Project fix myself

 Hello again,

Wow, 2 posts in a single day, better check to make sure the world did not just end!

So I wanted to post another item today to cover another aspect of my journey to this grand adventure.  Along with getting gear and riding to boost my experience and gain new riding skills and confidence, I have been working on fixing myself as well.

When I finally got serious and started working on this project, I was kind of ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room, my health.

At the time I was overweight (and got worse over the last few years) and horribly out of shape.  It hurt to get down on the floor to do something (forget the concept of bending over to do that), was hard to stand up without using something to help lift myself up, even hurt getting up out of my chair in the evenings after watching a movie or TV show.  I was tired quite often, had trouble moving around, and it was quite a chore to tie a shoe or boot.  I could break into a sweat walking across the house and got winded on a single flight of stairs many times.

Something had to change (okay, I had to change, but took some time to get that point beat into my skull...more on that coming up).

I had spent a good half my life eating quick meals from the microwave or fast food in the earlier days of my career when I was mostly broke all the time and always in a rush as well.  As my career matured and I could slow down a bit and afford better things I started to eat out more, just slightly nicer places, which of course came along with slightly larger food portions.

Sadly the first decade of my doing this I had a nuclear metabolism that would burn off calories almost before I ate them.  Eat a whole pizza, would lose 2 pounds....so it seemed I was never going to really gain weight or have issues (I was 6 foot tall and weighed about 160 pounds).

Then slowly over a period of about 1 year (the year 2000 to be specific) I eventually realized my clothes did not fit very well anymore, I was a bit more uncomfortable and moving around was harder.  After ignoring my actual weight for quite a while I finally stepped on a scale and almost fell off from shock.  In just over a year I had somehow gained nearly 60 pounds!!

Since then I have slowly gained and while I have on more than one occasion worked to lose some of it, I never seemed to lose as much as I gained and within 6 months to a year I would gain it back and then tack on another 15 pounds for fun.  

I was finally reaching a point where I was very close to crossing that 300 pound mark.....and that was completely unacceptable.  So I started to make a few changes to my diet, trying to eat out less, or at least limit what I ordered.  This had very limited results, but the weight gain slowed down and even stabilized for some periods of time.  I was experimenting with different weight loss ideas and plans and not really seeing much success, or finding things that caused weight loss, but not anything I would be willing or able to keep doing constantly.  I realized that while I needed to work on the diet, my larger issue was the mostly sedentary life I had.

I sit at a desk all day for work, then sit at a desk all night working on other stuff, or sit watching TV, or sit in a car going someplace to sit and watch something or do something that takes little effort.  However, doing anything physical was a painful and very difficult thing to manage, and was hard to force myself to do that (basically I did not do it).

But in March of 2020, the world changed and with it I was forced to change and from that I was able to finally get this train wreck back on a track that was heading in the right direction.

The COVID pandemic that shut the world outside my house down forced me to stop eating out for nearly 2 months, and start buying food and eating at home.  I of course just bought mostly quick microwave meals or simple things to cook, most of which was not what you would call healthy, but the smaller portions and less heavy foods did have some impact.  I stopped gaining weight, and even started to lose a bit, though not much.

After things opened back up, I started to go out again, but had actually enjoyed the new variety of food from cooking at home, so I also kept doing that more, and I also started to decrease the amount of food I ordered when going out.  This helped to maintain my weight, but did not lose anymore.  However I was still not eating really well.

Late in 2020 I decided add a bit more variety to my diet as I was kind of stuck in a rut with the few restaurants and always bought the same stuff at store to cook at home.

So I started to order meals from one of those home delivery services that send you food every week to cook and that started to open up some new possibilities for me.

The first part was that it required me to start eating more vegetables and many other items that I would never had bought at the store on my own.  This helped me improve the health aspect of my diet quite a bit, and I even started buying some better foods for meals I prepared on my own. But I still ate out quite a bit and mostly fast foods or heavy plates of carb and fat loaded foods still.

Doing some experiments during this time I did find out some good information about how my body responded to some food types as well, which I have tried to incorporate into my continuing dietary plans.

So now that I was eating at least somewhat better, I decided to look into some options for the physical work I needed to do.

A chance ad on Facebook (yeah, they do occasionally show you something useful) for a local fitness training gym intrigued me with the challenge they were offering.

The hook was that you had to lose 25 pounds or a certain % of body fat in 6 weeks.  If you succeeded, you would be refunded your money for that 6 weeks.  If not, well, you still got 6 weeks of time hopefully well spent.

