A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step ... and Then Many, Many More Steps

   I’m a journalist at heart.

   I spent most of the first 17 years of my career—plus four years of college—inside a newsroom.

   Being a journalist can lead to a very sedentary lifestyle. It can also lend itself to some bad decisions when it comes to food.

   I can recall many all-you-can-eat pizza buffet lunches in college, as well as late-night runs to the local convenience store for two-for-a-dollar “Death Dogs” and Jolt Cola. I have many memories of evening shifts in the Montgomery Newspapers sports department where we’d order a couple pizzas and Cokes at 8:30 PM and snack on it throughout the night.

   And over those 17 years, those decisions were compounded by poor choices at home and lack of exercise. And I got heavier and heavier.

With my daughter Sydnee at her bat mitzvah in April 2016. I
weighed about 325 pounds, was unable to button my
jacket or the collar of my shirt, and my wedding ring
no longer fit on my ring finger.

   I’d tried numerous times over the years to shed the weight. Sometimes, a diet-and-exercise plan would last two weeks. Sometimes, a week. Sometimes, until dinner. And despite all the places where I should have been able to find the motivation to lose weight and get healthy, I kept coming up short.

   When my nephew went skydiving to celebrate his 18^th birthday, I told him that I’d lose weight to get under the 250-pound weight limit and go skydiving with him. It never happened.

   As both my daughters’ bat mitzvahs approached, I knew there would be rounds and rounds of family photos that I wouldn’t want to see myself in if I looked the way I did. I couldn’t drop the weight.

   Most importantly, I watched as my father suffered—and continues to suffer—through diabetes, two heart attacks, renal failure, and myriad other health issues brought on by poor eating habits and lack of exercise, and I couldn’t even find the proper motivation knowing that I was walking down that same path.

   Sometimes, the motivation comes from a place you wouldn’t expect.

   In March of 2017, an all-staff email appeared in my inbox at AlphaBioCom. Our company president was inquiring if anyone was interested in joining him in the Philadelphia Half-Marathon or Marathon in November. A few days later, he stopped by the editorial department to follow up on his email. After asking the rest of the department, he turned to me.

   “Craig, are you in?”

   “I’m sorry, have you seen me lately?” At this point, I was tipping the scales at about 323 pounds.

   “I’ve seen people twice your size do it.”

   “First of all … no, you haven’t. Second of all … I could probably walk 13 miles.”

   “Great! You’re in.”

   Shortly thereafter, I let my wife know that in eight months, I would be competing in the Philadelphia Half-Marathon. Up to that point in my life, the closest I’d ever come to a marathon was watching three seasons of Game of Thrones in a week-and-a-half. I don’t recall the exact words of her understandably supportive response, but I do remember that it included “insane” and “heart attack.”

   We in the editorial department joked about it for a few days before a thought popped into my head. “You know, I don’t want to embarrass myself. Maybe I should at least try to get into a little better shape.”

   I’ve never been able to follow diet plans, point plans, and the like. But I found that I was able to take tips and habits from others, and it turned into my own plan. And I started doing a lot of things I never thought I’d do.

   I started drinking protein shakes for breakfast, and spent time on Sunday nights preparing lower-calorie and higher-protein meals to pack for lunch every day. I had a consultation at my gym with a trainer who suggested that I add some weight training before my cardio activities. I downloaded at-home workout videos and began waking up early to run through a video each morning. I bought a fitness tracker to keep me motivated to hit 10,000 steps a day and used its app to help keep track of my calories. And perhaps most shocking of all, I purchased compression pants.

   My exercise plan was simple: Hit my 10,000 steps every day. Get to the gym at least three times per week, and on the days I didn’t get to the gym, do a workout video in the morning and walk around the neighborhood at night.

   I learned some important things along the way:

•          Slow and easy is the way to go. At 323 pounds, there was no way I could start training for the marathon right away. For the first several months, I worked on my cardio by walking in the neighborhood or on a treadmill, or used the elliptical at the gym. It wasn’t until I lost 40 pounds or so that I began running.
•      You’ve heard this one before, but, it’s not about dieting, it’s about changing your eating habits. Cutting out certain foods simply doesn’t work for me. I need the occasional pizza, burger, or handful of potato chips. I just made sure I was eating at the right times, burning off more calories than I was consuming, and practicing portion control. And if I cheated … which I did … I didn’t beat myself up over it. I just tried to do better the next day.
•      Sometimes, you’re going to look stupid. I always avoided the elliptical because it looked so silly. But it gave me the relative motion of running without the pounding on my knees and feet. I made sure to do the workout videos only when no one else was home because I was embarrassed for anyone to see me. After a while, I stopped caring. It became more important to get in shape than to look silly to total strangers who didn’t care anyway, or to my family, who hopefully understood that I was doing this for them as well as for myself.
•      There may be nothing more important than having an accountability buddy. When I downloaded the same workout videos that a colleague was using, I was greeted every morning with, “Did you do the video last night?” When I didn’t, I heard about it. It kept me honest, and kept me motivated.

