While this adjustment has been great for us as a family and fantastic
for me personally, the exercise side of things has been an odd sort of
evolution. For me, the exercise bug
began even before we started with the healthy eating when I joined a gym near
our house last fall while we were patiently waiting for the birth of our second
child. As a bit of back story, I have,
on at least three separate occasions, lost a significant amount of weight
through hard work/exercise (the weight by the way, came back each time with a
vengeance) and I think in the back of my head I kind of thought that I could do
the same thing this time. If I went to
the gym five or six nights a week I could lose weight again and wouldn’t have
to change my eating habits. Unfortunately, my 30 something metabolism didn’t seem to agree and, to
be honest, I don’t know that I was working at it the right way. For the first two months I did nothing but
ride the stationary bike and then spent the next two months doing only the
elliptical machine. In all that time,
while I think I got in better shape, I’m pretty sure I actually gained about 15
pounds and I’m positive not very much of it was muscle.
Then at the end of February, we made this change into healthy eating
and low and behold I started losing weight.
Again, those of you who have read my wife’s earlier blogs will know that
it came off pretty quick and like a typical guy, I started asking myself how
could I make the weight loss go faster.
One night, I had a light bulb moment and told Laura that I was going to
go for a jog the next morning. I think I
made it about 1 kilometre and while I was sucking wind and hyperventilating like
a kid whose older brother just punched him in the stomach, (those of you with
older siblings get it), I kind of felt fantastic at the same time. After the first week, I was hooked, and over
the course of the last couple of months I have steadily increased the time and
distance that I have been running.
In August, I made a decision that I was going to do a 5km and would
debut my fantastic form at the Army Run in September. I trained hard and was doing roughly 5km at
least three times a week. I was timing
my runs and thinking that I was in pretty good shape to compete on this
race. Then I talked to a few folks who
run on a regular basis and realized that I was averaging about 15 minutes
behind the “slow” runners. Undaunted, I
figured that it wouldn’t matter since all I had to do was finish the race but
then life took over.
Around the same time that I was in full “training” mode, Laura and I
were starting to plan our fifth anniversary and we made a snap decision to go
to New York for an extended weekend.
Sometimes you just do things without thinking and before I knew it, the
tickets were booked before we realized it was on the same weekend as the Army
Run. Even though I was a little disappointed,
as a good husband I felt obligated to soldier on and go to New York and all
kidding aside, it was a great trip. We
saw tons of sites, did lots of walking, drinking and eating but in the time
since our trip, I had kind of gotten off track a bit on the lifestyle
change. I think skipping the run may
have opened up a bit of a laziness door in my brain that encourages me to have
snack or a beer and unfortunately, I am one of those types that once Pandora’s
box is opened, I have a hard time closing it again.
Stay tuned for part two of the Rob Runs saga…
1 comment:
So very proud of you, of you and Laura :) and damn lucky to have you guys as friends...because I think its really cool to have another couple to go do 'crazy fit shit' with like City Chase :) Even if you beat us LOL.
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