I'm still at the "before" part of this bit.I'm 45, 6 foot 1 and about 190. I was big into Stew Smiths Navy Seal workout a few years ago and got into pretty good shape. Actually I was probably in the best shape of my life during that time which was five or six years ago. I think I was up to 12 good form pullups and I could do a slew of pushups. Four years ago this past July, I found out I had Non-hodgkins lymphoma and that pretty much blew my motivation for exercise. It was really frustrating to have spent so much of my adult life eating right and exercising only to get clobbered out of nowhere by some stupid disease. I'd never been sick at all for my entire life and then bam. On the plus side, the type I have is considered sort of a nuisance cancer. Hard to cure but manageable with the proper treatment. When I was going through chemo, the doctor told me to not worry about my diet too much and just eat whatever I felt like eating. Heh...I went from 160 lbs to 195 over the course of my six month treatment. Now, some of that weight gain was a result of my body actually getting the nutrients from what I was eating instead of the cancer. Most of it though was the McDonalds bacon egg and cheese biscuits every morning before work and the litany of chicken fried steaks, chili dogs, bacon cheeseburgers and just about anything else you can imagine. The chemo sucked. Getting to eat anything I wanted guilt free was pretty okay though. I mean hey...double bacon chili cheeseburger...doctors orders!
I've since stopped eating like that and have returned to something that, while probably not considered particularly healthy, is much more reasonable. I've cut out all sugar sodas except for the occasional (maybe two a month) cherry limeade from Sonic and eat a light lunch and dinner usually. It wasn't until recently that I've started thinking about exercise again and with my previous experience with Stew's program, I was naturally gravitating toward functional strength and body weight exercises. Don't really care about looks. I figure if you're strong, you'll look it. I'm particularly weak in the legs. I've always had what must be, in all honesty, referred to as stick legs and since the chemo, I've lost a great deal of what little strength I had in the first place. I won't bore you all with the story of me trying to run across the parking lot in the rain a while back and having my legs give out on me leaving me sprawled in a puddle underneath a parked car. 
In any case, I'm so far out of shape I decided to start with a couple of weeks of just stretching and very light exercises before I start Mark's basic program. I'm not in a huge hurry and I don't want to burn out after the first workout either so I'm hoping to minimize the shock and soreness by taking a slow and steady approach to getting started.So that's my story. I really hope I'll stay motivated, keep coming here and get to know you guys better as I move along and share progress. I'm looking forward to reading everyones success stories! Seeing other people succeed always provides a huge boost for me and pushes me to try and emulate and duplicate that success. Hopefully I can contribute in some meaningful way as well. I also want to say how great it is to see that Mark is an active contributor on the boards. What a huge asset to be able to pose questions directly to the architect of the fitness program you're embarking on.
I've rambled enough. See you all around the boards!
-Hoof-
