Greetings Rebels

[Priest]

Hi All,

 

Since I've just joined up to the NerdFitness community I thought that I should say 'hi' to everyone and let you know a little bit about me

 

In November of 2013 I was a fat middle-aged man, desk bound and incredibly lazy. I had, and I still do have, an epic romance with food - I love to eat well and I find peace in cooking. This combination did me no favours since at this point in my life I weighed in at a very unsavoury 110kg, unsavoury because I was a weak, slothful slouch with the muscle tone of partially set jelly.

 

This was the year and month when my annual full medical had my GP inform me that I was pre-diabetic and that I'd need medication to control my blood-sugar levels within the next six months.

 

Fortunately for me I'm far stingier with money than I am lazy and the mere thought of paying thousands in medical expenses every year had me foaming at the mouth. So, I did what any nerd would do; I started to educate myself and luckily for me this was around the same time that professor Tim Noakes was beginning to make waves locally by promoting the banting diet. I stopped eating processed foods and sugary soft drinks. I cut out bread completely and disavowed myself of potato and pasta. I took up a twin philosophy of behaviour:

 

1. If you don't cook it you're not allowed to eat it. "Cook" is a relative term here and includes cold foods like ice cream.

2. If your great-great-great-great grandmother wouldn't recognise it as food or an ingredient you're not allowed to eat it.

 

Coupled with the banting principles this was hard to live with.

 

I can describe the next few weeks only by plagiarising something that I'd read on the Internet. I was adopting a new lifestyle but it was fine, almost familiar in fact, like riding a bicycle. Except the bicycle was on fire. And the ground was on fire. And everything was on fire, because I was in hell. There was a point where I was in a shopping mall and I saw somebody's child eating a small packet of crisps and for a moment I seriously considered stealing them from the child and eating them. Luckily for me I'm a little more stubborn than I am stingy so I didn't break

 

Eventually the cravings wore off. This took about a month, and once my body had purged the last of my sugar-and-salt dependency and flushed out the last of the chemical agents roaming through my body I didn't notice the change anymore. Coffee was bitter and most food was green, but I was OK with that.

 

I dropped steadily from 110kg to 84kg over the next year. And that's where it stopped. I'd plateaued. I'd lost the "excess" weight but I was still a fat, weak, middle-aged man. I was healthy (medically, compared to where I was) but I wasn't any better. My daily calorie intake was too high and my resting energy burn was too low to let me become slim. Here I weighed up my options. I will NOT run, ever. Not even from Zombies. I could cycle but that's an open ticket to a hospital stay in my country.

 

So I bought a kettlebell. A measly 8kg kettlebell. It hurt me. For weeks. Eventually I managed to migrate to a 16kg kettlebell. It didn't hurt nearly as much, but I needed to get stronger and become used to it before I moved up to 20kg (payday this month).

 

Since starting kettlebell work I also started body weight sessions and I watched my waist drop from 34 to 33 inches. I gained weight at first and moved up to 87kg and then it slowly come back down to 82kg as my body found a balance. I didn't care about the weight gain, I knew it was muscle.

 

But I was getting lazy again. Bi-daily workouts were becoming weekly workouts. Sometimes I'd skip a whole week.

 

At this point I stumbled across NerdFitness and read through the site and some of the forums. I adore the idea of gamifying my life and being part of a community where goals can be set and reached (or missed) with an audience to whom you are accountable. This appeals to me. A lot.

 

So I joined up and I look forward to getting to know at least some of you over the next couple of years.

[Mr_Willes]

Great story! Got the workouts back in line, seems the rest is already right on track. Good Luck! 

[letara]

Hi Priest , I love this story xx