A Tae Bo Experience

2/20/2006

At a very heavy weight of almost 300 lbs it was time to do something. Tae Bo did the trick for me.

One day a few years ago, I went to the doctor for a regular check-up. The "dreaded" moment of getting weighed was approaching. There I stood watching the slider move higher and higher up the number line. Finally, the magic number was 298! My heart was racing from the shock. I knew right then and there that it was time to do something. I had a child to think about. I told myself after leaving the doctor's office, "I will not let myself reach the 300 pound mark."

I had hit one of the worst points in my life when it came to my weight. "Something wasn't right," I told myself. "How could I have gotten to be almost 300 pounds?" Simply put, I had not taken care of myself. I didn't exercise or eat healthy. One day, while watching TV, something got my attention that would turn out to be a blessing. I saw an infomercial for Tae Bo that just called out to me. I knew of other people that supposedly had started doing this. "A fun way to get some exercise in my life," I thought. If "normal" everyday people can do it, then why couldn't I, even at 298 pounds?

The next day I went to the store and bought a Tae Bo beginner's tape. It wasn't until the next day that I actually went ahead and tried the workout. To be honest, I barely made it through the first 5 minutes. This can be a lot to do when you're not accustomed to any real kind of exercise, but I was committed to making a change in my life. I continued to do the Tae Bo workout. One day at a time, one step at a time, I felt I was really getting somewhere with it. Gradually stepping up how much I could do during the exercise and going at my own pace, eventually I could finish a whole workout. I would have good and bad days with it. Sometimes I would even feel like quitting. But I wouldn't let myself think about it and just kept rolling with the punches.

It can be easy to find reasons not to stick with an exercise program. The most famous of these is, "I don't have the time to do it." I've come to learn that this is practically never true. If you ever feel like you have just too much to do during the day, and you need every bit of your free time to fit some sleep in, you may be considering, "I'll just wake up earlier the next morning so I can do a workout." However, what happens when you've gone to bed too late the night before? You may end up thinking that the next morning's opportunity has been blown.

This can become a never-ending cycle that repeats itself until you've stopped working out all together. What I've actually learned is that if you just fit it in anyways, the result of doing this may surprise you. On any given day, that I just forced a workout into my busy schedule, no matter the consequences, I actually found that I had more energy throughout the remainder of the day, and would be more easily able to double-time any other efforts of mine, as would be needed. When you've been overweight for a while, "energy" always seems to be the thing that's missing in life. Each day you get that workout in, you're always glad you did afterwards.

Four months went by before I stepped on a scale again. I had noticed my clothes were fitting better, but wasn't count on having lost much weight for some odd reason. "Maybe I lost a few inches," I thought to myself. To my surprise, simply after having added the exercise to my life and with no change in my diet, the scale showed I had lost 40 pounds! I can honestly say, I never felt more proud of myself before.

Tae Bo is a combination of kickboxing and Tae Kwon Do. I paced myself during the workouts as you should with any exercise and had started off doing the movements very slow. I gradually got to a point where I could do them well, even if not perfectly. This was a truly re-affirming experience that I could definitely accomplish anything that I'd put my mind to. Since I had begun these workouts, I have never put back on any of the weight. Tae Bo is fun and a high-energy activity that helped me succeed with permanent weight loss. I believe this program can help anyone that is determined to make a change and get some energy back in their lives.