First of all, before I do anything else, I need to apologize to you. You have been there with me through thick and thin and somewhere along the way I got sidetracked. For that, I'm truly sorry.
How? You ask. Really simple. I let a little popularity go to my head. Popularity, I found out, is a really fickle thing. Once I got it, I found it really hard to let go. Jealousy reared its ugly head, and it started consuming me. I wanted it constantly. What I finally realized is, I don't need it. All I need is the love and support of my close family and friends. I've got a great support system around me and I started ignoring it because I was wanting to be the next "trending" person.
It all started a few weeks ago. Weight Watchers has a great app called Connect. It's similar to Facebook, but it's limited to Weight Watcher members only. The day after I did my first 5k, I posted a picture, and said, " My first 5k. I came in dead last, but I was faster than anyone on the couch." It blew up on Connect! I started trending, and ended up with over 9500 likes and 1300 comments. It all died down in about 24 hours. Because of that post I was contacted by Weight Watchers to sit in on a national broadcast conference call with Oprah Winfrey. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience! She interviewed me for about 10 minutes and I got the chance toward the end to answer a couple of questions too. After the call I had a lot of people asking questions and I stayed up to 1 that morning talking to people. I was honored to be chosen for such a event! Oprah is such a sweet lady, and I enjoyed it when she even teased me some during the call.
I enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame and honestly, I was thought I was good, but I got where every time I put something on Connect, I was wanting it to trend. If it only got 20 likes, I deleted it and tried something different. I was really starting to get unhappy, that only a few people liked what I had to say. After a few weeks of frustration, I had break through. I realized that who cares that 3,000 people don't like what I said. What should really matter is me putting my focus back on me and on my journey. I was so desperately craving the attention, I had once received and forgot that I wasn't on this journey to be popular. I was on this journey to be healthy and lose weight.
I had my blinders on and wasn't looking around me at the good things going on in my life. My weight loss is still going down, but it is getting harder to lose weight like I once was. No more 3 - 5 lb weeks, but more like .8 - 1.6 weeks. Ive now lost 92.6 lbs in 7 months. I haven't been this size in 20 years! I've gone from a 56 jeans to a 48! I had been so consumed, that I haven't wrote in my blog in over a month! Well, no more! This is my record of my journey and I don't need to forget about it again.
This past weekend me and Melody did our second 5k. It was the Memorial 5k in downtown OKC. It was in honor of the Murrah Bombing 21 years ago. This had been something I had been wanting to do for sometime, and finally got healthy enough to do it this year. I was a blast. Hell or high water, I'll do this 5k every year from now on! I was proud I didn't finish last. I was 3,301 out of 3,903 runners, or 81 out of 94 men my age. I didn't beat my personal best though. I think I would've, but 2 trains crossed the path and we had to wait for them to get out of the way. We finished at 1:04:09, which was only 7 minutes off my time.
We have already signed up to do another 5k in May. This one is going to be a color run. I'm not sure if I am ready to do a 5k where I got people throwing stuff at me the entire race, but we'll see! I'm proud of the fact now that I've had some family members who have started to notice the difference in mine and Melody's journey and are encouraged to start being healthy themselves. I have had some friends and family join Weight Watchers and join our gym too! I've even got some family who are wanting to do a 5k with us! Things are really looking up! We have a family reunion in a couple of weeks and I hope I've hit my hundred pound mark by then, but if not, I'm still healthier than I was this time last year!
24,818 runners. I was one.
