June 2nd 2015 was the first day I ever worked out.  I went to the Harbison Recreation Center, in which I get a free membership as one of the many perks I get for being employed at The Home Depot, and rode on an exercise bike for 27  minutes and burnt a total of 107 calories.  At the time I weighed 218 lbs.

I have always struggled with my weight, even as a young kid I went to weight watchers.  One of my weaknesses is ice cream.  If I could only have one sweet that is what I would choose, every time.  My favorite place to get ice cream is Sweet Cream Company in downtown Columbia on Main Street.  If you haven’t been there I highly recommend it.  Jessica & Joe are the owners and they make all of the ice cream on site themselves.  It blows away any other ice cream shop I’ve been to and that includes in Long Island, where I am originally from.  Being a coffee snob I also need to shout out their locally roasted coffee as well.  All around I just adore this place and once you go, you will too.  See what happens when I start talking about ice cream, I get all in a tizzy and get off track.  Any who, one day in 2015 after Donna and I had finished a candy run at Mast General Store, another must if you have never been also located on Main Street in downtown Columbia, we were driving home and I had an awakening.  I caught myself mindlessly taking one tootsie roll after another, unwrapping them and popping them into my mouth without a thought.  Was I hungry?  No.  Was I taking my time to enjoy each piece of candy?  No.  All of a sudden I just stopped chewing and spit that tootsie roll into an empty water bottle that was in the car.  Donna looked at me like there was something severely wrong with this picture.  She now says that she felt a shift in the universe at that moment.  I woke up.  Something changed in me.  From that point on I have looked at food and myself differently.  Have I been a perfect picture of healthy eating everyday since then?  Absolutely not, but then again I am human.  I don’t want to be perfect.  I don’t want to be skinny either.  I just want to be comfortable in my own skin.  Comfortable in my clothes.  I want to be healthy.  I want to live my life with Donna for as long as I can and being overweight does not support that vision.  But damn isn’t it sometimes a son of a bitch to do the right thing with food and exercise!

The itinerary of my working out consists of this.  I run on my own, with my MP3 keeping me company, pumping out the best of the 80’s to keep me motivated. I usually run/walk to the S.C. State House and back which is about 4 1/2 miles.  I actually ran my very 1st 5k last year for the Stephen Siller Tunnel To Towers Foundation in downtown Columbia with my step mom Yuri.  I was so incredibly proud to participate in this run being I am from N.Y., so the cause hit home hard and I was just proud that I did it.  I could never imagine myself in the past running in a 5k, but I did.  You can do anything you put your mind to, remember that.  It just depends on how bad you really want it.  You are the only one standing in your way.  Yuri is my workout mentor, besides being the best step mom anyone could ask for.  I have participated in 2 different boot camp workouts with her.  From flipping big ass tractor tires to burpees and planking, she will make a fitness warrior princess out of me yet.  I also want to shout out my face book family who are some of my biggest cheerleaders.  Nicole Maxwell Kallo, thank you for challenging me to do better and inspiring me through sharing your fitness journey.   You are an awesome example of what can be accomplished with hard work and determination.

I have been slacking off on my eating habits as well as not doing any kind of exercise lately.   It hasn’t really bothered me too much.  I went to the doctor recently and when I got on the scale it showed that I had gained 10 lbs since the last time I was there in November.  No bueno, no bueno at all.  But that didn’t really phase me too bad.  Sometimes a visual is all we need to turn that corner.  Just today I was looking at pictures on my phone and I saw one of myself taken a couple of months ago and it stopped me in my tracks.  I didn’t look like the person in that picture anymore.  I had an awakening, again.  Just like what happened with the “tootsie roll incident”.  So I dusted off my MP3 and I decided to go for a run.  Every journey starts with the first step, so I took it.  I know your probably thinking that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Well, it took me changing my diet and literally exercising my ass off to lose the weight I have lost.  I had lost a total of 42 lbs and not by drinking any fad shakes or taking pills or getting the fact sucked out of me.  Not by buying expensive workout clothes or getting a membership for a trendy gym.  I did it Rocky Balboa “old school” style.  Before you ask, I don’t beat up slabs of meat in a meat locker but you can spot me running over the Gervais Street bridge from time to time, so feel free to cheer me on if you see me.  Oh and another thing…  Did you know you can get fit and lose weight no matter what kind of clothes you wear?  My cheapo shorts and tanks from WalMart work just fine.  I lost weight by challenging myself to change my eating habits and get my ass of the couch and excercise.  This is the first time I have ever been successful at loosing a substantial amount of weight and I don’t ever want to be in the position again where I have to do this again.  As I said before, I don’t want to be skinny.  I don’t think skinny is sexy by any means.  I think healthy is sexy.  So whatever your healthy is, achieve it and strut your stuff people.