Why I Decided To Lose 25 Pounds

Courtesy of Alan Cleaver via Creative Commons license.

Over the last five months, I lost 25 pounds. On purpose. Some of you who know me personally might wonder why. In this post I’ll begin by talking about why I decided to lose 25 pounds. Then, in my next post I will go into the details of just how I lost 25 pounds.

To begin with the why, I need to give you some background. For starters, I’m 5′ 9″ tall. I struggled with my weight when I was a kid and there are quite a few pictures of me as a chubby child. Once I hit puberty and had my growth spurt, my height-weight ratio evened out somewhat so I looked more normal. When I went into the US Coast Guard, boot camp helped me to get in the best shape of my life. I graduated from there weighing around 150 pounds.

Then, as time, inertia, gravity and metabolism all ganged up against me over the years, my weight slowly crept back up. I had to keep a reasonable weight while I was in the Coast Guard, but once I got out it all began to unravel. When I landed a series of desk jobs after the Coast Guard the sedentary lifestyle became my friend – or my enemy.

I also wasn’t eating a very healthy diet. While I got the occasional fruit or vegetable, it was for the most part a free for all. Fast foods had become the exception rather than the rule. I began to think that super-size was the way to get a bargain instead of a belly. Every night it seemed required ice cream or cookies before going to bed. Five years ago, just after turning 41, my weight reached 215 pounds. For you fitness wonks, that’s a body-mass index (BMI) of 31.7 which landed me in the obese category.

The problem was that I didn’t really look like it. I wore my weight all over so I didn’t have the classic pot belly that most men have. But I felt bad and I knew I was placing my health in danger. My own father passed away from diabetes at age 54, and his mother also had diabetes. Speaking from a practical perspective, just how many old fat people do you see? Not many, at least not where I live. I knew that something had to change.

Another reason for doing this is because of the habits I knew my kids were picking up on. My own bad habits were having an influence on them. Obesity has consistently been on the rise in America since the 1980s and is becoming an epidemic. Just last week, a new study reported that all states will, by 2030, have at least 44% of their population in the obese category. To give my kids a fighting chance, I needed to change something and do it soon. And to someday see and play with my grandkids, I had to make a change. God may have other plans and take me before then. But if He does then it won’t be because I was overweight.

In the next post, I’ll describe my adventure to lose 25 pounds. As a bonus, we’ll go back to 2007 and cover the full journey starting from my original high weight of 215 pounds. Come back to see just how much I’ve lost altogether and how I went about doing it.

Application Question – I decided to lose 25 pounds. Is there something in your life that you know you need to do something about but just haven’t made the decision to start? Can you identify your list of “whys” to get you moving in the right direction?

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