{"id":224,"date":"2012-03-13T21:25:14","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T01:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/?p=224"},"modified":"2012-03-15T23:41:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T03:41:13","slug":"being-normal-never-felt-so-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/13\/being-normal-never-felt-so-awesome\/","title":{"rendered":"Being &#8220;normal&#8221; never felt so awesome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like most thirty-somethings, my weight has been gradually creeping up over the last five years or so. Last December, it hit 188, which was ten pounds over the BMI normal\/overweight cutoff for my height.<\/p>\n<p>They say that most drug addicts can&#8217;t quit until they make the decision to do so, and that they usually don&#8217;t make that decision until they hit some personal low that&#8217;s a trigger for them. It&#8217;s different for every addict: some decide to go clean when they first wind up in the ED, or when they&#8217;re first arrested, or first imprisoned. For some, of course, it sadly never happens.<\/p>\n<p>I think it works the same way for people who decide to lose weight; at least it did for me. When I hit 10 lb over the limit, I finally decided to get serious. I cut way back on (but didn&#8217;t eliminate) carbs, stopped eating sweets, and started weighing myself every morning with a scale that could provide accurate, precise (to +\/- 0.2 lb) measurements. And amazingly (at least to me), the weight almost instantly started coming off. It didn&#8217;t, of course, happen overnight, and there fluctuations due to water or eating more than I needed, but the general trend was noticeably (0.2-0.4 lb per day) downward.<\/p>\n<p>I hit a plateau in the low 170&#8217;s near the end of February, but I kept doing what I had been doing, knowing that I was on the right track. My goal was 10 pounds below the BMI cutoff.<\/p>\n<p>This morning, I stepped on the scale.<\/p>\n<p>It read 168.0.<\/p>\n<p>I had done it! And I look better, have more energy, and my clothes fit better.<\/p>\n<p>The best part of all this, though, isn&#8217;t the preceding. The best part is, after three months of eating differently, my habits have changed: I&#8217;ve finally shed (so to speak) my junk-food vegetarian ways. I eat more veggies and protein, and less garbage. And now that the habit is ingrained, I should be able to continue it in the future, continuing a thinner, healthier me.<\/p>\n<p>I feel as if I&#8217;ve been walking around all day with AC\/DC&#8217;s &#8220;Back in Black&#8221; as my own personal soundtrack. :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like most thirty-somethings, my weight has been gradually creeping up over the last five years or so. Last December, it hit 188, which was ten pounds over the BMI normal\/overweight cutoff for my height. They say that most drug addicts can&#8217;t quit until they make the decision to do so, and that they usually don&#8217;t &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/13\/being-normal-never-felt-so-awesome\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Being &#8220;normal&#8221; never felt so awesome<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rmW5-3C","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathankmack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}