Getting Here From There

Over the past year, I've fielded some fair (and some odd) questions.

"What motivates a 40 year-old who's never done triathlons or marathons to all of a sudden start?"

"When did the King of Devouring Doritos start eating healthy?"

"Aren't you getting a little TOO skinny now?"

That's just a sample. It's difficult to answer one question without having a look at the big picture. It's easier for me to answer the question, "How did you go from being a semi-overweight, unhealthy, quasi-lazy Facebook junkie to a more slender, semi-obsessive healthy workout junkie?"

It's not an easy singular story to tell. It's actually three different stories that have each played a significant role in how I got from there to here.

PART 1: KICKING THE HABIT
I started smoking when I was 17. I had quit twice, only to start up again both times. I had almost quit a third time but couldn't quite kick the habit. I had tried various methods - hypnosis, the patch, gradually cutting back, but I had never tried cold turkey. What lead me to try it was probably the most illogical reason of all: spite.

Working at DirecTV there are a lot of smokers. Being in charge of training and safety meant I was spending most of my time at the office and not in the field in customer's homes. That actually lead to an increase in my daily nicotine intake, fed mostly by the frequent smoke breaks the rest of the field managers would take.

There were 4 other field managers, and all of them smoked. On January 2nd, 2011, we headed out back for our normal first morning smoke break. But there was something different: three of the four weren't lighting up. It turns out they had made a resolution to quit. Good for them - I congratulated them and wished them luck.

But then they pointed something out to me. "Since we're quitting, it'll just be you and Brad (name changed) out here smoking together."

Here's why that sucked: Brad was a notorious whiner and bellyacher. Non-stop complaining about how bad his job was, how overworked and underpaid he was... I'm sure you all have worked with someone like Brad. Now imagine being stuck with Brad about half a dozen times every day with no one else around. Yikes. And the guys were reminding me of that fact.

"Lucky you, Wamz - you get to come out here every day with Brad and listen to him."

Sure enough, after one week, I couldn't take it anymore. It was magnified by the fact that Brad was taking even more smoking breaks than before, and I honestly didn't like losing that much work time. The other supervisors were laughing it up at my expense, glad that they had finally scraped off the biggest complainer onto someone else so they didn't have to endure it anymore. Their prediction was spot-on, and it was driving me crazy.

But as luck would have it, they also provided the solution. One day when Brad wasn't in the office, I was cursing them for quitting and leaving me as the sounding board for Brad's relentless complaining. Being the funny group of guys they are, they offered the following:

"You know what you should do? You should quit just to spite him."

"Yeah," chimed in another. "Imagine how much more miserable he'll be if he doesn't have anyone to complain to when he goes out on his smoke breaks all by himself!"

They thought it was hilarious, but it was not only ingenious, but the right motivation I needed for that particular time. Here's what I know about myself: as stated in my previous post, I like routine. Habit, if you will. And that's all that smoking was to me. I had gone hours, sometimes even a full day without having a cigarette and never suffered the effects of crankiness, feeling lethargic, or other nicotine withdrawl symptoms. I knew it was just mind over matter. So that day, I bought my last pack of cigarettes, and when they were gone, they were gone for good.

Brad, as you might imagine, responded exactly how the rest of the guys predicted: he was pissed.

"Aw, not you too? Dammit! Now who's going to go outside with me? I don't wanna smoke all by myself!"

But he did. And with the lone exception of 2 celebratory cigars, I haven't had a cigarette since January 10th, 2011.

QUIT-SMOKING STATS AS OF JAN 27th, 2013

Been quit for 2 Years, 2 Weeks, 3 Days, 11 hours, 53 minutes and 21 seconds (748 days) 
Saved $1,777.66 by not smoking 7,484 cigarettes.
Saved 3 Weeks, 4 Days, 23 hours and 40 minutes of my life. 


Oh, and the other three guys? They all gradually went back to smoking within the next 3 months. So in an humorous turn of events, the last guy to quit is the only one who made it stick. And I only quit to piss someone else off. Now who's having the last laugh?

PART 2: LOSING THE BITCH-TITS
In mid 2010, Wendy had heard about a diet from her sister. She took these little drops, ate small meals, and lo and behold, lost 20 lbs. I was really proud of her!  And yes, she looked great.

Fast-forward to February of 2011. I had borrowed P90X from a neighbor and tried a few times to get going with it, but after a few workouts I decided it was too hard and gave up. What I did instead was did the Legs and Back workout two or three times a week in advance of our ski trip to get some leg strength built up. But I could still tell I was getting heavier from recently quitting smoking. That and the fact that I wasn't as active as I used to be. I wasn't playing softball anymore or doing anything physical, recreation or otherwise, save for skiing or golfing.

I wasn't a slave to the scale, but I knew that I usually weighed around 170lbs, give or take a few. I also wore 34-inch waist jeans comfortably. But slowly and surely, the 170 was taking more than giving. The 34-inch waist was less comfortable. Then one day I stepped on the scale. 188lbs. Yikes. I hadn't been that heavy since 1996 when I was 195. Back then my then-girlfiend and I did HerbaLife, and it worked. But I was younger back then. What would I do now?

