~Ode to Future Me~
Ever since I started sports in
elementary school, I have been told to get in shape; lift hard, run hard and
live hard. Everything I did was to never be half-assed and was to be all out
amazing. This was the attitude that sports gave me. As far as my body goes, I
was pretty big for my age and I always made it my creed to be stronger than the
rest. I made sure that if someone got the attention that it had better be me.
As the years passed my body changed and I noticed larger muscle growth than my
peers. As a senior I weighed 275 and was benching 415. I was getting attention around the area for
the sports I was in and was always what was being compared to when someone was
describing the size of an individual to another person. I was told time and
time again to “get bigger” and “don’t quit lifting.”
These ideas in my head of never being
satisfied landed me at Morehead State, a division one school in Kentucky, to
play football. The same words were said there “get bigger!” and “don’t quit
lifting.” I had the highest bench on the entire team as a freshman and even
started for my first season there. Unfortunately, the next season, I sustained
some injuries while I was there and had to leave the team.
Months passed and I decided that I
wanted a break from working out all together since I was not playing football
anymore. I was weighing around 320 and benching about 440 at this time. After a
while I felt worthless and discontent with what I was doing to myself and would
endure a few months of off and on
working out that were not very consistent. I managed to lose some weight and
when I transferred back home I decided that it was time for a change.
I worked out for a month straight. Four
to five times a week I would work out at Snap Fitness and even go twice a day
most days. I ate the best that I have in about a year and I even was able to
run longer distances and lift more weight as time passed. Although the food
intake was dramatically different, I found a way to stick with it and in the
end it made me feel glad I did.
Everything I could possibly work out and
strengthen was fair game for me. I did all I could to perform the absolute
best. In the end I believe I did a good job at this cumulative act. I still am
not satisfied but that is an attitude that would need a whole other project to
fix. This project gave me the opportunity to get better in an area of my life
in which I was not doing too well at. My health. I wanted to lose weight but
more importantly, feel better than I looked.
