Up until about a year ago, one of the pre-dominant themes of my posts had been my difficulties with weight loss and the obvious wrench my penchant for sweets (and lots of them) tended throw into those efforts.
Anyone who has followed this blog for longer than the last 13 months is probably already familiar with some of my background in this area:
When I got married nearly nine years ago, I was at or below about 225 lbs. [Such were the delightful days of never having to pay attention to the scale.] This is roughly what I weighed during the halcyon days of high school and college basketball.
Three years later, by the time I started law school, I had ballooned to about 310 lbs. Indeed, I remember distinctly a sister of mine playfully referred to me as "tubby," which nickname was not so playfully received. While it still seems an odd thing that I, or anyone, could simply "let themselves go" that much, my efforts to reverse course could never quite overcome the allure of an evening half gallon of ice cream or a lunch time package of Oreos.
It was with the onset of winter 2002 (and first semester, 1st year law school exams) that I began making headway. There were lots of bitterly cold mornings where I ran around the Charles River (in Cambridge), and occassionally even exercised a modicum of eating control.
As my posts -- especially my earlier posts -- have documented, it has been anything but a direct path since then. Little by little, however, my habits seem to have steadily improved. My motivation in recent years has been in attaining the "Preferred Select" class of life insurance -- the top class that garners the cheapest rates.
Last year I narrowly missed for a few reasons: (1) the nurse doing the physical measured me at 6' 6" -- and refused to budge on that measurement -- which lowered my weight class [in other words, I had to weigh less at 6' 6" for the preferred select class than I would have at 6' 7"]; (2) though I was near the top of the weight range [around 240 lbs.] I'd lost more than 10 lbs. in the preceding 12 months to get there, which apparently is a ding on your application.
Hence, to achieve that level of nirvana, I had to maintain my weight for a year and then reapply. Largely out of fear that I may have gained weight [especially after a particularly egregious Christmas season], I didn't weigh myself at all in the intervening months, until about 3 weeks ago.
This week -- 13 months after my last life insurance physical -- I had another. Not only did the nurse this time measure me at 6' 7", she then added another inch putting me at 6' 8" because I was barefoot (and she said they expect a measurement with shoes on). I then weighed in at 222 lbs, hopefully securing for the next 29 years the "preferred select" premium for life insurance coverage.
The days since that physical have felt odd. For all intents and purposes, I'm back to where I was nine years. For the first time in a long time, I have no real reason (or need) to diet, and no particular goal pushing me out the door to go running in the morning (besides maintaining, and perhaps balancing out the treats I intend to eat later in the day/week).
The truth seems to be that I've spent so much time striving to get here that I almost don't know what to do with myself now [though if you're in the area in the next 20 minutes, you'll probably catch me plodding up a nearby hill and later even running past a local donut shop.
It does feel good to be back.
