My Journey With Health And Fitness – A New Name

Ok, I have seriously overbooked myself. Today I was supposed to take the dog to the vet in the morning and then take my brother out for some fun as he has surgery tomorrow. However, to pull that off meant getting up obscenely early to do a 10k run and then a 6k walk so that I could be on the road with the dog by 9:30am. Then tomorrow I have to have my brother at a hospital downtown by 6:45am and then wait for him there for 5-6 hours. To pull that off while still getting work outs done I’ll have to do a couple really long walks through Stanley Park. To make matters worse, when I was out walking today the veterinary clinic called to cancel the appointment as the vet called in sick. Sigh, getting up for a pre-dawn run was for nothing.

My husband was watching me as I typed my blog on Tuesday and said it is time for a new name for this blog. As he pointed out, it hasn’t exactly been about weight loss for a long time now. He suggested that I consider what it is I am really posting about and what it will be going forward. That got me reflecting a bit on what it is I want to convey.

I realize when I started this blog it was about how I had gone from being obese to having a normal BMI. I have been pretty open about this journey and all the bumps in the road that I have discovered along the way. I started the blog because of the number of people who kept telling me how I had inspired them to start working on their weight and I know many of them follow my blog. However, I think that part of my story is fairly complete.

I thought about what my ultimate goal in all of this has been and that took some time as it has morphed, quite frankly, a lot. Once I had reached my goal weight back in January 2021 was when I decided I wanted to take up running and be able to run 10k (how small a goal that seems to be now). I met that goal last summer and doing that training had seen me drop even more pounds. Then the beginning of this year my coach told me I should train to run a 1/2 marathon and it was less than a month ago that I met that goal. Now I am working on improving my speed for my next 1/2 marathon.

But along the way there has been added benefits that I may not have consciously anticipated. Ok, the fitness part is kind of a no brainer. When you work out as much as I do you can’t help but get fit. And by that I mean the most fit I have ever been in my life. If I look at my Fitbit it tells my my cardio fitness is very good (though they then say ‘for a woman your age’ which I kind of resent). Moreover, my resting heart rate is now at the top part of ‘great’ teetering on the ‘excellent’ range. As well, to say my arms and legs are buff is an understatement so yeah, this journey has been a lot about fitness.

The thing that is probably most surprising is my health. Before I started on this journey I had been diagnosed with diabetes and had for probably 1.5 decades been taking medication for high blood pressure. As I lost weight my glucose levels slowly started coming down and my medication was reduced. Then I started running and my glucose got into normal range ultimately leading to being taken off all diabetes medication. My blood pressure dropped significantly to the point where that medication was removed as well. In February my doctor declared me to be very healthy and pleaded with me to keep doing what I am doing to stay this way. I assured her I am committed to doing just that.

So, I’ve rebranded this journey to be about health and fitness because I think that truly reflects where I am today.