an olympic weight lifting coach

Great news! I talked to the Olympic weight lifting coach here in Santa Fe and I'll start training with him on Monday! I'm very excited. I've been dreaming of Olympic weight lifting for almost a year now, and this coach is a top notch coach. He has numerous athlete's who are world record holders.

Since I've been completely sedentary for the last few months he's going to have me working exclusively on partial lifts. If after a couple weeks I seem to be responding well to the partial lifts he'll move me into the next phase. My first goal is to drop down to the heavyweight division which is 206 to 231 pounds. This morning I weighed in at 280 pounds which means I'm in the super heavyweight division of 232 pounds and above.

Since I'll start training on Monday I'm going to go to an OA meeting today to try and get my eating under control. Like I said, my first goal is to get into the heavy weight division which means I need to lose 48 pounds. I can't do that without OA meetings, phone calls, prayer, a sponsor, and God!

I'll keep you updated on how things go.

olympic weightlifting for me?

A couple months ago I posted that I retired from triathlons. The sport of triathlon was great for my eating disorder. I love competition, so the races fueled me with passion and motivated me to be dedicated. No matter how much I worked out if I binge ate I'd be overweight and slow. And if I didn't eat enough I'd be to weak to finish my workouts. The healthiest I've ever been was when I was training for Ironman Arizona in 2011. Since I retired from triathlon I've been looking for a sport to pick up to help me stay active and keep me from being obese, which I am VERY obese right now. I've been doing CrossFit for awhile and I love it. But I've been content being the slowest and fattest person in my CF gym.

 There's a lot of Olympic weight lifting in CrossFit, and I've found I really enjoy the olympic weight lifting. One of the things that attracts me to that sport is that it's important to get and stay as light as possible. Olympic weight lifters compete in a division determined by their body weight. The men's divisions are:
123 lb
137 lb
152 lb
170 lb
187 lb
207 lb
231 lb
and over 231 lbs

Currently I weight 265 pounds, so I'd be in the 231 and over division. Virtually all of the athletes in the 231 lb and over division are freakishly strong. That's NOT the division I'd want to lift in. Probably the best division for me would be the 170-187 pound division. I'm still strong and healthy at 190 lbs, and I could cut a few pounds the day before the competition to make the 187 pound category. There's an olympic weight lifting competition here in my home town on September 7th, and another on November 9th. I'm going to compete in them to see if I enjoy it as much as I think I will. I'll keep you posted.