Two examples of how my fitness and nutrition evaluation woke me up: 1.
My resting heart rate is 83. It's not "Get that boy to the hospital" scary, but the average for males my age is around 72 (65 is a great target; professional athletes can be in the 50s and 40s). So I'm a little concerned, because of how much harder my heart is having to work
So if my heart is beating 18 times per minute more than it is preferable... then multiply 18 by 60 minutes, then 24 hours, then 365 days, then the 40 years more I hope to live. And see how much harder my heart is having to work, than it should.
The good thing, as Julian said, is that the heart is a muscle and it adapts quickly to exercise and eating the right amounts of the right foods... that it's easy to help the heart even before dropping weight.
2.
I don't eat breakfast during the week. Between helping get the kids ready for school and getting on the road for work, I simply don't take time. And before kids I was in graduate school myself and usually stayed up late writing, then woke up late and lived on coffee until lunch. So it's safe to say that I've skipped breakfast for ten years. As Kyle, one of the trainers pointed out to me, that means that I've been going from dinner to lunch without a good intake of nutrition-- since late night snacks were usually less than ideal.
That's a good fifteen to seventeen hours every day, without giving my body what it needs. Fifteen hours x 365 days x 10 years. The body is designed to burn calories, and I haven't been doing mine any favors.
