My Personal Journal: The History

I've kept a running record of my fitness and nutrition journey in
various places over the years, but decided this week that I should add
this information to the Train Your Brain for Fitness blog. Since I'm
51, this could take a while!
The short story is that with only periodic exceptions, I did not spend
much time thinking about fitness and nutrition until about five years
ago. I say "periodic" because I have always been aware of the
importance of these things, and would occasionally do something to
improve the way I ate or to increase physical exercise, but for the
most part I just flowed along with the masses around me, eating fast
food, heavy Southern cooking, lots of high calorie sweets, drinking
soda, sweet tea, beer, etc. And mostly I didn't exercise. I bought
various pieces of exercise equipment such as a stationary bike and
some kind of universal contraption, and then proceeded to not use
either on a regular basis. I would occasionally increase exercise
through walking, but nothing that was consistent or focused on what I
really needed.
As a result, I went from being a skinny high school girl to a plumper
and plumper woman who seemed to add about ten or fifteen pounds per
decade until I found myself in my forties shopping in the plus size
racks.
My maximum size was about 200 pounds and a size 18 in clothes. I'm
five feet six inches tall and my body shape is a good one, so I
carried this weight pretty well and knew how to dress to maximum
advantage, but I was still aware that I was overweight and more to the
point, not fit and healthy. I had bad eating habits born of not
wanting to devote the energy needed to preparing good foods,
gratification from the sweet-and-salty munching pattern, and poor
judgment about what was "good," (e.g., high calorie carbs, high fat
content foods, things I thought tasted good.) I no longer even
pretended to exercise. Interestingly, my annual physicals showed me
to be in good health, with the only negative being my actual weight.
I think this is because my annual physical focused on things like
heart rate, lung function, blood tests and urinalysis, and paid
absolutely no attention to muscle tone, strength, endurance, etc.
Around 2005, I started paying more attention to fitness. (Note I did
not say nutrition.) This is probably linked to the fact that I had
changed jobs, taking one with a national-scope program which put me in
front of audiences around the country, and a change of location which
moved me from the south to the east coast. More people around me were
focusing on health than previously. I also had a friend who was
staying with me for a while who started making use of the gym in my
apartment complex and she pushed me into working out with her. I was
also starting a new relationship with a guy and was thinking more
about my appearance.
I came to like the exercise (mostly treadmill and elliptical
workouts), and I liked the results. I lost weight and felt better. I
wasn't weighing myself at this time, so I don't know my actual weight,
but I was able to fit into size twelve pants. This lasted about a
year until I, for whatever reason, didn't manage to maintain the
exercise.
The good news for me during this period is that I had really started
thinking about my over-all fitness and health. It was no longer a
surface consideration about how clothes fit me, but a real concern for
my health. I was tired of the size roller coaster and decided to put
some real consideration into how I could take control.
Late in 2006, when I no longer fit comfortably into my size twelve
pants and was purchasing fourteens and even sixteens again, I hired a
personal trainer. This was an admission that whatever it was going to
take to give me control of my fitness, I didn't know how to do it
myself. I needed guidance, information and someone to hold me
accountable. I was also pretty sure that if I was going to spend the
kind of money it takes to hire a personal trainer that I'd give the
whole thing the attention it really deserved.
Even this did not miraculously resolve all of my issues, but I did
start learning about fitness and nutrition. The introduction of
really focusing on nutrition in addition to exercise was a key factor
which set in motion the life-change needed to get real and permanent
results. Knowledge about what to eat and how to exercise was not all
that was needed, but it certainly gave me a base from which to work,
and to which I could return when the roller coaster took me up again.
This then, was the real beginning of my journey to better health,
fitness and nutrition. While better late than never is a true
summation, there is nothing particularly smart about waiting till I
was nearly 48 to do this. My sincere hope is that people will start
learning and implementing well-known facts about how to be healthy and
fit at a much younger age than did I. It's not exactly rocket
science, but it's definitely not built into our current culture.
Though my poor condition manifested in excess weight, there are many
thin people who are not fit either. Though fitness is often measured
in body size, it is not really about size. It's about strength,
endurance, balance, flexibility, strong bones, good skin, good
cardiovascular function, etc. While the resiliency of youth can hide
a lot of the damage our life-styles can have on fitness, it begins to
show up as we age and then we're in the position of having to do the
best we can with what's left. It would be much smarter to set all
this in motion while we are at optimal potential for good health and
fitness. Nevertheless, I'm dedicated to seeing how far I can get with
better late than never!