Motivational Mondays (May 24)

When I started my weight loss journey four years ago, I had many reasons to doubt myself and many opportunities to quit. I'd tried and failed to lose weight before, many times, so what was another failed venture?

That time, though, was different. I had a few reasons to continue along that path, to try and shed the weight that had plagued me for the longest time.

First, my wife. Her support is unbelievable and ever-present. I would be nothing without her.

Also, my daughters, who were 2 and four months when I signed up with the trainer back in March 2006.

It's one thing for me to try and look good and live a healthy lifestyle for my wife's sake. I mean, yeah, I want her to have a decent-looking fellow on her arm when we go out. But we love and support each other and always have. And we change and grow together and are always there for each other, as you'd expect in any strong marriage.

But my daughters... they reached me in places I didn't realize I had.

I like to think that everything I do is for my daughters. This is one of those things, weight loss. Everything I lost was for their sake. Every workout and exercise I did was so that they wouldn't have an overweight dad take them to and pick them up from school. I know I've blogged about it before, but I want to say it again: I did not want to be the fat dad. I was for a while, even though I wasn't taking my girls to school or anything, but I was an overweight dad for a few years.

In Mexico with Kennedy, August '06

With Yvie and a famous Mexican athlete in August '06

I was already on the way towards losing my weight when these pictures were taken about three weeks apart from each other. I'd dropped about 40 pounds by this point but I still had quite a few pounds to shed.

I persevered and came out better because of it. Saturday was just a reminder of that.

I hadn't realized it until way later, but the SBSD Youth 1K Mud Run was the first-ever race we ran together. I mean, I knew we were running together of course, but I was so focused on Kennedy that I didn't realize the implications of the whole scene.

Last year during the Camp Pendleton Mud Run, there was a guy with a white t-shirt, and two teenage girls on either side. On the back of the guy's t-shirt read DAUGHTER and an arrow pointing to the right and left. The girl to his left had DAD written on the back of her shirt with an arrow pointing to the right, and the girl on the opposite side had a similar back to her shirt. I wondered when I'd have the chance to do something similar.

And not even one year later, I had the chance.

Overweight LB would not have had that chance.