Changes over the past year
Last year Lynn and I were in Anchorage and made the decision to purchase a couple of fitness trackers. I know you can go on the internet and see article after article that will tell you that these things are a waste of money, they don’t work, aren’t accurate etc. Without going into a whole lot of detail at this time, I can report I managed to go from 216 pounds to 137 pounds and in the process I was able to get completely off my blood pressure and cholesterol medications. Lynn has had similar success and we are both better off for it. It hasn’t been easy, we had to completely change what we ate, and incorporate a fairly regimented workout schedule into our already busy lives, we’ve been at this for over a year now so it has long since become a habit with us. Part of our success with this is that we both are doing essentially the same thing although my particular workout schedule is a bit more involved as I will show.
Small steps at the beginning
We knew that we needed to change our diet, not to some short-term, unsustainable fad diet, but instead, concentrate on eating healthy balanced meals in the proper amounts. We also had to incorporate regular physical exercise into our lives. My belief was, and is, that if you don’t enjoy doing something you won’t keep it up. I enjoy riding bicycles and Lynn is a swimmer so initially we stuck with that. Along with getting more active physically we started paying attention to what we ate. To that end there are numerous computer and smart phone applications for this purpose. We tried a couple and finally settled on one we both could use. Because it was still cold and a bit icy early in the year I was not able to safely ride my bike so I opted for walking every evening. I started out walking three or four miles a day. I started to lose weight at a fairly steady pace but noticed that I wasn’t getting the same exercise benefit from walking as I had when I started. Increasing my walks past five miles a day was getting time-consuming so I started using the workout room at the pool when Lynn was swimming. This enabled me to use a treadmill and stationary bike in a more comfortable environment.
No more meds
Eventually I lost enough weight that my medications were not necessary and one side effect of getting off them was that I was able to run without a lot of muscle soreness. Initially I would have been hard pressed to run a mile without stopping but I have gradually increased my daily workouts to the point that a five-mile run before breakfast isn’t out of the ordinary.
Latest goal
Because I was riding a bike regularly and was now able run a fair distance I was looking for a way to incorporate this into some kind of structured routine. I personally do better at things like physical fitness or shooting if I have a specific goal or test in mind. Since we have a pool in Galena I decided to set a goal of competing in a sprint distance triathlon in 2017. My swimming wasn’t and still isn’t up to par for the purposes of competition but I am getting better. We’ve had some issues with the community pool that have prevented me from doing any swimming at all for the last several weeks but hopefully this will all be resolved soon. My initial goal is simply to finish, hopefully not too far back in the pack. I’m using this blog partly as a way to document my training.
Challenges
Lots of things can happen to prevent me from reaching my goals, physical injury is a possibility and there are logistical issues with traveling by air in small aircraft with the equipment necessary to compete. I plan to post at least once a week recapping my efforts. Right now most of the training is indoors since I have found that running outside at temperatures below -15F is a bit uncomfortable. Riding a bike is likewise challenging at this temperature with the added difficulty of icy roads. Both of these are complicated also by lack of daylight that makes running on public roads a potential safety hazard.