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In HS I played every sport I could, football, basketball, track and field. Lifted regularly but not hard enough looking back at it. Passed up a couple D1 walk on shots to play lower level ball with hefty scholarships. Ended up having some health issues. Blood pressure etc pop up ended up in the ER. Ended up in the Army and started to really get in the swing of things. After that stint decided to give football another shot. Went to open tryouts and didn't make the roster. Took a couple transfers instead of the guys that came to tryout.

 

Before my son was born I lifted seriously for a solid 2 years. 5 to 6 days a week etc. Was maxing out at over 400 on bench etc. Best shape of my life. Have recently let it slip with a family now etc. Have put on more flab than I wanted too. For the last week and a halfbI have gotten myself back into a solid diet and workout plan.

 

AMAZING how much strength and stamina a person can lose in under a year of not taking the gym and diet seriously.

 

However I am currently down 8 lbs of flab over the last 10 days. And plan to get in the best shape of my life so my son had a positive role model and we can share some time in the gym and in the yard tossing the ball around.

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In high school I long jumped 22 feet and could slam a basketball with both hands taking two steps from the free throw line. Today I'd be lucky to long jump 15 feet. Slam dunk? Ha ha! But I can slam down a beer with two slurps. (I'm clearly not in very good shape. LOL) :lol:

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I was always one of the fastest kids in school at any distance through middle school, and big enough to take a hit as a running back. Decent at baseball too. In high school I didn't get any faster or much bigger so a lot of people passed me and I got discouraged and only played varsity baseball.

 

Years went by and about all I'd do is run a few miles a few days a week a few months out of the year and played a lot of rec league sports. At age 39 I decided to run a marathon, so I trained all year, dropped 20 pounds, and finished in under 4 hours. A couple years later a friend told me about trail running and I ran a 50K. Now I've run 40 marathons or longer, ran Boston twice, and have a 100 miler at the end of this month.

 

Last year I put all the medical numbers I get from physicals, blood work, etc, in a spreadsheet to compare over the years. Just about every one of them is steady or better since I got serious about running.

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I've told bits and pieces of this here but probably not the whole story.

 

In HS, I was 6'2" and graduated at 155 lbs. I had absolutely no coordination nor strength. So, my ability to play sports was limited to intramural basketball and training and showing horses in the summers. I did some team roping also.

In college, I found how much fun beer, pizza and women were and at the same time, my body finally developed and I started gaining weight. By the time I graduated, I was a shade over 200 lbs but in horrible shape.

 

A couple years later, I started a contracting business that was very labor intensive and I thought I needed to do everything myself. 13 years later, I realized my body (back) was shot and couldn't take it anymore. I lived in constant pain but I had been living with it long enough I didn't think there was anything that could be done. I had absolutely no desire to do anything let alone exercise. I got fat. I laid around and ate anything and everything in front of me. My favorite snack was a bag of ruffles potato chips and a tub of sour cream. Yep, I could finish it all in one sitting.

 

Up to this point, the only thing I had ever done athletically was that I ran triathlons when I was 30. It was totally on a whim and having fun with a friend who had to start exercising for health reasons. He dared me that I couldn't do it and so a dare is a dare and I proved I could. Shortly after that is when my back went to crap.

 

When I was 38 we moved back to Nebraska where I am around my father all the time. He has always been a guy who eats everything and thinks exercise is stupid and only idiots who don't have anything else to do, do it. About this time, my back was bad enough I was starting to go to more doctors to try to figure out what to do. I finally found a surgeon who suggested steroid shots. I was extremely skeptical but was wiling to try anything. Three days after my first shot was the first time in well over 10 years that I had absolutely no back pain. It was amazing. I honestly never realized how much pain I was really in until it was gone. About the same time, I realized that when I had sex with my wife, I had chest pain. I went to the doctor and ended up hooked up to an EKG machine. Luckily, nothing was wrong but it scared the crap out of me.

