90 Days of Lifestyle Change
A (Mostly) Transparent Look at the Last 90 Days
On the left was me at my little sister’s wedding in July of 2015. I’m not the man that I was in July. I’m not the man that I was at the beginning of November, either. While we share the same name, Robb Clarke, I’m not the man that I once was. I left that asshole in the past.
That guy was generally unhappy and unhealthy. That guy made some terrible choices and went down a lot of wrong roads.
It all started, as it does for so many people, when I left high school and went off to university. I spent the majority of my time eating like shit and drinking like a fish thinking that my invincible high school metabolism was still in tact. Growing up I was pretty athletic; I certainly wasn’t going to earn a professional contract in any type of sport but I was active and played a lot of sports. What I failed to recognize was that I wasn’t playing high school basketball anymore, I wasn’t spending my summers swimming in the ocean or playing tennis. I didn’t have a mountain of physical activity to fall back on. I stopped exercising and ate horribly.
When I married my wife in 2009 I tipped the scale somewhere around the 275 pound (possibly even 280 pound) mark. I absolutely despise my wedding pictures — which is a shame because my wife looks gorgeous — I just can’t stand to look at myself in that state. I was completely disgusted with myself but had no real drive to do anything about it. I ate my feelings which was just a vicious circle of idiocy.
A few years back I put a real emphasis on eating better and getting active and I shed quite a bit of weight. I approached it wrong. What I was doing wasn’t sustainable and soon I was back to my old ways — eating terribly and barely exercising. My problem was that I had never really committed to the lifestyle change and I fell off the wagon with no real desire to get back on — why would I when a double Baconator was so fucking delicious? Soon I was right back where I had worked so hard not to be. I watched as the scale went up and up as the months passed, each time telling myself “Eh, it’s only a couple of pounds.” But you know what? Those couple of pounds add up — quickly.
Let me tell you a bit of a story.
Eating like garbage and not being active really takes it toll on you, especially when you cross over into your 30s. You don’t have the benefit of your youthful metabolism anymore. You stop sleeping well, which starts to affect your moods. Your moods start to effect those around you. Suddenly, your health starts to take a turn for the worse. You suspect that something’s wrong because for no reason your heart starts racing but you’re in complete denial about the whole thing so you don’t do anything about it. Your body is trying to tell you that something’s wrong but you ignore it because you think you know better. You’re invincible. Bad things happen to other people, but not you, you’re the exception.
You have the roughest year of your life — all completely self-imposed and you start to spiral. You experience the darkest of your days. In spite of McRegret, you continue to eat fast food. You try to move past your mistakes and forget the past but like ghosts, they haunt you. You have a whole host of personal demons that you battle daily; many self-imposed. Denial is a harsh mistress.
Soon, you do some routine tests with your doctor because you’re over 30 and that’s a thing that you should be doing. In the past, after those tests he tells you the results over the phone because they’re not bad. There have been some stern warnings in the past but what does he know? He’s only a doctor. You’re invincible, remember? This time is different — this time he wants you to come in and see him in person. You’re still in denial.
Your doctor is booked up solid for a month and it’s five weeks until you can get in to see him. As the days crawl by you start to come to the realization that he’s going to tell you bad news.
One day you wake up and have an epiphany. One day you wake up and you really realize what’s happening and what’s at stake. It hits you like a ton of bricks. Its like a fog has been lifted from your mind. That’s the day that you get your act together and decide to make a change. That’s the day that you commit; that you put the past in the past and vow to fix the damage that has been done by your idiocy. You know that when your appointment comes that he’s going to be telling you bad news so you start to do something about it before that day comes. That day you start doing research about dietary changes and you use the weight bench in your basement that’s been collecting dust. You change your diet and start working out twice a day (three if its the weekend). You start eating better than you have in your entire life. You buy a treadmill and start running. You sweat your ass off.
Pre-emptive apologies — this is where I’m going to get vague and not disclose personal details.
