Road to Fitness Forth Anniversary

Forth Anniversary Restart 

Five years ago I started DDPYOGA. I had great success.....for 9 months.  Then I had a year or two of slowly gaining some weight back.  Now I am pretty much right back where I was five years ago.  I haven't stepped on a scale in a while, and I am waiting until I can get an appointment with my new primary care doctor so I can keep I consistent, accurate record of my weight.  Over this week I will get my measurements and take my "six pics".
My plan is to use this blog as a daily blog about my journey.  I am starting all over from Day 1.  I am using the DDPYOGANOW app, Beginner 2.0 program.  I am adding in workouts my off days.  I know this is best for me from my experience last time.  Here is what my next two weeks look like.  The program is 13 weeks.

Today was my first workout and here are the stats:  

Well, it all makes sense, sort of.....

Over the last several dozen months I have tried and tried to "restart" my road to fitness.  All of those restarts have crashed and burned, and man I was on the verge of giving up.
Then it happened.  SEVERE, debilitating neck pain.  I made an appointment with a  doctor I knew was good with these type of things.  During our first appointment he did some type of injections directly into the nerves in my neck and gave me a prescription for some pain killers in the some term.  After a couple of days the pain started to calm a bit (like down to 7/10 instead of 10/10).  During the next appointment I was able to give him a better history of the pain and where it radiated to.  He told me to get an MRI.  Luckily I was able to get the MRI that Saturday and was able to see my doctor within a couple of days.  Well, it turns out I have a "Protruding Cervical Disc with Cervical Cord Impingement".  While my doctor was careful to explain the difference between that and a "herniated disc" I still am confused between the two.
It also appears this is not a new, or acute, injury.  This seems to have been something that happened a while back and went un-diagnosed.
It appears that I am 50/50 for neck surgery at this point, but I really hope to avoid that with the use of some therapy in the doctor's office and DDPYOGA at home, when he clears me for it.
So, while I am certainly very, very concerned about the my neck.  I am very relieved to know that there was a reason I wasn't able to train through the pain.  A lesson that everyone needs to learn.  As DDP says in the video's "Pain is Pain".  And another saying that my doctor is having to remind me.  "No pain does not mean no problem".  I will continue to go see my doctor weekly for the foreseeable future, and will only do what he clears me to do.

Restart #1,000,001, Let's see how it goes!!!!

As the title states, this is my unknown number restart.

Let's start at the beginning of my Journey.   This all started WAY BACK in the year of 2013.  I was a very out of shape, very depressed 35, soon to turn 36 year old, who had a decision to make.  Do I allow myself to sink deeper into my couch potato lifestyle or do I make a change?  I have been overweight all of my adult life, and much of my childhood.  I could go into a long debate about social exposure vs hereditary causes, but lets just say no matter which you believe, I had the bad side of both.    Both of my parents are of 'large stock'.  My mother regularly served insanely large portions of lasagna and spaghetti. That is not a knock on her, as far as she knew that is how a mother shows a family love.  Both had been raised the finish your plate mentality and passed it onto me.
Anyway, back on track, I was very much becoming less and less active.  At the time I was a stay at home dad for one kid and he was starting elementary school.    
Demons were faced, decisions were made and I committing to improving my life with DDPYOGA.  and man was I hooked. By day 3 I was noticing, not just small changes, but significant life style changes.  Day 3 sticks out to me because that is the day I bent over and tied my shoe without much effort for the first time in a very long time.  Something so simple meant so damn much.  Also, in my first month I became part of a fitness challenge called "Gamer Fitness" that was adminster by the Youtube channel Drift0r.  DDP's aggressive style and Drift0r's Gamer Fitness kept me engaged for the first 3 months.  And man those three months were AMAZING.  I dropped 50 pounds in 3 months.
This success had me on a high and wanting more.  It was at this time I started to pick up a few subscribers on YouTube and followers on Twitter.  Over the next 6 months I had my ups and downs, but mostly ups.  I rarely was stuck at any certain weight for any length of time.  Basically I was owning that shit.  And people noticed that.  And they praised me.  This lead to me getting in more motivated and by month 9 I had lost a total of 102 pounds.
This was my peak.  My lowest weight in my journey, and it's one that I am not overly concerned in seeing again. BUT since it is my lowest weight it was also were it all started to go wrong.  I had gotten bored of the same old song and dance.  The same thing to eat daily, the same workouts. I had moved out of my groove and into a rut.  By the time my One Year date rolled around I was battling weight gain, but since I had such an amazing number at 9 months I didn't let it register in my head all the warning signs.  It was this at this time I started to search for other things to keep me engaged.
I found CrossFit. I will say this, it works for some.....just not me.  I tried to push through my dislikes of "metcons" for far too long.  I would go home with scarred shins and eat the pain away.  And the weight started to creep back.  one pound here, two pounds there.  This slide pushed me into hiding.  I How could I admit to my millions of followers (actually 100ish)  that I had lost direction and failed?  I could not.  So I didn't, I hid.  Then I would get frustrated and decide to start fresh.  I would shoot a video and state, I slipped but it's time to get back up.  and that worked a couple of times but the motivation would fade in time.  