 

I looked around and realized I didn't want to end up old and fat like my father (or dead) and started exercising and eating right. I started at 247 lbs and got down to around 185. People were telling me that I was too skinny so I allowed myself to gain back to around 200 lbs. where I am trying to maintain.

 

My back needs a steroid shot about every 18 -24 months. I can actually walk straight and not limp. What is weird is that I have friends who are happy I lost weight and got in shape and I have a few who almost act pissed. I don't understand it. I have others who I have actually motivated to get into shape themselves.

 

Now, it's just a way of life for me. My kids prefer to eat right and be healthy. All of them are much better athletes than I ever was and I am extremely happy that I have been at least a good roll model for them in this department. They love their grandfather just as much as I do but we discuss regularly the difference between living like he has and how we try to live and how that affects his quality of life now that he is 80 years old.

 

I have two fitness goals. I want to run a half marathon and I want to climb a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado. Someday I will get it done. I haven't done the 14,000 peak because I want my family to do it with me and it just hasn't worked out yet that we can do it.

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People were telling me that I was too skinny so I allowed myself to gain back to around 200 lbs. where I am trying to maintain.

 

I have a neighbor who will tell me this sometimes and it bugs me. I'm pretty sure it's because she got used to seeing me heavier, and when I lose weight she thinks I look sick, because it shows in my face. Here I am working hard to get down to a healthy race weight and she is being critical of it. Funny thing, she and her family look like scarecrows but it's their natural body style. Bottom line, unless you are anorexic, ignore them unless it is your doctor, trainer or nutritionist, someone like that.

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People were telling me that I was too skinny so I allowed myself to gain back to around 200 lbs. where I am trying to maintain.

 

I have a neighbor who will tell me this sometimes and it bugs me. I'm pretty sure it's because she got used to seeing me heavier, and when I lose weight she thinks I look sick, because it shows in my face. Here I am working hard to get down to a healthy race weight and she is being critical of it. Funny thing, she and her family look like scarecrows but it's their natural body style. Bottom line, unless you are anorexic, ignore them unless it is your doctor, trainer or nutritionist, someone like that.

 

I know. I honestly think that Americans are so used to seeing people fat a middle aged man without a gut must be sick.

 

I would actually like to get back down to 195 so that's my goal over the next couple months.

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In HS - I played football, (outside linebacker free safety- funnest, and TE - small SD school - had to go both ways), Basketball (got to play for SD all time win coach at the time), Track (880 & mile), Swim (Breaststroke), and Hayball (bailing hay all hot summer long on the farm for dad and others).

College - intramural basketball and running on my own

Young adult - church league basketball & slow pitch, swimming, running on my own and hiking

I was in pretty good shape until I hit 45 -48. Then the job changed - less activity, more stress, both boys were out of school and I was no longer coaching their summer league basketball. With all of that I slacked off and even though I did gym work (off and on) I think the metabolism slowed down but my eating didn't for some time and I could never crank up the burn to reduce the pounds gained. So I went from 5'10.5" and 160lbs in HS to as high as 225 in recent months. I've done the no carb and would lose weight to gain it back, the HCG to loose weight to gain it back (each time around 25-30 lbs). Now it is a matter of lifestyle changes and eating better.

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I've told bits and pieces of this here but probably not the whole story.

 

In HS, I was 6'2" and graduated at 155 lbs. I had absolutely no coordination nor strength. So, my ability to play sports was limited to intramural basketball and training and showing horses in the summers. I did some team roping also.

In college, I found how much fun beer, pizza and women were and at the same time, my body finally developed and I started gaining weight. By the time I graduated, I was a shade over 200 lbs but in horrible shape.

 

A couple years later, I started a contracting business that was very labor intensive and I thought I needed to do everything myself. 13 years later, I realized my body (back) was shot and couldn't take it anymore. I lived in constant pain but I had been living with it long enough I didn't think there was anything that could be done. I had absolutely no desire to do anything let alone exercise. I got fat. I laid around and ate anything and everything in front of me. My favorite snack was a bag of ruffles potato chips and a tub of sour cream. Yep, I could finish it all in one sitting.

