COMFORT FOOD: I was working construction, and I got laid off when the economy took a crash. I was eating for comfort: pizza, hamburgers, fries, chicken nuggets ... and I was drinking, smoking, chewing, everything.
Smoking Cessation 101: Since I was laid off, I couldn't afford to buy cigarettes or chewing tobacco, so I stopped cold turkey. I loved the mental challenge. My wife and I helped put on a fundraiser for a sick little girl in 2007, a classmate of my kids'. I put in money for a three-month membership to a gym and started going five or six days a week.
A SLOW START: I could run maybe half a mile or a mile. It was another mental challenge to force myself to go to the gym, and it was fun. I was losing weight slowly. I wouldn't even step on a scale; I was mainly trying to be healthy and get myself motivated. After the first month, I started thinking, why do I run and then put junk food back in? So I slowly incorporated healthy food into it.
Zero to 26.2 in three years: I used to think running was ridiculous. But last winter, I'd wake up and throw on some long johns and sweatshirts and run 5 miles when it was 10 below. It's kind of healing; it clears my mind. It helps me mentally with two jobs, four kids and a wife. I don't know if I would be able to do all that and handle it without being healthy. I just signed up for Grandma's Marathon with my three older brothers.
Couch potato no more: I got a job two-and-a-half years ago with Fed Ex grounds crew at the airport, and more recently a job as a service tech for a pool company. I work at Fed Ex 4-7:30 a.m. I'm home by 4:30 or 5 from the pool job. We have dinner, I work out or run, play with the kids or do yard work, hang out as a family, put the kids to bed at 8, and go to bed at 9:30. I don't get a lot of sleep.
Picture-perfect: My oldest son says, "You look so different now from the pictures on the mantel." The kids come running with me sometimes: I'll go for a 5-mile run and the older two will bike and I'll push the younger two in the stroller. What I like to eat is different now. I love spinach. Now everybody teases me if I have a chicken nugget: "Oh, do you have to go run five miles now?"
Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a Twin Cities freelance writer.
Contact us If you or someone you know would be a good candidate for "How I Got This Body," e-mail us at body@startribune.com and include your name, age, contact information and an explanation of your fitness story.
More from Star Tribune
More from Star Tribune
More from Star Tribune
More from Star Tribune
More from Star Tribune
More From Star Tribune
More From Variety
World
'Oppenheimer' finally premieres in Japan to mixed reactions and high emotions
''Oppenheimer'' finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers' reactions understandably were mixed and highly emotional.
Business
Network political contributors have a long history. But are they more trouble than they're worth?
One of the nation's most prominent news outlets has found itself in an embarrassing mess over the hiring — and quick firing — of someone who isn't even a journalist in the first place.
Gallery: Champlin beautiful garden winner
The backyard garden of Yee Lee and Bryan Johnsen photographed on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023 in Champlin, Minnesota.
Variety
King Charles stresses importance of kindness as he skips pre-Easter service amid cancer treatment
King Charles III on Thursday stressed the importance of friendship and acts of caring in a recorded message delivered to a traditional pre-Easter church service, which the monarch skipped as he continues to undergo cancer treatment.
Minneapolis
Pickleball craze breathes new life into old downtown Minneapolis office buildings
After a major tenant bailed, Mike Marinovich transformed the second floor of 1200 Washington Av. S. into the sound-proof Minneapolis Pickleball Club, and it's beckoning people back to the city.