The Exercise Bug

As you probably know if you read this blog regularly, about two years ago I set out to lose a bunch of weight.  I was pretty successful, dropping in excess of fifty-five pounds over about a nine month period.  My success was largely due to exercise and diet.  I was a little off and on with the diet, but when I was exercising five or six days a week, sometimes twice a day, I had some latitude in my eating.

Over the last year, I put back on about twenty pounds of the weight that I had lost.  I think the high point was when I was back in the U.S. this summer.  My exercise routine was pretty dismal then, and I ate like a man who didn't care much about his waist.  

My goal had been to get back on track when I returned from the U.S., but a hurt foot slowed me down a bit.  I still exercised some, but my diet was terrible, and I couldn't run.  A few weeks ago, my foot finally felt better enough to run, and I started a bit of jogging. 

I decided on Halloween, of all days, that I was going to drop some more weight.  I put myself on a pretty strict diet for the first five or six days, and have relaxed it a bit.  In addition to avoiding eating a lot of food, I have pretty much given up sweets and stopped eating anything after dinner.  Tonight I did have a bowl of Captain Crunch for dessert, but that's about as far as I've gone with sweets.

The other part of the equation is my exercise routine.  Over the last ten days, I've exercised nine, taking off last Sunday.  I am lifting weights for thirty minutes three days a week, and running every day.  Most days I am running twice a day, I'll run about five kilometers in the morning, and another five in the afternoon or evening.  I'm not running very fast, and really don't care about my pace at this point.  My goal is just to get out there and do it, as I know time and effort will build endurance and speed.

One thing that I am a little wary of is over doing it, but I'm in that frame of mind where I don't want to take a day off.  A couple of days last week, I woke up thinking that I might just rest that day, but I couldn't.  I felt myself compelled to at least run.  My attitude now is a lot like it was when started two years ago.

So far I've definitely seen some success.  I am probably down around thirteen pounds from when I returned from the U.S., a decent chunk of that lost in the last few weeks.  I still have a long way to go, but I'm glad to be focused again.