The Past Year In Review

It's been a hell of a year since the beginning of last April when I had my very first Crossfit foundations class. I was 294.6 pounds on April 6, 2011 and 52 weeks later on April 4, 2012 I am 216.2 pounds. That's a 78.4 pound swing. My highest I weighed in the year was 299.2 and the lowest was last week at 214.2 giving a maximum weight range of 85 pounds. I couldn't have done it without Crossfit and more specifically Crossfit Arlington. Despite the risk of hurting feelings I'm going to also name names that for me went beyond the fantastic sense of community there which in and of itself was probably the biggest single impact once the decision was made to dedicate myself to being there.

Tristan: My ambassador of fitness. Planted the seed far before he even invited me to take a trial session. Always there to push me, always there to congratulate me on the smaller successes along the way.

Wang: It was nice having another friendly face in my first couple months and we had a couple of really inspiring talks at times when I was feeling discouraged and I don't know if before now I ever expressed how important those were.

Manni: Head coach, pushed for more, a watchful eye. You did a great job fulfilling the promise that Crossfit can be scaled to any level of fitness and that was important.

The Janimal and Brandi: There's something infinitely inspiring about these two and for the same reason, so I grouped them together. Their never satisfied and/or complacent attitude towards their own (stellar) performance combined with their never ending encouragement really meant a lot to me. They're also such nice people that they contributed a lot to making me feel welcome.

Progress in 2012 has slowed and while I'd like to think that it's because I weigh so much less, the fact is that without the regularity of the intense workouts of Crossfit I am not getting as much exercise as I had been. While it's somewhat discouraging, I'm gonna keep pushing and focus on how I can make additional lifestyle tweaks to continue towards an end goal. Speaking of goals and progress, I will be making a side by side of the picture from day 1 and the picture from this morning and I'll edit a link into this post.

Moving on to reflections. It feels fantastic to feel like a normal sized human. I still have a gut (albeit not nearly as large), but since the country as a whole has packed on a few pounds I'm much more rarely the fat ass in the room. I no longer need to shop at big and tall stores as my shirt size is hovering between XL and Large and my pants size is presently 38. My old jeans (that I kept as a keepsake) are 48s to give you a reference point. I had always sort of thought that one day I'd figure out a method for losing weight that worked for me, and now that it happened it's a bit surreal. I still have quite a ways I intend to go as I don't think I'll be satisfied until at least 185.

We've talked exercise so let's also talk diet. My first month or two of progress can attest that exercise without diet would have hampered my progress significantly. I might argue in fact that the exercise merely enhanced the progress of the diet and gave me some muscle to shrink into so that I wouldn't look doughy/scrawny. Now that I've mostly been relying on diet I can see my weight drop a pound (maybe two) most weeks, but if I was getting the same level of exercise I have no doubt it would add a 1.5-2 times multiplier on that. However the exercise without the diet as I eluded to gave even smaller results and left my weight bouncing around like a super ball. I eat salad several times a week now. That was unthinkable a year ago. I in general eat more vegetables and have come to enjoy them a bit. I've often been surprised at how tasty a vegetable can be when cooked certain ways or seasoned and such. I've learned how to deal with "hunger" which in most cases for me is just a desire to eat how I once did.

Since we're doing the year in review, I'd be remiss to only talk about my physical transformation. I've met the most wonderful woman, and we're getting married, and we're having a baby. I love Jen so much and she's been super supportive of my weight loss when I've been a little discouraged in the past couple of months. I can't wait to see what life has in store for us and our soon to be family. I'm already trying to figure out all the best baby gear and get ready to have a child. It may not have been planned, but we knew it was in the cards, so we're embracing it.

Another thing I love about Jen is that she was willing to pick up and move across the country with me. That was a big sacrifice on her part as she had a great job and was about to get a promotion and she was doing something she loved. She left that all behind to let me follow my dreams and work for Google. Did you like that segue into talking about the job/location change? Not only did I get the dream job, but now we live in sunny California. The long story short is that Google is at least as awesome to work for as they say and California is definitely a place I'm digging.

Life is great, thank you to everyone who helped make this past year so incredible, and you will not be forgotten.