Get Off Your Butt!! ...or How I Decided To Leave The Couch And Learn to Love Exercise

This post could also be titled "How I Spent My Summer Vacation," although I didn't actually take a formal 'vacation' this summer. But I digress...

I suppose I should start by rewinding the clock a few months to April of this year. Around that time, it was starting to dawn on me that I was really out of shape. The results of what should have been an otherwise gorgeous photo-op with the family around Easter time were almost all of the proof I needed. My cheeks and neck were doing battle for custody of my jawline...and my jaw was losing!



But I wasn't, in hindsight, really ready to do anything about it; just basically an overall sense of unhappiness with what I was becoming (or had become). Toward the end of May, I stepped on a scale at my in-laws house and was mortified by what I saw... "234.1" was staring back at me. Yuck. Something had to change, but I wasn't sure what. The Memorial Day long weekend came and brought with it some beautiful weather. The warmth and sunshine brought more opportunities to play outside with the little one, and I found myself getting abnormally out-of-breath when playing games like "Ring Around the Rosie" ... with a two-year-old. Not a good situation, and I certainly did not feel good about myself. Had the folks and my brother and his wife over for typical Memorial Day cookout food (meat and beer, essentially), and an end-of-day look at pictures solidified my decision... it's time to get off the couch.



As fate would have it, the next day (June 1st) brought with it a text message from old friend Brad Golub. Brad and I have been friends since the first week of freshman year at Northeastern, and were roommates during the 2000-2001 school year. Brad and I were also, well, not all that healthy. Beer? Check. Pizza? Check. Mexican food and KFC (at the same time)? Check. Typical "single-guy" college stuff. I had spent the summer of 2000 working as a trash man and picking orders in a warehouse, so I was in decent shape. I weighed about 186 when I moved in to that apartment in Dorchester. When we moved out a calendar year later, I was up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 220. Not Brad's fault, it was my own...but we were certainly two peas in a pod.

Anyway, so the text message from Brad revealed that he had taken up running, and was doing his first 5k race. I was floored. Brad was quite a decent baseball player (or so he says) in his younger years, but if there is one thing that Brad was not, it was a runner. An ongoing text conversation throughout the day that Brad had decided, too, that enough was enough. He had been running and changing his eating habits, and was down somewhere around 50 pounds since the start of the calendar year. His secret? Burning more calories than he consumed. You'd think he cracked the Da Vinci code. But he said it really was that simple. He'd taken up jogging and was "eating like an organic farmer...lots of protein and vegetables, cutting way back on the carbs." I had been on a specialty beer kick at the time, and asked him about his current drinking habits. He said that he really hadn't been drinking, because "If I'm going to take in 150 to 250 calories at a time, I'd rather not be drinking it."

For some reason, it all made perfect sense. I decided that day that it was my turn, too. I set a completely unrealistic goal of getting to under 200 pounds by my birthday/Labor Day. In essence, three full months to drop somewhere around 34 pounds. Doable? Who knew...never really tried before. The completely unscientific plan that I came up with was simple...consume less calories than you expend. I decided that the diet was the first thing to change, mostly because it was going to be the toughest part. You see...I like to eat. I like food. I like food that tastes good. I also like food that is pretty easy to cook on a weeknight after work. That generally entails a lot of simple carbohydrates; pasta, mashed potatoes, breads, any combination thereof (there is nothing like good garlic bread with pasta...except maybe good garlic bread with Pierogi, which are essentially potato-filled pasta). Those days were going to have to stop, and fast. It was time to start limiting calories.

The good news is that the weather was getting warmer, which meant that I could do a lot of cooking on the grill. I haven't yet bothered trying to make pasta, potatoes or bread on the grill, so this may work. Also, summer brings a lot of fresh vegetables and the second annual Wakefield Farmer's Market. The new diet, almost overnight, started to consist of some very easy things to cook on the grill. Lots of lean protein (chicken, pork loin, etc), lots and lots of vegetables (peppers of all colors, onions, summer squash, zucchini, asparagus, eggplant all cook up nicely on the grill). No more sandwiches (at least not with bulkie rolls). No more bagels or toast for breakfast...unsalted rice cakes and natural peanut butter are a suitable alternative. No more junk snacks (Cheez-Its, Combos, Wheat Thins and Triscuits have all been popular in my belly). More fruit. More organic. More quinoa, more hummus. More Israeli couscous with broccoli and zucchini (amazingly good). No more junk cereal. It helps that I like Fiber One and Special K with Strawberries.

I didn't make any real behavioral changes surrounding exercise for the first month..."baby steps," I thought. The diet was going to have to be the real lasting change to get used to. The real exercise part was going to happen in July. I did go for long walks a couple of times during June, but walking doesn't really do anything for me. After about 7-7.5 miles, I sorta get bored. Finally July 1st rolled around, and I was feeling pretty confident. People started to notice that I had been making changes. I seemed to be eating better. No beer, no pasta, no bread to speak of for a month. I seemed to be a little smaller (I don't have a scale at home, so I'm not sure how much). But the real work was about to begin. I hemmed and hawed for a while around how to actually begin the exercise portion of my "master plan." Again, walking was boring. Running, while it seems to run in the family, apparently skipped my part of the generation. The exercise-induced asthma certainly doesn't help. I don't know enough people locally to get into a softball league or a pickup basketball league. I didn't want to join a gym, because I didn't really want to add a lot of muscle. I tossed around the idea of riding a bike, but I didn't actually own one. Nevertheless, it seemed like biking might be the way to go. I certainly wasn't going to spend a lot of money though, because I have a history of getting sick of things quickly. After much perusing of Craigslist, Amazon, eBay, bike shops, WalMart and Target, I had found what I thought would be the winner. The embarrassingly named GMC Denali, as made by ultra-low-end manufacturer Kent. It rated decently enough that I didn't think it would fall apart (always good). And it certainly was cheap ($168 at WalMart, including shipping).



