Aim to increase the duration of your workouts by no more than 10% per week.

Over time you will be able to run more and walk less. If this feels too hard for you, walk briskly instead, until you’re fit enough to include a little running in your workouts. Once I knew it was multiple sclerosis, I realized the stakes for keeping the weight off had just been raised.If you’re a total beginner, your runs should start at 15 minutes in duration and increase gradually over a period of weeks or months.

I’d had neurological issues before, but it had seemed a one-off thing. Then I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The first month of not drinking, I dropped about 45 pounds. And once I quit drinking, it just supercharged my weight loss. I really got into spin classes and doing a lot of cardio. Then I got so I could go to a gym that had just opened around the corner from me. I cut down my calories quite a bit because I couldn’t exercise much until I lost weight. I had started using the Lose It!! app and counting my calories. On a whiteboard in my house I have a tally of how many days I’ve been sober, how many days I’ve not smoked, how many I haven’t gambled. I had some really sick days as my body responded to going sober. Alongside losing weight, I decided I needed drinking out of my life. I was someone who would black out and not remember what I did while I was drunk, plus I hated the way I felt the next day. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to playĪnd I’m an alcoholic. My relationships were strained because I was depressed about my size. We’d recently gotten new badge photos and I thought it was the worst picture I’d ever seen of myself. Clients had watched me struggle to climb a set of stairs. I knew I felt terrible, and I knew I looked terrible. I was struggling to walk through the Raleigh-Durham airport and everything just kind of hit me all at once.

And I travel a lot for work, meeting customers, so here I am this 480-pound guy who can barely move more than 10 feet, but I’m carrying my luggage and my laptop and looking like a mess. I couldn't walk more than five or ten feet without needing to sit down. I’m 5’10”, so that’s a good weight for me. At one point I was 370 pounds, and over a year got down to 180. It came back fast, for all kinds of reasons. Except where some people lose ten or twenty pounds, then gain it back, I’ve lost hundreds of pounds at a time. I’ve been a yo-yo dieter for much of my life.

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