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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Tuesday, August 30, 2005Losing weightLike too many people in my profession--that is, the large group of people who sit in front of a computer all day--I've put on way too much weight over the years. I'm 6' 1" tall, and arguably have a big frame (you know, like Cartman, ahem), but every year, little by little, it's just added up. I weighed 185 when I graduated from high school (1985), 167 by the end of that summer (thanks to a summer job doing construction in Albuquerque, New Mexico), and probably 200-205 or so when I got married in 1990. Add another 50 pounds and, presto, it's 2005.I've made a few good attempts at losing weight over the years, and a number of half-hearted ones. My most successful try was in 1997, when I began seeing a personal trainer in Phoenix. That was working out well, but then we moved back to Boston to get our son the medical care he needed, and that was the end of that. In late 2003, I went on the Atkins diet solely because of the many, many people I had met who had lost weight doing it. Well, let me go on record as the only person in the universe who couldn't lose weight on Atkins. After 9 months of serious work--as my wife and friends will corroborate--I had lost just 9 pounds. Dejected--and more important, sure that the diet just wasn't healthy--I stopped. The weight came back, and then some. This summer, I finally returned to the one thing that really helped, and it's been amazingly successful. If you're looking for a pill or other similar no-work cure-all, I've got bad news: Losing weight takes a lot of time and effort. I began seeing a personal trainer at Fitness Together right here in Dedham about six and a half weeks ago. So far, I've lost 18 pounds. Mind you, I still have a long, long ways to go. But there's one thing I know from my previous experiences with personal training and Atkins: I can do this. This is actually going to work. And work it is. Lots of work. I see the trainer three times a week for 45 grueling minutes. I had started out doing 20 minutes of cardio after each session, and then bumped it up to 30 minutes. Now I'm doing 30 minutes of cardio five or six days a week in addition to the workouts. I might go to 40, though I've finally eclipsed the elusive 500 calorie mark for each cardio session (I hit 540 today, which I consider excellent). And we go swimming very regularly in the summer, so that helps. In September, I'll start with weekly basketball games as well. The problem with working out is that you have to make time for it. Like many, I've tried in the past to do this, but have failed. Regularly scheduling sessions with a personal trainer has been the impetus I've needed to just do this as part of my normal schedule, and now I spend at least some time at the gym every day, even though I have an elliptical trainer and Bow-flex at home. I'll think about using those machines again when I "graduate" from Fitness Together. But first, I've got a lot more weight to lose. For the first time, I have a good feeling about that. [ Posted at 11:49 AM | Permalink ]
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