Kicking This Thing Off

Today I turn 30. While I am trying to handle the transition from being described as "late twenties" to "early thirties" with some degree of grace, I will admit that I am kinda freaked out about it. One thing late night soul searching has reinforced to me is that I can't keep living and eating like I don't care about my body or health. I am literally too old for that.

I haven't "struggled with my weight" in the traditional sense. People who say they have struggled with their weight were usually overweight when they were young, tried diet and exercise, and generally rode the weight roller coaster for years. My weight hasn't been a struggle - in fact for most of my life I have been very comfortable with. Maybe a little too comfortable, which has led to me steadily gaining about 8-10 pounds a year for the past 12 years.

This is a picture of my then-future-wife and I in high school circa 2001. She is wearing a shirt that says "Chicks dig scrawny pale guys" and I definitely fit the bill. 6 feet tall, rail thin, and dedicated gamer, I was scrawny and pale and I ate whatever I wanted. Early in college I can remember being around 175 when being measured weekly at the blood plasma clinic (gotta pay the bills somehow) and I ate whatever I wanted. I spent 7 years in college and  over time I started to notice some extra pounds as my metabolism started to slow, but I still ate whatever I wanted. Somewhere in there I passed the 200 pounds mark, but I didn't pay much attention so I don't remember exactly when, but it wasn't a big deal at the time. I had a little extra chunk than I wanted and my body was starting to gain definition (aka, a belly), but I didn't mind much.

After college I landed a desk job programming for NASA and the extra income combined with lack of movement really sent my BMI climbing. I had a group of friends who were a little older than me and trying to lose weight constantly, so I tried to get involved in some exercise programs with them but they never really went anywhere. One year I remember weighing in at 220. Another year I was in the mid 230's. By the time we started our office "Biggest Loser," I was pushing 250. I can tell you right now that I didn't win that competition; I ended up losing Biggest Loser by actually gaining weight over the course of it.

My lack of weight loss wasn't due to lack of trying (or at least, entirely due). Some of these competitions required 5 workouts a week, an hour at a time. 5 hours in the gym a week didn't help my weight, although I did feel generally better. Over time the lack of weight loss plus my weak willpower always led to discouragement and quitting the programs. And to be honest, I HATE going to the gym - it's just miserable and time consuming and often I feel like I would rather just be fat than have to put myself through that multiple times a week.

More recently I have all but given up on trying to live a healthy lifestyle. I can't remember the last time I was in the gym and my eating habits are even worse. Louis CK sums up my current state of affairs more eloquently than I could hope to:

"My doctor starts asking me about my eating habits, like there's habits, like there's a pattern. It's just chaos and awfulness."

I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. Lunch at work is usually fast food or a huge sit-down restaurant meal. Soda is a constant. Ice cream, candy, and snack cakes are always available. I know this is bad, but the alternative of dieting and eating less just always seemed miserable and unsustainable to me. Maybe I could lose a few pounds by going on a kale cleanse for a month, but once the diet was over and the binge started again, I would just gain the weight right back, I reasoned. And without steady exercise, I would never really lose weight anyway right?

This is all fine and dandy for a 20-something (not really), but I'm not a 20-something anymore and continuing this behavior as I trudge toward 40 is a death wish. I had something of a wake up call a few weeks ago when the scale told me I was nearly 270 pounds. I never really considered myself fat, but the mirror doesn't lie and 270 is way closer to 300 than I ever wanted to be; I'm getting fat, I am 30, and I decided I need to do something about it.

So this blog is a result of that decision. My goal is simple: Lose 30 pounds while I am still 30. A year from today when I turn 31, I want to be AT LEAST 30 pounds lighter, and hopefully a lot healthier than I am now. I have a couple ideas I want to try and some experiments to run, but I will save those for later posts. I haven't started anything yet in earnest, so this will be a learning and growing process for me and I want to record all of my experiences here. 30 pounds doesn't seem like a lot for a whole year, but considering than my weight has only ever gone up, I will be happy if I succeed.