All right. I’m down about 35ish pounds from where I was in my year of half marathoning. Y’all are noticing (and I know I’ve been mentioning struggles with free food), so I gotta talk about it at least a bit.
I still have a long way to go. I’m hoping to lose about 35 more. So, I don’t want to delve into it too much here, ’cause it’s not time to raise up our arms and celebrate yet. But since I do feel that I need to address it, basically a few things happened together:
1) I was denied as a kidney donor at the first hospital I tried (after 6 long months of tests and process and such). It had nothing to do with my weight. However, the requirements at the next hospital were different, and I had to lose about 23 or so pounds to make it. So, I had a real and immediate reason as to why I absolutely had to lose weight. That was obviously a really huge part of this and basically the main impetus.
2) I also happened to get a great job on an amazing schedule, which made things soooo much easier than normal starting last October/November. I was working normal hours, had lots of time to work out, was on a night-owl schedule I adored that worked wonderfully with my body clock (and the gym down times when I could have it all to myself).
Plus, I’d gotten a raise from my job before that. So not only did that put me in a great and even less-stressed mood about life, but I had money to buy the more expensive healthier, organic things. Aaaaand I was working in an area that had tons of healthy options around (plus a grocery store down the block with a big kitchen in the office). So I had absolutely no excuse to not eat healthily more often than not.
3) Some people told me I was an inspiration or role model to them for coming back from open-heart surgery and doing all the half marathons and such. But I couldn’t in good conscience accept those compliments if I couldn’t even take care of myself. Obesity is a huge problem in this country… a problem I’d love to help try to work on! But how can I bemoan the problems of America if I am part of the problem?!
So, everything worked together well. I had the perfect amount of stress in my life – enough things going on that were pushing and scaring me (in a good way) that I felt I needed to run them out… but enough happiness and control to still feel I could fly through the air (as opposed to falling apart in bed every night).
(If you want to know how I did it, there was no secret… build up exercise, cut down on calories. It was as simple as that… though I will get into more specifics when we talk about my weight loss in detail… after I’ve gotten the rest of it off!)