My Fat to Fit Journey (Derrick)

Just as the title says, this is Derrick. I’ve hijacked my wife’s blog because I’m too lazy and boring to give my own blog the attention that it would need to survive. Most of my posts would probably be the same, which would get tedious causing it to wither up and die. So instead I figured I would just create one post that would sum up what fifty of any small posts I could conjure up would contain. So here we go.

               Let me start off by saying that his is not a shaking-finger-at-you post this is simply my experiences in my own personal weight loss, hopefully I won’t ramble too much.  In my life through childhood up to early adulthood I’ve been known as the “Bigger” guy. What this means is, the fat guy, but everyone’s too afraid to say anything so it goes a little like this, “No man you’re not fat, you’re just solid/husky/big-framed.” Now I know, this is meant to be a nicer non-hurtful way of saying “You could lose a few,” but I can tell you, even though it may have seemed appreciated, now looking back on it I realize it only helped enable my problem. Does this mean you need to call people fat? No! Don’t be absurd! Calling people fat merely breaks them down further, and de-motivates. While working at a previous job, I had a new manager come in, this man didn’t know how overweight I had been previously. I remember one day while discussing a customer interaction with me he describes a women as “huge” as in “You know the huge women you were talking to?” I was taken back and disgusted by this remark; I had been raised to respect people, you don’t know their life situations or what they’re going through. I can tell you that anyone who is obese, already knows it, they’ve already beaten themselves down more than you ever could. You adding bricks to the house that they already have on them doesn’t help the situation .Even if the person seems to be okay with their obesity, know that it’s just a cover up for the fear that they have. The fear that they may never be able to overcome their weight, that they’re stuck with it forever,  and that they will always be seen as just a blurred face walking through the mall on a news special titled “Large And Not In Charge: America’s fatty’s!”  People need to be motivated; better yet people need to be shown how to motivate themselves, why they want to change, why they want to put in the hard work. To put in the hard work you must be self motivated, or else you’re likely to end up giving up when it gets tough.  Let me tell you, it’s a lot of hard work.

            Growing up, I lived in a household where fruit and veggies weren’t a mealtime priority. My parents fed us, clothed us, put a roof over our head, and spoiled us. They were great parents! They were just busy with the hundred things that parents of five kids are, and at some point just found the ease of fast food a perfect solution for kids whining and groaning for immediate sustenance. Then as we grew older and became teenagers with our own transportation and social lives everybody had different eating schedules, so we, as young intelligent teenagers, would just eat as it became convenient and wherever was the closest dollar menu. This was done with no thought towards calories, or fat, or sodium content, which equals to 2 double stack burgers, a chicken sandwich, and a value fry, for the low price of 4 dollars! Awesome deal! Except when you end this hot streak of saving time, and “saving money” to a 5’7, 26 year old man, with over 40% body fat, and pre-hypertension blood pressure.

   So what happened? Were you always this big for real? Well there was a time in high school, when I was 16 when I weighed about 165 pounds. How?! Well I got really ill for 2 weeks during Christmas break where I could barely choke down soup and water, during this time I also went through a growth spurt. I came back to school, a lean, mean, angsty teenager, with no respect for the weight I had lost. Why? Because I didn’t earn it, I didn’t cut back portions, sweat my way to victory, I merely woke from a 2 week sickly hibernation with a new body. This is how I view diets (sorry dieters) or magic pills (sorry pill poppers).  If you don’t earn it, you can’t respect it, which means like 16 year old me, from the moment you lose your weight you’re rolling back down the hill to being overweight again, be it fast or slow. It took me about 2 years, from sophomore to senior to not only gain back the weight but to add a few notches. I went from 165 to about 190 in two years! The truth is, is that unless you make a permanent change to your lifestyle, you will be doomed to repeat it again, and again. Now I don’t know about you but I can honestly say that I do not want to do it all over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love they gym, I love eating a healthier life style, and I love that I was able to carve 60+ pounds of fat off my rather large-at-the-time body, but if I had to do it every pre-summer just to have that beach bod? Ugh I shutter just thinking about it. That’s because there is a lot of work to be invested, it’s like being a kid and making an incredible sandcastle with a beautiful glistening moat just to have Boris the bully come and stomp it to nothingness, then go, “well there’s always next year” bad metaphor? Probably, but you get the point!

