Andy's Guest Post

We all have our different stories and reasons for wanting to lose weight, here is mine.

I have always been a big guy, not overly fat necessarily just a burly fella ya know. It was once said I got the German body while my oldest brother got the skinny Irish one, and my middle brother got half and half (normal). It has been this way as long as I can remember and in Jr./High School I was pretty heavy into lifting weights in addition to Football. At one point during my Junior year I was even bench pressing 310lbs, and weighed around 210 at graduation. However as time and life went on, and my love affair with food grew to unmatched heights during culinary school and a 12 year stint as a chef, so did my weight. I forbade exercise in my life and relished beer, cigars, hard partying, and food for years. What could go wrong? I am in my 20s, I am invincible right?

That is until about a year back when I went in for a routine Doctor checkup expecting the usual "Well you could stand to lose a little weight but damn, your healthy as a horse!" only to be told that my cholesterol was very high and my blood pressure was getting there. I figured the test must have been wrong because I didn't fast beforehand. So 3 months later I got tested again, for real this time and I was going to prove that Doctor wrong and show her that my cholesterol is juuuuust fine. Wouldn't ya know it but it went UP 25 points! (Sonofa!) Ok, so that is a sign that I need to change my lifestyle right? Yes so I did what the men in my family do best and ignored it.

That is until September of this year when on a lark I weighed myself to see that I was a whopping 270 pounds! This was the biggest I had ever been, and to make matters worse my wife had mentioned that very same day that she was at 135. I was exactly 2 times her size and it was no longer muscle mass. Something HAD to change. Diabetes and high blood pressure both run in my family and I hate medical afflictions of all kinds because they mean inconvienance, expense, and Doctor visits hell they are just plain annoying. If I can avoid being diabetic that is reason enough to lose weight. By absolute coincidence Sunshine told me just a week later about this pool. This was just what I needed to drive myself. I need routine and competition to stick to any sort of diet alteration much less exercise. So I dragged my feet for a week or so just working on it on my own and finally joined up. I started my own program at the same time as the pool but made it official a week later.

I am a realist and skeptic at heart so I refuse to take any sort of magic pills, get surgery, or buy diet quick fixes off infomercials. I believe that weight loss is just as everything else in life is, you need to make up your mind to do it is all, no excuses. When I cheat, it's because I let myself cheat as a reward and it only comes in the form of a meal not a snack. When I don't deserve a reward, I don't get one. So far it's been working out pretty well and while the weekly losses are varied I have managed to drop 23 lbs total. It would be great to get down to 230 (17 to go) and fabulous to see 210 (37 to go) again so those are my 2 goals I am shooting for.

Anyway, that is my story of how I got in the pool.
Andy