Hi, I’m Jeff and it has been roughly 6 days, 4 hours and 31 minutes since my last chocolate donut. I am a 31-year old, married and the proud papa of one little girl (soon to be two). My weight has always been an issue for me, not so much from a health and wellness perspective, thankfully, but in a social and self-image sort of way. My larger than average size (a size called husky when you’re a young boy – which is rather cute) played a vital role in distancing me from the parochial and high school social scenes. As a result, there was a minimal amount of peer pressure in my life growing up. So there truly is a silver lining in every cloud, as the social fringe I resided in as a boy helped me stay out of trouble, allowed to me get in touch with my emotions (read: I wrote bad poetry and listened to good music), truly find myself at a young age and lead to me becoming a vibrantly independent and self-confident adult. That being said, I am a confident man, and now father, with an ongoing, seemingly permanent weight problem. I am in the process of evolving my mostly sedentary lifestyle in an attempt to lose some weight and match, at least from time to time, my daughter’s youthful energy. I know that my luck in avoiding major and even minor weight-related health issues is bound to expire and that if sweeping changes are not made to the way I eat, exercise and live my life I may not be doing the latter for much longer.
I weigh about 300 pounds, which is thankfully spread pretty evenly over my 6 foot 5 inch frame. I always joked that if I was a foot shorter I would be perfectly round. While I only really look fat, or dare I say obese, while seated, I know that I am way too large to be considered healthy by any sane doctor. So I made the decision to join a gym late last year. This is the first gym I have ever joined, and I only really did so because it was a $10-a-month-for-life deal with no exit/contract buyout clause. It was a practically risk-free venture. My gym is a growing chain that bills itself as an equal opportunity workout facility – in short there is to be no judging and no stereotypical gym rat, body builder type of clientele to scare away us heavy, common folk.
My goal is to shed about 50 lbs and then to maintain a weight of around 250 forever. So the plan is to get to the gym 3-4 times a week for anywhere between 25-50 minutes at a time, to walk briskly on the treadmill and work individual areas on the resistance equipment. As most people know, exercise alone will not help one drop the lbs; you must also eat a balanced and nutritious menu. In my next post on Tuesday I will discuss my intimate history with food and discuss my personal non-diet strategies for success in “Losing It!”
I sincerely hope “Dad’s Losing It” does not, in 6-12 months, become a work of fiction. I also hope that my struggles, successes and failures, as documented here, will inspire and motivate you, or at the very least make you chuckle a bit – which is important in life as well.
Jeff is a Family Fun Blogger. Check out his other blogs here.
Other Weight Loss Blogs
Ed Paul’s “Getting My Mind Right”
Elizabeth Kane’s “Time To Get Moving”