Weight Loss: Halftime

Six months ago, I decided I was done weighing 250 pounds.

This wasn't a decision I took lightly. Through a stressful, ambitious lifestyle, I'd grown to rely on food to give me energy when I wasn't sleeping enough; pleasure when I wasn't happy enough; and an excuse not to talk when I wasn't not awkward enough. Every time I thought I might do something about my weight, the same excuses came back: I couldn't afford less sleep; didn't want less happiness; wasn't about to be less awkward.

Finally, in Mt. Vernon, that changed.

After I graduated, I spent the next six months wanting to find work and the following half-year wishing my job would give me more work. Nonetheless, I thought, I have time to knock out some of my 43 Things: I finished the 64-book Animorphs series after an eight-year layoff between books 26 and 27, watched every episode of Frasier and started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I'm now halfway through season five). But the item at the top of my list - then a generic "lose weight" - was too frightening to contemplate.

Then, last fall, two things happened very close together.

First, my then-co-worker, the then-newly-wed Rorye, persuaded me to sign up for the Jefferson County YMCA's Losing Team program, which would team us up with our boss and another person to live the healthiest lifestyle over the next three months. I was hesitant but told her I'd consider it.

Then, the next weekend, I traveled to Champaign-Urbana to see my girlfriend Megan and got an unexpected call at 2:15 a.m. Saturday. My old college drinking/Star Trek TNG buddy Steve wanted to catch up. He was doing great, I found out: in addition to finding a job in his field in Bloomington (a much bigger, nicer town than Mt. Vernon), he'd lost something like 50 pounds by eating right. While Steve was always lighter than I was, here was someone who had worse habits than I did - Hot Pockets seemed to be a religion when he lived across the street from me - but turned it around through research, time and an iron will.

Besides, if he could do it, why couldn't I?

I changed my goal to a concrete "lose 100 pounds," calculated my BMR and BMI, attended some YMCA sessions and got started.

Alas, that effort was short-lived, as I moved to Marion in November and needed badly to get my bearings and not worry about my food for a while. Still, I'd lost ten pounds in two months using calorie-counter MyFitnessPal, and the seed of an idea was planted.

January 9, after my life wasn't so complicated by job adjustments, other people's year-end vacations and the holidays, I decided to pick up where I'd left off. One of my coworkers was fired that day - naturally - but enough was enough; I was done. 250 would be a thing of the past.

Slowly, through a lot of salads, air-popped popcorn and hours upon hours of just plain being hungry, I saw results. By February I was 240 pounds; in March, 230; in April, 220; and so on. Even the occasional slip-up - loads of stuffed pizza at ACEN, a beer-filled Memorial Day weekend in Madison, a very unhealthy birthday dinner complete with multiple burgers and pizza slices - couldn't derail me once I had guidelines to work within and succeed.

Of course, I also had help from the people closest to me. My parents, Megan and my friend Tim frequently convinced me that I wasn't wasting my time, and several people - my Uncle Tom and soon-to-be-in-laws among them - made me feel better by actually noticing what I was doing.

The biggest motivator, though, may have been the network that slowly filled in around me on MFP. Almost immediately, I got connected to Melissa, a friend of mine from just-after-college who wanted to lose the university weight and get healthy for her job at a fitness publisher. She's now lost 22 pounds and is headed for a Thanksgiving goal that I selfishly want to see her miss so I don't have to do my last month without her.

Then, a couple months later, that connection expanded into Lauren, my former colleague/president/director/editor, and other friends from my college theatre troupe, New Revels Players. I feel bad that I can barely keep up with all of them anymore, but together they've been a bigger inspiration than I can say.

Thanks to all of those people, my goal doesn't seem so impossible anymore. Today, halfway through the year, I'm halfway to my goal, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

So I just want to say, here tonight, in front of God and the Internet, thank you all. I'm sure many of you won't ever read this, and some won't ever find out what your help has meant to me, but it's truly the difference between being where I am now and being nowhere at all.

Let's keep this train rolling.

250-pound me and Megan with our friend Becca at her Champaign apartment in October. Note my bursting button.

The image I used to propose to Megan via photobook, taken at her Urbana apartment April 14 at 225 pounds.
It kills me that these photos won't look like me when I'm done. Also, none of these clothes remotely fit anymore. 

Megan and 200-pound me outside our apartment in Marion yesterday. Halfway there.