Transform Your Body, Transform Your Life

“Lack of activ­ity destroys the good con­di­tion of every human being, while move­ment and method­i­cal phys­i­cal exer­cise save it and pre­serve it.” – Plato

Today I’m telling you my story and how my life has been trans­formed due to becom­ing fit.

A lit­tle his­tory. Grow­ing up I was active, but not overly involved in ath­letic team sports. Col­lege brought a lit­tle less phys­i­cal activ­ity and more junk food. How­ever, I still remained skinny. Mar­riage brought bet­ter food and more din­ing out. And a few pounds. After we had our three chil­dren, I just seemed to be phys­i­cally tired alot. And before I knew it, ten years had passed since we had been mar­ried, and I was well over­weight. I wasn’t superbly over­weight, but I had reached 230 lbs (I’m 6’2″ tall) and I just gen­er­ally felt lethar­gic. Sparked by an upcom­ing get­away for our ten year anniver­sary, I finally decided it was time to lose some weight. Of course, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I started by cut­ting out soda from my diet, and attempt­ing to run (more walk than run). This led to about a 20 lb weight loss over the course of six months. After this, I begin to work more on my diet, and really began to read more about weight loss. The next six months brought another 35 lb weight loss. I was now down to 175 lbs, and think­ing I knew it all. In real­ity I knew very lit­tle. In fact, I had lost too much weight, espe­cially mus­cle. I was still car­ry­ing the fat. At this point I really got more into resis­tance train­ing to sup­ple­ment the car­dio activ­i­ties I was doing. And I began to com­pete in 5K races (run­ning) and sprint triathlons (swim/bike/run). Over the last cou­ple of years I have really worked to keep my mus­cle built up while los­ing the fat. For me, that works best to include 2–3 ses­sions of resis­tance train­ing each week and 1–2 car­dio ses­sions. My weight has evened out and ranges typ­i­cally some­where between 185 — 195 lbs. I built a gym in our base­ment and work out there typ­i­cally. For most of the pro­grams I have been doing recently, I have fol­lowed those cre­ated by Alwyn Cos­grove in his New Rules of Lift­ing book. For more infor­ma­tion on Alwyn, check out: http://www.alwyncosgrove.com/

My life has changed immensely since I began my jour­ney to lose weight nearly four years ago. And it can for you to. All it takes is start­ing. Maybe it means eat­ing more nutri­tious foods. Or going for a walk every morn­ing. Or join­ing the local gym. Start with small steps and before you know it you’ll be see­ing the change you want in your body (and your life). Feel­ing bet­ter about your body really does roll over into your out­look on life. So begin today. Do some­thing to set your­self on the jour­ney of improv­ing your body and your life!

Lance writes sto­ries from his heart, aim­ing to inspire and moti­vate, as you align more fully with YOUR true peak. When he’s not here, you can find him hang­ing out with his fam­ily, rid­ing a bike, or just gen­er­ally act­ing goofy.   Sign up for the Thoughts from the Tree­house newslet­ter and get addi­tional inspi­ra­tion in your email inbox!

Lance Ekum

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