Help David raise money

For most of my life I always considered myself relatively healthy. I wasn't the picture of good health, but I didn't have any problems. That all changed a couple years ago when I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. It wasn't a huge surprise considering I was getting older, there is a family history of high blood pressure, and I was definitely overweight. Fast forward a couple years, my blood pressure was somewhat better with medication, but I had been on a roller coaster of weight loss and fad diets. Then through the beginning of the pandemic, my health wasn't getting any better. I wasn't eating that well, I had gained some weight, and I generally just felt unhealthy.

Towards the end of 2020, I had an annoying knee injury from slipping on some ice in my driveway. It wasn't anything serious, but it lingered for weeks. During that time, I was having trouble getting up out of a chair, going up stairs required me to pull myself up using the handrail, and doing just about anything was much harder. It was becoming obvious that my weight and my age was catching up to me.

I'm not sure what prompted it, but on April 28, 2021 I stepped on the scale for the first time in months. I was 298 pounds, and I knew it was just going to go up from there if I did nothing. I took that weekend to research some diet tracking apps. Tracking what I ate had worked for me in that past. It helps me stay accountable to myself, and just makes me conscious of what I'm eating. I settled on the Lose It! app which made it easy to track. The plan wasn't to follow a specific diet, but to just eat healthier and have good portions to fit into Lose It!'s calorie budget. In order to make that work, I started cooking all my own food and not eating anything highly processed. I set a goal to lose 2 pounds per week and wanted to get down to 220 pounds by the end of the year.
In addition, I made it a point to just try an walk more. In previous attempts to get healthy I had used a FitBit, but when I stopped/gave up I also stopped wearing the FitBit. However, I have been wearing an Apple Watch for 3 years, and it was very apparent how low my activity level had gotten over time. It was 2 weeks into my weight loss when I decided to make it a point to get the cliché 10,000 steps per day.

And that is what I did for 3 months. The pounds flew off at first. I quickly lost 40 pounds by July. I upped the 10,000 step goal to 12,500, but I seemed to be plateauing by the end of July. My calorie intake was consistent, but it seemed like I couldn't walk enough to lose weight at the same rate. The problem was that there just wasn't enough hours in the day to get the exercise I needed.

At the beginning of August, I decided to try a Couch to 5K running program. I had tried one of these years ago, but ran into the same problems I have always had with running any type of distances... shin splints and sore knees. However, I was determined to take it slow and try it out. Unfortunately, I got annoyed with the "free" C25K apps and didn't want to pay a bunch of money for something I wasn't sure I would be able to stick with. So I switched to the Nike Run Club app that was already on my Apple Watch and started their "Getting Started" training plan. It was similar to the C25K programs, but didn't have the 5K end goal. It was more oriented to just getting out and running 3 times per week, which I did. At the end of that 4 week program, I was really enjoying running and did not have any of the injuries that always stopped me in the past. So I kept going, running 4 times per week adding 10% distance each week.

By November I hit my goal of getting below 220 pounds, but I didn't feel like I had anything to stop. Eating what I have been eating is just what I do now, and I'm still enjoying running. I was up to running 25 miles per week.

But I needed a new goal...

I never really cared to sign up for races. I'm not fast... at all. I liked it when I did my first 5K and 10K, but those were just on my own. I didn't feel a need to complete those at a race to feel like I accomplished something. Originally, I looked at the Pittsburgh Marathon to do the half marathon as a good challenge to take on. The timing of the Pittsburgh Marathon was impeccable, May 1, 2022, a year to the day of when I started my weight loss journey. However, as I continued to run, I realized that I would be able to physically do a half marathon well ahead of that date. So I have decided to take on the full marathon.

Why?

As I was researching the tracking/weight loss apps, I first took a look at Noom. As part of the start to the program they had an exercise to figure out why you wanted to lose weight where they just kept asking "why?" to get to the core of what motivated you. Ultimately, my reasons came down to my family. I knew I wasn't on a healthy path, and if I didn't change something I wasn't going to be around for my wife and sons. I'm sure COVID had an effect on all of this. We were a year into the pandemic when I started this journey, and the overwhelming factors for bad COVID cases was age, obesity, and underlying health conditions. All three of which were quickly affecting me.

So getting healthy became a priority, but once I started running I enjoyed the challenge and the accomplishment that came with it. Having goals in running helps keep me on the path to a healthier lifestyle.