Weight Loss

One of the big reason I starting riding bicycles long ago was weight loss. In college I participated in intercollegiate athletics throwing the shot, discus and hammer. I was always a big guy, by the time I was a freshman in high school I was 225 pounds, by my senior year I was 245 and in college my weight varied from 245-260 pounds.

With that said, I never worried about weight because I was always lifting weights and in a sense needed the weight for throwing. I was always muscular (max bench 455 pounds, max squat 650 pounds) and weight loss, eating healthy, endurance sports were the last thing on my mind.

Then, my eligibility ran out and I stopped throwing, which meant there wasn't much reason to work out. Over time my weight went up, my muscle mass went down and my body shape changed...over time though it's hard to notice until that one day you look in the mirror and go "Oh My God! I'm so freaking fat"...time to do something about it.

My time came a little over two years ago after a trip to Las Vegas with my wife and two close friends. We took a lot of pictures, but I avoided most of them...however, one I could avoid showed me just how far I had fallen.

In this picture I'm sitting right around 290 pounds give or take a few depending on breakfast that day :) By this time I was starting to feel like I was wearing a fat suit, which wasn't good. It limited my mobility, made doing things I liked hard and my self esteem was through the floor.

Another concern for me was my family history with obesity. My mother is approximately 5'1" tall and at times weight well over 300 pounds. My father was always between 260 and 330 pounds. My brother who is 3.5 years older than I am was up to 330 pounds. To combat their weight issues my mother had gastric bypass surgery, my brother a lapband procedure and my father...well, he didn't care whether he was fat or not but is paying for it now with daily insulin shots, a stroke and many other health related issues.

This was not the route I wanted to take and I knew I needed to do something about it.

When we returned from our trip I decided it was time so I ordered a new custom framed bike (from Doug Curtiss at http://www.curtlo.com/ ) which was something I had always wanted, and began riding my trainer inside (it was January in the Northwest after all). I started easy with 45 minutes a day 5 days a week. After a month I bumped that to 1 hour a day 5 days a week. Then 1 hour a day 6 days a week and just continued from there.

On top of this I decided I needed to do something about my diet.

For me I signed on with http://www.fitday.com/ to monitor my daily caloric intake and found out I was eating 5000 - 6000 calories a day with very little activity to go with it...hence the increase in weight.

So I decided on some drastic action with eating. I limited my diet to a -1500 calorie a day deficit to go along with beginning workouts. This is very drastic but something I needed to do. I also shunned junk food and started eating better foods: more meats, vegetables, fruits and nuts.

The weight started coming off pretty quickly. By April of 2006 I had dropped 30 pounds and was starting to feel better. By the time my bike had come in (Mid June) I had dropped 40 pounds and had increased my riding a fair amount...I was up to 9-10 hours a week on the bike. By the end of the summer I had dropped my weight down to 235 which was a weight I wasn't sure I'd ever see again.

Then in the spring of 2007, after putting a few pounds back on over the winter not riding my trainer (back up to 270 pounds) I got back into riding with the new year and joined Portland Velo in the spring. By this time I had dropped my weight back down to 245 but had found a group to ride with and new inspiration. I started riding with the A19 group, but after 3 rides had moved up to the A21's where I rode the rest of the summer. This extra motivation dropped my weight to 223 pounds by the end of the riding season.

Again, winter hit and the weight went back up...Ugghhh...but I had decided it was time to start racing again after dropping down to 223 in September. However, my weight jumped to 240 over the winter and I had work to do...so back to very restrictive calorie reduction and lots of working out 12-14 hours a week. By April of 2008 I had dropped to 194 pounds....a weight I hadn't seen since the 8th grade!

At this weight I feel really good and have been able to keep it off over the past two years. I had a great racing season last year moving from CAT 5 to CAT 4 on the road and this year with more training and more power have been able to move up from CAT 4 to CAT 3. The highest weight I hit this winter was 212 pounds for a short period but spent most of the time at 202-203 pounds which was a major victory for me.

This is a life long battle for me and will always continue to be hard, but having teammates to be competitive with, racing and not wanting to get shelled every race and pride in knowing I can do it help with motivation to keep the weight off. Also knowing if I don't I have diabetes, obesity and many other health related issues to look forward to are huge motivating factors.

For those that don't think they can do it....they can and I only hope that I can provide motivation for others to do the same with their lives :)