   At a doctor’s visit in early April, I weighed 320 pounds. When I went back in late June, I was at 282. Three months later, I was down to 261.

   There were, of course, setbacks along the way. On August 5, in my first 5K, I came out of the run with a fractured elbow (don’t ask). That derailed my weight-training and workout videos for several months. And in mid-September, some issues with cramping in my right calf forced me to cut down on the cardio for a few weeks.

   Still, I kept focused, and while my weight went down, my cardio and endurance went up. I dropped well below “pre-diabetic” and “morbidly obese” levels for the first time in numerous years. My blood pressure and cholesterol went down.

   And on November 18, following a week filled with a lot of self-doubt and nerves, I lined up with eight of my coworkers and ran in the Philadelphia Half-Marathon. We ran when we could, walked when we needed to, and three hours later, I crossed the finish line of an event that nine months earlier, I could never have even conceived that I could have finished.

Me at the end of the Philadelphia Half-Marathon in
November. I weigh about 255 pounds, am down two
pants sizes, and I can wear (and button) an older suit that
I hadn't been able to fit in for at least four years. My
wedding ring still doesn't fit (now, it's too big).

  But while I may have crossed a finish line on that day, I did not reach my ultimate finish line, nor will I ever. I know that I will battle my urges for the rest of my life when it comes to making healthy choices with foods and exercise.

   I do not enjoy exercising. I do not feel energized and powered up after a workout. I do not go to the gym because I want to. I go because I know that I have to. Every time that I go to the gym or the park, I do so against every desire telling me that it’s far easier to sit on the sofa watching TV. And every quarter-mile I run, every step I take, I do so through a conscious effort to continue running when every bone in my body tells me to walk the rest of the way, or just stop completely. My fitness tracker may give me a goal to aspire to, but getting there is a challenge, every day, every step.

   Nor do I ever foresee a day where my food preferences will change. I will always take a pepperoni pizza over a low-calorie wrap. I will always prefer a handful of M&Ms or Doritos to a handful of grapes. So I need to remain vigilant that I am making the right decisions when it comes to what, when, and how much I eat.

***

   I entered 2017 weighing nearly 325 pounds. I was tired all the time, always felt stuffed, and hated the way I looked. I enter 2018 about 70 pounds lighter, with more muscle and energy, less joint stiffness, and I sleep better (mostly because I no longer snore, so I’m not awoken multiple times at night by my wife telling me to stop snoring). And as I look ahead to 2018, I’ve got a few more firsts I’d like to accomplish. I’d like to try skiing and ziplining, and my nephew is now 28, so I’m hoping that the next time he’s in town, we can finally book that skydiving outing that's a decade overdue.

   As for the continued motivation from my workmates, we’re eyeing another half-marathon, a Spartan Sprint or mud run, and many will join me as I return after a five-year hiatus to the ACS Bikeathon this summer.

***

   You never know where inspiration is going to come from.

   As recently as four years ago, the thought that I would no longer be involved in journalism was incomprehensible to me. The concept that I would one day be an editor at a medical communications company was not even in my universe of thought.

   As recently as one year ago, the thought that I could run in a half-marathon was just as incomprehensible to me. Yet I’ve got a ringing Liberty Bell medal that proves that I accomplished just that.

   We all hope to find jobs where we can have an effect on others, and maybe make the world a little better. If we’re really lucky, we become better ourselves. I found a job three years ago that has helped me to become a better editor and a better manager. I never expected that it would also help me become a healthier—and better—person as well. And whether my colleagues helped me directly or indirectly—whether they are aware of their influence or not—I hope they know that I am eternally grateful for their help and inspiration.

   And that I continue to curse their names with every step that I run.

  

   If anyone is interested in more detail on my regimen, I'm happy to share if it helps others. Please feel free to email me here or leave a comment below. I want to note, obviously, that I am not a doctor or a fitness trainer. What worked for me might not work for you. All I know is that if someone as lazy as me can go from couch potato to half-marathon, you can too.