The Friday after July 4th came and my package had arrived. An hour or so worth of work and a little help from my wife and my chariot was assembled. Took it out for a mile spin around the block in the dark just to see if I still had legs. Turns out...I didn't! This was going to be work... But I knew I had to do it. The first week brought rides of 5.5, 7 and 10 miles. Not a bad start. Very, very warm out, for those that might recall. Also, it was mid-Tour de France. In hindsight, this is a bad time to start cycling...every time I rode, the only thing I could compare myself to was Andy Schleck or Mark Cavendish. Anyway, second week brought rides of 13, 7 and 11. I was starting to get the hang of this cycling thing, though by all means an amateur. Finished the month with rides of 8 and 19, the latter a new high. All in all, about 87 miles the first month...not a lot, but not a bad way to get my feet wet.

Around this time, it started to dawn on me that there was an annual charity ride in the part of CT that my in-laws live in...called the Folks on Spokes ride. It takes place the second weekend of September, and riders can sign up for rides of 5, 10, 20, 40, 50 and 66 (metric century). I had already proven to myself that I can do rides of up to 19, so 20 should be doable. Maybe even 40. So I now had two goals: get under 200 pounds by my 31st birthday, and do the F.O.S. ride.

First week of August brought rides of 19.3, 7.3 and 19.3 again. The 19-miler in July and the first 19.3 in August contained parts of the F.O.S. ride. Pretty rides along the coast, followed by some decent hill climbs. Maybe the 40 is doable after all. Time to up the ante a little. I took a day off in August and rode the bike into Boston to visit Natalia for lunch. 15 miles each way. Very doable, though city riding is not, how shall I put this, conducive to staying alive...so it's probably the last time I'll do that. Great hill climbs coming out of the city though. The ride back was the first time that I really felt like I was becoming more than a pure novice. Finished that week with rides of 14 and 10, but then took two full weeks off (it finally rained for the first time in months, then we went out of town for a weekend). By the time I was back on the bike, it was August 27th (a Friday), which gave me suddenly only two weeks to get ready for the 40-mile F.O.S. ride that I had now committed myself to doing. Time to get back out there! That last weekend of August saw rides of 21, 18 and 24 miles on consecutive days. New routes, not just stretching out the same neighborhoods in Wakefield and circling the Lake endlessly. These were rides that "cyclists" do...and they were tough. But I was feeling better after doing 24 miles now than when I would do just 5 or 7 miles the previous month.

Logged 162 miles for the month...almost twice what I did the previous month. And I was definitely losing weight...down to 204 pounds by the w/e of August 20-22. That's right...30 pounds in about 2.5 months. My pants started not fitting so well. My belts started not fitting so well. People started commenting on how much weight I had lost (more on that later). Maybe my plan was working?!?

On to September. The problem with September is that the days get shorter. Not a whole lot of time to ride after work, as it was dark by the time dinner was over and Morgan was bathed and in bed. I was also coming to the realization that I'm really not good at hill-climbing on the bike, and that I could get away with taking a few shorter rides as long as they contained some serious climbs. Mapped out a couple pretty good routes where I could achieve maximum climbing in minimum distance. One of the endless good parts about living in New England is that there is certainly no shortage of hills! Especially in our neighborhood. I followed a short 6-mile uphill ride on 9/3 with a longer, hillier 25 mile ride on 9/4. Pretty good weekend, and left me marginally confident about doing 40 the next weekend. Took Sunday off to do an early family birthday celebration. Wasn't sure how much I weighed, but the picture below is proof that I was starting to shed some noticeable weight.



Got in a hilly 9 miles on Monday 9/6 before attacking 35 miles before work on Thursday the 9th. I had mapped out my 35 mile course to be similar in climb to the FOS ride and by about 8 miles, I wanted to stop. This has become a recurring theme for me. I find that it takes me 8 to 10 miles of moderate riding to get into a groove. Prior to that, I kinda get bored, especially riding by myself. But I kept at it and, honestly, had a lot left in the tank when I made it back home. I had enough left in the tank that I had thoughts of changing to the 50-mile FOS ride, but I had already registered for the 40.

Anyway, that brings us to the Folks on Spokes ride itself, which I will cover in my next post. But it should be pointed out that when I stepped on the scale the day before the FOS ride, I was down to 198 pounds. I had accomplished my first goal...under 200 pounds by (roughly) my birthday. Honestly, I had sorta set the bar high for myself because I assumed I'd give up when I realized it would be unreasonable. But it became evident to me pretty quickly that my plan was actually working. Eating less, and eating better, felt natural. Getting on the bike and pedaling around the main streets and back roads of our area felt natural. I mean this to come across more as inspirational than as braggadocios, but it really hasn't been that hard. With all sincerity, if I can do this, anybody can do this. It does take a certain level of commitment, but really, it isn't that difficult if you keep it simple. Burn more calories than you consume and you'll lose weight. Magic, I know. Find something that you like and do it! If you don't like running, walk. If you don't like walking, swim. Or play tennis. Or basketball. Or start by just parking at the far end of the lot at work or at the grocery store. Or do what I did and buy a $159 bike at Wal-Mart and get out there and just pedal around the neighborhood. It will work...trust me!