New Beginning

[Dcobes]

First, I apologize, I used my first post in the Meet Up section.

Now for my story....

The last time I can remember looking in the mirror and being proud of my body was my freshman year of college '02. This was before I started giving my body all the booze, the fried food, the grease, the late night snacks/meals, and so on. I was active back then playing ice hockey, working out regularly so I was able to stay fairly fit.

Flash forward a few years and I get a gig being a security analyst. Great job, bad habits. This is when I became low active to no active. My job entails me to sit on my butt, analysis data and find anomalies. I was juggling this job along with being in a rock band, so I was at least getting some activity with that, considering our practice space was on a second floor in a warehouse. We had to lug all of our gear up and down those stairs, and in and out of gigs. Well, flash forward a few more years, the belly got bigger, the muscles got weaker, and no more band. Activity in my life has now become as little as walking up and down the stairs at home and work.

I realized I needed to get my act together. I attempted P90x several times, stuck with it for 45 days, got in ok shape. I let excuses get in the way and dipped off that bandwagon. If I couldn't make it a day or two due to late night work, I made excuses, "I need to sleep and get my 8 hours, I'll workout tomorrow night". Well that ended up becoming, "I just need to relax tonight, I'll workout in the morning". Rinse and repeat.

I changed roles in my job, moved up the food chain, which meant more work, even less activity. I decided to give Insanity a try, as I had my wedding coming up and I wanted to be fit for my wife and for the honeymoon. I stuck with Insanity up to the day before the wedding. After the honeymoon, things fell off the wagon again. I noticed I need a different type of goal something further down the road, something I can't make excuses for.

My old college buddy and best friend always chat about workouts, mostly his since I was so "busy" working. I kept thinking, he is in the same field, and he has time to do workouts. A change is needed, I want a change. Something I will stick with. I look at the mirror and get depressed. It's time to change for good.

That's when I found this site. I lurked for a couple days and read many of the stories/blogs/referral links. Here is a site that has other people like me with desk jobs and can be successful in this. I found more motivation just from reading the stories to help make the change. Although I've have a nasty flu-like cold the past 4 days, I've still began collecting and formulating my plan of action for the diet and workout. I've laid out a few short-term and long-term goals to keep me motivated to be successful in the change.

Short-term:

-WarriorDash end of September (I'm not going to make it, but adding it for a long-term goal for next year)

-High School Reunion is coming up in October

-1 year anniversary with the wife in May

-Beach season next year

Long-term:

-Keep online blog of updates with pictures; list struggles, list tips&tricks, list things that don't work.

-Keep journals per NerdFitness aka Steve's suggestion for food and workout.

-Keep posting my results (good or bad) on this forum

Thats my (long-winded) story.

-dave

[CyningaDena]

Welcome to the boards, Dave! I've had spotty results with keeping myself motivated on my own, too. I'm finding that it's great to have a crew here to not only keep me accountable, but push me to examine why I stumble when I do. It's been an awesome learning experience all around and I'm getting stronger physically and mentally because of it. Jump in the fray and enjoy the fantastic community here!

[Caution]

Welcome aboard! Your story sounds eerily similar to mine ... '02 Freshman, booze, got programming job, got lazy, more booze, do 90x, get married, get lazy again... Good luck with the goals!

[Sinuosette]

Welcome!

I'm fairly new to this forum myself but so far this is what happened my once lazy self: I found a workout I am actually looking forward to do when I go home, more to do once I am done with this one, amazing tips to get healthy and seeing the results in terms of centimeters lost. I feel A LOT better than I did even just a month ago.

Besides this forum and the terrific amount of useful information I find here, I realised that having friends that share the same interest also helps: mine don't make a fuss when I don't eat dessert, they understand when I say I will go out only after my workout (sometimes they join me for running cause I hate running by myself) and they challenge me to do better. Maybe your friend can be your support group like mine are to me

Good luck!