100 Pounds Lighter

[Kyellan]

Hey there NerdFitness friends--I just wanted to drop by here and say thanks, because this place has been an amazing community for the past 18 months or so.

 

TL;DR -- formerly-fat guy lost ~100 lbs. If you want the whole story, read on. =)

 

I've always been a heavy guy, I was a heavy kid and teenager. I was quiet, awkward, never into sports or outdoor activities, preferring to stay inside on my computer with a bunch of junk food. When I got my first retail job in 2003, I slowly lost about 60 pounds over the course of two years in a combination of higher activity (retail) and some weight-loss supplements. Unfortunately, all of that got undone in a very short time-frame when I left my retail job and moved to a sedentary desk job, where free coffee, doughnuts, and hot chocolate were a daily occurrence. I went right back up to 280-ish in 2006, and I stayed that way for about four years.

 

About six years ago now, I stepped on the scale and realized that I weighed 298 lbs. My brother, and then my best friend got married, and when I saw the wedding pictures, I felt sick when I looked at my own image. For some reason, the combination of these shocked me out of the complacency I'd been living in. I DID NOT WANT TO CROSS THAT 300 LINE.

 

I was also living in chronic pain at that time. Part of it, I realize now, was simply carrying around all that extra weight. I did discover much later that a large part of it was also medical, but I'll get to that later.

 

At that point, I was living with my then-fiancee-now-wife. It turned out to be much easier, being out of my childhood home, to take control of my eating habits. I stopped buying some of the extras like cookies, candy and ice cream. I cut out soda. I replaced second helpings of dinner with bowls of vegetables. Slowly but surely, the weight started coming off. 

 

There have been plateaus, some of them a year long. (I stayed at 245 for about a year, and then spent another year at about 230). However, the trend has always been downward, just adjusting things here and there. I got all the way to 230 without really any additional exercise to speak of, except a couple abortive  and inconsistent attempts at running and such.

 

Here I discovered the medical issue -- a pretty severe Vitamin D deficiency. As it turns out, this can cause incredible full-body pain for days when you try to exercise. Resolving that literally changed my whole life, and that summer of 2014 is the biggest turning point that I can name in my entire journey. Suddenly, I had ENERGY! Physical labor no longer put me on the couch for days afterward! The pain receded to background noise, and by then I was so used to living that way, that the decrease of daily pain from 6/10 to 2/10 meant that it was basically zero.

 

A few months later, I discovered NerdFitness. I started with bodyweight training, because I wanted to feel better physically. I'd always wanted to take up a martial art, and it was my fellow Monks that gave me the courage to find a local Kung Fu school, screw up my 20 seconds of courage, and go check it out. I've been training ever since, bringing home beginner-division gold medals and first-placings at tournaments in my first year.

 

(Me and my Twin Dragon Kung Fu classmates in Nov 2015. The sword I'm holding is a Kung Fu Division 1st-place trophy from the WMAF. I'm third from the left.)

 

Last December, I started training running with a friend, and I ran my first 5k in April. On Sunday, I have another Kung Fu tournament. In two weeks, I'm running a Tough Mudder with NerdFitness friends. I'm riding bikes (both mountain and road) for miles and miles and barely feeling winded, doing intense kettlebell workouts, lifting weights, and generally feeling like the best version of myself that I have ever been.

 

This morning, I weighed in at 196.6 pounds, officially crossing the 100-lb weight loss marker. 

 

And here's the best part--this is just the beginning of a new life full of fun, activity, and strength that I never even thought was possible!

 

I've gone from size XXL shirts to comfortably fitting in a size L; size 42 relaxed-fit jeans to I-don't-really-know-what, but I need a tight belt to keep my size 34 "relaxed fit" jeans on my waist. I no longer hate looking at myself in the mirror or in photos--in fact, sometimes I hardly recognize myself these days. Any quick snapshot of myself looks better than a professional photo would have even three years ago. 

 

I can't attribute all of my success to NerdFitness and the Rebellion, but I can tell you for sure that the BEST parts of my journey have been because of this place and this site. Just changing my diet got me a lot of the way, but I would have never gotten the courage to pursue my Kung Fu without my Monk brothers and sisters, and that one little change has led to a butterfly effect in every other part of my life. I'm better, faster, stronger and more MYSELF than I have ever been in my entire life, and it is truly a wonderful feeling. I've made friends with people who share my sense of humor and my sense of fun, both the old kind (games and gaming) and the new kind (running, walking, hiking, biking, fighting, you name it!).

 

LIFE. IS. AWESOME.

 

THANK YOU!

[RisenPhoenix]

Yesssssssss...........

 

You rock, brothah!!

[JustCallMeAmber]

WOW! That is so awesome! Congrats!!!

[Sohbek]

You go Glen Coco you go! Well done!

[RebelWithACause]

Awesome work! 

[Elastigirl]

Way to go. Wow, I knew that is was a problem to be short on VIt. D, but I had no idea how big a difference it could make. 

[Igaduma]

I didn't read the entire post but looking at the pictures... that's impressive!