Take Shape For Life: Minus 82 Pounds And Counting
Life is good! How can it not be! I’ve been on the Take Shape For Life program and I’m now minus 82 pounds and counting. Counting down to my second goal weight of 175 pounds.
As you can see by my before and after photo on the left, I have come a long way baby, in just twenty-two short weeks. I’m only a few pounds away from my second goal weight of 175 pounds. Then the question is, do I stop there? We’ll see.
Sometimes it seems like a dream. A great dream, but a dream none the less. I’m having an out of body experience. Out of my old body and into this new one. But it’s still my body! And I’m surely okay with that! I have more energy than I’ve had in over 10 years. I feel good every morning when I  awaken. No more back aches from sleeping. Sometimes I wait, like I use to; waiting for pain, but it’s just not there. Not that I’m complaining! Sometimes we are so use to being a certain way. So use to defining our existence by aches and pains, or illness, it befuddles me that these things don’t exist any longer. I have a new way to define myself—fit and healthy. How wild is that!
I do realize that the program, the food, and the ideology are only tools to help one get to that seemingly illusive place—optimum health. But I never thought I’d embrace it all so wholeheartedly, so completely. What I also realize is that I did this, I’m doing this, and I will continue to do what I’m doing to stay healthy and feel the way that I do … as long as I possibly can!
And if losing the weight and feeling better wan’t enough, I have the bonus of being able to go to the gym and work out, or speed walk, or get on my bike and do twenty miles and not feel winded or tired. It’s all very invigorating, also very different. I had reached a similar point in my life ten years ago; having gone back to the gym and lost fifty pounds. But this time it feels so much more different. It’s the realization that at fifty-five years old I feel better about myself and my life than I have in a long long time. I am energized by the things that I can now do … fearlessly.
While talking to Kelly, one of the trainers at the gym, she told me: “I love training you older guys who were never very athletic in your youth. You have no injuries to overcome.” I think that is part of why I can do all the things I can now. Kelly also gave me this little nugget: “I have a client who is now seventy-five, and he called his fifties the youth of his old age.” That little tidbit really gave me a new outlook on being fifty-five. If I take care of my health and my body now, I don’t have to fear my seventies or beyond. Pretty amazing idea in my book! Especially when I use to think I was doomed to feeling like crap and in pain for the rest of my life. It’s like getting a reprieve from a life sentence at hard labor and pain.
If I come off like this is all too good to be true, or a little overzealous, I’m soooooo not sorry. When I first came to my TSFL coach Janet back in March, I too thought the program was too good to be true and she was trying to sell me on something I wasn’t quite sure of. But on the other side of it all … it really is true and I created the results. And I am living proof this thing works!
Minus eighty-two pounds and HAPPY … oh yeah!
