Matthew Herald

What is your history with sports and athletics?

For the first 35 years of my life, I was lazy. My idea of an athletic competition was how fast could I take out a bag of Doritos. And I was GOOD at that! So over my adult life, I slowly got fatter and unhealthier. But I just had no desire to do anything about it.

When I was 34, I had a cancer scare. A spot was found on my gall bladder and the doctors weren’t sure what it was. Since it wasn’t bothering me at the time, the decision was made to leave it alone and check back on it in 6 months. So I waited. And when they looked at it again, it was determined to be a benign polyp as it was getting smaller. On the follow up, my doctor stated that I got some good news. I said oh yeah, I was cancer free and happy. He then smiled and asked why my blood pressure was so high. And the game was over.

You see, I’ve had high blood pressure for pretty much my whole life, but I was never diagnosed with it as I always had a way to talk myself and the medical staff out of it. For instance, when a nurse or doctor would comment on it, I would say things like, “I’m in a lot of pain right now!” “I haven’t been drinking much as my temperature is so high and I’m just not thirsty.” “Doc, there is a sign on your building that says ‘Cancer Center.’ Yeah, I’m a little nervous right now!” And yes, those are all actual things I have told medical staff. How high was my blood pressure? I don’t know the numbers because I truly didn’t want to know but one time I had a nurse tell me this: “OK, I’ve never done this before, but here’s what we’re going to do: you are going to lie down, drink some water and do some breathing exercises while I do some paperwork. In a few minutes I am going to take your blood pressure again and if I get the same numbers, I’m calling 911.” Yeah, it was that bad.

So back to my follow up with the doctor. He had me cornered and he knew it. And this time, I knew it too. I was just going to have to accept my fate that my life was going to be dependent on a pill now. You see, I am not one to take medicine unless it is absolutely necessary. Now, don’t get me wrong here, when the doctor says you have strep and you need to take this antibiotic, I take it. But with this, it felt like I was going to have to take a pill for the rest of my life just to keep me alive and I wasn’t too happy with it. So I slumped my shoulders and told my doctor that he had me as I had no excuse this time. He then said some magic words that I will never forget. He said, “Either you do something about the blood pressure or I will.” I was confused. Very confused! There was something I could do about high blood pressure? He then said, “Lose some weight and the blood pressure will come down.” That was the punch in the face that opened my eyes and woke me up.

Now I would love to tell you how much I weighed when I started, but I didn’t own a scale at the time and I didn’t want to own one. I knew I was fat and I didn’t need a scale to remind of it. But I was at least 260 pounds of pure American fat. Now granted my eyes were open and I had a very specific reason to get healthy, but there was a voice inside my head telling me I would fail. Why? Because I already had. Twice. Yup, I had tried to lose weight two times before, but I didn’t succeed. This time, I told myself, it would be different. The last two times I just started exercising and playing with my diet. No real goals in mind, no progress tracking, no way for me to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

This time, I would have a 2 step plan.

Step 1: Get my diet under control.

Step 2: Start and stick to an exercise program.

With my diet, I finally came to terms that I have a food addiction. I love food! Like, I could eat all day if given the chance. So I had to tame the cravings. But first I had to figure out what I was eating and how much. So I started tracking everything in MyFitnessPal. And when I say everything, I do mean every little bite of food I ingested, I tracked. I did this for a month to give me a baseline. 

Then I made changes. I made small ones at first, like replacing potato chips with carrot sticks. My snacks would be fresh fruit instead of junk food. I drank only water (except for coffee in the morning because I REALLY don’t want to go to jail for homicide). And then I learned what portion sizes were. That part blew my mind! For instance, one serving of beef is the size of a deck of playing cards. Now, imagine the size of a New York strip steak from Texas Roadhouse! That’s three or four servings plus the extra calories from the seasonings and butter they use! The next step was my alcohol consumption. Now, I was never an alcoholic, but I did enjoy a good drink. Still do. The difference was that at that time, I was easily consuming three or four drinks a day and most of that was beer. Beer is very high in calories (and yes, the beer I drink is high in calories as my wife LOVES to label me a “Beer Snob”). So for a whole month, I cut alcohol out of my life. No big loss for me, but it was just extra calories that I didn’t need.

