A Heavy Issue, Me

So, I’m always hesitant to post things about weight or my personal weight loss struggles and victories on social media. Frankly, it’s because I’m embarrassed… No one else in my life put unhealthy foods in my life or told me to stay on the couch when I should have worked out, I did and didn’t do those things. I’ve struggled with my weight ever since I can remember and its been a 20+ year struggle. Sometimes I’m more comfortable and confident in myself no matter what my weight, I base that on my health and fitness level, other times I see nothing positive in the way I look. I have baffled countless doctors who tell me that they have no idea how I can be so active and still struggle with weight. Blood tests, metabolism tests, nutritionists, personal trainers, therapists… I’ve done pretty much everything and have had some great success with those things, but I’ve never reached a point where I have been happy. I struggle with an up and down rollercoaster, I’ll go from incredibly motivated and focused to completely demoralized and hopeless. Well, my weight has once again taken a front row seat in my mind. I am incredibly frustrated. I’ve run one marathon and training for another and yet I feel like I’m constantly defending my athleticism because I don’t think I look like an athlete. Granted it is actually difficult to loose weight while training for a marathon, you require an insane amount of energy, and that comes from food. Now, I eat the healthy types of fuel but still, calories are calories. It is because of that that I can get away sometimes with eating more than I should, but I also train hard.

Alright, so enough of that… here’s the deal. I’m ready to make the changes I need to to finally do this thing. I’ve tried for a long time not to set weight loss goals for certain amounts of time because the disappointment was always too much when I would eventually fail. So I’ve realized that I need to start putting my goals out there because I need support, as much as I hate to admit it, I can’t do this by myself. Essentially I have to do it by myself, but I need to include the people I love in this whole plan because whether I succeed or fail I have to be held accountable and sometimes I’m way too easy on myself.

So, here’s my goal… when I was at my heaviest, at the end of my freshman year of college, I was 267 lbs. Today (7/25) I am 203 lbs. I used to say I would be happy if I could get down to 180, but not anymore… I am now aiming for 167. That would be 100lbs down from my heaviest weight and I think I would be really happy to get down to that point and stay there. I think I would finally feel like the person I’ve been the whole time. Overall that’s losing 36 pounds. For me that is a HUGE goal, it takes me forever just to lose 10 lbs. But, here we go… I’m giving myself six months. I’m starting today but I know that losing weight while marathon training is not just hard but not exactly a good idea to cut significant calories. So after I run the marathon the main focus will be weight loss, and with the support of my friends and family, I’m going to do it.  

This is me in the summer of 2006 at 267lbs
I am never going back to that again.