     So, how did I get to where I am now?  What was my motivation? In August of 2012, I went to a wife-forced physical. The reason for this was because I was feeling tired, sickly, and achy all the time. I am a paranoid individual, and one of my biggest fears is to die early and not get to be there for my daughters, or grandkids or so on. To not be able to live, travel, or grow old with my wife.  It was a time when it seemed that every other young person I knew or heard about had cancer or some life threatening disease. With all my feeling of illness, and exhaustion I was worried that if I went in for a physical that I was certain I would find bad news. So I chose the route of “I’d rather not know” which was acceptable for me, but completely unacceptable for my wife, and as we all know, she won and will continue to win those kinds of arguments. So there I was at the doctor, went through the whole process, my doctor was a younger women with a sweet demeanor. I could tell that she was uncomfortably trying to state the obvious, which went a little something like this “You know everything looks pretty good except your blood pressure… You know when people get near to obesity things can get complicated... People who are obese can develop sleep apnea… you said you do some workouts? Well maybe less weights? You should do at least 30 minutes of cardio at least 3 times per week… (more silence, gathering confidence).. Listen your blood pressure is pre hyper tension, I want to see you in 6 months if some changes haven’t been made we’re gonna have to look at putting you on blood pressure medication.” I nodded and we went our separate ways. I was in shock, those last few words hit me to the bone for some reason. At this point in my life I was getting sick of “fat pictures” in which no matter what angle (in attempt to find a flattering side) would work, there was always a roll peaking out, I wanted to lose weight and change it but I just didn’t have the extra little push yet. This was it, I didn’t want to be a 26 year old on blood pressure medication! I didn’t want to be in that kind of health category, genetically I was already fighting potential blood pressure issues on both sides of my family, why was I going to help it out  even more by being unhealthy. How would that be explained to my children? “Sooo your dad didn’t care enough to get healthy when he had the chance so he had a heart attack instead.” No that’s not how I was going to live anymore. I was going change and I meant it, I was determined to get healthy for myself and my family. I decided that I wanted my children to be raised in a household that valued self respect, good health, and hard work.  It had been put off for way to long.

            In September of 2012 I began my journey at 217 pounds, and it started out rough. I started trying veggies, fruits, egg whites, boiled chicken, and raw oat concoctions. All of it was nasty, well in comparison to fried, processed, and sugary foods. I cut out soda completely, and attempted to limit fast food runs to twice a week.  I started taking advantage of a Gold’s Gym pass my father-in-law had gotten us a year previous. At first it was a half hour a day 3-4 times per week mostly on a recumbent bike. Maybe 200 calories burned each time, and was losing about a pound per week.  November came and I discovered and app call “My Fitness Pal” this was my non-secret weapon. It told me everything about the food I was eating, all the nutrition facts; I could count calories I ate and track calories that I had burned. I could even scan barcodes on almost any food to get the facts about it. I also starting going to the gym 45 minutes a day 5 days a week, burning about 400 calories a day. Now I was losing 2 to 2.5 pounds a week. I hadn’t notice much of a change in my physical shape but I felt better, more energized, and healthier. I started decreasing fatty food (fast foodish foods) to one day per week. People arund me were noticing the weight change and s was I. When January hit I was in need of new clothes (now about 185 pounds). So while in Vegas spending time with family I spent $300 on new clothes, this included a new suit, I even made sure the jacket on the suit was a little on the tight side to allow for more weight loss.  (Even though the sales person seemed to think I was crazy)

