One year ago I was falling apart...(120 lbs lost)

https://imgur.com/a/xVqLKtb

Before and after pictures in the linky thingy. M/36/5'11" (296 lbs -> 176 Lbs)

So, I'll spare you the gory details, but a year ago right around now I was embarking on a new phase in my life. I was going through a divorce, moved out on my own, and started comforting myself with food, like I always did. I was already well overweight/obese at around 250 lbs, but I just stopped even trying to pretend to make a pretense of caring. But then a month or two later I decided to go another way. In May of last year, after having eaten my 5th pizza for the week on a Thursday, I decided to do something different. I chose to stop going down the path of self destruction.

It started with little things. I began walking on my lunch breaks. I decided to take the stairs instead of the elevator (I work on the 5th floor, it was hugely tiring for me back then). I did something most people don't recommend, I bought some Soylent and drank my calories. It's dumb, but I did it because I could assure what I was eating was healthy for at least one meal a day. I would make that and eventually add in some protein powder and have that for lunch as I walked.

At the end of June I joined a gym, and got a trainer. By then I was all in. Intermittent fasting, calorie counting. You name it, if YouTube fitness said it I did it. These were horrible ideas, don't do that shit. Anyways the gym and trainer were the saving grace, and I started hitting the weights. My trainer wanted me to start running, but I was leery of it having been so big for so long what if my knees were shot? Well by end of August I was running. Slowly. Shittily. I was running in the morning, walking at lunch, and working out with weights at night.

This was way too damn much, and I hurt my back deadlifting in November. My trainer taught me how, but I went in one day and didn't do what he told me, didn't work with a spotter, and basically just let my head go straight up my ass because I thought I was big and bad. Anyway, two weeks before Thanksgiving I blew out my back, so I couldn't lift any more. I ran the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving day, and running (the thing I hated) became pretty much my only exercise because it was all I could do with my back being fucked up. I didn't hit the gym again until January, basically out all of December.

Now it's March. Last year, at this time my life had fallen apart. I was a pathetic wretch of a person, and I gained ~40 lbs in about 2 months (no exact figures, I didn't weigh myself often). I say I weighed 296, but I frankly have no idea if I ever got any heavier, that was just the only number I actually took. I kept eating like shit for a week or two after I weighed myself there. Who knows what my highest weight really was.

But I made one good decision. And then I made another. I built upon that, one upon another upon another. And then I made some bad decisions. I fucked up. I had set backs. I did lots of really good things, and lots of really bad things (do NOT do a 36 hour fast and try to keep up twice a day work outs, trust me). But the good outnumbered the bad, and now I'm down 120 lbs.

I don't fast any more. I don't do two-a-days. I do count calories, and monitor protein intake. I do listen to my body now, and accept my limits. I have a lot of work left to do, but I have done a lot in this past year. And I just want to say, if it starts small that is all it takes as long as it starts. I made one good choice. That was really hard, but I made it. Now I make a lot of them, and it's a lot easier. Getting to the point where the decisions are easy was difficult, but realizing that they WERE choices, that I COULD choose? Life changing.

Be good to yourselves.

submitted by /u/Skalite4
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2I3e21t

No comments:

Post a Comment

Teen struggling w/ weight + no support at home, where the hell do I even start?

So I’m a teenager and I’ve been overweight/obese basically my whole life. And it’s been messing with me pretty bad. For the record, I don’...