The Journey Begins

In January 2009, I made a decision. Actually it was really a surrendering. I finally just surrendered to the fact that I needed give up my will and came to the realization that no matter my weight, no matter how old or young I am, no matter what fitness level I am at, if I wanted to live the rest of my life healthy that I needed to incorporate exercise into my life. Little did I know, that small decision would change everything. I did not start out even thinking about weight loss. My friend and I committed to each other and we just started moving. 30 minutes a day, 4 days a week. That was the goal. I started out walking, then added toning and strength training dvds every day. (Because my friend was doing them. I stayed on level one for many months). I tried the interval training setting on the treadmill once (30 secs jogging, 90 seconds walking) and realized I wasn't going to die so I did that every other day as my cardio for many months. Keep in mind that I was doing this at 5'3" and 298 lbs. At the time I thought I was too fat to ever be doing interval training on a tread mill. Turns out, I limited myself by my mind. No, I could not run a mile (And still haven't yet without stopping at least once, but I will). I just tried things and did what I could do. Things I couldnt do I just would keep going back and trying until eventually I could do them. I remember trying the eliptical when we first started and couldn't even do it for 15 seconds without stopping. I was done after a minute. Now I can do 30 mins (okay, with 5 second stops here and there, but still!) But I took many weeks even months between trying it each time. I just went back to doing something I could do longer. In the beginning, as long as I got my 30 minutes in, I didn't care what I did as long as I was doing something.