Weight Loss?

As stated below in an entry from Thursday 6-5, I have been a bicyclist all of my adult life. It's ironic then that I continue to preach about the virtues of an active lifestyle, bicycling in particular, and in 2010 and 2011 went through the roof with my weight, expanding like a puffer-fish up to 310 or 320 pounds??!? If cycling is so cool, how did that happen?

In 2003, one of my cycling heroes and an internet acquaintance of mine, Ken Kifer, was killed by a drunk driver. Here is a link to Ken's excellent cycling website. This event sort of took the wind out of my sails. In late 2003, I stopped bicycling because of fear. I thought I was next, to be frank with you. There are so many people drinking/driving, texting and talking on their handheld devices, that I honestly believed I was the next person to be hit and killed on the streets as a cyclist.

But in 2010 I was shocked to see pictures of myself - I had, over a period of time, become obese. Here are two pictures that slapped me awake:

This was springtime of 2010 at a concert I played at. I'm the guy in the center of the photo, gold shirt and tie:

Here is my wife Bonnie and I at a family picture outing in the Summer of 2011:

As you can see, I was shocked with the amount of weight gain I had experienced. Therefore I started riding my bicycle again - I added dieting - I concluded that it was probably more dangerous to be a couch potato and become enfeebled by chronic disease than it was to ride my bike, eat correctly, and face the off-chance of an encounter with a drunk. 

I figured if I'm gonna die, I would rather do it as an active, healthy, mobile person than the "other" choice.

For details on my weight loss, visit my weight loss page at markstone dot org