Craig Zablo

My buddy, John Beatty recently posted similar thoughts about his fight against weight gain and had even started a blog to track his efforts to lose weight. I posted here that I thought that was pretty bold, going public with his plan. John has since pulled the plug on his blog, but his battle to lose weight continues [and is going well].

It’s strange that Chris and I are in the same boat [although I’d venture a guess that my boat is even bigger] but that we got here by different paths. Chris says that he was skinny for the first half of his life. I was never skinny. As a little kid I was “husky” [man, I hated that word].

In high school I was in pretty good shape. I played football, lifted weights, and was a pretty good wrestler. And consequently I was in shape. I remember a couple of my coaches who were heavy. At the time I thought, “Man, why don’t they get in shape? I’ll never let myself get like that.”

Then I graduated high school and started college. I was no longer playing football or wrestling and had stopped jogging. The first year I gained a bunch of weight. At the end of the year, I started running again… and lifting weights. I got back into wrestling shape… and said “never again… never again will I get overweight.”

Yeah, right.

Once you’re married, have a job, have kids, heck, as you get older, the weight gain comes easier… as do the excuses to not eat right and exercise. Because really, that’s what it comes down to.

Eating right and exercise.

My goal is to get back into shape.

I’ll probably never make the 188lb class again, but my goal is small steps back to decent shape.

I don’t plan to talk about my progress [or lack of] much here. In fact I’m surprised that I’m even saying this much. I guess the fact that Beatty and Chris were willing to go public, made me at least “weigh in” on the subject.

At any rate, you’ll be able to tell from the pictures that I post from time to time how I’m doing. Maybe in a year or two, you’ll wonder, “Who is that normal sized guy that kinda looks like Zablo?”

Napoleon Bonaparte was at one time a self-proclaimed Emperor who had conquered nearly all of Europe.

Napoleon died an early death from stomach cancer when, despite his military genius, he was defeated and banished to a small island in the South Atlantic over 180 years ago.

Now it appears that Napoleon may not have died from cancer after all. A new toxicological report shows a “toxic form of arsenic, used for centuries as rat poison, was found in Napoleon‘s hair samples at 37 to 42 times above the normal level.” .