Healthy, Happy, and Loving it!
One year fitness progress
Many people have asked me “What are you doing?” in reference to the weight I’ve lost over the past year. “Eating right and exercising”, I answer. Seriously, that is actually true, but a little bit too simplistic I suppose, so here is how I did it.
In October 2011, we were in San Carlos, Mexico enjoying our annual trip down there on trade. I found myself wanting to nap most of the time and when my kids called out, “Dad! Come and swim with us!”, I just wasn’t in to it. I was downright lazy! Sluggish. Tired. It wasn’t me…not the me that I remembered, anyway. I didn’t want to swim because I was FAT! I grew up slender, in shape, a wrestler in high school, Pop Warner Football, the “whole nine”, so to speak. Years before, I felt good about myself, strong, and confident. Even when I got married, I was six feet tall and 195 pounds and I looked and felt great.
Seemed like with every child my wife had, I gained the weight! After 14 years and six kids, that’s about 10 pounds a kid! But, it was only about 3-4 pounds a year. The weight just adds up…creeps up on you and before I knew what happened, there I was…60 pounds heavier than I was the day I was married. There is a huge lesson in there somewhere, but I digress. I couldn’t believe what was going on in my head and then, like a spring just snapped in my brain, I knew I had to change. And so I did. When I got home from that vacation, I took a picture of myself and swore to change. This time, (and this is the key, so pay attention) I decided to do it for me, without any pressure from a doctor, or mother, or even my wife. The change came from within myself. I wanted to change.
The first thing I did was download an app, My Fitness Pal, onto my phone to track what I was eating. It’s free, so go do it. Then, “friend” me like on Facebook here. My username is “bryanmoody”. It was amazing just to be aware of what was in the food I was eating. I had no idea just how many calories were in fast food, for example. The app has a huge database of food and it is broken down by calories, fat, protein, sugar, and other nutrients so you can get a very good picture of what you are taking in and what you are missing. I set my goal weight, the time frame I wanted to reach my goal, and I was on my way!
I started going to the gym and doing what I knew…I wasn’t a stranger to working out and so I had a pretty good routine to get back into. A month or so later, I had dropped a good 15-20 pounds, mostly from just not drinking soda! The first several pounds are easy, of course. Then, around Thanksgiving I kind of fell off the wagon. The holidays are a great time to get back into old habits, but I stayed pretty true to my new way of eating with the occasional splurge on Christmas goodies. As the New Year rolled around, I committed to going back to the gym and staying strictly within my calorie range for continued weight loss. I didn’t set foot in the gym once in the entire month of January! “Great start to the new year”, I thought. I lacked an accountability partner, someone to help keep me on my path.
Enter Brad St. Louis. I hired Brad in February and started working out with him twice a week. Brad is a personal trainer now, but used to play football for the Cincinnati Bengals and settled down in Mesa after his NFL career. The workouts are great and focused on totally different areas than what I was doing on my own. Core strengthening exercises and leg workouts really kicked my fitness up a notch. Finally, once I got under 225 pounds, I started playing basketball twice a week and I go hiking with my son’s scout troop on a pretty regular basis on the weekends. In all, I spend about 5 hours a week exercising and I have my diet under control. I use a good multi-vitamin combination from Melaleuca as well as an Access bar before I work out.
I’m ready for the holidays this year…Bring on the goodies!
