4XLT

Good riddance, 2008.

Another year has come and gone, and I am here feeling rather philosophical (no surprise to any of my fellow bloggers, right?). 2008 has been huge. And epic. And monumental. And any other number of suitably large sounding words. The past twelve/thirteen months (I’m counting December 2007) have influenced and changed me in a number of pretty substantial ways. I can honestly say I’ve changed more in the past year than I’ve changed in the past three years since graduating from college.

I’ll take some time to look back at the past year today, and Saturday I’ll take a look at what I’m planning for 2009.

The Year of Change

If I had to boil down the entire year to a single word, I don’t have a doubt as to what it would be: change. And it’s both a good and bad thing.The weight loss and the accompanying mindset evolution has, of course, been the focus of the blog, and it’s what I’m the most proud about. However, the fat loss isn’t the only change I’ve been through this year.

Most notably is the huge change in my professional life and the fallout it’s created in my personal life and spirituality. I have spent the last three years as a Christian minister working for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries and with various churches to help people encounter God through music and the arts (in church jargon, I was a worship leader).

Chi Alpha is an awesome organization, and my bosses are wonderful, loving people. I can’t stress this enough, so please don’t misconstrue any of this. However, with Chi Alpha and other similar organizations, all staff (including the national staff) are required to raise 100% of both their personal and work budgets. I won’t go into a tangent of the why’s and how’s, but I’ll just suffice it to say that it is hard work, especially if your personality isn’t a natural salesman – like mine.

I spent the last three years in stress of trying to pay my bills, picking up some odds jobs here and there and the occasional freelance design job. But, during the last third of the year, the finances just completely bottomed out. Combined with a bit of a financial emergency, I just hit the point financially that I couldn’t continue on any further.

Fortunately, I was able to find a job doing web development with an Intel contractor here in the area. In the midst of my financial and mental meltdown, my trusted pastor Jeff Taylor at Agora Tulsa messed me up by suggesting this whole thing is orchestrated by God. I scoffed at it initially, but have come to agree. However, it’s one thing to agree with your mind and another thing all together to believe and trust something from your heart. I’m somewhere in between.

These days, I’m in the process of digging myself out of the debt I created. But, it’s been such an odd place for me these past weeks trying to sort out my faith and belief. I’m still a Christian, and remain one more than anything else because I am rock solid convinced that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead after his crucifixion and death.

But any further thoughts on my personal faith I’ll keep it between myself, trusted friends, and God. For now, I return to the change aspect I began with: for years I thought I would be in the vocational ministry until the day I died, and now I’m very happily working a “normal,” marketplace job and have very little desire to return to life as a minister or involved with nonprofit work.

Jobs may seem like something relatively minor, but as mine was tied to the most important aspect of my life – my religion – this change has been more enormous than I can adequately describe.

I Create the Change I Want

I started out the year finally determined to lose weight. Since graduating from high school around 290 pounds or so, I packed on 150 pounds of fat through poor nutrition, a very sedentary lifestyle, and enough Dr. Pepper and fast food to feed several impoverished African villages. At the beginning, I had no idea hope much weight I could lose, if I could really lose weight, and how long it would take.

I was so utterly in the dark, but I was determined to go for it. After a false start in December 2007, I really started going strong at the end of January 2008 thanks to a flash-in-the-pan weight loss bet with a friend of mine. Dropping the 35ish pounds to weigh under 400 pounds by my birthday in March has got to be one of the best feelings I’ve ever had.

I’ve proved that anyone can lose significant weight if they just get smart, get a plan, and are willing to work hard. But the bad news is that I’m still fat – just not as fat as I once was. I won’t be satisfied until I am healthy, strong, and thin. I refuse to settle on being chubby or having a pot belly and man boobs.

Struggling to Lose Weight, or Getting Comfortable and Lazy

I crossed the hundred pounds lost threshold sometime in August at 340 pounds. That took roughly eight and a half months, or roughly twelve pounds a month. Since that point, I’ve struggled through the next 20-30 pounds past 340. I gained and lost the 330-325 range four or five times, and now I’m working through the ten pound range of 320-310 for the third time.

The specific reasons of how is pretty simple: I stopped regularly weight training, and when I did, it was so sporadic that when I did go, I failed to lift with a plan. My time at the gym as a whole with cardio as well has been extremely suspect, as well.

My food intake, while manageable when I’m at the gym five or six times a week, only leads me to easily pack the pounds on again when I’m not sweating them off. So, instead of getting my fat gut into the gym regularly again, I’ll just go on strict eating and majorly restrict my calories to drop pounds quickly, when I’ll eat poorly again and restart the cycle.

But even more than the how I’ve done so poorly the past few months is the bigger question of why.

And for that, I don’t have a great – or any – answer right now.

So, there’s 2008. 120 pounds lost. Major change in my professional career. Major change in my faith perspective.

And the latest monumental change? I’ve got contacts now, after wearing glasses since third grade. I guess breaking my glasses at my sister’s wedding reception paid off surprisingly well.

Stay tuned, a look forward to 2009 is coming up Saturday.