If I’m completely truthful, this is the most pressing of my current projects. It’s an initiative that, if I’m completely truthful, I’ve had stewing on the burns since I was 18.

As a child, I was a pretty normal sized kid. As the years wore on, the pounds started packing up. A dual effort between my mom’s rich cooking and generous portions as well as my father’s reliance on fast food whenever he was left in charge of my nutritional needs. I believe it was somewhere around the 4th grade that I made the transition from "husky" to regular run of the mill "fat".

For the majority of my life, that wasn’t a problem. I was always very comfortable with my body, physically and mentally/emotionally. So much that with the exception of one boy whose name I don’t remember in the 2nd grade, I’ve never had my weight thrown at me as an insult. It wasn’t until I left high school that I started feeling uncomfortable in my skin.

Once I left the controlled environment of high school, I started dealing with all of the issues that adults deal with. The most prominent in my mind? wanting to explore my sexuality. I came "out" during my sophomore year of high school, but still had claim to my virginity leaving high school; quite a feat in this modern world we live in. So I started waking up every morning at 5am, a practice that I was accustomed to having spent so much of my life having to rise early to cross the US-Mexico border to get to school, and became a runner. I ditched a considerable amount of my excess weight: when I was at my fattest in high school, I weighed in at an
astounding 265 lbs. when I finally fell victim to complacency, I had brought myself down to around 220 lbs.

In my time off from running, I planned to pick up the running habit again and keep pushing towards more. In my head, I planned to get in peak physical condition so that when I turned 21, I could go out and party to my fullest. That didn’t exactly pan out. After I failed to meet my initial deadline, I told myself I would still follow through, a process I repeated year after year without producing any results.

Over the past couple years, things took a turn for the worst. Up until 2010, I hadn’t been losing weight, but I was at least maintaining a lower body mass. At the start of 2010, things in my personal life became too overwhelming, and I gave up. I stopped caring about my health, my goals, my appearance, everything. It wasn’t until the end of the year that things started looking up. By then, though, the damage had been done: I put myself all the way back up to 240. So I started trying again, and last year, even had a few bouts of determination to finish what I’d started years ago:

http://thechexican.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/towards-a-thinner-tomorrow-preparation/

http://thechexican.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/towards-a-thinner-tomorrow-gearing-up/

http://thechexican.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/towards-a-thinner-tomorrow-back-on-track/

http://thechexican.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/exodus/

http://thechexican.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/smoking-as-in-quitting/

According to the dates, that was almost a year ago. Now, it’s 2012, and I’m finally committing to this once more. There are two large contributing factors to this resolve.

The first is the fact that I’m leaving the comfort of 25 and starting my journey into my late 20’s. I realize that my body is no longer the growing resilient thing is used to be. I’ve pretty much done all of the growing up going to do physically, and am now hitting the part where I instead start growing old. As such, I can’t afford to not get in shape – otherwise, the rest of my life stuck in this thing is going to suck pretty hard.

The other motivating factor stems from the fact that I am going into my late 20′s: I only have 4 more years before I become a member of the 30’s club, and as much as I did party hard from 21-23, I’m not done taking advantage of my youth. Even though my interest has admittedly waned in going out, living large as a whole has become new and exciting again for me. Yes, I want to go out dancing and have the best time of my life, but I also want to do more. I want to travel, I want to climb mountains, I want to play team sports. I want to be able to do all of things, basically, while I still can it’s not painstaking hard.

So I’m making a fitness category for this site, just as I did on my old blogs. Like before, this category is for me to log my weight loss journey. Unlike before, I also hope to grow this category as a kind of sub-blog – not just about my weight loss, but also as a reliable resource for anyone looking to do the same for themselves. So, that all being said…let’s do this!