It's been over a year since my last post, and my weight loss attempts all but stalled in that time. Until now...
Allow me to explain how I got to where I am now. A few weeks ago I participated in the Portland Rose Festival Character Clown Corps. Yep, I'm a clown! The main event of the Portland Rose Festival is the Grand Floral Parade, a 4 1/2 mile walk from the Memorial Coliseum, over a bridge, and through downtown Portland. Knowing that I had this physical challenge ahead of me, I decided to start walking around my neighborhood to get my legs out of their state of near-atrophy! Then, something amazing happened: I discovered I liked going out for walks! What I liked more was how I felt after I was done. I felt energized, awake, and alive. What a great feeling!
The day of the parade came, and I conquered it! While I definitely felt tired at the end, and my feet were sore from pounding the pavement with nothing but Converse between them and asphalt, the feelings of near-death that I had dreaded never came.
After the parade, I watched the televised highlights and had the shock of a life time. There I was for all the world to see and in high-definition. A 337 pound clown, huge, wobbling, and waddling across the street. Worse, I was surrounded by a plethora of skinny, fit people. I was the elephant in the room. I've seen pictures of myself before with similar feelings, but this felt even worse. On my face you can tell I'm having the time of my life, but everything below my face said that my life was going to be cut short because I am very unhealthy.
Not long after, I stood on the bathroom scale and had another shock. The renewed activity in my life had a very positive impact. I had lost 5 pounds. Ok, so 5 pounds is not a lot for someone living in the 330s, but for me that was huge. I hadn't been dieting, and I really hadn't even been exercising. I had just been walking and trying to get this body ready for a 4 1/2 mile walk. Then it hit me like a perfect storm: if I want to live, I need to walk.
So walking I've been. My partner and I recently moved into a neighborhood not more than a half-mile from a middle school with a track and a mile-long cross country trail. I decided that I no longer had any excuses, so I put on my shoes and went walking. Two weeks ago, I set out a goal: walk every night. Mission accomplished. The next week I managed to get in three walks. So far this week, I've managed to get in one (with another coming following my publishing this blog). I found that I really enjoy walking the cross country trail, and yesterday I managed to walk it 3 times. Since I walk to and from the school, that's nearly 4 miles of walking!
So, that's where I am. The scale last week told me I no longer weigh in the 330s. For the first time in 5 years I'm in the 320s, which for me is huge. I have a goal to be at 318 by the end of the month. It's ambitious, but I know I can make that happen. Why 318? Two years ago, I was at my heaviest weight: 353. By month end I hope to have lost 10 percent of my weight, which will put me at 318.
So that's where I'm at. I've been wanting to journal my weight loss and I can't think of a better way to do so than to blog it. With that in mind, these blogs will be much more frequent than before. Stay tuned!
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