     Flash forward to June 2013 at this point I had smashed through my goal weight of 160 and was now 155 lbs. I was spending an hour and a half at the gym, and hour of cardio, bike/elliptical/ stair climber, and a half hour of weights. I was burning about 800 calories per day at this point. My clothes that I had bought in January were draped on my body and the nice practically new suit that I had bought a size smaller now made me look I was a little kid wearing his dad’s suit. So off the clothes went to a local store that gave us a few bucks for them and off we went to Vegas for summer vacation where I purchased a new wardrobe, did I  feel bad for having to spend money on clothes when I had just purchased a bunch a few months ago? Yes, and no. Yes because I had to spend money on it, no because for the first time since I was 16 I felt confident in myself physically, I wasn’t the fat guy anymore, but more importantly it was the first time in my entire life that I had felt this good internally, every health issue I had seemed to evaporate. My bones didn’t ache, I had severely less anxiety, my horrific stomach acid was gone without the need of two Zantacs a day. It was incredible, I was rejuvenated, and I was in love with the gym and what I had accomplished! Food tasted completely different, fresh veggies, and fruits were so good, and fast food tasted salty, greasy, and gross.  My taste buds had changed completely, and made for an entirely new food tasting experience, I was excited; it was like a baby trying foods for the first time.

    During this time I had started a new job and part of my health benefit registration was to get a physical to see if I qualified for a healthy living discount, they measured my body fat, blood pressure, and did several blood tests. When I arrived they checked my heart rate, the nurse looks at it and sees that it’s under 60, she looks at me a little confused and worried, “Is your heart rate usually this low?”, to which I replied “I think so, I do a lot of cardio 5 days a week”, she nods and seemed more comfortable with the reading now.  Before she checks my body fat she asks, “Where would you like it to be?” I told her that at this point my goal would be to have it at 11%. She checks it and says, “Well you’re at 10.5%!”

   When I arrive to see the doctor he starts to go over all the test, “Everything looks fantastic” he said nonchalantly. I said “would you believe that 9 months ago, I was 65 pounds heavier with pre-hypertension? “  His eyes widened a bit, “No way! That’s great! Keep up the good work!” I felt a sense of victory, I had set out to accomplish a goal and I crushed it, but I knew that it was important to keep setting goals, so my new goal was to refine my body, strengthen my endurance and star gaining lean muscle. I went to the gym later that day, and decide to start the treadmill, I ran at 6 mph, for 3 minutes. I was disgusted. I had come so far, how could this be? How could I only run at that speed (which felt super fast) for that short of time. It was depressing, but it allowed me to set a new goal, I was gonna reach a 5k, but how was I going to do this while trying to gain lean muscle? I adapted, I studied and found different work outs, started mutating crossfit-type workouts with classic muscle building resulting in a high impact, high cardio muscle training workout (Something my Step-pops has lovingly titled the caveman workout). I did that for 45 minutes, and cardio for 30 minutes. This has worked for me, and I know it may not work for everyone but I’ve enjoyed it!

   Skip forward to now, I now weigh 158 pounds but have continued to lose fatty inches, by gaining muscle. It’s an ongoing process and I’m not finished, I still have cuts that I want to earn and strengthening that I want to gain. I’ve now ran a 5k in 21:30 and am gonna continue to attempt to go faster and go farther. My wife started her fitness routine in May of 2013, and now has lost almost 40 pounds. My daughter knows that her parents go to the gym regularly and that it’s just a part of life, she will eat apples, oranges, bananas, egg whites like nobody’s business but when given cake she’ll eat a few bite and go “I’m done.”

    So to anybody contemplating losing weight, or for those who don’t want to lose weight but switch to a healthier lifestyle, I can tell you without a doubt it’s worth it. Just do it, the longer you make excuses the worse your body and mind are getting. Just take the first steps; you’ll be glad you fought through it. Going to the gym/working out is incredible it’s one of the few things where you can feel accomplished daily. You get recognition from yourself everyday by destroying goals daily, even if you beat your last workout by one second, rep, or calorie, you’ve set a new record. It’s like getting a gold star sticker everyday!

           Thanks for taking time to read my overly long ramble!