It's a little surreal that this entire Biggest Loser experience is coming to an end... this day seemed like a long way away a few months back. We were counting the time left in months; months turned into weeks, then into days, and now, it's hours. I will probably write several concluding posts as I move through the weekend, but just a few thoughts here on Thursday - the LAST Thursday that I can say "I'm participating in the Augusta's Biggest Loser competition".
I've been sick since sometime on Monday of this week - pretty sure it's just a cold, but somehow, they always seem nastier in the warmth and humidity of spring as it rolls into summer. I thought yesterday was the worst day, until today rolled around. Yesterday I managed to make a hospital visit (yeah, I know you're not supposed to do that) and preached at church last night, but today, I spent the entire day in bed, except for a little light cardio at the gym this morning (and I do mean "little", and I do mean "light"), and my appointment at PHC. I enjoy my PHC appointments - I can only remember really being fussed at one time early on, but usually my visits are very pleasant, and usually pretty short.
Today they took my final set of measurements that will be taken during this competition. I don't have all the numbers in front of me right now, but I do know that I have lost 23 inches in my waist alone. Overall, I have lost 74 inches, a set of measurements that includes chest, waist, beltline, arm at the biceps, and wrist. I've lowered my blood pressure to 112/70; as I wrote halfway through, my bloodwork all came back fabulous; and last week, my doctor kicked me out with a clean bill of health and told me to come back in a year.
I asked for advice for the last day of the competition - I'm pretty much just to follow the same routine I've been doing on weigh-in day since we started. Other than a little extra work in the gym, I've stuck pretty much to the same routine since day one, and not really needed to vary too much.
I've talked a little in the past few weeks about hitting my goals, and I assigned various weights to those goals - breaking the record for highest percentage, losing 140 lbs, and getting below 200 lbs. I won't know until Sunday if I achieved those goals, but there's another set of goals I wanted to reach, and I have accomplished those. My first, most overreaching goal, was that I wanted to change my life. I've done that. My life is so different now at near 200 lbs than it was at 350, you can't imagine the contrast if you haven't lived it. My second goal was that, whether I hit a specific number or not, I wanted to be "done" when we hit the end of the process - in other words, I didn't want to have to clean up 30 or 40 pounds once the competition ended. I'm not taking anything away from anyone who still has weight to lose; on the contrary, some of them have been so inspirational to me during this process, and I respect every single pound that has been lost (over 1,000 pounds as of last weigh-in, with only 11 people participating). I had just personally hoped I could say "I'm there" at the end of the journey, and I think I've accomplished that The weight I had to lose is all the weight I could have lost during these six months, I feel. My third goal was that I wanted to be able to take the things I'd learned, the success I've been having, and use those things to help other people. Even before I was halfway done in my journey, I've had the opportunity to help several individuals, and to start a blog about living a healthy lifestyle using the things I've learned. Finally, the last intangible goal I've had was to be able to say, "I have no regrets about anything I've done or didn't do during the competition." I missed exactly one workout during the entire 6 months due to an unavoidable trip; I worked out myself at the hotel where we stayed, and I still lost 10 pounds that week. I was late a couple of times, but we all were at sometime. (Just for the record, Nandy did not miss a single team workout - not one.) I made it to the gym after spending most of the night in the emergency room once; I made it after being up with a sick kid all night; I did everything I could. On the food side of the equation, I did not put one bite of food in my mouth that I was not supposed to have. Was I ever tempted? Sure, I was. The weekend we started, there was a turkey fry at our church; then Thanksgiving, Christmas parties galore, Christmas dinner, New Year's Day - it seemed like there was always an occasion to eat. Our church has monthly birthday fellowships on the first Sunday night; our missions emphasis month in February had food every Sunday afternoon. There was anniversary Sunday and Easter and Mother's Day, and all the usual times to eat. Besides those scheduled "opportunities", I have two kids approaching adulthood who don't eat the way I have learned to eat, and there have been many trips to the fast food places and the pizza joints. I will never forget the first trip to Papa John's shortly after I began, because my kids had ordered garlic bread, and it was so buttery and garlicky, it stunk up my van for a week. My Biggest Loser journey encompassed every single birthday in our family except for my son's (three in the third week of April alone), and I ate no cake or ice cream for any of them. There were trips to Krispy Kreme for various early-morning church functions, and countless other opportunities to "cheat". I can say with a clear conscience before the Lord that not one time did I ever eat a french fry, a cookie, or even a food item in a restaurant if I thought it had too much butter, fat, or sodium for me.
Lots of people have praised my "willpower", but I told my Sunday school class this past Sunday that it wasn't a matter of willpower; it was simply day by day, sometimes minute by minute, making my choices based on what I wanted to become, not based on what I wanted. The blogs, the photos, the repeated viewings of "The Biggest Loser" - all those things helped me stay focused on what I wanted to become, and allowed me to by-pass the things I thought I wanted. I used to look at my favorite breakfast on the Sonic menu and think, "I want that." Now I can look at it and think, "that will kill you if you eat it enough times." A whole day's worth of calories, carbohydrates, fat, and sodium wrapped up in a burrito, and I would toss back a pair of them and a 44-ounce soft drink. AND be ready for lunch three hours later, where I would consume another whole day's worth (or more) of calories, carbohydrates, fat, and sodium.
All I'm trying to say is this: whether or not I hit my numerical goals; whether or not I win the contest or not, I've achieved the goals that really matter in the long run. I'm not too heavy for the ladder; I'm not the biggest guy in the room, no matter what room I'm in; I don't have discussions with myself about whether a 2x shirt will shrink so much that I'd be better off buying a 3x.
My life has been changed, and sometime over the weekend or early next week, I will pass out my "thank you's" in a later post.
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