Accountability Monday, February 8, 2010

My name is Mike Bowers, and I'm a product of change. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much good change.

Mainly, it's been my weight that changes. For years, my weight has gone up in an upward and unhealthy direction. For the first half of my life, I grew outward as quickly as I grew upward. It's easy to hide the fact you just put on 20 pounds when you got three inches taller at the same time. Unfortunately, my weight didn't stop increasing as the same time as my height.

I was 300 pounds by the time I was in the eighth grade. It seemed like a deathly-scary thing at the time, but after about four years at the same weight, it didn't seem so bad. My senior year of my high school, I went up a little more, then a little more in college. By my sophomore year, the doctor had to write "350+" on the chart. Even after that, I found myself starting to justify things: at least I'm not 400, I said. I'm still in relatively good health. Nevermind the fact that I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and, as a result, I have to sleep hooked to a machine to make sure I don't suffocate in my sleep.

2009 saw a lot of drastic changes for me: my entire office at work left for other things, leaving me the "senior" member of the office at 10 months. My girlfriend moved to take another job 3,000 miles across the country. Worst of all, I lost my mom unexpectedly on April 21. Getting in shape wasn't exactly a priority before, and it certainly didn't become more of one after that. Then I went to the doctor and stepped on the scale: 378 pounds. My heaviest ever. Only 22 pounds from the dreaded 400.

I spent the rest of 2009 going through similar spurts, but I eventually decided I didn't want to push back my "breaking point" anymore. Enough was enough.

I always figured if I got down to 250 pounds, I'd be in fairly decent shape. When I was weighed at the beginning of January, I checked in at 358. That's roughly 108 pounds to my goal weight. For the sake of a catchy blog name, let's just say I have 100 pounds to lose. This blog will be a chronicle of my progress towards that goal. I'm going to post whatever is on my mind at the time: excitement about a workout, confusion about figuring out new healthy eating options, frustration over hitting a plateau, or whatever else comes to mind.

More importantly, this blog will be an attempt at accountability. I'll post updates on my progress so I can point out when I'm doing especially well and talk about what I need to change when I hit a roadblock. Am I going to send this to everyone I know? Maybe. Or I may just leave this out in cyberspace and see what happens. If nothing else, I'm putting this out there to where even if no one sees it, everyone could see it. It's a start.

As of this morning, I clocked in at 345.4. (Super Bowl Sunday was a bit rough.) That's down about 34 pounds from April and 13 pounds from when I started. It's progress, but there's much more work to be done.

After all, I've been through plenty of change already. A little more wouldn't hurt me. Hopefully it will save me.