Week 104 — Two years of lifting!
Sunday, October 18th, 2009This was Week #104 of my lifting… two full years. To borrow StressMonkey’s phrase when he hit the two year mark, I can now say that “I’ve been lifting for years.” I kinda jumped the gun this morning when I set my fit status to “I’ve been on bb.com for two years,” thinking it was the 18th that I joined this site, but I saw later that it was actually the 21st. Oh well, start the party anyway!
I never would have believed it back in the fall of 2007 when I decided to get serious about lifting and diet minding that I would actually have stuck with it long enough and hard enough to actually accomplish anything. I spent so much of my life up to that point fat/chubby and wishing I could be more fit looking and would try things like lift a little (emphasis on little, both in effort and weight) now and then, or try to mind what I was eating, but since I was never making a lifestyle change, it never worked and never lasted more than a few days at a time. BB.com and the BodySpace folks especially can take a lot of credit for getting me this far: the positive comments and encouragement all along the way have been a tremendous help. As I have commented before in the blogs, I have virtually no support of my bb efforts at home with my folks or my friends and coworkers. That was something else that worked against my earlier efforts, the lack of support. Here on bb.com I found all sorts of people who had similar fitness backgrounds to mine and who managed to transform themselves. Some were like me being always chunky (or worse) and managed to trim down and muscle up, others came from the other end being very lean and learned to bulk up and muscle up. Many were my age or in the ballpark, as they say. Hey, if they can do it, maybe I can do it, too! Looking at others’ pix each day helps keep me focused. There’s always more bodies out there better than your own to keep you motivated.
I started out as a fat 43-year-old at over 190 lbs at 6-ft tall, and at times in the past I had been well over 200 lbs. There was a time in my mid-20s that I was approaching 220. I have no or few pix of me from that time. I sure didn’t want my photo taken then, but now one from that time would be a good comparison pic. When I started two years ago my body fat percentage was over 20%, probably around 23-24%. Today it is down below the teens, maybe around 12%, give ‘er take. Net weight on the scale is down about 20 pounds, but the fat weight is likely greater than that because I have put on some muscle. Previously the only place I would go shirtless is at the cottage where there are few other people close by; I sure wasn’t into being seen shirtless. This summer I mowed the lawn, washed the car, and did other house chores outside shirtless and I didn’t care who saw me. Cool stuff.
We had a big family event this weekend, my folks’ 50th wedding anniversary was yesterday and I rented a room at a local restaurant and had a dinner for them and over thirty friends and relatives. Some of the relatives I had not seen in about three years and they were extremely complimentary and supportive of my appearance, which was a nice ego boost. One of the dinner guests was the mother of the family I grew up next door to, her youngest is a year older than me and we were best friends growing up. We haven’t seen each other in almost ten years. The mom commented to my mom that she thought that I looked so good, along with her older son who keeps rather fit, but her comment about her younger son was, “Oooh, he’s so hea-vy.” Another one of the guests apparently also commented to my mom about how good I looked, so I think my mom is finally getting the message that what I have done is a good thing. There has been this underlying almost tension with my mom since it was becoming obvious that I was losing weight, I think she was convinced I had some dread disease despite my repeated assurances to the opposite and that it was because I am lifting.
Here’s to the next two years of lifting… so I’ll keep liftin’.
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