Well I hit my first real hurdle in the month-long process of trying to get myself healthy and back into shape.
I got sick.
And while a sniffle wasn’t enough to keep from going to the gym on Tuesday night, the deluge of horror that ensued on the following days was absolutely enough to sideline me for the remainder of the workweek.
I had an out of control fever, a horrendous sore throat, a splitting headache – all of which gave way to the most horrendous head cold I’ve had in more than a year.
It sounds like a blizzard was unleashed when I take a deep breath and exhale out loud. Not even breathing treatments or asthma inhalers are helping me find any sort of deep breath solace.
So what are you supposed to do when you’re like this?
Well, against the advice of one friend, I figured I’d try and sweat it out. So I went to In-Shape, climbed into the steam room, and spent the 25 minutes taking breaths as deep as I possibly could without igniting the coughing attack that was sure to follow. This used to be a regular thing for me – when former Bulletin Managing Editor James Burns and I played racquetball three times a week, we always ended up in either the steam room or the sauna to cap off the gym session.
But I wasn’t really prepared for it this time.
I don’t know if I felt any better after the fact or not – it didn’t do much to remove the congestion, and I just ended up feeling like I was running hot for the rest of the day.
But I actually did it far easier to develop some sort of standard dietary trend considering the only things that I could really hold down during this entire weeklong span was minestrone soup, rice, boiled chicken breast and bananas.
And…I lost three pounds.
Now I know that’s not necessarily a win. But it was informative for two reasons – the first showing me that making a drastic switch to my diet, while unwanted, was actually easier than I thought it would be. I didn’t starve. Second, it showed me that by just switching from the typical junk that I shovel down my throat and gulp down, it’s actually possible to lose a little bit of weight.
Think about how much that would be if I had actually spent the week following the meal plan that Alex gave me (there’s no way I could have done that though) and spent at least three days working out to make this something that wasn’t just an interesting byproduct.
I’m almost under 300 pounds.  Now that’s an obscene weight to the average person, and I know in my heart-of-hearts that it’s not acceptable to me. But if I’m being honest, I told myself when I was closer to 400 pounds than 300 that I’d be happy if I just get below that mark.
“It’s not that far away Jason – you can do it.”
Well, it was a lot further away than I thought – a lot of things had to go right in my life in order to get me to the point that I was able and willing to make the sort of chances necessary to enact that.
But I’m not done by a sight. It’s a good milestone to reach – I’m hoping to get there by the end of next week, and then double-down on things so that I can really kick this mission into overdrive.
People are counting on me now more than ever, and while there may have been a time that sticking around for another 30 years wasn’t necessarily the highest on my priority list, lets just say that now it’s a necessity. 
So keep on trucking I will.