(I'm at 1:11 wearing a scarf)

What Started this Weight Loss?

So what started this weight loss that I'm on?  Well there isn't one reason.  First there was the problem that in the first 3 years since moving to Vancouver I had gained 75 pounds.    I don't blame this city, I blame the job I have now.  Before moving here I worked some very physical jobs, but for the last 5 years my job has taken place at a desk and therefore I don't move around very much.

But that's not what got to start loosing weight.  At the end of 2008 I had a blood clot in my leg.  I wasn't even 30 yet and I was having a serious health problem.  This bugged me a lot but I was making the excuse that I was too busy with work and school to have the time to start running so I did almost nothing about my health.  Well I guess that's not completely true because I did try to eat less and a year later I weighted in 10 pounds lighter, but I know now that I could have done more.

Skip ahead to February 2010 and since I couldn't get tickets to the Olympic events that I wanted to go to, I decided to take the money I saved up and take a trip to Anaheim.  I was so excited, it was my first trip to Disneyland it 5 years and I had a lot of fun there except when on a few rides, I had trouble getting the safety restraints on.  Now I was able to get them on, on every ride, but there were a few times I struggled and almost was removed from the ride.  Space Mountain was the worst as the safety bar was squeezing my legs to the point where I was in pain for the whole 2 minutes of the ride.  This was a little scary for me.  If I was just a little larger I could be unable to ever go to Disneyland again and enjoy it.

So now I really felt that I needed to start running again, but I needed that last push to get started, and now when I look back at what finally got me to start loosing weight, I know it really wasn't much.  By that summer I read about a guy named Banks Lee who was removed from the new Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios because he was too big and so he started a weight loss blog.  I guess that I just felt if he could do it then I could too.  I set my goal easy at first,  to loose 25 pounds by December and If I do then I will go back to Disneyland.  I'm proud to say that I made my goal (just barley) and I had a wonderful time at Disneyland.  I did have an issue getting on Space Mountain, but it was no where as bad as before.

After my trip, I kept on loosing weight.  If you watched the video above, that was me running in my first and so far only 5k event.  I have lost 60 pounds from my 2008 max and I have set a new goal of loosing another 55 pounds by January 2013.  When I ran in that last 5k, I really wasn't ready to run the full distance, but I am now and I'm looking at running in another one soon.  I don't know which one because I have a little ankle injury right now, but I hope to figure this out soon.