Week 4 – Fitness

by Dr. Mark Richards
We are half way through. Great job coming this far for the 60 Day Turnaround people. I haven’t talked about fitness all that much (I know you all hear plenty from Dr. Eric).  Everyone knows the benefits of exercise and that it promotes health. So I won’t go into the whole convincing you its important, because I’m sure you already know that it is. I always knew it was something I needed. But, as with a lot of things, knowing the right path and actually doing it are far from each other.

As I’ve said before, I’ve been overweight for the past decade. Through those 10 years I’ve tried to exercise and get fit a lot. I tried working out at home, even tried Crossfit workouts, running, phone apps, and organized sports. The only thing that I could be consistent with were my sports. I’d play hockey once or twice a week through the winters, and soccer once a week in the summer. But, once a week just isn’t enough to really promote fitness and health. I stayed consistent with those because I love playing both of those sports. If I could, I’d play them 7 days a week and have that be my main means of fitness. Unfortunately that isn’t very practical.

So I tried adding running. I would see people doing it all the time, and they looked fit. Well, I don’t really like running, for the sake of running. I’d go as far as to say I hate it (which I’ve always thought was funny that I hated it, but if you put a ball on some grass that I could chase, then I loved it).  Crossfit worked well at home when Eric was visiting that one week out of the year. I’d try to continue after he had left, but I didn’t really know what I was doing and it was pretty hard doing it on my own without someone coaching me or working out with me.

So now I’ve told you how I failed over and over through the past decade I should probably talk about what has worked, and why. Well, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been doing Crossfit since moving here in July. I’ve grown to love it! Really I think this is the key, liking or even loving, the exercise you do. That’s why I could be consistent with hockey and soccer, and its why I have been consistent with Crossfit. Its just fun. I’ll admit the first couple weeks were extremely hard and painful (soreness, not injury) but at the same time there’s that feeling of “gee, I think I can do better, I should be able to do better.” So liking it helps, and the fact that Crossfit promotes fitness at a far superior level than my team sports ever could, make it a great fit for me.

So we know its important to exercise. I also think its equally important to really enjoy, if not love, the exercise you do. Then find a way to incorporate it into your everyday life. Crossfit is great for getting an awesome workout in relatively small amounts of time. Make it a priority to figure out a way to get that exercise in, in a way that you’ll enjoy.

As I said in my last post, I was expecting this past week to be a good one, and it was. Having those meals planned really does help us. So I lost another 2 lbs. this week, putting me at 204 lbs. I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve been pretty consistently loosing 2 lbs. a week. Obviously I’d like it to go faster, but there is comfort in knowing I’m on a path that I plan on following for… ever maybe. So I have a lot of time to reach my goal, there’s no real hurry. My wife Amanda hasn’t had the results I’ve been having (on the scale that is, I think she’s looking great, but she needs to see  it for herself. What I say doesn’t really matter much). I realize that can be frustrating for her, I know a lot of you are probably in the same boat as Amanda, having someone close to you doing the same things as you (she beats me pretty regularly at our Crossfit workouts too), and seeing results, while you might not be. Stay the course. The plan works. She has told me that we are going to continue this diet, this plan, until we are both where we want to be. Thanks for reading.

One more note: Somehow I forgot 1 ingredient from the pizza crust recipe. I went to look back at the original recipe, and it was removed so I don’t know the exact amount. The missing ingredient is Parmesan cheese. I think the amount was between 1/2-1 cup. Sorry if you tried this and it didn’t taste that great.

-Dr. Mark