It’s been a long journey, but I’ve finally made it. I stepped on the scale this morning to the pleasant number of 150. I hit my goal weight! Now granted, I was dehydrated and feeling like my stomach was about to eat itself alive, but it was a good feeling none the less.

A little about my journey to get here… I used to be fairly athletic when I was in high school and during college. I swam on the varsity teams at both. After I started work, though, my fitness level took a big drop. I was pretty burned out from swimming and didn’t really have anything else that I enjoyed doing. Fast forward to oh… seven years later or so. I was feeling fat and out of shape and probably not in the best state of mind (yeah, I still need to write more on that too). My co-workers had been triathletes, so I committed to turning my life and body around and I got into the sport. I started working out last August and was just over 170 pounds. I couldn’t run more than a mile straight. I owned an el’ cheapo bike that I had bought from Target, and while I could swim I had little to no swimming stamina. I was a couch potato that woke up late, had Taco Bell just about everyday for lunch and ate out for dinner almost every night. Basically, I was a heart attack in the making. Not good considering I have some family history of heart disease.

So I started watching what I ate and the first ten pounds came off pretty easily. Well, I suppose I should restate that. The first ten pounds came of easily, mostly in part because I was working out over an hour a day and only consuming about 1500 calories a day. I guess it was easy because it was a new goal and I was extremely motivated at the time. After making the initial progress though, I started eating more again. I was still working out, but wasn’t really losing any weight. By the middle of winter, my hard training for my 1/2 IM hit. I figured since I was working out more, I could indulge a little more. After the first month of hard training, my weight was no lower than when I had started. Somewhat depressing when you’re working out more than you ever had before!

It was during my second month of base training that I really decided to take a hard look at my diet and work hard to eat “right”. I educated myself as much as I could about proper nutrition and learned as much as I could about it. I finally settle down on a diet that falls somewhere between the paleo diet and the South Beach diet. Essentially, lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean cuts of meats. Minimal starches (i.e. rice, pasta, breads, etc.) and ideally only ingested after the longest and hardest of workouts. I also took to using FitDay - a free, online food and activity journal where you can carefully monitor your calorie intake and output. Properly educated and armed with the tools necessary to succeed, ten weeks and three days later I’m at my goal weight of 150.

And what’s probably best about it all is that the cravings that I used to get before I started getting serious about my nutrition have almost disappeared. Sure, I still enjoy those foods, but I rarely ever crave pizza or chicken wings or desserts like I used to. I think I’ve made good progress in making a permanent lifestyle eating habits that hopefully will stick with me throughout my life and that’s really the ultimate goal I think. Anyone can eat well for a week. I read someplace that most people can even typically diet for seven weeks before they really go back to their old eating habits. But if you can make changes in such a fashion that you can eat better for the rest of your life, then you’re really in control of yourself and your body.