The program was not cheap, but besides the workouts that were being aimed at my age group (no more 21 year old instructors thinking that I could do 100 pushups like I was walking to the back yard of my house), the trainers really did spend time trying to work with you to adjust the work out to fit your abilities, while also trying to push you a little to make sure it did some good.  They also included a real dietary plan that made sense and was more structured than other places I had looked at in the past. 

Plus, in a first compared to any other gym I had looked at or tried, there was no offers or pushing me to buy THEIR protein or other supposedly necessary drink or sludge that would miraculously make everything work out.  While they recommended 2 protein drinks a day in the meal plans as a mid morning and mid afternoon snack, they did not care what I bought or where I bought it as long as it met the dietary needs of protein content and minimal carb and fat content.

So I signed up, and this time I decided I was going to take it serious and followed the meal planning (which was a bit restrictive, and while it could be maintained indefinitely, I am too much of an epicurean to do that).  I figured I could give it at least 6 weeks though.   I started by attending the workouts 3 days a week (the minimum commitment they asked for) which were each about 40 minutes long. 3 weeks into it I started to attend 5 days a week, and for the last 2 weeks even went in on Saturday to make it 6 days.

My results were spectacular.  In the 1st 2 weeks I had already lost 60% of the weight I needed to reach the 25 pound goal, so it was looking like this might work.

At the end of the 6 weeks I had succeeded in losing 26.5 pounds and 3-4% body fat!

I was now feeling pretty good, not only from a mental viewpoint having that kind of result, but obviously was not as heavy, clothes were fitting better and I found I could now move around without the pain and getting up and down from the floor was now something done without much hassle.

So I took my refunded money and signed up for another 6 weeks, figured I had nothing to lose at that point.

When that was done (I actually went 7 weeks, as they worked with me since I was on vacation for 1 of the weeks during that time) I had only lost another 4 pounds, and no real change in body fat.

However,  I had also started to go back out for many of my meals, and was back to eating my home delivery meals (which I had suspended for the 6 week period as they did not fit the meal plan well enough to spend the money on them during that time).

Knowing then that I could make some small adjustments and keep seeing results, I decided to sign back up for 6 months (which did lower the cost per week as well).  I have since been working on eating less again.

So now we have caught up with today.

For the month of October I have decided I will not go out to eat at all and only eat my home delivered meals and meals I cook or prepare at home (might still be a few microwave options, but will try to cook most of them).  The first week results; dropped 5 pounds and another 1% body fat.

So in a little over 4 months I have lost 35.5 pounds, 5% body fat, regained a large amount of flexibility and movement, and even started to rebuild muscle and increase strength. This I have seen by how much easier I can do certain things and the less pain I now feel.

I really noticed it in my riding compared to how I would feel during and after a ride just 6 months ago.

I am hoping that the lack of restaurant foods for this next month will allow another decent weight drop. I will then slowly go back to eating out some (I mean, the food is really good, and it forms what little social life I have and gives me a reason to leave the house for a bit), but the hope is to limit it more, and again try to change what I order and how much I order.

Combined with the increased range of food options I have picked up from the home delivered meals, and discovering lots of food things that I actually now enjoy that a year ago I would have sworn I disliked and refused to eat, it should be easier to still enjoy a meal out, but not cause so much issue with my health.

The worst case I see is that I will start to maintain weight where I am, much like what I saw over the last 30-40 days where I was not gaining, but also not losing.

But to hopefully sweeten the deal, now that I can get out and do more without pain and suffering, I will be planning to not only ride the motorcycle more now that the cooler weather has arrived, but will be dusting off the mountain bike and getting back out on it too.  Also plan to get out hiking some as well since there are many nice trails within a 15 minute drive from my home.

With the better control of diet and a big increase in physical activity (I do not plan to reduce my workouts and have lately started pushing myself more during them) I should hope to see a continued weight loss, though possibly slower, but that is fine.

Well, now that you have read the account of my fitness train wreck that has now gotten back on the track, I will in the future continue to spend more time on bike trips and gear stuff :)  But I will drop a note now and then on the fitness progress, as it will play a large part in any success I have in long distance ADV biking trips in the future.

Thanks for the read and hope you all are well.  If you have any specific questions about any of the above, just contact me and I can provide more details about specific products, companies or concepts I have found or done, just in case you have a need to fix your self too :)

Chris