The Journey of a Thousand Miles…

I wanted to share a real life story with you from one of our listeners.  Esa has been a long time listener to the Home Server Show and began to listen to the Fitness Tech Podcast soon after we started it in December 2010.  The two of us chatted one evening after the live recording of one of the podcasts and we started a conversation that put him on a different road in life.  Below is his story, in his words.  I hope you can gather some inspiration from it!

Our goal is to track Esa’s progress over the remaining months in 2011.  He starts his journey at 312 lbs.  He has made real progress in the last month and it will be exciting to watch him progress more.  Watch here for update as he shares his life with us.  It’s a real privilege to be part of it! 

Here is just the beginning of his story…

Being obese and unhealthy is something I had come to accept as normal. This however, does not mean I was happy with my life style.  Being a big person all my life, I was happy with the life I was living, until I got a reality check.

I walked into a my doctor office and was told I really needed to change my current life style since the doctor mention that I might not live a long life and see my daughter grow up. These really crush my heart and made me think a lot about my health. I started to look at my options:

1. Stay with current life style

2. Take Diet Pills

3. Surgery options

4. Try to eat healthy and exercise

Well option 1 was not a choice to me and then I went to number 2.

I started to look into diet pills but all my research did not convince me to try something without having some type of side effects.

On to my 3rd option surgery, this really scared me since I have never been in any kind of surgery.  I did do research on the surgery that was covered by my provider which was Lap Band, Gastric Bypass, Gastric Sleeve Surgery. After all the research, I made my mind that I was going to get a Lap Band.  I went back to my doctor to get a referral to this department.

After being approved, I signed up for the 12 week classes for pre surgery meet up.  These classes provided a lot of new information about how this surgery works.  I finally got to meet up with the people that run the surgeries and was shocked when I was informed that there was no way they would do a Lap Band on me.  I only had the other 2 options this was a big setback.

After talking to my family and not getting big support about surgery, I made a choice and started the process for gastric surgery.  I was not really convinced that this was a great choice since I have friends that went to this process and gain it all back.  I put this option on hold the last week of December when I talked to Jim about my situation.

He encourage me to delay the surgery and motivated me for option 4.  Eat healthy and exercise sounds easy but in reality it’s not.  I have started slow by walking and cutting out soda pop (even that so call zero).  I went to only water, teas and sometimes coffee.  Also eating healthy more fruits and vegetables and reduce my fast food intake.  One month has pass and I am still going strong, I started to jog and cut fast food 100% out of my life.

Remember you don’t need a pill, a diet or even surgery. You need to change your life style.  I will keep you posted on my journey.

Like Jim told me

You never run to lose weight…you lose weight to run