My health over the last few years has truthfully been somewhat cursed. Around 2017, my mental health took a nosedive with what I would come to learn is major depressive disorder. It took until around the end of 2024 for me to finally find medication that made me feel somewhat normal.

It Gets Worse First

Then near the beginning of covid, I got infected with the infamous virus which seems to have left me with lasting effects. I struggled to walk from one end of a grocery store aisle to the other. A case of stairs? Legitimately terrifying. Together, I was not able to be physical due to chronic shortness of breath and my mental health made living anything resembling a normal life impossible.

During this time though, I was always seeing my doctor who was nice enough to listen to me and get me to try out various solutions for both issues. On the lung side, I ended up taking an inhaler and doing resilience training (basically a light workout most days). On the mental health side, it turned out after years or trying SSRI's that they don't seem to work effectively for me. I'm now on an SNRI which seems to have kept me stable but with the relatively mild side effect of slightly more sweating. This is great, right?

Wellllllllllllll..... all of those years of physical inactivity & being trapped inside due to physical disability led to me gaining around 45kg. My weight reached a peak of around 110kg towards the beginning of 2026. For reference, I'm approximately 174-175cm tall (5.85ft - 5.9ft) meaning my BMI was bad. While my lungs at the beginning of the year allowed me to take some short walks and similar, I still wasn't able to do a lot of stuff. Running was still out of the question, lifting anything heavy felt torturous, and I was hesitant to still commit to normal social things where I may need to be more physical. The weight gain was also beginning to bring it's own issues such as developing pre-diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

New Year, New Beginnings

Around Christmas 2025, I made a new years resolution to finally work on my lung health and my weight. Towards the end of Janruary 2026, friends and family were going back to their regular routines which meant I wasn't obligated to eat as much and could make attempts at losing some of this weight.

I began by simply cutting out snacking, drinking more water and not overloading my plate. Within the first week, I lost a moderate 0.3kg but I was extremely happy with this. My goal was to begin slowly making adjustments to my lifestyle and the initial weightloss wasn't my main focus. The next couple of weeks were then about swapping out more calorie rich foods for things that were healthier such as salads, re-introducing a snack in my daily routine which included either a handful of mixxed nuts or a piece of fruit and just generally fighting my brains cravings to eat chips.

By the end of the first month, I was down 3kg. There was a problem though. I hadn't pooped in at around a week. I looked online and saw that I was doing most of the suggestions I found. The one suggestion though I hadn't implemented yet was doing some exercise. This turned into using my treadmill more than once every while I felt like I hadn't moved around much. This turned into daily walks on the treadmill. At first it was slow and the amount of time I spent on there wasn't that long. I was moving at a humbling 3km/h for only 15 minutes before I couldn't continue more. Over the next month, I managed to get my speed up to 4.5km/h for 30 minutes and my weight at this point was down around 5kg.

Variety Keeps Motivation

I was beginning to get bored of the walking alone though. I used to enjoy working out in the past and thought, "If I'm doing all of this, I may as well make my legs, butt and core look good at the end of this." Because my partner bought an obscenely expensive multi-purpose cable machine, I looked around online as to what I could do for some workouts using it. I came up with:

• 3 sets Cable Pull Throughs
• 2 sets Cable Hip Abductors
• 2 sets Cable Kickbacks (straight and 30 degree)
• 3 sets Leg Curls
• 3 sets Leg Presses
• 2 sets Backwards Cable Lunges
• 3 sets Weighted Side Lunges
• 3 sets Squats

There's a couple more but I forget their names (mostly core workout names).

I aimed to do these exercises around 2 - 3 times a week with me doing my walking on all the other days; with Sunday being my rest day. Boy did starting this suck. My lungs wouldn't allow me to go through the 10~ exercises I planned for. At first, I was able to get through about 5 of them. What I'd do though is then the next session, I would continue on from where I left off last time.

Slowly over the past couple of months, I've managed to get through about 8 of 10 exercises each session. In addition, I began by using the lowest amount of weight the machine would allow me to use and now I'm around 5kg - 10kg for most of the exercises.

Where Am I At Now?

Right now, I'm down around 12kg and sitting around the 98kg mark. I've hit my first mile of getting out of the 3 digit weight-range. The next milestone is 95kg. I've had a little slowdown recently due to life being a bit more unpredictable but I've still been getting results; albeit just slower paced. My end of year goal is to get down to 85kg with the eventual goal to get down to my previous stable weight of around 75kg - 78kg.

Having lost weight in the past (although unhealthily due to anorexia), I'm keenly making sure I actually making sure I eat at least 2 meals + 1 snack a day. I've set restrictions on myself where I'll only weight myself once a week on a Friday. I know that if I allow myself to do this daily, I'll start skipping meals to, "Make up," for perceived cheating in my diet.

Truthfully though, having my mind not working against me has been the biggest help in all of this. Now with the regular fitness + weight loss so far, I feel like I broadly have more energy and more capabilities to do anything. An example was that last week, the windows in my house were replaced and I was actually able to help move furniture around. I wasn't stopped because I felt like I was going to pass out from extreme shortness of breath.

I'm overall happy with my progress. I haven't felt this normal in years. It's taken a lot of patience by my doctor, persistence by me but finally I feel like I'm back to being (mostly) able bodied!

Printer Update

For anybody wondering what's going on with my second printer, it's currently functional but I'm not happy calling it complete. The TFT35 I configured in my previous post seems to be faulty as it spams ghost touchs. I'm waiting on some parts to arrive so I can install a new screen + change out the skirts on that printer. Hopefully it'll all be here within the next couple of weeks.

Until next time!