 

Up to this point, the only thing I had ever done athletically was that I ran triathlons when I was 30. It was totally on a whim and having fun with a friend who had to start exercising for health reasons. He dared me that I couldn't do it and so a dare is a dare and I proved I could. Shortly after that is when my back went to crap.

 

When I was 38 we moved back to Nebraska where I am around my father all the time. He has always been a guy who eats everything and thinks exercise is stupid and only idiots who don't have anything else to do, do it. About this time, my back was bad enough I was starting to go to more doctors to try to figure out what to do. I finally found a surgeon who suggested steroid shots. I was extremely skeptical but was wiling to try anything. Three days after my first shot was the first time in well over 10 years that I had absolutely no back pain. It was amazing. I honestly never realized how much pain I was really in until it was gone. About the same time, I realized that when I had sex with my wife, I had chest pain. I went to the doctor and ended up hooked up to an EKG machine. Luckily, nothing was wrong but it scared the crap out of me.

 

I looked around and realized I didn't want to end up old and fat like my father (or dead) and started exercising and eating right. I started at 247 lbs and got down to around 185. People were telling me that I was too skinny so I allowed myself to gain back to around 200 lbs. where I am trying to maintain.

 

My back needs a steroid shot about every 18 -24 months. I can actually walk straight and not limp. What is weird is that I have friends who are happy I lost weight and got in shape and I have a few who almost act pissed. I don't understand it. I have others who I have actually motivated to get into shape themselves.

 

Now, it's just a way of life for me. My kids prefer to eat right and be healthy. All of them are much better athletes than I ever was and I am extremely happy that I have been at least a good roll model for them in this department. They love their grandfather just as much as I do but we discuss regularly the difference between living like he has and how we try to live and how that affects his quality of life now that he is 80 years old.

 

I have two fitness goals. I want to run a half marathon and I want to climb a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado. Someday I will get it done. I haven't done the 14,000 peak because I want my family to do it with me and it just hasn't worked out yet that we can do it.

What were the 3 biggest things that helped you loose that weight?

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I've told bits and pieces of this here but probably not the whole story.

 

In HS, I was 6'2" and graduated at 155 lbs. I had absolutely no coordination nor strength. So, my ability to play sports was limited to intramural basketball and training and showing horses in the summers. I did some team roping also.

In college, I found how much fun beer, pizza and women were and at the same time, my body finally developed and I started gaining weight. By the time I graduated, I was a shade over 200 lbs but in horrible shape.

 

A couple years later, I started a contracting business that was very labor intensive and I thought I needed to do everything myself. 13 years later, I realized my body (back) was shot and couldn't take it anymore. I lived in constant pain but I had been living with it long enough I didn't think there was anything that could be done. I had absolutely no desire to do anything let alone exercise. I got fat. I laid around and ate anything and everything in front of me. My favorite snack was a bag of ruffles potato chips and a tub of sour cream. Yep, I could finish it all in one sitting.

 

Up to this point, the only thing I had ever done athletically was that I ran triathlons when I was 30. It was totally on a whim and having fun with a friend who had to start exercising for health reasons. He dared me that I couldn't do it and so a dare is a dare and I proved I could. Shortly after that is when my back went to crap.

 

When I was 38 we moved back to Nebraska where I am around my father all the time. He has always been a guy who eats everything and thinks exercise is stupid and only idiots who don't have anything else to do, do it. About this time, my back was bad enough I was starting to go to more doctors to try to figure out what to do. I finally found a surgeon who suggested steroid shots. I was extremely skeptical but was wiling to try anything. Three days after my first shot was the first time in well over 10 years that I had absolutely no back pain. It was amazing. I honestly never realized how much pain I was really in until it was gone. About the same time, I realized that when I had sex with my wife, I had chest pain. I went to the doctor and ended up hooked up to an EKG machine. Luckily, nothing was wrong but it scared the crap out of me.

