I’m closing in on the one year mark of my journey into health, fitness and vegetarianism. I started Weight Watchers a week after New Years. Its been an interesting journey to say the least — one which I wish I had embarked on much much sooner.

The journey has not come without its challenges. Modifying my diet and cutting out all meats except for fish and seafood were the easy part. I’ve never once this year felt deprived of the foods I love and enjoy. I don’t feel like I am dieting to the point of not enjoying eating. All that said I’ve managed to make it through the hardest time of the year when it comes to dieting — the dreaded holidays.  My weight has been relatively stable fluctuating throughout the low 160’s.

The majority of my challenges are overcoming my physical limitations and recovering from the damage that being overweight caused to my physical being. I’ve had to spend a lot of time focusing on strengthening target areas. When I first started doing yoga I had to build up my upper body and arm strength because even the simplest of poses left me quavering upon collapse.  Those areas leveled out over time and then I had to work on building up my core muscles, which has been a work in progress. Since I carried a lot of my weight in my abdomen, it has been very hard tightening up the loose skin and rebuilding muscle mass. This also started to help improving my balance issues. I’ve always been somewhat flexible and that wasn’t ever an issue — it all comes down to strength and balance.

My biggest physical issue to date is in my hips — while they are flexible they lack strength, which contributes to balance issues among other things. Basically, the problem I am having is that the bones in my hip joints seem to be grinding together, which is terribly uncomfortable. It used to only bother me when I was working out specifically doing hip flexibility exercises, but it has gotten worse over the past month. I probably am going to make an appointment with an orthopaedist who specializes in sports medicine. I would never consider myself an athelete, but I want to make sure that doing yoga is not aggravating the problem more.

I realized recently that my inability to do yoga inversions (headstands, handstands and forearm balances) stems from these hip issues. I understand the mechanism of the poses and how to do them — its just getting my hips to work right and to do the right things. Hopefully, like the other physical issues I’ve had that this will resolve itself over time.

Aside from the hip issues, I feel great — I feel healthy — I feel younger and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since highschool. I do have my regrets. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to address these issues. I wish I had the courage to change sooner than later. The moral of the story is that its never too late to start the journey.