Close to the start of the year following a close friend's suggestion I decided to take up running as a way of getting a bit healthier, as it had worked well for them and I wanted to see if I could do something similar. This was mainly occasional runs at distances of <5km on a treadmill at the gym to start.
A couple of weeks later I was out on a group hiking trip to one of the nearby mountains. Typically on things such as that I'll be the photo guy, and as such I'd rarely, if ever, see photos of myself taken by others. Suffice to say I saw a photo that someone did take of me, and I guess the only way I could describe it was pretty demoralising. As in, I always thought I was relatively healthy, never really kept a record of my weight or whatnot, but the photo I saw pretty much shattered that viewpoint then and there.
The following day I started putting in a bit more effort on the running, and picked up a decent pair of running shoes to avoid the tendonitis I'd been getting, though didn't do as much to improve with my diet. About a week or so later NZ went into our full lockdown, which was a great time to start running outside of the gym. I'd typically do fasted morning cardio, usually between 10-15km on a loop every other day.
In addition, with the ongoing lockdown I limited my shopping to once per week, and was limited to what I could fit in my bag on my bike, which led to planning healthier meals for the week, usually pasta lunches & the chicken/broccoli/rice combos for dinner. I'd also picked up calorie counting, following another suggestion from my friend.
It's been a little over 300 days since I started, I've run (as of this morning) just over 1,500km and lost a cumulative total of ~21kg in that time - I dropped down from 96kg to 80kg (~212lbs to ~176lbs, resp. at 6'3", 25m), where I plateaued for quite a while. Around later September/early October I was weighing myself less and not running as often and noticed that the weight had started to come back on, taking me back to 85kg, so it was back to running and dieting. After weighing myself this morning I had hit 78.9kg, which is the lowest I think I've been in probably ~5-6 years, which is pretty cash. I was also nice to break that plateau point after being stuck there for so long despite constant exercise and restricted calorie diets. Ultimately I've still got a little further to go, my main goal is to reach 75kg at some point next year, which will hopefully be doable if I keep at it.
Whilst the running did help a lot I feel the diet changes were doing a lot of the proverbial heavy lifting. I have a pretty notorious sweet-tooth and so cutting out all the calories from that has helped a bunch, whilst also helping to temper the impulse urges to buy them.
Thanks for reading :^)
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