Before and after picture

I went back and found a picture of me on July 20th, 2003 (left) I think I was around 220 lbs and a recent one of me on December 26th, 2008 (right) at 150 lbs.

At 42 I thought my life was basically over. I had very high cholesterol, constant back pain and could hardly move.

Well sometime in 2005 I decided to take action to improve my quality of life so I changed my eating habits (no more fast food and very limited sugar if any) and started exercising. I started with a Water Walking class at the gym. I think the 80 year olds got around better than I did. Well after about 8 months of that I was able to get around better and I found out about a spinning class and started doing that. The first month or so all I could do was light pedaling. Boy what a workout. Then that is when things really started coming off and taking off. What I learned my body does best with is eating the following:

Breakfast: 1/2 cup berries, palm full of walnuts and natural yogurt.

Lunch: Homemade lentil stew.

Dinner: switching between salmon, chicken or tuna salad.

Snacks being an orange, apple and/or natural nut bar.

In 2008 I started running outside, cycling (I did 700 miles in 3 months) and my classes I take regularly are spinning, bootcamp, body works & zumba.

In late 2008 I got a little too thin (I got down to 148 lbs) and so I started making what I call a chunky monkey protein drink. That seemed to help put on some muscle.

Marathon on a treadmill

"I just felt like running I guess". That is what I said after completing a full 26.2 miles on the treadmill at the club on December 7th, 2008. The darn machine would stop every 60 minutes so I took a picture with my iPhone and restarted it for another 60 minutes. (Sorry for the blurry picture but I still had to put it on walk to get the stats). Well it took me 4 hours and 15 minutes to do 26.2 miles. I know the distance only adds to 26.1 but I did do at least another .1 after taking the pictures. It looks like I also burned 3231 calories. Not bad.

Before this the furthest I've ever ran was about 18 miles outside. Normally I run about 6 miles on the tread mill but this Sunday morning I woke up and said, "I feel like running a marathon".