ACI’s Walks the Talk: Navid’s Wellness Challenge (Part 1)

With two months until his wedding day, ACI’s Clinical Specialist Navid set a goal to make a lifestyle change and lose weight. Navid took to the ACI blogs to share his progress…

Exercise and keeping in shape has been an ongoing struggle for me. Growing up, it was easy to maintain a healthy lifestyle and body, thanks to the efforts of my parents in keeping me involved with sports and other extra-curricular activities. Once I went to college, especially graduate school, I settled into a sedentary lifestyle that resulted in me gaining over 20 pounds. Those twenty pounds were very easily gained, and have been proven to be very difficult to lose. About 5 years ago, I hit a point where I was steadily gaining weight and I was unhappy with myself. This prompted me into working out with exercise videos, namely P90X. This had great success for a while, and I lost lots of weight and gained muscle mass by keeping up with the workouts and diet. However, once the 90 days were up, I would revert back to my old ways and quickly put the pounds back on. While I was able to work out and commit to losing the weight, it was maintaining my weight that was difficult. I can remember looking in the mirror, thinking, “Nice, I look good. I deserve a cheeseburger.” This became a daily thing until I no longer looked good, and became used to my daily cheeseburger.

Fast-forward to this year. I am about to get married to the woman I love, I work a stable job as a therapist, which has its fair share of challenges and stressors, and I try to lead a balanced life between my work and personal hobbies. However, I still haven’t achieved a healthy weight or active lifestyle. I did not want to do P90X again for a number of reasons, largely because it hasn’t been sustainable and I’m tired of watching the same videos over and over again. Working for a company that promoted wellness and health has been incredibly beneficial, but it obviously wasn’t going to be the answer to my problems. Until I realized that it could be…

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