Greetings and Felicitations

[DrMobius]

Hello Rebels,

 

I found this site right before Thanksgiving but haven't gotten around to making an introductory post yet.  It's odd, I talk to people for a living but I've always been rubbish at talking about myself. I've desperately needed to start getting healthier for some time now but I'm not a gym person by any stretch and have, honestly, been put off by the vast majority of health and fitness sites I've come across. That's probably why this one was such a relief to find. I think it can be considerably easier to ask for support on a sensitive area of their life when one feels they're amongst their own so to speak.

 

I've always been a large individual and for most of my life carried a few extra pounds. It wasn't until I got to grad school, however, that my weight truly became unmanagable and I moved from being just a burly guy to outright obese. There were a lot of contributing factors to this happening but at this point grad school has been over for 6 years and I just want my life back. I work a fairly high stress desk job but short of changing professions that's always going to be the case so I need to learn new, healthier habits the combat that. I've recently moved to a different company and am now in a managerial role so I have more money so I can start eating healthier and I also have a more "normal" schedule so my sleep is easier to regulate and I actually have more free time (one of those things you need to retrain yourself to know what to do with again after grad school) so I can actually put together an excercise regiment. I'm also going to hit one of those weird milestone birthdays in a few months and I've made the decision that my 40s are going to be considerably more awesome than my 30s were and one of the biggest areas in my life that needs to be addressed if that's going to happen is my weight. These days I Myrcroft Holmes the scales at right around 400lbs and I've given myself the goal of losing 150lbs. I'm not giving myself a rigid time frame to do it in as that inevitably leads me to getting frustrated and quitting any excercise program I've ever started. I like this site's focus on smaller, more attainable changes which, in turn, lead to the big changes that we want and I'm trying to keep myself to that. My short term goal is simply some appreiciable change in my weight and appearance between now and February and I'll set new ones if I've met that one at that time.

 

To that end I'm trying the paleo diet and am finding that it's actually a pretty livable with menu. I'm starting to keep a food log and I'm attempting to expand my veggie pallate. I'm also making myself walk every day. For the past 4 days I've been getting off one stop earlier each way on my bus commute to and from work and I've also taken a 10-15 minute walk before lunch each day and I'm trying to take the stairs in lieu of the elevator when I can. This weekend I hope to be able to clear out a space in my house where I can do some weight training. I've not picked a class yet but when I do it will most likely be warrior or ranger (though as the gamer who always played spellcasters I will stubbornly refer to it as battlemage or spellsword. We're a weird breed like that).  The analogy feels right to me as my body fell into great neglect when i was focusing too completely on the academic/mental stuff and now that needs to get balanced out. 

 

I'm happy I stumbled across this site and I appreciate your taking the time to read this unintentionally spammy intro.