OLD ME

This is the old me... The man that I became.  The one that I said good bye to Aug 21, 2009.  That was the day I said to myself "Thats enough, I need to change my life now!"  From that day until now, I have been trying to change for the better.  Every aspect of my life is different now.  As soon as I got out of high school in 1999 I began my downward spiral gaining weight and changing my good habits.  In high school I would lift weights everyday and be active as a trainer at the high school.  I have always been on the heavy side, I have always loved to eat.  In high school I weighed around 230 which was a pretty good weight, I had some muscle on me and well I really never thought about diet, I just took up lifting weights to gain muscle.  As soon as I got out of high school,  I went to college, kept my same eating habits and stopped doing exercise.  My weight snowballed to a stout 319 lbs in 10 years.  

I opened a car audio store in which I would never really get out and do much. I would wake up, go to work, sit down and wait for customers, eat, sit down again, eat again then go home and sleep.  That was life from 2003 till 2009.  That in itself was the main reason for me just getting big, I did not have good habits and eating was just something I liked to do.  At first I was good with my weight, I could work good, I would bend to do installs and it would not hurt. Not until 2008 was when I really started feeling my problem. Every 2 weeks I would not be able to walk because I had severe back pain.  I had so much pain that I would be in bed for a couple of days.  I would not get good sleep because I could not breath well.  I started getting dark marks around my eyes because my sugar levels were all crazy!  I was bad...

I went on like that month after month.  I never gave it a thought that I should lose weight.  I never really saw myself that big.  I don't know why but when you are a bigger guy, when you see yourself in the mirror you do not see yourself that big.  I guess it is just your mind keeping you satisfied with who you are.  I've never and still am not a person who was really into making myself look good, never one to think twice about wearing the coolest clothes or having the slickest hairstyle.  Thats just not me.  I'm a humble guy that just lives day by day and wanted to make a living and have fun everyday.  The thing is that it wasn't fun anymore.  I would wake up hurting in the back. When I would stand up I would feel like fainting because my blood pressure would go out of whack. NOT a good feeling.  Now looking back I guess I had no choice but choose the path I had to take.

I completely changed everything. I limited calorie intake, started walking, signed up at a gym.  I lost a couple of pounds. I was excited.  I became obsessed, I guess you need to mess with your head to break all those bad habits. I would write all the calories down, and it actually made me start feeling bad when I ate something.  I got to the point where I got scared to eat....

I became obsessed with looking at workouts on YouTube for inspiration.  I had all the motivation but was still too heavy to pretty much do anything hard core.  I looked into exercises that was good on the back and found out that cycling burned lots of calories and was good on joints.  That is when I said that's for me!  I got on my mountain bike and would ride around the block. I started seeing results.  The pounds started coming off.  With my healthy eating and cycling, I would get even more motivated everytime I would drop 5 pounds.  I bought myself a hybrid bike because I wanted to go faster... I had read that with a faster bike you have more fun making you ride longer....well it was.  I started riding a whole 5 miles a day... every morning.  I loved it. All by myself, early in the morning.

TO BE CONTINUED...