In 2006 I was in a really bad accident that caused me having to have my right leg reconstructed. I spend over a year on my back majorly depressed, unable to walk but a few feet from bed to bathroom.. The only thing I had that gave me any enjoyment was food. I went from 175 lbs to 470 lbs the next handful of years. I attempted a handful of times to lose the weight, but never serious enough to actually do so. In November of 2019 I finally had enough and set out to lose the weight. A few weeks ago, I did my monthly weigh in and have officially lost 200 lbs. I still have a ways to go of reaching my final goal of 200 lbs but I'm very proud of my progress. August 6th is my 45th birthday, I'm stronger then I've been since High School, I still can't walk great, but I try to do a couple miles a day on the Treadmill.

Running 10k under 55mins :D

Haven't had anything with added sugar for year this month.

no huge fitness achievements, but i started doing some basic strengthening and toning on my upper body a couple of years ago.. just low-impact stuff, but i've managed to really stick with it.. the benefits are starting to stack up now a bit, so i'm very glad i started..

I got back to my weekly workout schedule this week after a month of not going.

Personally I squatted 295lbs for 2, a new two rep max.

Ran a 5k last night and PR'd by over 3 minutes from my race last month.

Been years since I exercised regularly. Now that I'm older, I can't get away with bad form without really feeling it later. Learnt mostly by myself and from youtube. A little while ago I was complimented on my form while squatting, and today I figured out what was wrong with my shoulder (nerve impingement from an unstable rotator cuff) and now I know what to do, day 1 and it already helped immensely.

Though I guess the real win here is that I'm going to the gym regularly. Tried many times before but I always ended up quitting. It was probably the depression doing me in. Guys, therapy works, no cap.

My resting heart rate hit a new low of 54 bpm! It was in the 70s earlier this year.

I transitioned from an elliptical to the treadmill. Knees are in rough shape and it took about 4 weeks for them to get sore after pushing a little too quick and not getting proper rest. Probably wasn't doing enough stretching either. Inside of my knee is where it hurt so don't think it was an IT band issue.

Listened to my body, that's the fitness victory. Knee feels better 7 days since my last run and just in time to set off of a thru hike of the Uinta Highline Trail on Sunday. Hella excited for the adventure too!

I went from doing all my sets "to failure", to first set 8RPE (rate of perceived exertion). So three sets, all the same number of reps and weight.

I work it backwards. The third set should be very close to 10RPE if I get 8RPE right on the first set. If it's under then I do extra reps to get there. The next time I do that exercise I can see the extra reps and adjust accordingly.

This is SO much better on my aging body, and I'm still able to keep up progressive overload at the same rate as I was with "to failure".

For those who don't know RPE is a self assessed evaluation about how hard a set was to complete. It's a scale from 1 to 10. 10 means there's nothing left, complete fatigue at the end and no hope of any more reps. 8 generally means that you have about 2 reps left in the tank.