Another Newbie

[Ryan Getting Fit]

Hi everybody, I'm Ryan. I've been working on adopting a healthy and active lifestyle for about 6 weeks now - really took off around the beginning of April. I've been reading the articles on the NF blogs, but just signed up for the forums today. And it looks like I'm just in time for the next challenge!

A little about me - I'm 32 years old and I'm currently working a part time job at a movie theater. I'm in the middle of a career change. I made a life changing decision a few weeks after the first of the year, and it has been a very positive change, but it essentially cost me my job for at least a year. Long story short - I decided to finally get professional help and go on anti-depressants after dealing with depression most of my adult life. The good news is I haven't had any days since then where I'm so depressed that I can't get out of bed in the morning, but the bad news is that anti-depressants are not approved by the FAA for use as pilots, so I'm basically out of my job as an airline pilot.

I've spent the past few months since then digging myself up from rock bottom, and spent a lot of time saying "man, I need to get in shape." Something finally clicked and I've been doing a pretty good job at it for a little over a month now. My heaviest known weight was 299, but I wouldn't be surprised if I broke the 300 mark at some point along the way. I've been in good shape before - about 8 years ago I worked at a gym, exercised religiously, tracked every calorie that I ate and was a lot skinnier and had a mid-teens body fat percentage. The only problem was that I was on a diet and following a workout regimen - things that by their nature have an end. Basically, I treated them like temporary things I was doing to make changes to my body. Naturally, when they ended and I added the stress of grad school to my life, all the results went away. That's why this time I'm doing it differently. I'm not forcing myself to make drastic changes all at once, or even going on a diet in the traditional sense of the word - i.e. some sort of restrictive eating plan that limits calories and food types to lose weight. Instead, I'm working on gradually changing my lifestyle habits, so there will be some sort of permanence to what I am doing. Rather than tell myself "you must eat these specific things at these times in these specific amounts" I'm gradually incorporating new and healthy things in my life - basically I'm working towards getting to the point where instead of grabbing the bag of Doritos when I'm hungry, I grab an apple; instead of getting the white Wonder bread, I get the all-natural multi-grain bread. My goal is to make my default decisions about eating and exercising healthy. I want to get to the point where if I need a quick meal, I make something healthy instead of defaulting to McDonalds.

Anyway, enough rambling. I'm hoping to make some new interwebs friends here to share this journey towards health and fitness with. Thanks in advance for the support.

-Ryan

[JediJem]

Hi Ryan, and welcome - I just found this site too, and it's great! Lots of incentives, lots of support.

Kudos on getting help with your depression; that is a big scary step to take (especially when the consequences are what they have been for you), so just know that it is a massive achievement for you already. There's nothing harder than fighting your way out of that black hole, but it CAN be done and with the right help you'll come out victorious in the end. Having a good diet and exercise routine will also most definitely help, as I'm sure you know (although sticking to routines in the middle of a slump can be near enough impossible, so once you get it going - don't stop!).

Do you have a workout plan as well as your diet goals? Only asking because it is often easier to eat well when exercise is also thrown into the mix!