The appointment with your doctor finally comes. You’re nervous as hell. You had suspicions that his news wasn’t going to be good but absolutely nothing prepared you for the complete and utter devastation that would be rained down upon you. Going into it you had your suspicions about what it might be. It’s that but its so much more. It’s so much worse. It knocks you on your ass. It’s the wake up call that you really needed.
You can’t handle being at the office that afternoon but luckily you can go work from home — which is good because you’re not in a good place. That night you lift more weight than you’ve lifted, you do sit-ups until you can’t sit up.
It takes you a couple of days to process but you keep doing what you’re doing. You realize that it’s going to be okay because you’re already taking the right steps and you’re working your ass off. Sure, it’s devastating and horrible but you’re already out ahead of it. You’re going to own it and make it your bitch. You’re going to work your fucking ass off. Maybe you’re still a little bit in denial about the whole thing but maybe you have to be lest you give in to it.
You stay quiet about everything that’s happening. You only tell a few people what’s really going on; partially because you have trouble letting people in, partially because you’re utterly ashamed of what you let happen. Most people think that you’re just on a diet, they don’t realize what’s on the line. They’re supportive regardless of what they know.
Quickly, you start sleeping better which means that your mood is improving. You start seeing the world in a whole new light and relationships start being rebuilt. You feel like a completely new person. You start to ween yourself off anti-depressants and take your last one the night before writing this post.
You start to enjoy running. You still haven’t figured out if you’re running away from or running towards something but you run anyway. You run because it means you can pull your belt to another loop next week. You run because you have a shelf full of pills that you can’t pronounce that fill you with rage every time you see them. You run because then maybe one day you won’t need the pills. You run because there’s a four year old little girl upstairs that calls you Daddy. You run because you hate the asshole that did this to you.
You wish you’d been smarter. You wished you’d made better choices.
Before you know it, 90 days have passed from when you started this crazy journey. It seems like so long ago but also feels like a heart beat. Your weight when you started in November was 260lbs exactly and now it’s 227.8lbs. You’re down 32.2lbs in just under three months. You keep going because you’re nowhere near the goal that you set for yourself.
You have another appointment with your doctor who does some tests and is impressed with the improvements done so far. You’re not out of the woods yet by any means. He’s scheduling you in for more in depth testing that will tell him in much more detail how much damage has been done and if the work that has been done so far is actually doing anything. You’re terrified about the follow up appointment two months from now when you get the results but that doesn’t stop you from running your first 5k run and then doing it again a second time a couple days later to prove to yourself that it wasn’t a fluke.
Waking up in the morning and working out before the girls wake up becomes the norm. Working out before bed is the same. Your diet has completely changed. You’re eating less. You’re eating better. You look at pictures of yourself from your sister’s wedding in the summer and you don’t recognize that man in any respect. That guy was a mess in almost every way and did everything in his power to hide it. He fooled everyone including himself. That asshole deserves to be left in the past. You leave him where he belongs.
You’re happy.
You’re recovering.
You’re getting better.
You’re not dead yet.
“I got me a shovel and I’m digging a ditch and I’m going to fight for this four square feet of land like a mean old son of a bitch.” — Frank Turner
Father, husband, writer, web developer. Former idiot turned #health and #fitness guy. Trying not to die. #notdeadyetwww.instagram.com
I’m posting (almost) daily with updates as I go. If you feel the need to follow along, follow me via the link above (or click here).
Thanks For Reading
My name is Robb Clarke and I’m a father, husband, web-developer, and writer from Fredericton, NB, Canada (amongst a whole host of other things). I’m on a life changing journey to get better — you can read a bit about what’s going on here.
Over the course of 2016 (52 weeks) I want to challenge myself and set forth a whole host of goals to finish before this year is through. I’m attempting 52 challenges; some big, some small. This is one of them. For me, 2016 is going to be about getting better (physically, mentally, emotionally, literally, metaphorically). I most certainly have not been at my best and it’s time to do something about it — for myself, my wife, my daughter, my family, and my friends. I’ve made a list of everything that I want to try to do. You can read all about it and see the other challenges here.
