My Fitness Why

I am the heaviest I've ever been... well, not anymore, but that was part of my reason for beginning my fitness journey. At my "healthiest" I was 130 lbs of decent muscle. This was also when I was in high school. I had a runner's body without doing anything. I was effortlessly fit. Those were the days, hehe.

So let's get to now. At the beginning of decision to get to healthy, I weighed in at around 250. I personally did not like they way I looked as well as the fact that I got very out of breath going up stairs. I admit that I am influenced by society's standard of beauty. I also am aware that much of what I see is a lie and I should be happy in my body. I am, sort of. I miss having the strength I had in my teens and early 20s.

A few years ago I thought about my dad and all the health issues he is dealing with; high blood-pressure and as a result of the medication, kidney failure. My dad, from what I saw, did not eat too "bad" (term used very loosely). He drank often, he worked (and works) a generally stressful job. Now, because of the meds that he is on, he had to stop drinking altogether. I'm not sure what other exercise he does, but I do know that he runs. It wasn't until his late 30's, early 40's that it all started catching up with him.

Ok, so I care about the health and wellbeing of my parents, but They live in another state and I don't keep tabs on them like that.

My mom also has a bit of high blood-pressure, but not enough that she's on medication. She also runs. Both of my parents were very athletic in their younger years; baseball, softball, football, track and field, cheerleading, etc. and they got me as their second child. All the muscle tone, none of the talent, lol.

So, I told myself when I turned 35 I would cut back a lot on my alcohol consumption and start working on getting ahead of my genes. I turned 35 in July of 2020. Thus it all began. I started running around mid-August. I really did nothing else, but I also saw that I wasn't losing weight or getting better at running and I was doing it 3 times a week.

Ok, so here is where I will actually list my reasons for wanting to get healthy:

1. To get ahead of my genetics, if possible.
2. To lose weight.
3. To just be healthy separately from genetics.

I know you are just absolutely wondering what I'm doing now,, right? Right. Well, it still took me another 3-4 months into 2021 to figure out what I needed to do. A doctor's appointment and a nutritionist referral helped get me in the right direction. I learned that I needed to track my calories and what my caloric deficit should be. At the suggestion of my primary care physician, I started a plant based diet (mostly). I am working out about 5 days a week and to date I am down about 20lbs.

If you made it all the way down here, thank you for reading. I'll eventually start posting progress and maybe some about my exercises and diet.