 

I looked around and realized I didn't want to end up old and fat like my father (or dead) and started exercising and eating right. I started at 247 lbs and got down to around 185. People were telling me that I was too skinny so I allowed myself to gain back to around 200 lbs. where I am trying to maintain.

 

My back needs a steroid shot about every 18 -24 months. I can actually walk straight and not limp. What is weird is that I have friends who are happy I lost weight and got in shape and I have a few who almost act pissed. I don't understand it. I have others who I have actually motivated to get into shape themselves.

 

Now, it's just a way of life for me. My kids prefer to eat right and be healthy. All of them are much better athletes than I ever was and I am extremely happy that I have been at least a good roll model for them in this department. They love their grandfather just as much as I do but we discuss regularly the difference between living like he has and how we try to live and how that affects his quality of life now that he is 80 years old.

 

I have two fitness goals. I want to run a half marathon and I want to climb a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado. Someday I will get it done. I haven't done the 14,000 peak because I want my family to do it with me and it just hasn't worked out yet that we can do it.

What were the 3 biggest things that helped you loose that weight?

 

Good question:

 

1) Get the app. I can't stress that enough. Get an app on your phone where you log what you consume and the exercise you do every day. The one I have I enter my starting weight and then weigh in when ever I want to. I have a goal weight that is plugged in and it tells me every day how far I have to go to reach it. I choose to weigh myself every day. I know a lot of experts say not to but I find it interesting. I don't get stressed out about it. I simply keep in my mind what I have done each day/week and how it affects my weight gain or loss. It's a pretty good study of your body and how it reacts to various factors. I can bring up a graph of my weight from ever since I started using it.

 

2) Started exercising and eating right. I put both of these in the same one because I find they are related to each other and my # 3 below is important to include. Like I said earlier, when I exercise, I tend to eat better. It's a complete change in lifestyle. But, I was so sick of how I was living before that i didn't find it hard. I felt better literally every week. People started noticing and that motivated me even more. I also started really enjoying exercising and how it made me feel.

 

3) This is probably the most important thing....Get the mental thing down. When I get interested in something, I read constantly about it and research it on the internet. Read read read. It informs you of the subject but, it also puts you in a mental state of thinking about it all the time. After a while, that bacon double cheese burger, fries and pop doesn't even look good. It also helps the mental thing to allow yourself a day every once in a while where you can eat whatever you want. Seriously, gorge yourself to the max with your favorite culinary sins all day long. You will love it, then after a while, you will hate it. You will feel so crappy that you want to puke. After a while, mentally, you just don't need to do that anymore. Think of yourself as a healthy person.

 

In essence, I (along with a lot of Americans) had brainwashed myself over my lifetime into thinking being fat and out of shape is just the way life is as a middle aged male. Problem is, I hated it. So, I had to rebrainwash myself into realizing I didn't need to live like that. Being over 50 lbs over weight is me? No....This is me where I can go out and play basketball with my 15 year old son or go snow skiing and do the half pipe (YES...I actually did that two years ago). I ROCKED it.

 

What other 45 year old man finds himself accidentally at the top of a half pipe on Copper Mountain in Colorado and decides to say..."f#*k IT" and nails it? Well, at least I'm telling myself I nailed it. I didn't fall down or break a leg.

 

That's the mentality I try to have and I can't do that if I'm fat. That bacon double cheese burger and fries puts me in heaven for about 30 minutes. It's not worth it for what I can do without it. Heck, I can actually waterski again. I lived on the water as a kid and me and my friends were the best skiers on the lake. I went years where I couldn't even get my fat ass out of the water. I lost the weight and now...I pop right up and can do almost what I used to do.

 

Thanks for asking. I'm a little passionate about it.

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