20181121 Healthy Vet Introduction Part 1
I let myself go after I retired from the Navy, this is my journey back to fitness and I'd like for you to join me.
As you can see, I don't have a professional studio to record in. I'm recording in my messy spare bedroom with a basic Logitech webcam.
Here is a little of my back story: In January of 2018 I got really weak and fell ill. I ended up taking three different anti-biotics back to back. I started losing a pound a week and I was totally miserable. In February, I lost a great paying job because I couldn't find the stamina to get up and go to work. My systems administrator and I got along really well but like all jobs, they needed a warm body in the chair completing tasks and I couldn't do it at that time. In March, I developed a very painful ulcer. I studied what foods were best to eat with an ulcer and they worked, but anything I gained was only temporary. I'd work all day calming my stomach down but as soon as I laid down, I would have to get back up because the pain was so intense. When I did sleep, I only slept for a few hours at a time. I honestly started wondering about my mortality.
This caused me to completely rethink my life. I took a deep, hard look at how I was living, and I asked myself a lot of questions. The main question was "What do I have to change to heal my ulcer and make sure it never comes back?"
I started researching everything I could about ulcers, what caused them, what healed them and what to do from there. I went back to the basics of life, basic foods, basic exercices, sleeping techniques, etc. I learned that basic broths and soft foods could be helpful, so that is where I started. I made sure I balanced my macronutrients to get a healthy ratio of fats, proteins and carbohydrates and I drank a lot of water. I later learned that probiotics could help with the imbalance of good bacteria and bad bacteria that probably got out of whack when I was on the anti-biotics earlier in the year. That helped, but only a little. It wasn't until my wife messed up and bought the wrong type of probiotics that things really turned around. She bought a dual action probiotic and within a week, I could sleep four hours instead of three and I started feeling better. During this time, I progressed a little and it gave me a little confidence in the research I was doing and in my ability to take control of my health.
I continued to lose a pound a week for the first 18 weeks of 2018 and then finally settled out in May. We purchased a house and my daughter graduated from high school. The move was brutal because I wasn't feeling all that well yet and my lower back screamed for mercy. My days and nights were all flipped around backwards and I was exhausted all the time. Throught it all, I made sure I walked. Walking helped my stomach settle a little and it helped me feel like I was doing something besides sitting in front of the computer all day. I've walked anywhere from three to five miles a day every day since I retired in 2010 but now, walking seemed like a lifeline.
In mid-June, I started to gain a little weight back and I started feeling a little better.
After several weeks of gaining a pound a week, I decided I wanted to intentionally lose some weight and get back in shape. Around the third week of July, I sat down and thought about what I could repeat to create weight loss. I created a diet and exercise plan. I immediately started taking a pound off a week, every week, but this time I was doing it on purpose and it felt great.
In this video series, I'll be sharing what I've learned after months of struggling and tell you a little more about my fight to get back to being healthy.
I have a few medical issues that I have to navigate around, things like sleep apnea, a chronic hiatal hernia and a degenerative disk in my lower back, but I'm pressing forward.
In this video, I talk about buying equipment to get started and what exercises to start with. I'll explain more in the next video.
