Happy New Year!

I’ll pause while you check your calendar.

I realize it’s late November, but it’s a new year for me. This coming weekend, I’ll be running the Jingle Bell Run 5K in Solomons, Maryland. A year ago, this was the first race of any kind I had ever run and the first real milestone since I had decided to get serious about health and fitness.

Over the past year, I’ve received a lot of encouragement and kudos as I’ve made progress. I can’t adequately express my thanks for that, so please trust that I am grateful beyond words. I have tried to be as open about setbacks as I have been about progress, but there may have been some filtering along the way.

I’ve previously documented why I started sharing my journey on social media, but it really boils down to something simple, yet complex: imposter syndrome.

At its core, imposter syndrome is about the feeling that you don’t belong wherever you are. That was me. As I walked into the gym, I noticed all of the people who were younger, stronger, faster, prettier, and in better shape than me. When I read articles about working out or running that were targeted at beginners or novices, the photos were full of people who looked like “Abercrombie and Fitch” models rather than, like me, the Pillsbury Doughboy.

I could already feel the de-motivation setting in, so I did two things: I started working with a trainer and I started tweeting. Two forms of external motivation and accountability, because the internal forms were faltering. Part of me was thinking that maybe seeing someone like me trying to kick-start his fitness would help someone else, but my motivations were mostly selfish.

While the “war on cubicle body” has been the public face of my journey on social media, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the support and encouragement I’ve gotten from my family. They’ve lived this every day with me, putting up with my incessant talking about running and working out, and joining me at races, even when the temperature was 9 degrees Fahrenheit. They have been the daily source of motivation, accountability, and love that have kept me going and helped me stuff imposter syndrome into a box.

A year on, I have learned a lot. Here are some observations:

Patience

I have learned a lot about patience. I am an incredibly impatient person, and also fairly competitive. Being surrounded by people who were farther along than me fueled that impatience. That can be good in moderation. I was surrounded by examples of where I could be, but my problem was that I wasn’t there right now.

Your body will respond, but it will do so in its own time. By exercising, you are firing up the massive chemistry experiment that is your body. It will respond in the time frame and sequence it needs to.

Weight has never been a primary goal of my fitness regimen — more on that later — but it’s a convenient metric. I dropped ten pounds almost immediately and then I plateaued for a really long time. That baffled me at first, but I came to realize that my body was performing calculus, not subtraction. The combination of strength training, running, cardio, and core meant that I was building muscle and using fat in ways that a) I didn’t fully understand and b) didn’t translate into a linear drop in weight.

As I kept doing what I was doing, I got stronger. As I got stronger, my endurance increased. As my endurance increased, I was able to work more. Eventually, I crossed a threshold and my weight started dropping. I dropped twenty pounds pretty quickly, then another ten a little more slowly, and I’ve been plateaued again for a while. That’s okay.

Through that whole process, I learned patience. My body was doing what it needed to do and I needed to keep working, regardless of the results. My impatience and competitiveness weren’t going to change a thing. So I’ve learned to settle in, breathe, lift, balance, put one foot in front of the other, and let the results come in their own time.

Weight, Health, and Body Image

As I mentioned previously, weight loss has not been a primary goal for me. I have primarily been focused on reducing my body fat percentage. Logically, I knew that the kind of exercise I was doing (mainly running) would lead to weight loss as part of reducing body fat, but it’s not as direct a target.

My trainer gave me a goal of dropping to 20% body fat from 37%. Since I can’t easily measure body fat at home, weight was a surrogate. We came up with a best-guess weight target to shoot for. In the end, I hit 18% about ten pounds short of the weight target. We adjusted the target slightly to 15%, but that’s probably going to translate to five more pounds.

Excessive fat is a real health concern, especially for men and especially in the mid-section. That’s exactly what I had going on. I called it ‘cubicle body’ due to years of working in such environments. For my long-term health, I needed to solve that problem.

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted a before/after photo that showed the changes to my physical appearance over the past year. I have generally resisted doing that because it can imply that appearance and body shape are somehow important and can have the same demotivating effect for others that I had experienced myself. I lost a lot of weight and re-shaped my body in a year. Another person’s body will respond differently, but their health will improve. That is the only goal that matters.

I recently found another photo of myself from about a year ago. In it, I recognized that I looked unhealthy. It wasn’t just weight, I looked puffy. I looked exhausted even though I know I wasn’t at the time that photo was taken. I had gotten used to feeling that way.

One year later, I am not so far removed from that experience that I can’t remember how I felt. Only now, in relief, do I realize how bad I felt and how much I had gotten used to feeling that way. Regardless of how much I weigh or how I look or what my waist size is, I don’t ever want to feel that way again.

Food

I am frequently asked about changes I’ve made to my diet, and there have been quite a few. I’m not following any easily-labeled plan. For example, while I have significantly cut back on carbs, I am not doing “keto” by any stretch of the imagination. Carbs are fuel and I couldn’t run as much as I do without them.

So, I’ve cut back on carbs, except for when I really need the fuel. I eat a lot more plants, but not exclusively. Meat is a good source of protein and I just like it. I have cut back significantly on red meat, though I do enjoy the occasional steak or burger.

I actually don’t pay a lot of attention to dietary fat, though many of the other changes I’ve made have reduced it as a matter of course.

I pay a lot more attention to portion size. I simply eat a lot less than I used to. There are times, however, when I get really hungry. In those cases, I just eat.

I avoid almost all added sugar. As a result, I have cut out almost all sodas, even diet sodas (mostly) because artificial sweeteners can trigger an insulin response. Most packaged snack foods have fallen by the wayside.

Because water can get boring, sparkling water and unsweetened tea have become staples. Of course, my friend coffee is still by my side.

I’ve never been a big drinker. A six-pack is a month’s worth of beer for me. That said, I’ve cut way back on alcohol, but not in a deliberate manner. The fact is that I have become more sensitive to how it makes me feel and I have begun avoiding it. I still have the occasional beer or glass of red wine, but I can go weeks without thinking about it.

Having said all of that, I live my life. If there’s cake at a birthday party, I have cake. Maybe not also ice cream, and definitely only one piece. I put away a good bit of food on Thanksgiving.

But those are occasions. As long as I don’t treat every day like Thanksgiving or a birthday party, then partaking in those occasions won’t really get in my way.

The Voice

In the past year, I’ve accomplished a lot. I’ve run a number of 5K’s, a 10K, a ten-miler, a half marathon. I have two more races this year and I plan to run the Marine Corps Marathon in 2019. I’ve dropped a lot of weight, a lot of body fat, and six inches off my waist. I can lift a lot more. I have better balance. The list of things that I can do now that I couldn’t do a year ago keeps growing.

And yet, “the voice” is still there.

I use a Garmin fitness watch to track my activities. After the half marathon, it told me the previous seven days included five runs for 22 miles. Two weeks later, my seven-day window was one run for three miles. That’s the voice.

“The voice” is the one in my head that tells me it would just be easier to not to. There’s work or there’s something to do around the house or, even worse, that warm cup of coffee just feels so good right now in your hand. Or the weather sucks. Or it gets dark so early now. Or literally anything else.

I’m starting to think the voice isn’t going to go away. Which leads me to my final, and most important, observation.

As much as I’ve learned about my body over the past year, I’ve had to learn as much, if not more, about my mind. It’s there that the real work gets done.