Found some old pictures, absolutely disgusted

(Posted this on another forum, figured I'd share here, too)

August 2008. The picture that pseudo-started it. Me @ 340 pounds, fooling myself with the "well, I'm not that fat..." attitude. Uh...yeah I was.


Flash forward 2 years (there's not that many pictures of me. Really...). After 2 years of only half-serious dieting then the wife getting preggers with #2 which threw any real attempt at a diet out the window (bad, bad excuse, I know), here's last year's July 4th 5K @ 270-275 pounds. At the time I was giving a half-effort toward running, was struggling around a 11 minute mile for a 5K race, only slightly better for just a mile.


Flash forward one more year. Something in January clicked. I was stuck at 275 pounds, but my wife decided to lose the baby weight, which helped refocus me on fitness, I joined MFP and started religiously logging my food intake. Started working out more and started getting serious about running. Here's not-so-fat Jason at the July 4th 5K this year @ 210 pounds.


Yes, ran that at an 8:52 per mile. Just recently the Fitness Camp that is sponsored by my company's HR department finished up. As part of the camp you do a first week and last week mile time trial. I went from 8:22 to a 7:33 and finished 3rd in the camp (which is weird to me, by the way).

Friday morning I stepped on the scale before my 4.5 mile run and it said "203.4 pounds, 21.1% body fat." I don't remember when I last weighed this little. Probably 6th 7th grade. Along the way I've gone from a XXXL shirt to comfortably in an XL and on the verge of just a L. I've gone from 48-inch waist pants down to 34 inch waist. My blood pressure has dropped thru the floor, my cholesterol is low and I'm no longer on the watch for all the bad weight-related diseases. My knees and ankles don't hurt any more, I can do pushups again (although I still struggle with this one) and I can keep up with my kids. In October I'm running the second leg of the Disney half-marathon relay (8.33 miles) and in February I get to run with ~10,000 women (and about 2,000 men) at the Princess half-marathon. And, not sure if this is sad or not, I can't wait.

The only thing I wish is that I could go back in time, slap the **** out of high school and college Jason. I wish I understood then what I understand now about eating (not just how much, but what my body prefers for fuel), exercising and just how flat-out bad I was living my life.