In the beginning … I was fat

I think it makes the most sense to start this blog at the beginning:

Years back life was much different for me. I was not the crazed triathlete I am today.

Back then, one of my favorite sayings was, “I only run when chased.” Had there been the 0.0 bumper stickers available, I would have proudly sported one on my car. I just didn’t get fitness for fitness’ sake and was happy to engage in physical activity only when necessary. Runners made no sense to me and I often ridiculed their obsession.

I actually had a pretty good diet, eating mostly homemade meals of healthy ingredients. As it goes, you can always have too much of a good thing, and my overeating and sedentary lifestyle started to catch up on me. About ten years after college I found myself about 70-80 pounds over weight. The weight had been bugging me for some time, but not enough to do anything about it until …

One day I woke up, tired of being fat. 

At that point I made a decision to completely change how I lived my life. No longer would I eat without thinking. No longer would “sedentary” describe my activity.

With the help of LoseIt, I started tracking every calorie in. I picked up a FitBit One and a 60Beat bluetooth heart rate monitor and paired them with DigiFit to measure every calorie out. Some days I only burnt a few calories more than I consumed, others I was over a thousand calories in the negative.

(Technology and how it helps me achieve goals will be a reoccurring theme of this blog.)

For the next six months or so I re-learned how much I was supposed to consume and exercised nearly every day. I started out doing work just on the elliptical with an occasional track run.

After six months of re-learning how to eat and falling in love with exercise, I went from officially obese to not so bad looking. ; )

I ended up dropping around 70lbs, going from the 230s to 160s.