I'm 16 Inches Smaller!

I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks. – Totie Fields

Let me first start by pointing out that I am still fat. But with a little hard work over the past six weeks, I am a little less fat and I am pretty happy with that.

My fitness club offered a six-week total body makeover class that met twice each week and offered training tips and nutritional information and meal suggestions. It was run by a woman named Jessica and, for the moment, I would like thank her for changing so many poor habits and giving me a much-needed nudge to better health. I use the “for the moment” part in the last sentence as a mere qualifier because anyone who knows me knows I have difficulty sustaining things. The proof is in my weight which has fluctuated wildly over the past 10-15 years.

Having made that qualifier, I should also tell you that I view the recent change in my eating and exercise regime as something that needs to be life-changing or I won’t have as much of a life to change later on. A number of my diet and exercise pushes have seemed easier than this one and I suspect the ravages of age and poor health has caught up to me and has made this last go-round, particularly the additional exercise, more difficult. In other words, I view this as something of a last stand to better my health and I really need to stick with it this time.

During the course we were given increasingly more difficult workouts and had our menu diaries reviewed by Jessica. Fortunately Mrs. Laz read Jessica’s menus so I just had to ask her what to eat. If only I could have gotten her to do the workouts for me I would be a lot less sore today.

The offshoot of the program is that I came in second place in my group with 14 pounds lost in the six weeks. My own scale had me losing more like 18 pounds but I’ll take an official 14 pounds in such a short time any day of the week. My body fat dropped from 25.7 percent to 21.3 percent and I lost a total of 16 inches off of various parts of my body (no, not there). The number of inches lost was the most in the group of about 20 participants and included four inches off my waist.

I think I could have lost more during the six weeks because I was in Latin America for one week and took two separate trips to Ohio so I missed five of the 12 meetings. I am continuing on with keeping a good log of my diet and exercising every day (or nearly every day). I am getting great encouragement from my family and from Sladed who even came to cheer me on for my final weigh-in; which was nice, but ultimately his cheering on was going to have no affect on the outcome. However I did get to "out" him while he was there. One thing is clear, it’s great to know so many people are pulling for me.

I would post the before and after photos except the after photo still has a little more of me than I am willing to share – especially if a certain Diane happens to take a look at this blog and learns a startling truth that could cause my chances with her to drop.