A personal training & food journal. Read about our weight loss progress at Train With Ron in Chicago, our nutritional habits and the life changes we're making to get in shape and stay healthy!

	Starting Our Journey With Training With Ron
	Posted by Daniel Arturi | 1 Comment

Sage advice for any twenty or thirty-somethings recently married and eating and living like it would never matter again: IT WILL. I am 40 and Monika is 35 and we are both wishing we could return our bodies and lives to the healthy state they were in before WE started eating and living like it would never matter again.

The good news: we can… and will. The bad news: there will be a mental, physical, and financial cost, and our eating, sleeping, and exercise habits must change.

Therefore we are enjoying our last weekend of eating and living as though it will never matter again… I expect from Monday on, it will ALWAYS matter… on Monday, we will begin a seven month odyssey, much of which I will document here, to train and eat to get our bodies, health, and lives back on track. We will be training with a triad of professionals a Train With Ron in Chicago’s West Loop: a professional triathlete, a former NFL offensive lineman, and a professional sprinter.

Why? Lots of reasons. I won’t speak for Monika, but I will speak for me: every morning I get in the shower and can’t stand the sight of myself anymore. I used to be able to run 3 miles in 18 minutes… I couldn’t run a mile right now if you held a gun to my head. I used to be able to play hockey for 2 hours straight with few or no breaks… my back wouldn’t allow me to skate for 10 minutes right now. I can’t shop off the rack for clothes anymore. My energy levels are so far away from what they used to be. Most of all, I just want to be comfortable… feeling “sexy” again would be icing on the cake. I’ve developed sleep apnea – maybe I always had it, I don’t know… but I sleep with a breathing machine every night… if there was a chance that losing 70 or 80 pounds could mean I wouldn’t need that anymore, that in itself would make it totally worth it to put myself through this.

Right now, I am 5′ 8″ and weigh 275 pounds. My body fat is around 40%. My ankles roll very easily and I’ve got a troublesome shoulder issue but other than that, I’ve avoided major injuries so training HARD shouldn’t be an issue if taken in baby steps and working up to that HARD level. The trainers have assured me they have a plan to build up, they’re not going to toss me into a pro athlete routine from the start. They know their stuff. I’m going to be sore, there’s no avoiding that, but sore doesn’t equal impossible.

I have a naturally big build, so I’m not looking to achieve “skinny”, nor do I want a bodybuilder’s size… 190 to 200 is probably what I ought to weigh for my frame.

Right now I have a cup of coffee every day (loads of cream and sugar), a sandwich or burger for lunch with fries and soda or sugary iced tea, and we order dinner delivered from a local pub, chinese food, or pizza probably 3-4 nights a week. Monika cooks the other nights and she is a pretty health conscious cook, but we do kind of avoid vegetables. I also late night snack on cookies, icecream, or whatever else i can get my hands on… slices of bread, soda, milk, cereal with milk are the usual suspects. We have talked about removing all refined sugars from our diets, and eating whole foods instead of our current diet. This is a SEA change for me, and probably the part of this I fear most, but I’m putting that fear aside and focusing on the outcome… a leaner, healthier, happier, more energetic me.

Exercise… I golf each Saturday but soon it will be too cold to do that. (I ride the golf cart… walk??? HAHA.) That’s about all I’ve done… we were playing tennis a couple times a week but getting a court is tough in the city. Today I walked up the stairs (6 flights) because someone was using the elevator to move out of our building… huffing and puffing at the top… I used to RUN up stairs and not get tired.

Hell, I used to run everywhere I went.

I just wanted to use this space to document my journey and share some of the funnier… and more painful… moments that I’m sure I’ll be experiencing.