It wasn't until realizing just how much progress my Dad has made, and watching him work hard to hang on to healthier habits over the last year or two that I too decided to give some additional healthy changes a shot. Wow, two, too, and to all in one sentence, and if we're lucky I actually used the right forms in the right context. Anyway, back to the point. Dad's lost around 75 pounds I believe at this time, and we recently had to get him some new, smaller, shirts because his old ones were looking really big on him. It may sound crazy that it took 75 pounds to finally get him a smaller size, but you have to take into consideration that my father does no clothes shopping for himself… like ever, and rarely sees the need for us replace an old shirt, even when holes have started to appear like polka dots on it. At any rate, to be completely honest, a small part of me was starting to get jealous. It's not that I didn't recognize that he was putting in the effort and I wasn't, and I am incredibly proud of him for it, I just always took a little comfort in the fact that at least if I had to be so big, I wasn't alone. For years I have been the one in the middle. Heavier then my mom, but lighter than Dad. Not anymore though, now I'm the one at the bottom of the pyramid.
With this typical, unfair wave of emotions starting to hit me, I decided I needed to do something about it, I figure I was going to go one of two directions if I let nature take it's course. Either feel resentful of Dad's progress, secretly hoping he failed so that the balance of our family could once again be restored (ain't I a peach), or get complacent and just accept my new role and give up all together on trying to improve. Since neither of those painted a very pretty picture, I began thinking actively about how to take some new small steps in the right direction. I still had no desire to get on the diet train, just to get detailed again, but I needed a bigger push than just "Lets set a weekly salad night" kind of goal.
Now I'll be honest, I did not have these thoughts, or reach any decisions in one day. This was weeks of feelings, thinking about said feelings, and finally a fluke that got me to where I am now, which I still haven't really told you, don’t worry, I’m getting there.
It started with stumbling across dad's Vivofit activity watch. Mom and I had both talked about wanting to track our steps before, and as luck may have it, my dad is a compulsive gizmo collector, and was on his third step tracking device. In fairness, if I could afford it, I'd love to try 3 or 4 out myself, they all have such different features and design, and I'm just as much of a gizmo nut as him.
His first, a fitbit that clipped onto your pocket or something, still sits in a drawer because the charger is missing. We're also not sure if it even still works as it took a spin through the washer one day; not sure if it's waterproof, maybe we could check if we could find the dang charger! Time will tell if it ever becomes anything more then another junk drawer resident.
His second, the previously mentioned Vivofit, had been sitting on his nightstand for months after being replace by a Vivosmart or something like that. The Vivosmart is cool, and has kind of a touch screen of sorts, and it gives him fireworks when he reaches his steps goal, and I am incredibly jealous of it... just not enough so to pay for my own as of yet. Anyway, I finally decided to dust off the old vivofit one day, and see if it was still working. I mean, yes, one of the big selling points of the base Vivofit line by Garmin is that the batteries only need replaced once a year, but this thing had been sitting there on his nightstand for at least a year, and worn for a few months before that, my shock was real when I discovered it was still ticking along just fine.
So of course, being the tech junkie I am, I went straight to downloading the Garmin connect app on my phone, syncing it up, getting my info all in there, along with the last weight I knew I was before our scale decided to flip out and stop working. On top of that, I found that you could link your Garmin account to MyFitnessPal, which I had used with some success in the past and really like for the "diet" side of things. That was just the icing on the cake... figuratively of course. All of the sudden, this was actually getting fun, for the first time since I started thinking about doing something, I was motivated to stop thinking about it and do! ...it... the something I mean
See you tomorrow for part 3!
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