My Health Journey

If you've read my '101 in 1001' list, you'll see that one of the list items is to 'Get down to 200 pounds'. That's the exact same list item I had my original 2011 version of the list. Back then, though, it was slightly easier to get there compared to where I'm at now.

Though I wasn't attempting a Day Zero List back in 2021, I did have a moment of realization in November of that year. I was testing out Reddit's live-streaming after seeing others do it. Being an extreme introvert, it took a week or two of watching other people to finally take the plunge. One day, I just signed on and went live. I had nothing in particular I wanted to talk about, but I just wanted to talk. Maybe I wanted people to interact with.

Though I'm an introvert, and have severe social anxiety, some part of me wants to socialize. I haven't had a friend since May 2004. That's 19 years. It's a long time to not have anyone to 'hang out' with. It wears on you, even as someone who always says he wants to be alone.

Anyway, I went live, and during the near one-sided conversation, a couple people showed up to watch me ramble, and somewhere along the way, it 'clicked' in my mind that I need to take losing weight seriously. So I actually started to. I took one of my Field Notes notebooks, and started making pages to keep track of my weight, what I ate, and over the next several days, how much I walked.

For THREE months, I was on top of it. If you take a look at the first page above, you'll see I went from 292.4 to 259.4 in just 12 weeks. Thirty-three pounds in 12 weeks. I was walking almost every day, jogged on the treadmill a LOT, and was working out. I got to the point where I could jog for 1.1 miles on the treadmill without stopping or walking. Then depression took over. Over the next 16 months or so, I've went back to just one pound shy of my original starting weight.

But on June 2nd of this year, me and my daughter both decided to do something about it once again. I started at 292.4, and am currently 286.2. There was a two week period where I gained five pounds. If it weren't for that two week period, I would be close to 280 right now.

What's crazy is, I took progress pictures of when I started, compared to when I was around 260, and even I could notice the difference. I just wish I had kept it up. Because if I had, I would be around 200. That bums me out, but I've just got to keep going.