Time to start

This is my first ever message on a blog, so I am not sure how this should read

or look,
or sound,
or generally flow.

Anyway, I was watching one of those news shows on MSNBC, or Headline News, or something, and they had on a doctor who had mentioned that people even 10 pounds over what was considered a "healthy weight" could face significant issues with joint pain, stress on the heart, and even face a risk of diabetes.

I thought to myself, "I wonder what a healthy weight would be for a guy my height and age (6'3", 32 years old). I went to a website that will calculate your ideal weight, and found out that it was about 195 lbs. I also was able to determine that my BMI should be below 25.

Those both seemed reasonable. However, I sat at the computer, knowing that I was 255 lbs, with a BMI of 31.9. These both put me in the obese category on the website's meter.

Obese!? I had been about 200 lbs out of college, and had steadily packed on pounds since, working a number of hours in a relatively inactive profession, and making a habit out of vegging out in front of the television after work, and on weekends. But was I obese? Couldn't be. I had to check another website. But site after site told me the same thing.

At that point, I talked to a couple of friends at work, who were both big guys (in fact, they have taken to calling themselves the "big-boned runners". I don't even want to know how they came up with that!). They were at a similar stage in life--married, kids, in their 30's, heavier, and ready to do something about it.

In one of my not-to-bright moments, I offered a three-way wager. The first person to lose 30 lbs would get $30 from both of the others. I think we had all reached a similar conclusion about what we wanted to do for our own health, and I thought this would be a way to keep motivated to lose the weight.

Well, so far, I have dropped 17 lbs, and I am running regularly. But I must say, that finding a couple of people to encourage me, and challenge me the way these guys are doing helps a lot. Despite the success thus far, I am losing the bet. Both of my friends have actually lost more. Fortunately, it is a friendly wager, and we are all really trying to do this for the long haul. Despite the fact that I started at 255, and 225 would be the magic number to win the bet, I really won't feel like I have achieved anything until I can get to about 200 or so, and really make a commitment to staying in shape for life.

One of my friends has convinced us to join him in a half-marathon in May. At this point, I am up to running about 16-18 miles a week, and I can run about 5-6 miles without stopping. I have taken to running on Saturday as far as I can go in an hour. So far I can get about 6.6 miles. Not bad, considering I have to walk/jog the last 15-20 minutes of it. My hope is that I can get up to running about 10 miles without stopping before the race in May.

I haven't really decided yet what I want this blog to do for me, or others foolish enough to read this. But I do hope that as the year goes on here, that the weight and health factors continue to point in a positive direction.

Also, I am curious to see what things will tend to pique my interest during the times I write my future blog entries. I tend to be a creature of habits and patterns. As a freshman in college, I took a test at the Johnson-O'Connor Labs, to help me determine what I was good at (and bad at, for that matter). There were a number of things I wasn't so good at, but one thing they told me was that I was a man of ideas. "you have a ton of ideas..." they told me, "...but that doesn't mean that they are necessarily very good ideas. Just that you have a lot of them...". Perhaps that will bode well for a blog with a lot of random thoughts, insights, and ideas (not many of them good...).

We shall see...





or Body Mass Index was 31.9. The website