I’ve lost Tommy.
What I’ve achieved in 8-weeks.
The day after Cassandra’s thirty-first birthday we stood on our new scales and confirmed the obvious, I was obese and she was on the cusp of it.
Not good.
To be precise I weighed 239.4 pounds which as a 6-foot male gave me a BMI of 32.5, anything above a BMI of 30 is considered obese.
I wish I could say I was surprised but that would have been self-deceit. I didn’t know exactly how bad it was, but I knew it was bad. My diet had been awful, my exercise lackluster and my mental health bumpy.
I was in the worst shape physically I had been in almost a decade, so on May 18, we decided to set 8-week goals.
I said that by July 13, I wanted to shed 24.4-pounds and get my weight back down to 215-pounds.
I don’t know if this is considered a high or low goal, I guess if I had googled it some ‘expert’ would have had an opinion. So I didn’t search it, I just set it and went to work.
I feel that diet is more important than exercise, so I recommitted to eating a more whole food plant based diet. I’m never militant, but over the past eight weeks, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve eaten zero animal based products, my consumption of refined foods have dropped significantly, I’ve had soda twice and my consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole foods has increased. Oh yea, and I’ve been diligent at ensuring I’m hydrated throughout the day.
When I went for my first run on June 14, it was hard and I think the only thing that allowed me to run 2-miles was the adrenaline in my body because I was running in the woods. Since that first run I’ve been averaging a run three times each week. I am not going fast and my longest run has been four miles, but I’m making progress!
Yesterday was 8-weeks since we started and I exceeded my goal by 0.4-pounds for a total of 24.8-pounds lost.
Now it just so happens that my two-year-old son Tommy weighs about this much so I held him up with one arm just to visualize the progress I’m making and it’s crazy, almost ludicrous, to think that just a short eight weeks ago I was carrying excess weight equivalent to that of my son every day.
This is just the beginning of my journey toward better physical wellness. My long term goal from here is to weigh 160-pounds by December 31, 2022, which is only another 55-pounds to go.
All the best,
Let’s start a conversation
What physical wellness goals are you working on?
P.S. Just so you know
What I’m sharing are my own opinions, thoughts and experiences. What has worked or is true for me may not be so for you. All advice or opinion, even from ‘experts’, should be taken with a pinch of salt because there really is no substitute for the difficult challenge of thinking and discovering truth and our own answers. One size never fits all and there are no silver bullets. So take what resonates and works for you and disregard the rest. But please join me in continued reading, listening, discovering, and above all, thinking for ourselves.
What is wellness?
For me, wellness means developing, improving, and taking care of my body, my mind, and my spirit.