Trading 15 minutes for 15 years - Part 1
By now you have seen the odd photo of me and more than likely it was sporting the a not overly flattering onesie. As you can see, I’m not a slight man by any means, but until recently I didn’t really know how bad it was.
You see, I’ve always been solid… not fat, but solid. Through High School I filled out and by the time I was 15, I was 69kgs (I remember that number for some reason ;)). I played sport and even after finishing school I was very active, playing Hockey, Touch Football and Basketball. I would train/play at least 3 times a week and due to this, my metabolism always allowed me to eat whatever I wanted and the amount I wanted.
I dropped Touch and then Hockey… I started to get more “solid”. I did pick up basketball a bit more and at one stage in my mid 20’s I was playing 3 times a week and still was holding my weight at bay (even though the gourmet pizza and a few beers after each game at the Australian Hotel wasn’t helping).
My “fighting weight” as I call it is 94kgs. At 6ft 1in, that is still considered overweight, but as I had always been solid, I was comfortable and I could still do everything I wanted too.
Like most parents, you put on a few kgs when you have a child… sure it’s expected from the Mother, but Dad’s do too, I put on sympathy weight when 3AM Mum was pregnant with Jaec. 5 kgs to be exact. 99kgs… hmmm… still under a tenth of a tonne and sure, I was past solid, but I still didn’t feel uncomfortable.
I was still playing basketball once or twice a week after we had Jaec. I still remember 3AM Mum saying how active Jaec was when he was in the womb at my games… now 9 years on, he still loves getting out for game. The trouble is 9 years on, I’m not 99 kgs, I’m not playing anymore competitively and the “old” knees and ankles don’t like it as much as they used too.
When we fell pregnant with Kaine, we made the decision to move up north to Brisbane for my work. I flew back to Sydney every weekend to see my 1 year old and pregnant wife and fitness went out the window completely The most exercise I got was slapping the “All Lines” button on the pokies at the local pub with some work mates at lunch, whilst dining on the finest of deep fried “foods”.
As we were pregnant again, I did what I did last time… I whacked on 5kgs of sympathy weight and to be honest, I felt all of my 104kgs. I was 10kgs over my “fighting weight” and starting to get uncomfortable. I was in a new city, without my family and friends. I had a baby over 1000km away and a pregnant fiance. I don’t think I was depressed, but it was the toughest emotionally I had ever been. Kaine came early and I flew home early that week and met my 2nd child in 16 months. 6 weeks later, all 4 of us were residing in Brisbane and at least I had my family with me. I was happy.
I started playing futsal once a week with my work mates, but with 2 kids under 2, it was hard on all of us. The only other exercise I got was walking 10 minutes to and from the train station… and I didn’t even like that. I stopped playing futsal, we fell pregnant again 8 months after Kaine was born and we had no family support.
We had 2 options, I try to get a job back in Sydney and maybe take a backwards step in my career or we move to the Gold Coast to be closer to the 3AM In-Laws for help and I make the commute up each day. We decided on the second, as I still needed to bring in some OK money with a soon to be family of 5 under my roof.
We settled on the Gold Coast really well, but now I was away from my work mates too and I was more time poor with the hour commute. I had no time for fitness and to follow my rule I set up previously, I was 109kgs by the time Izaac was born.
I received comments like “Really, you don’t look that big” , “Wow, that big. You really carry it well”.
This is the first part of my ongoing Weight Journey, I have recently started to focus on it, please keep an eye out for future editions.