So I had my plan. Yes, I got hungry. Yes, I did cheat here and there and eat some junk food. And when I did, I would feel bad and then do better next time. Luckily those slips didn’t happen often, and I was able to stick pretty close to my food plan. I made adjustments to my plan along the way, too. For instance, I spaced my eating throughout the day so that I was usually eating something about every two hours. Even today I still do this. This allows me to better handle those hunger pangs when they hit. By making these changes and sticking to my plan, I was able to lose 30 pounds.

Now I would love to say that the 30 pounds was just on diet alone, but the truth is that I was doing a little bit of exercising in there, but not much. You see, I looked at the exercise portion as well and while I decided that it was step 2, I knew that I would need to warm my body up. You will never see a major league baseball player step straight out onto the mound and throw 90 mile per hour fastballs right off the bat. This is because he knows that he has to warm up his arm, first. So along that same reasoning, I knew that I needed to warm up my body. How? 

Simple, by walking. I started walking. When I go to the office, I now parked at the back of the lot just so I would have to walk further. I started walking laps around the parking lot at lunch. In the winter, I would walk laps around the office, inside. I stopped using escalators and used the stairs all the time. If I was only going up to a second or third floor, I would bypass elevators and use the stairs as well. I walked everywhere I could and every chance I got. By my logic, when I started running (yes, running was a part of my exercise plan) my body would be ready and I would kill it. Oh how wrong I was!

After I lost 30 pounds I decided it was time to move to step 2 and start exercising. I downloaded a Couch to 5k program (the one I used was by RunDouble and I will recommend it to EVERYONE!) and decided that I was going to run a 5k even if it killed me! This program is a run/walk interval where a nice lady in my headphones tells me when to walk and run. She never says how fast to run, just run, so you can set your own pace. Well at the end of day 1 of week 1 I had moved my body a total of 1.6 miles and felt like I was going to die. No kidding. I felt horrible. I thought this was the stupidest thing I had ever done! Luckily the next day was a rest day and believe me, I took a rest day! By the second day, my body felt pretty good and it was time to run again. This was the exact same layout as the first day. So I did it again. And again I went 1.6 miles and again I felt bad. But not as bad. Sure I was tired and sweating like a pig, but I felt better than I did last time. And this pattern tended to repeat itself throughout this program. Each week the run intervals got a little longer and the walk intervals got shorter. Until finally, you get to a week where the lady tells you to run and then 30 minutes later she tells you that you are done. 

Now 30 minutes at a 10 minute per mile pace is 3 miles. A 5k is 3.1 miles. So if you can get your pace just below 10:00 minutes per mile, you can do a 5k in 30 minutes. And that is just what I did. Now I would love to tell you that I had no setbacks, but that would be a lie. The 12 week program took me about 20 weeks. My wife and I took a vacation to Las Vegas in there and while we did run a couple of times while on vacation, we also overindulged ourselves. There was also a time period where I caught the flu so that set me back as well. But I got right back on, worked myself up to the point when I fell off and then kept on pushing. I completed my 5k and then I started completing them faster. I then decided it was time to up my game again!

At this point, I was down over 65 pounds. My lowest weight was 180 before I started gaining weight. And this didn’t bother me at all. I was still losing fat because my clothes were getting loser, but I was also gaining muscle weight. See muscle is more dense than fat weight. Despite that fact, I was now running 10k’s (after completing RunDouble’s 5k to 10k trainer) and was looking at completing a half marathon.

Today I don’t weight myself very often, maybe once a week or so. My weight fluctuates around 190 depending on where I am with my training. But I continue to push my physical and mental boundaries. I have completed more 5k’s and 10k’s than I care to count. I have completed about two dozen half marathons and two marathons. I had a friend talk me into the dark side where I have taken up triathlon. I have about 10 sprint distance triathlons, 4 Olympic distance triathlons and 1 half IRONMAN under my belt. And yes, I have my sights on a full IRONMAN distance triathlon, but Covid19 has delayed that dream for a little bit. 

But not too long.