Wendy suggested the homeopathic HCG drops since they worked so well for her. I was intrigued, but wanted to know more about it. She told me how I had to take some drops of the HCG under my tongue 30 minutes before eating, and when I did eat it had to be small amounts. If memory serves correctly, it was a very strict 1,000-calorie a day diet. I know, doesn't sound like much does it?

I was dubious. What where the drops for? Hell, anyone could lose weight on just 1,000 calories a day. Apparently the HCG also works to manage your hunger. It doesn't do anything else like manage your metabolism (like others incorrectly claim). Now I'm no scientist, but I know enough that good eating habits combined with exercise should yield results. But the HCG instructions (correctly) point out that you should not attempt strenuous cardio or other types of extended physical activity because of the lack of calories. You could start after the drops ran out after 3 weeks and you increased your caloric intake up to 1,500.

You know what? Fine. At this point I knew I had to do something. So I made up my mind that I would do the HCG drops with Wendy, but only if she promised to do all 3 months of P90X with me once the drops were gone. It was a deal.

I wanted to catalog this, thinking if the HCG didn't work, I could have an argument for a refund. To the right is what I recorded over 4 weeks, which is how long I made the drops last.

Not too shabby. 20 pounds dropped in 4 weeks. I was impressed. But it worked because I was disciplined. And there were times I HATED being disciplined! Who wants to eat on bread sticks as a snack? I want my Doritos! A salad for lunch? What about a bacon cheeseburger? COME ONNN.

But the good eating habits stuck. Quiznos salads became my new lunch of choice. Small, appropriate-sized meals for dinner instead of being the one eating all the leftovers. And you know what? It wasn't that bad at all.

Next up: P90X. Any fitness professional will tell you that any program will work as long as you make the commitment. Well, both Wendy and I made the commitment, and as you can see below, the results speak for themselves. To be accurate, I took the 'before' picture when I had topped out around 190lbs.

I'll admit - in my wildest dreams, I did not expect to see such results. And in just a little more than 3 months!

But it wasn't just P90X alone. As summer progressed, I wanted to start running again. I ran cross-country in high school, but really hadn't ran much since then. I started with the goal of getting back up to 3 miles. HAH! Just getting through one mile was rough at first! But I kept at it. By the end of the summer, I could successfully run 3 miles without falling at the end of complete exhaustion.

I was not only seeing but FEELING the results. The workouts weren't as hard, I wasn't winded from sprinting up a flight of stairs. My clothes wouldn't fit anymore. My 34-inch jeans now practically slid off my hps - I was fitting into 31s!

At this point, most people would probably stop. They'd see the results, congratulate themselves on the results of their hard work, and try to maintain what they had achieved. But this was just the beginning for me. And it all came to a head one late summer day.

PART 3: THE POSTER
How's this for irony: the most healthy endeavor of my adult life started with a bike ride to the ice cream shop.

Hey, it's an awesome ice-cream shop! Over The Top is the name, and they make some incredible flavors! It's just about 2 miles from our house, so we decided to give ourselves weekly 'rewards' by walking or biking on Sunday evenings for a treat. But that was the deal - we had to walk or bike: no driving.

It's early July. I'm in full-on P90X mode, had started running again, and was feeling really good about the changes I had made. I had more energy than I ever had. More confidence also. No longer would my neighbor beg me to put my shirt back on while I was mowing the lawn. I was feeling great, both physically and mentally.

We had just ordered our reward ice cream (Amaretto Cherry for me, and let me tell you, there is nothing better or more decadent on the face of this earth than that wonderfully sweet concoction). As we're on our way out, I see a poster on the door that catches my eye.

COPPER CREEK TRAITHLON. 750m SWIIM / 20k BIKE / 5k RUN

Hmm, a triathlon, huh? Right here in my own town? I might be interested in that. I've never swam competitively, but I know I can run 5k (3.1 miles) and I'm sure I could do a 12-mile bike ride with some practice. Sounds like a pretty good idea!

One problem. The poster should have been taken down two weeks prior. The event had been held the last week in June.

Bummer. I was momentarily excited at the thought of a triathlon. Heck, that would be pretty impressive, doing one at my age. Wendy saw me looking at the poster, and I told her what I had just been thinking.

"You can always do it next year," she offered.

(Those may be words she someday regrets, if she hasn't already)

Yeah, why not next year? That gives me not just the rest of this summer to finish P90X, but I could do it again in the winter and start training, give myself time to be prepared, do some homework.

That was the day that may have very well changed the course of my health for the rest of my life. I did in fact compete in that triathlon the next year (details to come in another post), and I absolutely loved it. I was hooked. So much so, I competed in another one a mere 3 weeks later. A month and a half after that, my first full-distance triathlon. And now here I am looking towards half and full-length Ironman competitions in the years to come.

Not only did the competition breathe new life into me, but in training I have learned (and in some cases, re-learned) so much about health, physiology, nutrition, you name it.

So there you have it. The 3 primary stories of how I got off the couch to where I am today, and ultimately this blog. Or more precisely, going from the guy on the left...











... to the guy you see below.