Part 2: The triathlon prep

So if you are following the entire story you may wish to first check out part one where I explain about how I became a chunky-butt in the first place here.

After I accepted the offer to participate in a triathlon I have to admit that I was worried. I hadn't really done anything physical in a long time and now I had just signed up to do one of the most physically demanding things that you can do and only had 2 months to prepare... I had my doubts but now I had something to focus my negative energy on. I was certainly not in athletic shape.

one of my least favorite pictures of myself, of course with a beer

included this one because someone once asked if i play guitar.. .kind of, and i was fat

Fortunately there is a gym here near my house that has a 50 meter lap pool so I could measure how far I can swim. The triathlon distance is 1.8km and takes place in the ocean. So that means I need to do a mere 36 laps right? I brought a stopwatch in order to see how much i needed to improve in order to not get disqualified.

The first day, I could barely finish 10 laps and I nearly called the boys to cancel. I was extremely frustrated that this was the best i could do and I'm just going to let us down if I am on the team. I decided to give it a week first and if I hadn't improved I would cancel and this would give them time to find an alternate.

You see, this is the hardest part about being overweight: Perhaps you remember what you could do when you were a kid and now that you can't do that anymore it is exceptionally frustrating. Perhaps you are dillusional about how you are definitely going to suck at anything cardio when you have essentially been sitting on your ass and drinking beer for the past 5 years. Rather than face embarrassment you just give up. I didn't give up and instead decided to come up with a plan: leave the stopwatch at home and simply try to do 12 laps the next day.

This strategy helped a lot. it was ridiculous of me to try to do time trials on day 1 and i was just wearing myself out. I actually found that after doing 12 laps on the second day without a timer I still had enough energy to do 6 more. The following day I did 20 laps. By the end of the first week i was doing the entire 36. I had no idea how fast i was doing it but as it turns out this is a much better way to start. I'm only competing against my desire to quit and any time i wanted to give up I just remember about how much I hated the fat dude in the mirror.

a sign on the wall at the gym

I don't want to spend too much time talking about this because I actually did not lose much weight preparing for the triathlon because while I did go out drinking less, i still went out drinking quite a lot and I was still eating just whatever.

Basically, i found out that in order to not get disqualified I needed to finish in less than 1 hour and 10 minutes. In the pool, without anyone in my way, i was able to complete the 1.8km in about 55 minutes after nearly 2 months of training. The day of the race I guess my adrenaline was pumping because I had not trained in ocean conditions more than a couple times. There were waves, there were jellyfish, there were people kicking me in the head and my arms and legs were hitting other people.

However, by the end of it all when I RAN through the "finish line" where I tagged in my friend to do the bike portion (and the announcer poked fun at me for wearing boardshorts instead of professional triathlon getups,) i had no idea what my time was but I collapsed on the ground after passing the timekeeping strap to our bike guy. I later found out that I had finished the 1.8 km, in conditions I had never faced before, in 46 minutes. I finished ahead of 100 other people (to be fair a lot of these people were conserving energy because they had to do the bike and ALSO the run) and once I caught my breath I was very proud of myself.

We ended up getting DQ'd anyway because our bike guy was completely full of s&*t and had not prepared properly. He finished a full 2 hours after the cut off point. We are still angry at him about this. I'm just happy it wasn't me that made this happen, because i fully expected that if anyone failed us. It would be me.

So i know that the title of this thread is "how I lost 40 lbs in 6 months" and so far I haven't given any insight into how I made this happen. Or have I?

Basically, anyone can sit at home and decide to change something about themselves and normally people choose ludicrous objectives that are also very vague. Such as "I'm gonna lose 40 pounds!"

I never set such an objective because there is no real clear path to this. I said to myself "I'm gonna finish this triathlon!" Even that was too vague as I found out my first week in the pool. I found out that you can't go from "zero to hero" on the first day. I needed something more clear and achievable. In my case this was to simply finish 2 laps more than i could do the day prior.

My objective upon starting this wasn't even to lose weight, it was to not let my pals down.

So in a way I am saying the first step to losing weight (as was the case in my situation) was to introduce something in my life that was completely different than what I normally do. Changing my routine. Getting out of the chair and just do something! The hardest part about going to the gym (for me) was leaving my house and going to the gym. Once i was on my bike i was committed and something better than nothing was going to happen.

In part 3 I will get to the nitty gritty so to speak about how I actually lost the weight.