So starting about this time last year I began my journey of getting back into shape. It started small, just walking a mile in the morning as I began to get ready for what would be my first of many races. The walk turned into a walk/jog and then a full out jog. I then moved to two miles and now I’m running anywhere from 3-4 miles in-between my two days a week at the gym.
So my initial goal was to actually be able to run a complete 5K without walking. I wasn’t really sure how many races I was going to do after the Mini-Country Music Marathon I was signed up for at the time but I knew it was going to at least a few as I needed to complete a full race without walking (which happened on my third race). I hadn’t planned on losing a bunch of weight so I didn’t take any pictures of my progress (I’ll need to go through what I have and try and put some time-lapse look-at-me progression type thingy together), but as I was losing weight I decided to set two weight loss goals.
The first goal was to lose 100 pounds. I see people write about how they did such a thing and I when I would read those stories I always wished that was me, so a 100 pound weight loss was my first goal. The next goal was to get my BMI out of the obese range. I started this journey at 348 pounds with a BMI of 47.2. A non-obese, but still overweight BMI is 29.9 which would put me at 220 pounds. So the second goal is to reach 220 pounds. What’s crazy is for me to be at a “normal” weight would be 183 pounds. I think the last time I weighed that little was 5th grade…maybe 6th.
The lightest I can ever recall weighing was 189 pounds my Senior year in High School when I dropped down to that weight for wrestling. That lasted all of about 4 weeks before I went back up to the Heavyweight weight class (we didn’t have the 220 pound weight class like they do now so I was wrestling people anywhere from 190 to 275 pounds and I was around 215). I don’t see myself really getting down much below 220.
So as of this morning I reached the first goal of losing 100 pounds! That’s a lot of extra baggage I’m no longer carrying around. Next up is that 220 goal, only 28 pounds to go!
Below is a picture taken on December 24, 2012. If I was any bigger I would have consumed Victoria! After seeing this picture I knew I needed to make a change, it wasn’t until a few months later when I was on the verge of hitting 350 and was needing to buy 4XL shirts that I started such a change! Man, what a year makes! I’m 100 pounds lighter and take more vitamins than medication in the morning. Praise the Lord!
