Growing up I was always a chubby kid who was teased (read: bullied) for my weight and I did not really have an environment that provided any tools on how to address that correctly. As I grew out of my teens into my 20s, as it tends to happen, I leaned out without ever getting to any real fitness level. After getting married in my early 20s and being at my lowest weight that I can remember (182lbs at 20% fat) I started focusing on my career, having kids, etc. and slowly gave up things that I enjoyed doing for exercise such as martial arts, tennis, soccer and so on. Sure enough I started slowly putting on the pounds with a sedentary happy lifestyle.
Fast forward to now, and I am 34 years old and this year thanks to the pandemic I hit my highest weight ever at 260lbs. I remember at some point in May this year I climbed 1 single flight of stairs and felt out of breath and that really felt like my rock bottom. I did start to exercise and eat well and got down to around 230lbs but due to the pandemic and other personal factors I was not able to keep up my routine and have gone back to my current weight of 250lbs.
Even though I have talked about specific weights here so far, my goal is not to get down to a target weight but rather reduce the overall fat % in my body. I don't believe a target weight would help my situation as I would be able to starve myself and reach a weight where I am unhealthy. I want to achieve a status where I feel strong and healthy, feel better about the way my body looks, and be able to engage in more of the physical activities that I enjoy. Therefore I am not setting a target body weight here. Ideally I would like to achieve a body fat percentage of 13-15%. For now this is a lofty goal since I must be north of 30% at the moment. I have not measured this exactly as I don't have a fat caliper yet so in a future post I will post my known measurements and stats.
I have read up quite a lot about nutrition and exercise so I definitely have what I think are the necessary tools to get healthy and get in shape. In 2018 I was able to get a rhythm going for 3-4 months and managed to lose a significant amount of body fat, but again, I was not able to be consistent with it and slowly but surely slipped back into my bad habits.
This brings me to the true purpose of this blog: Accountability. I'd like to have a place where I can keep track of my progress in a semi public way that will keep me engaged and motivated and also allow me to express what I'm feeling as I struggle with working out or eating right, or the days where I am doing well feel good about what my progress is and even posting a picture or two of my meals. I will also be taking pictures and video of my progress but I will likely not post those until there is some progress to show and I feel less shame lol!
In the next few posts I will outline my starting measurements, my exercise routine, and my nutrition plan. And from there I will post as often or as seldom as it feels necessary to provide updates as my journey progresses. I hope you enjoy reading my posts in this journey!
See you out there
