Yesterday I was out on a bicycle ride with a good friend of mine.  As we were riding we started talking about the progress I’ve made over the past year in the sport of triathlon and how I am feeling as I prep for next Ironman in November.

I told him I felt unbelievably different.  I am down several pounds, my cycling has improved, and so has my running.  Most importantly, my mindset has improved.  Last year when I took on the Kona Ironman I had no idea what I was doing.  I didn’t know that carrying around extra weight could affect me as much as it did.

Last weekend I was flipping through the channels and caught the replay of the Kona Ironman on NBC.  I watched the race and saw my brief segment once again.  When I saw myself, I wasn’t disappointed, I was a little sad.  The reason I was sad was because I knew that I had a false sense of how I looked and felt physically.

I was big, not as in pre-Biggest Loser big, but I was carying more weight than I should have been to be competing in a race of that magnitude.  The thing is, is that at that time I didn’t realize it.  I felt like “I can move 140.6 miles in one day.  I am in pretty good shape.”  That statement was partially true.

True in the sense that you have to have a pretty good level of fitness to do that race and make the cut-offs.  Not true, in that I was definitely carrying too much body fat and failed to realize it.  I saw myself as being better off than I was.  It wasn’t until I saw myself on television that I realized just how big I was.

I am convinced that had I weighed then what I weigh now, I would have finished that race in under the cut-off time and would have been an official Ironman.  That is neither here nor there now.  I didn’t finish in time.  Heavy or not, I have yet to become an Ironman in the true sense.

What does this have to do with the title of this post?  As I was talking yesterday, I came to the conclusion that many of us have a false sense of where we are when it comes to weight.  Some of us can think we are smaller and better off than we are, others think we are bigger and worse off than we really are.

In order to know where we really are, we must give ourselves a true starting point.  By true starting point I am talking about where are TODAY.  I don’t mean 5, 10, or even 20 years ago.  The only way to gauge our progress is by having an official starting point and then using that point as a gauge.

For example.  If I weigh 240 pounds today, that is what I weigh.  In a year from now, if I weigh 200, I will say I lost 40 pounds.  If on the other hand I weigh 245, I will say I gained 5 pounds this year.  Here is why this is important.  I could use my pre-Biggest Loser weight of 353 as a gauge and in turn be able to say that I have lost 108 pounds.  Although this is true, it isn’t necessarily the whole truth.

I lost 157 pounds on the show then gained weight back.  I then lost weight again.  The reality is that If I use the 353 pound number than I am really just losing and gaining the same weight over and over again.  This is why I am now using 240 as my starting point.  By doing this I can have a clear number and place to begin.

What this allows me to do is wipe the slate clean.  I can no longer play games like the “I use to weigh… and even though I have gained…. I ‘ve still kept off….”  I know what I weigh and will use this as my starting point and lifelong marker.  By doing this, I will have a realistic perception and gauge of how I am doing on this lifelong journey.

In essence, our true starting point is TODAY.  Now, lets get started!

See you tomorrow.

Biggest Loser, fitness, goal setting, Ironman, Matt Hoover, Self Discipline, triathlon, weight loss

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010, 1:17 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.