On My Mark...

Me (on the left) having a fun time celebrating with my college BFF at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Feb. 2015.

I turned 50 nearly one year ago on January 30, 2015. I've never been vain, but that number was a tough hurdle as I became increasingly worried about my health. I made it to 50 without a lot of issues and I consider myself lucky. I rarely exercised. I had more than my share of chemicals, late nights, close calls, and too much of many good things.

I crossed over the 50 marker in pretty good shape, considering. But, that person was about 40-50 pounds overweight, on blood pressure medication, on the verge of having to take cholesterol medication and possibly facing Type II diabetes.

Getting into a more healthy lifestyle grew increasingly difficult. One trip to the gym here and there. A few days of paleo or any of the nutty diets and a continual charge of $39 a month for my Weight Watchers membership produced no results. It got to the point where I would tell myself there was no point. Why even bother? I didn't get a running start at 30 or 40, why would 50 be any different? I was a few years away from a heart attack, stroke or heart failure. Or, even worse, having a few good friends who lived a healthy lifestyle unable to even make it to 50 due to cancer, suicide, brain tumor.

I felt doomed.

About a month after my birthday, this profound feeling of doom really affected me in a way I'd never experienced before. I dragged myself to the gym and left in tears because I really felt that I had squandered my life and let myself go and there was no way to change anything. I was too late and at 50, there was no point to getting fit.

I combed the Internet trying to find ONE real story of a person like me with absolutely no history of making this sort of change until the age of 50. I can't find it. I can't find the books or stories of a person who didn't do sports as a child or young person and decided to make a change at 50. If I thought I did, I'd dig deeper and the person will point out that they had lost weight at some point when they were younger, or they used to play sports as a kid or something. Many, MANY self help books were written by people who were already pretty fit. I hate these people. They do not inspire me. They simply make me feel like the battle has been lost. I didn't do it when I was younger, so I would be doomed.

I still felt doomed.

In February, right after my 50th birthday, I started looking into the idea of getting a personal trainer. I had used a trainer in the past with moderate success and I thought if I could simply get myself to the gym, I'd feel better. I decided, at 50, that I wanted to be a person who exercised and that if I exercised without losing any weight, I'd be better off as a fat exercising person than a fat person who did not exercise.

It was then that I was led to a new training gym near my home that had just opened a few weeks before and before I could blink, I was meeting with Kara and getting evaluated.

And that's how the journey begins.