Well here it is.  I turn 40 this year.  This is the year I was suppose to run a full marathon, or finish a GORUCK Heavy, or a Spartan Beast.  Let's just say the likelihood of finishing one of those this year is very slim.  But it is time for a restart, reboot, whatever we decide to call it this time.  BUT this time I am doing for the proper reasons.  For my family and for me.  I may not publicly announce all of  mile stones, or big event plans, as I think the public exposure messed with my head too much last time.  But know that I am never going to give up and i will be pushing forward to a great 2017 and a great 40th year on the planet!!!

Three weeks into my restart.....

Today was Week 3, Day 1 of a fresh start.  The first week of this restart was similar to others.  The first day I was ready to take on the world, the next day I was ready to sink back into my dark hole and never do a workout again.  Week two I was able to hit all of my workouts.  Now here we are at week 3 and I am still on track, workout wise.
Nutrition wise...not nearly as good.  But this is a process.  I am slowly getting back to my old habits of eating proper food. Today was a good day EXCEPT for a corn muffin that I was eating before my brain could say no.  Tomorrow will be better.  And the next day even better than that.

Here is the thing.  I knew I was slipping and I knew I needed to get back on track, but I kept going back to the good ole, "tomorrow, today will be my last day of gluttony", then "tomorrow" would be my last day of gluttony, then again.  And just as the saying goes, "tomorrow never comes".  I kept focusing on how bad I was being. Then I watched a press conference by Conor McGregor.  McGregor is now the UFC Champion in his weight class.  This press conference was about an hour after he had just won the belt.  He said a few things that really hit home but one really stood out.
"Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners"
Most will see this and think, "what does this have to do with weight loss".  My response is this, I have been focusing on the wrong thing.  I have been trying to figure out what fit person I want to be like.  Do I want to be like my CrossFit?  He is very lean and muscular.  Do I want to be like DDP? He is an amazing yogi.  Do I want to be like my GR friends? These guys and girls are as tough as nails.
What I need to be focusing on is being me.  I enjoy doing DDPYoga, jogging, and Kettlebells regularly.  I enjoy doing GORUCK events.  What I do enjoy is feeling beat down everyday.  This is the feeling you have when you are doing CrossFit, or training heavily in a GORUCK based program.  I am going to focus on my goals!!! Which brings me back to another amazing quote from the McGregor press conference: (speaking about his ability to predict how the fight would end with incredible detail and accuracy)
"If you can see it here (point to his head) and you have the courage enough to speak it.  It will happen.  So I see this shots, I see this sequences, and I don't shy away from them.  A lot of times people believe in certain things but hey keep to themselves.  They don't put it out there.  If you truly believe in it, you become vocal with it, you are creating that law of attraction that will become reality."So here is it.  I am vocalizing what I see from myself:
1.) I will lose 30 pounds before the end of February.  This should put me close to 250 again.
2.) I will finish back to back GORUCK Tough and Light in March.
3.) I will complete the Monument Ave 10K unbroken in April.
All of this will be accomplished with copious abouts of hard work and proper diet.  There will be slips, but I will not let my arrogance get in the way again.

So glad to be back!!!!!!!
Marv "exHeavyHippie" White (let's get that "ex" back)

for those that are interested here is the press conference I am quoting:

Day 310 on Heavy Hippie's Road to Fitness

Sunday February 23rd, 2014 somewhat Daily Check In:

Breakfast: Two Egg Scramble
Workout: 5 mile run to break in new running shoes. 
Lunch/Dinner: I was bad, I had fast food. (Just being Honest) This is not a huge slip, just starving after a five mile run and Jesse wanted a Lego Movie cup. 
Evening Snack: Blue Organic Corn Chips.

The run felt great and I feel like I could have done more be 1.) I was starving, 2.) I was afraid to run too much further in brand new shoes.
I also finished my DDPYoga Challenge Group Wrap and Burn challenge.

Thursday February 20, 2014 Daily Check In (Day One all over again but in a good way)

Breakfast: Two Egg Scramble
Lunch: Huge Salad with the last of the leftover Chicken
Afternoon snack: One Ounce Raw Almonds
Afternoon Workout: DDPYoga Extreme: Hip, Back, and Knee Opener TUTORIAL followed by RHC
Dinner: Panera Pick Two, Cup of Chicken Noodle Soup and 1/2 Winter Power Salad (highly recommend)

So, the HBK tutorial was a real wake up call.  I truly felt like it was Day One Diamond Dozen all over again.  I felt awkward and clueless.  BUT on the same note at the end I FELT GREAT!!!!!  If you have the extreme DVDs I highly recommend popping that in when you feel adventurous.  I will try to add that to my weekly schedule, just the tutorial for now though.