Absolutely, Chris.
I was having minor, intermittent knee pain. It's gone now.
My feet would throb after a long day of being on my feet. Not now.
My back and hips were stiff every time I rose from a seated position. It felt like I needed to oil my hip joints. It took 30 to 60 seconds to loosen up. No more.
I was having difficulty getting out of chairs without having to push on the arms to lift myself up. It was literally embarrassing for me to rise out of a chair in front of someone. I actually broke the arm off my friend's folding chair last summer. I delivered a new chair to him a few days later along with another apology. In the past year, I remember straining my lower back severely getting up from a sitting position using my core muscles only. This is absolutely not a problem now. This is how I visualize the results. For every 8 lbs that I have lost, it's like getting out of the chair with 1 less gallon of milk resting on my shoulders. Having lost 70 lbs, I can now rise without the extra "9 gallons of milk" weight. This was actually the main reason I wanted to lose weight.
I was short of breath just climbing the basement stairs. Last Sunday, I did 16 flights of stairs (up and down) at church. I'm adding a flight here and there to see if I can eventually get to 50 flights. I met a guy a few months ago that was doing this routinely. Because we like to travel -- and stairs are always involved in the cool places we want to visit -- this is important to me.
For the last few years, I had struggled with sleep apnea. I kept putting off a visit to the doc...which was stupid and a source of family frustration. The sleep apnea stopped after I had lost the first 20 pounds.
I used to get up multiple times during the night to relieve the fluid that accumulated in my legs during the day. Laying in the bed eventually caused the fluids to look for a way out. I rarely get up during the night now...which also helps my sleep.
After 4 months or so of eating properly, my doc declared my blood work to be "perfect." It was borderline on everything bad when I started my journey. Same with my blood pressure.
I figured all of this would keep getting worse (and quick) if I took no action.
I could probably come up more benefits if I think on it. All things considered, this stuff is worth more to me than the momentary pleasure of eating whatever I want.
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