It is not about the bike

From The Crawfords in AZ Blog Photos

A couple of years ago, I weighed myself and stared at the scale. It read 277 pounds. For a bunch of different reasons I had become inactive and gained a bunch of weight. I mention this because today I looked at the scale and it read 202. I have lost 75 pounds since that “high water mark”.

I am in the best shape I have been in since 2000. About three years ago I started some great habits where I started eating less at meals. The portions we eat are way to big. When I got out to AZ, I start calorie counting. I found a web site that you plug in your sex, height, and weight and it calculates how many calories you need to maintain, gain, or lose weight (your choice). Something that has made things easier is the fact that I do not have a bunch of snacks laying around to distract me from my goal.

Recently I combined eating better with exercising when I start biking to work. It seemed like the thing to do considering how well the weather cooperates out here (at least so far) and that parking is way too expensive at ASU. Now I have started an exercise program at ASU’s Student Recreation Complex where you can hire a personal trainer (often an upperclass Exercise and Physiology student). Thanks to that, I am starting to use the facility on my own before work so that I can improve my progress.

One problem I am having is that I am going to have to give away some real nice pants since I have shrunk out of them. I am also down to the last hole on my belt. So it looks like I will be going shopping for new clothes soon.

My goal is to get near 170 pounds, a weight that Dawn has never seen me at (she has never seen me under 195). I am hoping that the habits of eating right and exercise that I have started will continue for a long time. Who knows, maybe I will participate in the Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon or the Arizona Ironman one day.

In the meantime, I am just enjoying the fact that I feel great.