Capitulation and reloading

I can't do the Urbanathlon (at least not well)... In my current health, I'll never do a longer distance triathlon either. This is the reality I've had to face this week. I have lots of guilt and regret over the Urbanathlon, but I've been fooling myself to try to get to it.

A few bottom lines have emerged:
- When I rest my foot hurts less (but has never completely recovered) and every time I run it hurts more. Truthfully it hurts most of the time and I'm creating other issues by protecting it when I walk.
- Every time I get past 3 miles on a run, I seem to hurt myself
- My blood pressure is out of whack and it ain't just caffeine (been monitoring at work and it is generally 130 something over 90 something)
- Without a doubt, I can no longer use event training in isolation as my weight loss program.
- Limping through Sprint triathlons brings limited joy
- As fit as I may or may not be, I'm not pleased with how I look. My BMI says I'm obese and while that may be dubious, the fact that I am too heavy is not debatable.

Bottom bottom line... I weigh too much and it impacts my health at every turn

So those are my current outcomes from my current methods and as we know you don't get new results with old methods.

So, I'm shifting again.

I have no events on the calendar and I'm not adding any for now. My sole health focus will be doing things that lead to achieving a healthier weight. For now, that will be biking, swimming, and other low impact activities. This way I can see if my foot is ever going to heal. I can see if my BP can be managed. I can get my stress under control and build a diet that befits a 41 year old man, not a 20 year old miscreant. I also will use my fitbit tracker to see if I can add activity to my day in general, rather than rely on a workout to make-up for the bad behavior of the other 23 hours of the day.

I weighed myself this morning and clocked in at 197.3. That's actually lower than expected, but not healthy. I would like to weigh 170 pounds eventually, but for now I'd like to see what losing 5 more pounds does for my health.

I have to admit the Blood Pressure thing unnerves me a bit. It's been going on for a couple years, but I've always been able to get enough good readings to convince myself I'm ok. That is less true since January and not at all the last week. I'm going to continue to monitor it daily and if I don't see progress by the end of the month, I'll see my doctor.

My dreams of triathlons etc. have not gone away, they are just postponed until I can improve my overall health. Doing some things differently is so tough, the inertia of life keeps you in the same patterns. I use the following quote on my work emails and it strikes me as too true today.

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones"

I think I'll keep updating this blog, but you can expect it to much more about weight loss for a while. I'm sure I'll randomly muse as well. My work has been great fodder lately, but more another time on that.

Wish me luck. I still believe you don't have to give into getting older and accepting lesser health, you just need a new plan. Just like Stalin, I'm good with new plans, my room for improvement is on the implementation side:)