Progress Report on Getting In Shape

A few years ago when I first started blogging here on Activerain, I also started my get back in shape effort.  When I noticed the a group on here that was dedicated to fitness, I joined and even posted to the group on occassion.

Then, my business got caught up in the "mortgage crises" that turned into the "real estate crises" and then eventually into the "great recession".  As with a lot of people in the industry, these crises took their toll on my health when I stopped working out while I did damage control in an effort to save my business.

I put back on some of the weight that I had lost and to make matters worse, I developed Plantor Facietus in my feet that made it difficult to walk, more or less exercise.

Well, the bad news is that by the time I got my last kid graduated from college, I was burned out on a lot of different aspects of my life, but real estate and mortgages where the worst.  I was to the point that I would get depressed when the phone rang!  I honestly didn't want to have to deal with whatever the person on the other end had to say.

So, after much soul searching, I decided to throw in the towel on my business and shut my operations down.  Before I did, I made all of the necessary arrangements for me to "reinvent" myself in the renewable energy industry by going back to school at a small community college in rural Oregon.

One of the requirements of the program though was a weight limit required by the fact that much of the program that I was going to be attending was focused on the technical aspects of wind turbines and in order to work on the turbines, I had to be under the maximum weight limit imposed by the manufacturer of the turbine.  Since most of these weight limits were around 280 lbs including tools and equipment and I was already at about 270, I had some work to do! 

So, my wife and I bought a calorie counter book and started measuring and tracking what we ate.  I learned to tape my feet and went back to walking/jogging, as well as riding my bicycle on a regular basis.

By the time we were ready to leave, I had dropped about 10 more pounds, which was close, but still not enough to win the cigar.  So, after getting to Oregon, my wife and I started training for a 1/2 marathon.

I also gave up lifting weights because the push here was to get my body weight down so that I would be hirable after I completed the program (no wind companies would hire me over 250 lbs, so I still had some work to do.)

Anyway, I did manage to make the weight by the end of the program, but still didn't get a job in the wind industry, but that's a different story.

After graduating, I continued to job and kept my weight at around that 250 lb. mark until a hurt my knee and then felt sorry for myself and started eating crap again.  My weight went back up to about 261 before I said, "no more!".

So, about 6 months ago, I got serious about losing some tonnage again and went back to measuring and tracking my diet and exercise through a phone app called, "Lose It". 

Since that time, I've dropped another 23 lbs (right at a lb a week).  It sucks that it's taking so long, but then again, I didn't get fat overnight...so, why do I expect to lose it over night?  Last week, I hit my intermediate goal of 235, so now I'm shooting for sub 200 (a weight that I haven't seen since my freshman year in high school).

Anyway, I thought that you guys might be interested in my progress??  If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to give me a shout out.

Bob