and after, I learned, helped reduce soreness significantly. For running form, I did plenty of research beforehand and I made sure to take my inhaler about 15 minutes before running. Walking for 1 minute, running for 30 seconds for a total of 15 minutes was my first routine. To my surprise, it was relatively easy. As a precaution, I didn't push myself too hard. I wanted to avoid as much soreness as possible. I know soreness is a normal thing, but my horrible flashbacks of my first experience kept me extra careful. That fear ultimately led to better practices.

After two weeks of training 3 days per week, I discovered Couch 2 5k (C25K). If you don't know what it is, it's an app that is a general 8-week interval training program. Each week, the difficulty increases slightly to help your body get used to running longer distances and to eventually be able to run a 5k distance or something equivalent to that. I'm currently starting Week 4 of the program (6 weeks total since I started training myself) and I can actually say I'm a little addicted to running/jogging. I haven't seen too much of a difference with my body other than my ability to actually run half a mile consistently! While I train for the race which is coming in min-January, I'm trying to ignore my weight loss progression entirely. What matters to me right now is being able to run the race all the way through without any walking. After that, then I'll train for the 10k! The weight loss will come as a bonus!

Currently, my main problem is my food choices. I'm a vegetarian (have been for about a year now), but I'm a very bad vegetarian. My appetite can be an absolute monster, especially when I let myself get too hungry. I still eat junk food, but I drink from a gallon of water throughout the day and avoid liquid calories for the most part. I don't count calories, but I used to, so I kind of have a good idea of how many calories are in the food I eat. I don't want to be on a diet that I'll just drop later on. It needs to be something I can stick with for the rest of my life and can promote my training without making me feel miserable or like I'm eating too little.

On a side note, my cousin is in the Navy now, but will be visiting in March, so I want to make sure I've lost an obvious amount of weight before he gets here. I made a promise that I would make an effort to lose weight since we always went to the gym together when we were in college.

I'm 5'7" @ 196 lbs as of Nov 18.

My ultimate weight goal is to eventually get to 145 lbs or around there. At some point I will definitely have to eat more healthy, but I'm just gonna take things slow for now and just focus on beating the race!

My ultimate physical goal is to complete a full marathon. It's at that point I'll feel confident enough to say I've beaten my asthma.


So now that I've rambled, what are your fitness goals? How do you plan on getting there and what has motivated you thus far?

Please feel free to send me a friend request if you'd like! I don't use the food diary anymore, but I record my weight every once in a while. I'll be posting my progress via C25K on here as well.

Thanks for reading my novel! I didn't think I'd write this much.

[Posted edited by MFP Staff]