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Fitness: My workouts have been taking a toll on me, but that’s alright as I made it to 197.8 yesterday and to 197.6 today, which is my lowest weight yet. My initial weigh-in at the gym was at 307.5, so I’ve technically dropped 110 pounds now. I say technically because my initial weigh-in was fully clothed and I weigh at home in my boxers, so I’d guess 195 will be my official 110 pound mark. Then again, I was up to 310 at one point before my initial weigh-in, so going by that, 200 was the 110 pound mark. I love getting lost in the minutiae. Also, I had considered making this weight a stopping point in a previous blog post, but there’s definitely more work to be done. 190 or bust! Mouse: Despite having tongue cancer and having dropped a couple pounds, he more or less seems like the same cat he was before all this happened. The weight loss has put him at 12.4 pounds, which is still a pound heavier than my other cat Bootsie and she’s healthy. On to personal achievement! |
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If you’ve been following my Status Reports on previous blog posts, you’ll see that I’ve made it down below 200 pounds on multiple occasions, with the first big breakthrough coming two days ago when I hit 198.2. Since then, I’ve made it to 197.6 and I keep getting closer to 190, which is my current goal. I have a feeling I might want to go lower once I get there, but I’m not going to worry about that right now. Let me take you back to when it all began. The Backstory When I first started at the gym in May of 2006, I was 307.5 pounds and my fitness level was rather shoddy. I could lift a decent amount thanks to all the years I’d worked with weights, but my cardiovascular ability was negligible and I had a ridiculously high amount of body fat. After the initial assessment, I started working with a personal trainer that got my diet going in the right direction and I would spend at least two hours a night at the gym after work (one hour of weights, one hour of cardio) and an hour with the personal trainer on Fridays. The weight dropped off pretty fast that first year, as I lost about 60 pounds by the beginning of 2007. I slowed down in the gym after that, but still managed to drop around fifteen pounds per year since then. I was 235 in 2008, 215 in 2009, and now below 200 in 2010. I’m not waiting until 2011 to hit 190, because I’m going full speed ahead since rediscovering my fitness goals on January 20th. I’ve dropped 12.5 pounds in about seven weeks, which is pretty great for being so close to my goal! Crossing 200 The first time I saw a number on the scale that was below 200 was on Friday, March 5th and I about jumped backwards off of my scale in excitement. I had barely crossed it at 199.8, but seeing myself at a weight that I likely haven’t been in close to 20 years was amazing. I went from seeing 3XX.X on the scale at the beginning to currently seeing 1XX.X, and that’s an incredible feeling. It was a great payoff for the four year journey in fitness that I’ve worked my way through. It also made me think back to the last time when I was that weight. I don’t remember specifically, but I want to say I was around 12-13 years old at the time. I remember that I was 240 when I hit my current height of 6 feet, 2 inches at the age of 15, so that seems right. It’s not like the weight gain all happened at once, as I started putting on extra weight when I around the age of 6. The weight gain wasn’t necessarily due to a lack of physical activity – it was mostly due to growing fast and eating faster. I knew nothing about proper nutrition and my folks always wanted me to be part of the “clean plate club”, so I obliged. I still am, but I make sure to take smaller plates with much healthier food resting atop them. I also don’t mess around when it comes to exercise, as my posts on my endurance routine and working with pyramid sets will attest. Why I Did It It’s pretty simple, really – I want to live a long and healthy life, so I need to get myself in the proper shape to do so. I’ve cleaned up my diet and tuned up my physicality to a level I’ve never achieved before, but there’s still some room for improvement as I’ve still got a few areas that jiggle. I’m not going to get as high as I can go because I refuse to give up beer on the weekends, but that’s a small price to pay for the lovely taste of beer. The whole beer thing may be a moot point, as I tend to get my weekend weight off pretty fast these days – usually by Tuesday or Wednesday. I also did it to prove that I could. I don’t recall anyone around me saying that I couldn’t do it, but I wanted to prove it to myself. All of my previous attempts to lose weight were fairly halfhearted and I wanted to do better this time around. Before these last four years, I’d exercise for a while and get my weight down some, then I’d give up on it and the weight would come right back. I had no idea that fitness was a lifestyle choice that you make for yourself, rather than something you do every once in a while because you feel you should. Once you decide to make it a lifestyle choice, it involves straightening up your diet, figuring out a fitness routine for yourself that you’ll stick with, deciding on what your physical goals are and how you’re going to achieve them. It’s a lot to take in and there are many variables along the way that can interfere with getting there – reaching a plateau will require a reassessment of the way you work out, getting injured can halt progress completely and will require even more effort to attain your goal once you’re healed, and every once in a while a family emergency will pop up and put a halt to your routine as well as take you out of fitness mindset due to having something more important to think about than yourself. That said, all obstacles can be overcome with a true determination to achieve your goals. It make take quite some time, but you’ll get there. Discuss this post at [The Forum of Jason Vincion]! Posted on March 12th, 2010. |
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 Compilation Volume Three |
 Shizz Block Volume One |
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[March 2010 Index] [2010 Index] [Index] |
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[Endurance Routine] [For the Love of Fitness] [Rediscovering Fitness Goals] [Working with Pyramid Sets] |
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