I’m about as fat as I’ve ever been right now. In 2003, my then-girlfriend HazMat Jenny thought that she was overweight (as if… she was a little stick of a girl) so WE should try the South Beach diet. “WE” did and stayed on Phase 1 for two weeks, and then stuck with it through phase 2 and 3 for another month or so. At the end of that six weeks, I had dropped from 180 down to 162. Jenny only dropped about seven pounds. My friends Rick & Fran were doing it also, and had similar results: Rick lost more than double what Fran did. I should add that at the time I was teaching a lot of SCUBA diving, doing shore-based resort courses for cruise shippers. According to a few different calorie trackers, scuba diving burns up a HELL of a lot of kcals per hour, plus climbing in and out over the rocks/shoreline help, too.

I stayed around the 160-165 range for almost a year, and then started creeping back up again the more sedentary my job got. (In 2004 I left the diving company and went to the airline) The last time I started to balloon up again was two summers ago after my Vespa accident. I was more or less eating the same way I had before, but for nearly a month, I didn’t move around all that much because my feet hurt from the accident. Once I was up and around, I worked through the Couch to 5k running program with the help of some awesome podcasts that '”walked” you through it. I stayed with the running, doing a mile or so when I was pressed for time and two to three when I had time at least twice a week. Since I moved back to Vancouver I haven’t done much of anything… and have the waistline to show for it.

Last week I started the Couch to 5k program again and started all the way back at week one again, thinking that it had been too long since my last run. Where I was gasping for breath a year and a half ago on the last interval, I was able to complete week one’s workout barely breaking a sweat. Rather than push too much too fast, I stuck with week one and will do the last workout tomorrow and switch to week two on Monday.

We also picked up a Wii fit last week for Laurie’s birthday. I asked her not to tell everyone that I got her a Wii Fit for her birthday, because that sounds bad… like it’s a passive aggressive way to tell her to lose weight. “That’s almost as bad as telling everyone you got a vacuum cleaner for Christmas” (which she did) but that was just bad timing because we had moved into a new apartment and needed one with a pet hair attachment. I AM an a-hole, but not THAT much of an a-hole!

Between the Wii Fit yoga/strength training and the couch to 5k running program/podcasts I should start to shed some of this junk soon. I’m seeing the benefits already in that I’m hitting the sack earlier and sleeping better. Next post I’ll elaborate on tracking it.