Hi all,
I'm a 36 year old male from Belgium, and I've been obese all my life. For as long as I can remember I've been having problems with my weight, with the exception of ages 15-18 when I was a big skateboarding fan. However, university life made sure I gained weight again.
In the month of April 2011 I started doing a lot of work on the house and the garden, and I noticed my clothes became a bit looser fitting. As I hadn't weighed myself in many years (no scales in the house that could handle my weight), I started wondering about my weight. I went to the store and purchased scales that indicated they could handle 160kg.
It was the coldest shower of my life when I mounted them and they read "error". I'm a big man (187cm), but never in my life had I imagined I could weigh more than 160kg.
After a few days I gained enough courage to go out and purchase a new scale, this time one that could handle 220kg.
To give you an idea how shaken I was, I went to a different store to buy this scales, as I was afraid the clerck from the first store would recognise me from before and make the link that I had maxed out on the scales I purchased; ridiculous in hindsight, but that's how I felt.
Anyway, the new scales indicated 180.0kg (i.e. 397 pounds). I've never been on a real diet in my life, but I decided to make a serious change to my lifestyle.
Around the end of april 2011, I bought a book that explained the importance of motivation, of calorie deficit, exercise combined with weight lifting, the BS in pill diets, and showed to me that there were people before me that had achieved the task before me. It was and is a great help, but still the task seemed almost insurmontable: calculating with a realistic weight loss of around 0.5-1kg a week, I had to go on a diet for 1.5years at least! I realised that I could not look at this as a "diet", but a real change in lifestyle. There was no way I was going to stick to a diet for 1.5 years!
I started walking, short distances at first. I dusted off my old home trainer which I had bought many years before but never used (it actually has a weight limit of 99kg, but holds up fine
), Bought some dumbbells, gave my old mountain bike some maintenance (it is so old I had to buy some replacement parts at a vintage bike outlet on Ebay!), and purchased a Wii fit.
I've been sticking to a calorie-counting diet for 3 months now, I do all of the exercises mentioned above on a weekly basis (helped by a fitness watch with built-in motivational program, I'm an IT geek) and I've shed 15.5 KG combined with a SERIOUS improvement in fitness: I can walk 15km, Every sunday I mountain bike 15-20 hilly KM, and I have to set my home trainer on max to get my heart rate up high enough.
I firmly intend to continue with this, as I feel better than I have in many years. After 3 months I think I'm serious enough to stick to it, so this is why I am allowing myself to join this forum. There are difficult periods, there are friends inviting us for dinners (my wife is model-like slender, she supports me but she also likes our friends), there are cravings and sometimes I give in. Hopefully this forum can give me the support I need to deal with those moments in an appropriate way, and I hope to gain some courage from people here who have achieved or are achieving the same seemingly insurmountable task.
Thanks for reading my story, and hope to talk to you soon!
I'm a 36 year old male from Belgium, and I've been obese all my life. For as long as I can remember I've been having problems with my weight, with the exception of ages 15-18 when I was a big skateboarding fan. However, university life made sure I gained weight again.
In the month of April 2011 I started doing a lot of work on the house and the garden, and I noticed my clothes became a bit looser fitting. As I hadn't weighed myself in many years (no scales in the house that could handle my weight), I started wondering about my weight. I went to the store and purchased scales that indicated they could handle 160kg.
It was the coldest shower of my life when I mounted them and they read "error". I'm a big man (187cm), but never in my life had I imagined I could weigh more than 160kg.
After a few days I gained enough courage to go out and purchase a new scale, this time one that could handle 220kg.
To give you an idea how shaken I was, I went to a different store to buy this scales, as I was afraid the clerck from the first store would recognise me from before and make the link that I had maxed out on the scales I purchased; ridiculous in hindsight, but that's how I felt.
Anyway, the new scales indicated 180.0kg (i.e. 397 pounds). I've never been on a real diet in my life, but I decided to make a serious change to my lifestyle.
Around the end of april 2011, I bought a book that explained the importance of motivation, of calorie deficit, exercise combined with weight lifting, the BS in pill diets, and showed to me that there were people before me that had achieved the task before me. It was and is a great help, but still the task seemed almost insurmontable: calculating with a realistic weight loss of around 0.5-1kg a week, I had to go on a diet for 1.5years at least! I realised that I could not look at this as a "diet", but a real change in lifestyle. There was no way I was going to stick to a diet for 1.5 years!
I started walking, short distances at first. I dusted off my old home trainer which I had bought many years before but never used (it actually has a weight limit of 99kg, but holds up fine
), Bought some dumbbells, gave my old mountain bike some maintenance (it is so old I had to buy some replacement parts at a vintage bike outlet on Ebay!), and purchased a Wii fit.I've been sticking to a calorie-counting diet for 3 months now, I do all of the exercises mentioned above on a weekly basis (helped by a fitness watch with built-in motivational program, I'm an IT geek
) and I've shed 15.5 KG combined with a SERIOUS improvement in fitness: I can walk 15km, Every sunday I mountain bike 15-20 hilly KM, and I have to set my home trainer on max to get my heart rate up high enough.I firmly intend to continue with this, as I feel better than I have in many years. After 3 months I think I'm serious enough to stick to it, so this is why I am allowing myself to join this forum. There are difficult periods, there are friends inviting us for dinners (my wife is model-like slender, she supports me but she also likes our friends
), there are cravings and sometimes I give in. Hopefully this forum can give me the support I need to deal with those moments in an appropriate way, and I hope to gain some courage from people here who have achieved or are achieving the same seemingly insurmountable task.Thanks for reading my story, and hope to talk to you soon!
