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But, several have. (That’s NOT me, btw —>)

I’m getting an increasing number of people asking about weight loss. I know, I know. If you think this is me lecturing like I’m now a fitness know-all, don’t read what follows. I don’t blame you. I joked with somebody in the last few days that: “It’s hard to lose weight. It’s harder to keep it off. And it’s apparently impossible to NOT tell everybody else how you did it.”

This is not me being that guy.

This is me taking a couple of blogposts to answer the questions I’m getting, and hopefully inspire some folks who need to get healthier.

Let’s start with the WHY.

The WHY is extremely important. Knowing the WHY is much more important than knowing the HOW. Knowing the WHY keeps me going if I get temporarily bored or burned out on the HOW. The WHYgets me started, and that’s the most important thing of all. We cannot take a journey without a first step. The WHY moves one foot forward, and off we go. So here’s some of my WHY:

• Vanity. There, I said it. It wasn’t (& isn’t) my deepest most important motivating factor, but it is a factor. I wanted to look better. I got tired of watching myself jiggle when I brushed my teeth. I got tired of being unable to see my shoes while standing up.
• Health. I’ve had cancer and heart disease. I was taking a fistful of medicine every day. I couldn’t do some things I wanted to do. I was tired a lot.
• Family. At some point I realized that a 300+ pound guy who’d had some of my health issues probably had a limited shelf life. Staying fat and out of shape was jeopardizing the possibility that I would be at the weddings of my grandchildren. Maybe even some of my children. And because we have six kids, we’ve “eaten my retirement.” I need to stay healthy and able to work for as long as I can. When I lift weights, I’m shoving away disability. When I walk, I’m running from the day that others are forced to care for me.
• The ROCK. A church like ours deserves better than a fat, tired pastor. A church like ours doesn’t need to be ashamed of the way the guy on the platform looks. A church like ours doesn’t need to roll their eyes at the hypocrisy of an obese preacher talking out of one side of his mouth about sobriety and self-control, but then – like a glutton – stuffing fatty food in the other side of that same mouth.

I set a goal of losing 50 pounds this year. I’m 35 pounds closer to that goal. In the next post, I’ll tell you what has worked for me. But – and THIS IS IMPORTANT – it won’t be nearly as important as the WHY. I’d love to hear WHY some of you have gotten fit.