Here we are, Being Unconquerable. Thanks again for taking The Path to Unconquerable with me. Like I said before, it was a tough journey to revisit, but it was important for me to go through it all again. As I mentioned in my first posts, a lot of that was shared on my private Facebook page years ago, and some of it was brand-new writing. Regardless, I made it through, and it’s time to move forward.
These Being Unconquerable posts will be, I’m hoping, weekly. I want to keep them conversational, talk about the wins and losses of the past week, share my goals for the coming week, and provide physical status updates. I really want to keep this interesting and engaging, and I fully expect every one of you to call me out if they get repetitive or dull.
With that out of the way, let’s get to this past week…
OK, the biggest news from the past week was passing my Certified Personal Trainer exam. I’ve been working on that curriculum since early May. To be honest, it was wearing me down. But it’s done, I have the certification, and the next step is to get placed at a gym for my “Gymternship.” This is an 8-week, 80-hour program where I’m working in a gym getting practical experience. I’m looking forward to it and should be placed somewhere locally by November.
On the usual grind side, it was a pretty typical work week. A couple of shifts at the store and the full-time job.
For exercise, I pulled three CrossFit sessions, a spin class this morning, and an hour of weight training after that. Diet is still hit or miss—I really need to take the time to prep some of my meals for the week. I feel like that will be a game changer.
On the mental health front, I can happily report I am completely off the Zoloft. My anxiety is very manageable right now, and with my doctor’s support, we successfully titrated me off it. I fully believe that this was possible because of the therapy I’ve been working on and getting my activity levels back up. I also understand there will be ups and downs, but right now I’m in a good place. I learned something about myself yesterday that answered a few questions I’ve had. I’m not fully ready to talk about it yet, but once I get a better handle on it, I’ll share it.
This past week I’ve also been thinking about goals. I’ve set a weight goal of 225 pounds. That is when I felt the best. I am trying to do this in a healthy and practical way, and I’m not rushing it. Before I started this journey back up, I had reached 294.1 pounds on March 9. That was the heaviest I had been since March 6, 2017, when I weighed 293.9 pounds. Since March 9, I have lost 13.2 pounds—putting me at 280.9 pounds right now—which equals 4.5% of my starting weight. Reaching that 225-pound goal would be 69.1 pounds lost. As of today, I am 19.1% there.
To help incentivize my loss and maintain progress, I’ve decided to put my reward system back into place. This time, I am going to base it on percentages, and each reward will happen at every 25% lost. While I don’t have things in mind yet for the remaining benchmarks, for 25% I am going to start running again. That will be at 276.8 pounds and a total of 17.3 pounds lost—meaning I’m just 4.1 pounds away. I am choosing that mark for running based on previous conversations with my doctor. And to be clear, I want consecutive days or a weekly average of 276.8 pounds or less before I start running.
To fix that hit-or-miss diet, another goal this week will be doing some meal prep for both breakfast and lunch. I will need to give that some thought today and tomorrow, but I want to be sure that I have the time to do the prep and not be rushed. I’ll try to come up with a few more realistic and obtainable goals during the week.
Finally, this week is going to be busy. I have a couple of doctor appointments, a blood work appointment, and the big thing... Weezer in Brooklyn!! I am also on the schedule to work and work out, so I’ll try to get posts for that up as they happen.
I hope everyone has a great week. As always, please feel free to comment or message me at any time—and if you have any good ideas for those 50% and 75% benchmark rewards, let me know. Thanks for reading!!
