Why is it that losing weight is so difficult once you reach a certain age? I was always thin in my youth and early adulthood. I can remember adding 15 pounds or so during the winter when I was in college, but I would lose that weight when the weather broke. To be fair, I was a lot more active when I was that age. I was in college and when the weather cooperated, we were always taking time to golf, play softball, or go swimming.
Then I graduated, got married, started my practice, and started a life that felt busy, but also was more sedentary. I know that sounds odd, but it was true. When we start our career lives, we are busy, but a different kind of busy. I barely noticed the weight gain. It was slow and incremental. Then one day, I am looking for a pair of pants with a waist size that was longer than my inseam, and I’m six foot six!
Jaba the Hut? Nope! It's me!
Then the battle begins. How do I lose the weight? I decided, without giving it much thought, to increase my exercise. I started running but that did not last long. It had been years since I had run and in one quick run outside, that idea was scratched. I tried other exercises, but it seemed to take so much effort and time. I tried eating healthier and that did not work well either. So, I just gave up on exercising and I just kept adding the weight.
It took several years to finally end up in the hospital with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure and atrial fibrillation. In everyday language, the top of my heart was beating too fast, and the blood was backing up in my body. That backup was the reason my legs and ankles were swelling. The congestive heart failure is when the blood back up is so bad that the lungs are starting to fill up with blood. This makes important things like breathing really difficult, but it also makes you really tired. The vast majority of this is directly related to being overweight.
I remember being scared that I would die. I realized that I had a lot more that I wanted to do and to live for. I knew there were certain things that I needed to do, and I got started. I decided to start by cutting back on the volume of food I was eating. I started eating only one helping per meal as opposed to two or three helpings. I stopped going through McDonalds for a mocha frappe every day. I cut out soda pop and started drinking water instead. I was a coffee drinker and I still enjoyed coffee, but I cut back to two cups and drank them in the morning only.
I started to watch my diet and cut back on the calories, ate better foods, and started to exercise more. It was difficult at first. I had to give up a lot of foods that I had positively become addicted to. I had to change my eating habits. On my long works days I schedule a couple hours off from 2 until 4 pm, and then I go back to the office for a few more hours in the evening. Before my heart condition, I would have coffee in the morning to start my day, eat a light lunch on my break, and when I got home in the evenings around 7 to 8 pm I would be starving. I would make a riding crust pizza and eat the whole thing and wash it down with a can of Sprite. (And I wondered why my waist ballooned up to over 54 inches!)
Sadly, I had other bad dietary habits to correct on the other 5 days per week too! Exercising was terrible to start. I hated it. I finally, slowly, and with the help of some friends got to the point that I could walk several miles and not be winded or too sore. So, you may be asking yourself, “why is he telling me all of this?” I am telling you this because I have allowed myself to fall back into some old habits. I put on about 50 pounds of the 100 that I lost!
Since that time, I have been able to drop 25 of those pounds but I am struggling to drop the next 25. I would also like to lose and additional 25 pounds. This would still put me in the overweight category with my BMI, but I would potentially weight in at about 250 pounds. I like to see how I look and feel at that weight.
The reason I am telling you this is twofold. First, by telling you this, I am hoping that you all will ask me how my weight loss program is going each time you see me. This small amount of discomfort that I will experience with that question will help keep me on track. Second, I will be starting a new program that I want to check out to help me. This is an all-natural, no medication, nothing that is advertised on television program. Please keep watching for more information here on my blog, but also on my social media platforms as well! Cheer me on, or hold my feet to the fire, as I post some of my journey! Follow me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/weberchiropractor
Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/kirk_weber_chiropractor/
and I would appreciate all the help I can get, so please share my content and my journey with everyone you know!
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