Hey Fellow Fanatics,
I meant to spend 5 minutes catching up on CF, but ended up reading this thread for over an hour! I have a story like most of you, and much of mine can be found in pieces of all the other stories on here. Needless to say, my 'wake up call' after years of denial and increasing amounts of medication to control blood pressure, cholesterol, etc came in July of this year. In short, years of 'so-so' physicals became a very bad physical in July. I started making some changes (slowly) in July and have increased since then. I am down around 15 lbs and feel better.
My one piece of advice that maybe hasn't been stated much on here is to start with small changes and build up to bigger ones. Seriously. From my experience, if you try to make a huge amount of changes all at once, you have a high probability of failure. I started with a simple goal of 'walking the sidewalks in my neighborhood' 3 nights a week (equates to a bit over 1.5 Miles). I now run / walk 2-4 miles almost daily. My diet is unfortunately hit or miss still, but mostly hit. I cut out most fried foods and have severely cut down on the red meat (not eliminated as I cannot say goodbye to burgers and filet completely!). I still 'cheat', but when I do I now view it as motivation to 'kill it' the next day.
My goal now is to continue improving my diet and beginning the process of re-shaping my figure (i.e adding strength training). I have a follow-up physical in December and am admittedly nervous that my numbers will still be horrible. We shall see.
Good luck to everyone with their goals!
I meant to spend 5 minutes catching up on CF, but ended up reading this thread for over an hour! I have a story like most of you, and much of mine can be found in pieces of all the other stories on here. Needless to say, my 'wake up call' after years of denial and increasing amounts of medication to control blood pressure, cholesterol, etc came in July of this year. In short, years of 'so-so' physicals became a very bad physical in July. I started making some changes (slowly) in July and have increased since then. I am down around 15 lbs and feel better.
My one piece of advice that maybe hasn't been stated much on here is to start with small changes and build up to bigger ones. Seriously. From my experience, if you try to make a huge amount of changes all at once, you have a high probability of failure. I started with a simple goal of 'walking the sidewalks in my neighborhood' 3 nights a week (equates to a bit over 1.5 Miles). I now run / walk 2-4 miles almost daily. My diet is unfortunately hit or miss still, but mostly hit. I cut out most fried foods and have severely cut down on the red meat (not eliminated as I cannot say goodbye to burgers and filet completely!). I still 'cheat', but when I do I now view it as motivation to 'kill it' the next day.
My goal now is to continue improving my diet and beginning the process of re-shaping my figure (i.e adding strength training). I have a follow-up physical in December and am admittedly nervous that my numbers will still be horrible. We shall see.
Good luck to everyone with their goals!