10 Years of Exercise Tracking - And The Start of What Led to Running

Today is a special anniversary for me. It was 10 years ago, on May 30, 2010, that I made a decision to get serious about my health. I was about 60+ pounds over what a target weight should be for someone my age. I got winded just walking a few blocks. I needed to change! My wife and I both decided we were going to start getting in shape by just going walking. It was SO helpful to have her as a partner in doing this. We started walking in a beautiful, large cemetery in Keene, New Hampshire.

Over the weeks and months that followed, we started to add short bits of jogging to the walking. Then a little more. And a little more. And more. We had objectives - first we would run from the entrance down to the flagpole. Then we would extend it up to the Chapel. Then back to the flag pole... and so on.

Eventually over many months we were actively running through the cemetery paths!

And through it all I started to record my weight and other stats every Monday morning. I've continued doing that all these years later, leading to the nice chart at the top of this post. It's nice to have a decade of data.

There was a wonderful period of time in there from maybe 2011-2014 when I was actively running in 5K races. I even ran three half-marathons (the same race, three different years). And somewhere in there I would routinely run a loop through the whole cemetery after running an entire 5K!

Beyond adding in exercise, I was also looking at eating healthier, too. In large part cutting back on seconds, eating fewer sweets.

But then things happened. I kept finding excuses for not exercising. I didn't make the best food choices. And as the graph in this post shows, my weight kept climbing and climbing.

Then last fall I decided to get serious again. I tried increasing my exercise while also lowering my consumption of carbs and sugar. It was all working well as the red box on the right points out.

But then... COVID-19. And in the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, I've chosen comfort foods and sweets, and have slacked off some on the exercise.

But... my goal is now to change that... and bring back more of the exercise, and make better food choices! Hopefully if I am still writing these posts 10 years from now, the story may be a bit different!

Time will tell... but tonight I'm just going to celebrate this anniversary of starting the journey toward being healthier - and all that that journey has brought to me!