June-August: “Caught by surprise”
This morning started off like any typical day. I work from home so my normal “business attire” is really just a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. You know the type, the shorts with the elastic band in them. Because I wear those so often, I didn’t really notice how much I was shrinking. But, that night I put on my favorite cargo shorts as we headed out to dinner. Well, my favorite shorts are no more. That night they literally fell off….as I was walking out the front door. Haha! What a surprise that was. I knew they were loose, but didn’t know they were that loose.
Sometimes the things you are looking for happen when you least expect them. As my mother used to say “a watched pot never boils”. So, that thought process goes right along with the advice that my coaches continued to give me which was “avoid the scale, it is NOT the best indicator of fitness”. They even said “are your clothes fitting differently”? is a better indicator. The whole muscle vs. fat vs. weight discussion happens.
More often than not when someone is embarking on a fat loss journey they expect to see HUGE results instantaneously. I guess that’s not surprising seeing as how we have become a country that wants instant gratification. This is why the “quick fix” fitness industry is a multi-Billion dollar business. People want everything instantly, but don’t want to show the patience or apply the EFFORT that it takes to achieve the desired result. People must first remember, as I told myself when starting my fat loss journey, I didn’t get this way overnight. It’s not like I went to bed one night with abs and woke up the next morning weighing 313 pounds. It was a pattern of poor choices in food day in and day out that lead to the gradual weight gain. One thing folks need to realize is it’s that pattern of bad choices that go from being choices to becoming HABITS. Once they are habits, they become harder to break. You don’t see huge weight gains over night, but with those bad choices becoming bad habits that you repeat day in and day out, you slowly start to gain a couple pounds a month. Inside of a year that is a gain in 24 pounds, now let this progress year after year, and you easily see how someone gets 50+ pounds overweight.
The good news is habits can be broken. I read one time that it takes 14 days to break a habit. Speaking for myself, I walked through life like a zombie; I ate whatever, whenever and never really put any thought into what I was consuming. So it all begins with being cognizant of what you are doing. Think before you eat….. Ok that became a tangent, but as I am traveling this journey to become the best me I can become there are all these little light bulbs that start going off in my head. It’s becoming as much a learning experience as a fat loss journey.
August-present “Follically Challenged”
There was a post on the CrossFit Combustion Facebook page about the “It Takes Two to Tango”, team competition at Crossfit Talon in Franklin. Without giving it much thought, I replied and said I was in. Before I knew it Jeremy Gossett and I were paired up and we came up with a team name. Seeing how we both sport the same dashing hair style, we decided to go with Follically Challenged. More than anything, we are going out there to have more fun than should be allowed when going through multiple WODs in a day. I can’t wait to leave it all out there and cheer on all the rest of the teams from my box. There is no doubt we are going to represent CFC in a big way. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Hope to see everyone there!
Boyd’s: I’m not telling you nothing you don’t already know very well…every Box has a Fat Boy story. Maybe even several of them, and Fat Girl’s too. These Formerly Fat Boy stories give me more job satisfaction in my Coaching job than in my other job as an Anesthesiologist. Just keep showing up Roy…that’s all you have to do.