A couple of weeks ago Tom celebrated his one-year anniversary at CFU; as of last Thursday, Tom has lost 40# and has gained so much confidence since beginning his journey. Tom has always had the “I’ll try” attitude and never gives anything but his best. What I love most about having Tom at CFU is his infectious attitude and smile…especially when he crushes a WOD and in one instance a poor ol barbell –remember that one?? 🙂 As Tom says below, his journey is not over yet and I can’t wait to see where the next year takes him! Keep doing great things, Tom!!
When Coach asked me to write this “Tuesday Transformation”, my initial thought was to ask her to wait until a year from now, then I’ll really be “transformed”. But, I guess there’s no better time than now. A lot of things have come together for me and Crossfit Unstoppable is helping me succeed in an area, fitness, that I had utterly failed at before.
I remember going to see my doctor because my heart was racing at night. I didn’t like that feeling very much. The stress was stressing me out. I went to the doctor and he gave me a bunch of pills. They helped with the symptoms. At one of my appointments, I snuck a peak at my medical file. It said something like, “the patient is morbidly obese and unmotivated”. Ouch. That was pretty shocking. I’ve never told anyone that, it bothered me so much. I lost weight, gained it back, and went back and forth about what to do and how to do it. I had high blood pressure, a high heart rate, and was close to being diabetic (it runs in the family and my diet wasn’t helping). I remember having a hopeless feeling about it all. What could I do?
One of the principles I’ve found in my life is that you can really only accomplish one big thing at a time. You can tackle a lot of little things (tasks), but if you want to succeed at a big challenge in your life, you need to Focus (with a capital F). I’ve done a few big things since I ‘discovered’ this like quit smoking and getting rid of my debt. But there was a big challenge out there that I really wanted to take on, my health. In the past, I had gone to the gym, used the elliptical for about a year and not accomplished very much in the process. My family had moved and that motivation had been lost.
At some point after our move, I had heard about Crossfit. I googled it and found Crossfit Unstoppable. And as an Internet Introvert, I lurked on the website and read about the happenings for a good long while until the time was right, then emailed Debbie and showed up for the Saturday foundations class where Andi (who’s awesome BTW) showed me and another interested newbie the ropes. Then I had to work…hard.
Now I spend the same hour that I used to spend on the elliptical at the gym, but the payoff is so much greater. I am poor at choosing what to do, how much of it to do and having the motivation to get it done. Coach makes those decisions and I just have to decide whether and how often to show up.
I want to thank all of you who show up and go through the work outs. You aren’t doing it for me, but you are doing it with me. I appreciate the kind words, the high fives, and the fist bumps. You push me to be better than yesterday.
