Well, bmonday.com has undergone a number of major redesigns over the years, why not the owner?
There were two reasons for my nearly-2-year sabbatical in Oklahoma. Officially, the public reason was to reconnect with my family, but the less publicized reason was to reinvent myself. My 15 years in Seattle had left me solidly in a rut, and one I didn't much like. The recurring theme in the unpleasant bits of my life was the fact that I wasn't very happy with the man I'd become, outside of a very successful career. I had gotten complacent in my personal life, and needed to mix things up. Change of scenery, change of environment, change of personnel. I needed a hard reset. I bought a house in Oklahoma, near my family, packed up the cats, and left.
Meet the most important woman in my life over the last year (she's the one without the beard, in case you're confused. The bearded one is me.):
The twig of a woman standing next to me in the pic is Katie Baxter, a personal trainer at Aspen Fitness of Edmond Oklahoma, and she's been my 3-a-week habit for the last 7 months. Under her diligent oversight I went from 307lbs to 250. I went from 35% body fat to 20%. I shed 58lbs of fat in the time we were together, and put on a couple pounds of muscle just for grins.
Katie is the primary reason I was successful in the remodel of myself. She provided the accountability, the inspiration, and the encouragement that I hadn't been able to produce organically from within myself. She committed to me as much as I to her. If I needed to squeeze in an extra workout session before a trip, she bumped other clients to make a hole for me in her schedule. We worked out on Thanksgiving day, like it was any other Thursday morning.
The other keys to my success were several:
I put my health above all other things. Remember the pic of the fridge full of Fat Tire? The Fridge Full of Win? Yeah, I still have that. Still full of Fat Tire, but that Fat Tire is about 4 months expired now, because I don't drink beer any more, except on rare occassions, and never at home. If you knew me from my Seattle days, you'll appreciate how hard that was. I leave the beer there to reinforce my willpower, and remind myself of the sacrifices I've made. It's next to the water pitchers. I also had to give up my 3-a-day Starbucks habit, which prompted the subsequent shutdown of my local Starbucks (well, they may have had other reasons for closing the store), and angry exclamations of "we thought you were dead!" from the barristas when I crashed the store's wake on their last day.
I ate healthily. Not healthy, necessarily. Healthily. I'll give up beer and Starbucks, but red meat? That's crazy talk. I tried to make good choices in meals. I've had french fries maybe 3 times in the last 7 months. Lots of vegetables, cut down on the processed foods and empty carbs. I switched to ground turkey in place of ground beef. I ate 5-6 times per day, and tried to eat breakfast (usually oatmeal). I found an energy bar I could tolerate and made sure I was never without one in case a craving hit (Balance Bar, Cookie Dough flavor, for the record). I had sworn off sodas years prior, but wasn't a big water drinker. Changed that: I bought 2 Brita pitchers and always had one within reach in my office or living room. I tried a number of over-the-counter supplements, but they weren't effective for me, so I took a multivitamin daily and nothing else in that regard.
The big key was to put my return to health above all other things. I once read a sign at a gym in Seattle that said "Showing up is half the battle", and I showed up. I showed up at our early morning training sessions no matter what. It didn't matter that I was up until 5am on a scheduled maintenance at work, and got about 2 hours of sleep. I showed up. It didn't matter that I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning drinking whiskey diets and smoking cigars with friends. I showed up. It didn't matter that I spent the night at a friends house in Tulsa, and had to drive 90 miles back to OKC to make it to our 8am workout. I showed up. I didn't miss a workout for any reason, unless I was deathly ill (once) or traveling. When I traveled, I juggled my travel schedule to minimize the number of sessions I missed. In a couple cases, when my travel was unusually lengthy, Katie provided me a workout plan that I could give to a surrogate trainer that I hired at my destination. I worked out every day. While Katie could only put up with my antics every other day, I did cardio on my own every single day (twice a day towards the end, once in the morning and again at night to keep my metabolism stoked). I didn't accept meetings that conflicted with my workouts, and I didn't take my cell phone with me to the gym. Any emergency that happened at work was simply going to have to wait an hour until I got back from the gym. My family had to just understand that there were 3 times per week that I was simply unavailable, and they did, even when I was all mysterious about the whole thing in the early days.
I had missteps. My frequent returns to Seattle, and the socializing with my old friends that inevitably resulted, derailed me more than once. I remember one particular week-long trip to Seattle, early on in the endeavor, that erased an entire month worth of effort in the gym. I was crushed, and so was Katie. That's when I stopped drinking beer.
The results were more than I could have hoped for. My pants size went from a 48 waist to a 38 (if I don't try to breathe too much). I went from buying XXXL shirts to buying Large, or maybe XL if I expect shrinkage. I have to buy new clothes on a constant basis now, as the seasons change and I drag out my seasonally-appropriate clothes only to realize they no longer fit. I no longer need to shop in Big-and-Tall stores, and can actually wear the swag I get at conferences, which is invariably XL. Every time I flew back to Seattle for interviews I had to buy a new suit because the one from the month prior no longer fit.
But the biggest result has been what I intended: I'm happy with myself once again. I can go out to dinner with my rediculously-gorgeous friends and not feel out of place. I'm getting chatted-up in bars by random women, and I carry myself with a confidence I could not have summoned 6 months ago. I no longer glare at my friends when they want to include me in a photo with their kids. The profile photo on the home page of this blog was the first photo of me to appear here (aside from the pic of me in pink-bunny-suit drag) and it was a reward to myself after Katie and I hit our first milestone of losing 30 pounds. When I finish off the 2nd 30 pounds I'll probably be replacing it with a new one.
As I make my return to Seattle I feel like a new man, and that was exactly the point.