Oprah and Jared better look out, as a new weight-loss guru is coming to town.
Actually it’s me, and I’m already in town and I’m definitely not a weight-loss guru. But I hope to be as I’m all registered for Ministry Health Care’s fifth annual Community Weight Race. I intend to tell people about my progress, as well as my team’s progress, throughout the four-month challenge, much like Oprah Winfrey used to talk about her own weight loss during the era of her daily show and Jared Fogle still talks about his weight loss by eating subs at Subway.
Weigh-in was held earlier this week, and I came in at 260 pounds with a 46.5-inch waist. I’ll admit I’m fat, but compared to me two years ago when I weighed 315 pounds, I’m in much better shape. In fact, for the past two years I have run and exercised regularly, and have no health problems except a head that is balding.
To put my stats in better perspective, I am 6’4” and have always been a bigger person. I weighed 280 pounds when I got married eight years ago, and throughout my first three years of college more than 15 years ago I hovered around 270.
The summer between my junior and senior year I decided I had had enough of being big. I watched everything I ate, refusing to put anything bad in my mouth, and I started running. Many of my friends in high school were cross country runners and I often listened to them talk about the freedom they felt when they were on roads and trails. I wanted to experience that freedom myself.
At first, I walked more than I ran as my lungs could only handle so much. Within a few weeks I was running more than walking and I began to understand the freedom my friends had talked about. By the middle of the summer, I could often get into the “zone,” a feeling runners can get in which the body forgets it’s running and the mind focuses on other things.
I shed the weight like water and soon was down to 217 pounds. I’d never get lower than that, as a busy senior year took some of my focus away from careful eating and regular exercise. I graduated from college weighing 230 pounds and maintained that weight for about a year. It gradually started going up again, and before I realized it, I was my old self again, someone whom I did not want to be.
And then I became a new person, someone even bigger and someone I definitely did not want to be. A busy family life and work schedule were excuses I used to keep the focus away from caring about myself. It wasn’t until my father-in-law told my wife that I seemed rather winded after doing some mildly involved tasks that I realized I was completely out of shape.
Losing weight has been much more difficult this time around than it was previously. I’m older so my metabolism isn’t the same, and I don’t have the time I had before to concentrate on the weight-loss task.
But it has been slowly coming off over the last two years. I started running again, and I try to make better choices on what I eat. My biggest problem is I like to eat. Food and I were meant to be together, and my stomach demands this. My issue then is making my stomach demand food that is healthy and better for me.
I plan on focusing on this during the Weight Race. While I’ll also look at exercising more and better during the challenge, I know I’ll benefit more by changing my dietary habits. This will mean less eating out, less snacks and smaller portions.
Presenting my progress to the public will motivate me to follow through on this endeavor. It will motivate me the same way I expect it to motivate my other team members (and whom I’m still finding) who I will also follow through a series of articles covering the Weight Race. These articles will start in next week’s issue. Oprah and Jared better watch out.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, Jan. 13, 2012.
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