Inaugural Blog Post

This is the inaugural post for the Kegger 2 Six Pack blog, which is an offshoot of my wife's blog, The Flabby to Flabulous Files. Michelle's site is designed to share her journey toward a healthier lifestyle, and along the way, inspire others who are on the same road. I hope to do the same, with an emphasis on the male perspective, while sharing the tools and resources that are helping me along the way.

My wife and I have been on a parallel journey for the past two years, with some overlap, some differences, and some varying degrees of success. We started training for our first half marathon just under two years ago. I successfully completed three half marathons, along with other shorter distance races, over the course of the following 8 months. Michelle, on the other hand, has gone on to run...I can't even count how many half marathons and other races during the past two years. Running, clearly, is her thing. It is not my thing. Fortunately, I discovered cycling, both road and mountain, was my thing and have taken that up as my cardio workout of choice.

So we both found our niche when it came to a cardio-focused workout. However, we also both noticed, after some initial success, that our weight loss had stalled. We knew we had to look closely at our diet and add strength training in order to keep making progress. We dabbled here and there with various nutritional and weight programs, but nothing "stuck." Then in November, we discovered CrossFit Inland Valley--and this was the game changer. We not only found a program we loved doing, but an approach to nutrition that has made a huge difference. I will be sharing more about what we've learned at Crossfit IV in future posts, but for now, I will just tell you that we had something that we were able to do together while also being able to enjoy our individual exercise approaches. And thanks to what I have learned these past five months, I know feel that I, too, have something of value to share that I hope,will help and inspire others.

Why share? Well, I feel like I've found a great balance of diet and exercise that is fun, doable, and that has put me on the path that has inspired the title for this blog--getting rid of what I had long called "my kegger"--the huge belly I joked about publicly but suffered from physically and emotionally--constant back and knee pain, fatigue, frustration...even depression. Since November, I've drawn 40 pounds off that keg, and along the way alleviated a lot of the pain and exhaustion that was plaguing me. As others have noticed the changes, they've asked me about my diet and exercise, and I've explained a lot of what I do with them informally...and this has motivated me to share more formally on this site. Through this blog, I hope to not only provide a platform to illuminate the things that are helping me--meal plans, shopping lists, recipes, informational and inspirational resources--with others, but to also continue to keep myself accountable. While I have made progress, I'm no where near having that six pack, but I'm in it for the long haul, and hope others will join me for the ride.