Howdy there Mizfit’ers! I’m Brandon from A Healthy Dad, and I’m very happy and humbled to be writing in this space today.
I think my history and struggles with weight are very similar to many others out there. I was overweight pretty much my entire life, for as long as I can remember. I went through those awkward high school years as an overweight teen. Around the time I started college, I really began my love/hate relationship with food, going on a seemingly endless stream of on-again, off-again diets. Throughout college, my weight regularly fluctuated between 250 and 280 pounds.
My wife and I had our wedding planned for shortly after college graduation. For about 6 months leading up to the wedding, we went on Atkins together to “look good” for the wedding. And at least in the short term, it worked fairly well – I got down to 220 pounds for wedding day, the lowest I had weighed in years. But we had both treated it as just a temporary diet, and so the day after the wedding, we went right back to our bad habits and the weight gradually came back.
Fast-forward 5 years to December 2009 when our daughter was born, and I was at my heaviest weight ever, 290 pounds. I had turned camera-dodging into an art form, because I hated seeing photos of myself. But looking at the photos from the hospital (which I couldn’t easily dodge out of), I was faced with the harsh reality of what I had let myself become. Something finally clicked deep inside me, and I decided then and there that something had to be done.
I had no idea where to start. I knew that I needed to make fundamental changes to my lifestyle, so that the weight wouldn’t just end up coming back like it had so many times in the past. After a bit of searching around online, I came across Tyler’s weight loss blog, and was instantly inspired by what he had accomplished. I immediately decided that I was going to get started turning my life around, and created my blog to help keep me accountable.
In the early weeks and months, my main focus was dropping weight. In fact, I became obsessed with the scale – probably a bit too much. I was weighing myself sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, and if I had a bad weigh-in, it would put me in a bad mood all day.
Gradually, I’ve been learning to not put so much emphasis on that number staring back at me on the scale. I’ve lost 90 pounds so far, and even though I’ve got probably 10-15 pounds more that I’d like to lose, my focus lately has been much less on my weight, instead shifting to becoming the best version of me that I can be.
These days, I’m only weighing myself once a week. I’m focused on eating whole, clean, real foods that make me feel good, instead of the over-processed garbage I used to eat, usually resulting in me feeling blah. Whether I’m running my first 1/2 Marathon, or training for my first full Marathon in December, my focus is on being healthy and fit, not any particular number on the scale.
Instead of striving for a specific weight, I want to be healthy and fit for my kids, so I can run and play with them for many years to come.
I want to set a good example for my kids, so that eating healthy and being active is just the norm for them.
I want to eat clean, healthy foods that enable me to perform as well as possible.
I want to be the best version of me that I can be.
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