Weight Loss Progress!

Yesterday I weighed in at 246.2 pounds. That was the first time in a long time (I'm talking a few years here) that I weighed anything under 250, and before that my weight was pretty much on a steady rise.

Holy cow.

Like, really. That's a huge milestone for me. I know I'm still a far way's away from my eventual goal (I put on my bucket list that eventually I want to get down to 180 pounds) but seeing those numbers on the scale yesterday was just... relieving. Especially since the last month or so hasn't been great as far as working out consistently goes. I'm still keeping track, but with two jobs that work me about 50 hours each week, I don't have as much time to dedicate to just working out anymore. (Not if I still want a decent amount of sleep, that is.) For example, this week I'll have Tuesday and Saturday mornings off of one job, and Wednesday evening off for the other. My most recent choice of workout has been to go on a walk that, round-trip, is a little over six miles and meets all of my goals according to FitBit: steps, distance, "flights of stairs" (in quotes because it's really a measure of elevation), calories burned, and active minutes. Every time I've done it so far it's taken me a little over two hours to complete, and that's with just straight walking. I'm not feeling up to running just yet.

But then I think of how people are always saying that you really need to push yourself in order to see progress with weight loss. Heck, take a single episode of The Biggest Loser; the contestants do nothing but work out while they're "on campus" and end up losing 50, 100, 200 or more pounds by the end of each season. The record, at least according to Wikipedia, is 264 pounds, and that was in the course of 19 broadcasted weeks. So, some quick math here... almost 14 pounds every single week that he had to lose. And here I am with one, maybe two pounds a week so far, with a couple times that I'm working out to contribute to that.

Thankfully I kept reading through that article. There's a whole section, fairly close to the top, that talks about how dangerous some of the things the show did really were, and that that much weight loss ends up being more harmful than healthy. And a lot of the contestants have just gained it all back anyway, since the environment they were in for the show wasn't nearly one that they could maintain once they were back home.

For fun, I decided to just look up random quotes about progress, and one of the first ones to come up was from Frederick Douglass: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." While I do agree with that, there's no mention of how much struggle there should be in order to get going to where you want to be. Take this clip from The Office, as a hypothetical example:

This was from the premiere of season 5, which was centered around a company-wide weight loss contest. By the end of the episode, Kelly faints from the utter lack of nutrition in her diet. Obviously this was all part of the script, but it paints a picture that can be pretty intimidating for those wanting to actually lose weight and get healthy.

This can tie into a gospel teaching, specifically about repentance. (This wasn't how I was originally going to write this post, but I'm in kind of a stream-of-consciousness mode at the moment.) The comparison is that for repenting, while there are some major changes we apply right away like recognizing the sin we're committing and stopping the action, the full conversion to the point we want to get to takes time. We make lots of little changes along the path to righteousness so we can ultimately get to our goal of perfection. The same goes for weight loss, as I understand it: while there are definitely things to do when starting on the road to weight loss (or gain, in some instances, because I realize that it can go both ways) there are practices and habits that can be stopped immediately. But just that one change won't do it; we need to put in place good habits and practices that will help us reach our goal. Even for those extreme cases where weight-loss surgery is required, I'm sure the doctor doesn't just give you a pat on the back and send you on your merry way when it's all said and done. He probably prescribes a diet for you to stick to so you can maintain your new healthy weight and lifestyle.

All in all, I'm feeling pretty good about how I'm doing so far. It's not the most record-breaking progress that the world's ever seen before, but it's progress and it's something I can be proud of.