This a long one. On December 11 2021, my life changed. My wife and I lost our home to a tornado. We were in the home when it happened with our 2 cats. Miraculously, even though the entire second story was ripped off and the home was lifted 20 feet away from the foundation, we walked out with our cats and some cuts and bruises- that’s it. We lost 90% of our possessions, but in terms of life and health, we were okay. We’ve always been big people- like our whole lives. However over the next few months of living in a one bedroom apartment with ptsd, depression, and anxiety, we both gained weight to be at our heaviest we’ve ever been. I was at 254.4 pounds on 5/19/22 when I had to wake my wife up at 2 am because my heart rate was over 165 bpm when all I was doing was laying in bed trying to sleep. This was a panic attack caused by the stress of building/buying a home I didn’t feel we could afford on top of noticing how big I was getting. Bending over took more effort than it ever had before. It turns out to have been the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me. It woke me up. I stopped drinking, stopped eating out, started keeping a food journal and counting my calories, began to do what exercises I could do in the apartment (I hate gyms-social anxiety) and most importantly began doing a metric shit ton of research on weight loss, vitamins, cardiovascular health and activity, and fitness in general. Around the first of June I decided that I wanted to be at 180 pounds before my birthday this year. I knew this was a steep goal, and I was okay if I failed. But I wanted to feel like I accomplished something- a feeling I hadn’t had all year to this point. My wife decided it was time for her to get her health under control as well and we’ve been on this extra journey together since then.
I can’t believe I actually made it, but I made my goal. My birthday is tomorrow and my initial goal was to make it to under 180 lbs by today. Around the beginning of September I decided to up the ante and set my goal at 174.4 (80 pounds in 5 months). I’m a numbers guy, I know it’s not the healthiest thing to get obsessed with numbers but it’s been a huge motivator and helper for me in terms of calculating my necessary daily/weekly/monthly deficits and setting intermittent goals to get where I am. It’s not my final goal- I’m only 5’7”, so I want to make it to 154, but getting here means it’s time to slow it down. I’ve averaged 16 pounds per month to get where I am and I’m knocking that down to 10. I want to be (for the first time in my life) a healthy weight on 1/1/23. Tomorrow I’m having my first drink since 5/19/22 and I’m having some homemade peanut butter cookies to celebrate the most enlightening, destructive, and reconstructive year of my life.
My wife is kicking ass too. She started at 270lbs and is now down to 215 lbs. together we have lost 135 pounds in 5 months. We can do anything if we do it together- something I admittedly wasn’t so sure of until we went through everything we’ve been through in the last 10 months. We each have our own workouts/exercises we like- I prefer cardio (walking and running) and she mainly prefers lifting. But we encourage each other to be happy and healthy in our own ways and it fills me with such love and warmness that it’s never about what’s better or what’s worse, it’s all about “do what you want because it’s better than doing nothing at all”.
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