The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

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I read a great article this morning written by Kathy Gates for Ian’s Messy Desk (found via Lifehack.org). Kathy lists 7 lies we tell ourselves that prevent success in achieving our goals or living our perfect lives. As I read each item on the list, I found myself directly relating it to weight-loss and emotional eating:

Giving up quickly? Check.
I’ll start tomorrow? Check.
Setting unrealistic goals? Check.

This is good stuff! I’ve used her titles and applied them to healthy eating, weight loss and emotional eating. Instead of copying her discussion, I encourage you to read her original list - it’s a great read and applies to life in general.

Lie 1: Expect Quick Results.
When starting out, it’s important to remember and prepare yourself (constantly) you will not have instant gratification. It took months or years of unhealthy eating habits to gain your weight; it will take months or years of practicing new habits and eating healthier before it comes off. Instead of focusing just on the scale, pay attention to other weight loss indicators as well - less fat around high-profile areas like the face and armpits, increased endurance, successfully ending a meal before getting stuffed, dropping clothes sizes. Focusing on all your successes, small or large, helps maintain a positive attitude and feeling of power.

Lie 2: Complaining is OK.
Complaining is addictive and harmful. While it can be comforting to place blame for being overweight on circumstances “out of your control,” it also reinforces a negative attitude and infects your support network like a plague. No matter how resolved and committed you are to losing weight and changing your lifestyle, hard times will come for the rest of your life. Even if you don’t talk to your support group members, sometimes the simple thought of how proud your friend would be with your choice to resist the ice cream cone is enough positive reinforcement. Maintaining focus on your accomplishments and discussing hard times objectively as hurdles to overcome is like Miracle Gro for your support network - everyone feels proud and positive to be a party to your success. Complain about all the crappy stuff you’re eating or doing and your support network will either begin to pull away or will reinforce your negative outlook. Think negatively enough about weight loss, and you may just convince yourself it’s easier and better to just live life the way you want, healthy or not.

Lie 3: Fix It Later.
Tomorrow is the worst day to begin losing weight. Start today, right now, by making small changes - drink 32oz more water a day, leave some food on your plate, and park your car further away from your building at work or use stairs instead of an elevator. By starting with small changes, you begin to practice evaluating your choices based on their impact on your health instead of any satisfaction or emotional comfort you may get. Practice those small changes for a week, and it becomes easier to take the next step. Before you know it, you’re eating salads with no dressing and actually enjoying plain water.

Lie 4: Having an *Idea* Instead of a Plan.
No matter how hard or often you think about eating less and exercising more, it doesn’t become a reality until you formulated a plan and set goals. Thinking about losing weight is daunting and overwhelming - you focus on the total amount of weight and life changes to be made. Formulating plans and setting goals is positive and actionable - by splitting the ultimate goal into small tasks, you establish a concrete plan for success. Working towards an ultimate plan gives you a higher sense of purpose - it’s comforting to know today, tomorrow and next week you have specific tasks planned ahead of time that lead to weight loss and lifestyle change.

Lie 5: Ignoring Your Talents.
Weight loss and lifestyle change isn’t about denying yourself things you love or pushing yourself to limits - it’s about choosing to live a healthy lifestyle, and you’re not going to live the healthy lifestyle if you don’t enjoy living the healthy lifestyle. Incorporate your talents or passions into your healthy lifestyle to make it fun. Enjoy blogging? Join Jason Calacanis’ started the “fatblogging” meme and have fun joining an active weight loss support network. Enjoy surfing the Internet and discovering interesting sites? Sign up for Internet-themed podcasts and listen to them while walking. Learn a new language, listen to an audiobook, find a local dance club. Wherever your passions and talents lie, use them to energize your weight loss.

Lie 6: Elusive Goals Instead of Do-able Goals.
Set yourself up for success - make your goals achievable. Specifically for weight loss, I recommend making three types of goals: a goal weight, daily goals and “dream” goals. Your goal weight should be practical and realistic - best case scenario, you’ll work with your health care provider to establish one. Daily goals should be easily achievable and designed to slowly modify your lifestyle through constant practice - examples could include drinking 64oz of water, walking one mile and maintaining a certain daily caloric intake. “Dream” goals are inspirational and should be activities and events you would love to participate in but never could, like running a 10k race at Walt Disney World (a personal dream goal of mine). I talked more about these types of goals, and setting goals in general, in a previous article.

Lie 7: Adopting a “What I Do Doesn’t Matter” Attitude.
Looking down at the scale and considering the total amount of weight to lose can be daunting and overwhelming - it’s easy to think no matter what you do you still don’t lose weight fast enough, so you may as well stop trying. To prevent being overwhelmed, set small daily goals you can easily measure, surround yourself with positive people, recognize every pound lost slowly is a pound kept off, and concentrate on making healthy lifestyle changes and shifting habits versus dieting the weight off and denying pleasures.

When you live an honest, practical and healthy lifestyle, I can’t promise you’ll never fight the “unhealthy food choice” impulse battle ever again, but you will have won the war.

So today was my first run outside for awhile. Beautiful morning, when I prefer to run, and a nice cool 55 degrees out. The only “complaint” was that I was without tunes - My ipod wasn’t charged. So for most of the way I had to listen to the birds sing. If all off life’s problems were that Horrific. Laugh

But it was a good run, down around the Lake. Running on pavement is worlds different than running on a treadmill. While the health benefits are there for both, actually moving in the world and being able to see the distance you’ve traveled gives a better sense of accomplishment. It’s a more tangible thing, at least to me. Pull up google maps, and I would be able to trace it for you.

Another detriment to running on a treadmill is that the numbers fib to you. The speed setting might be set to 7.5 mph (8 minute mile) but given how you run, you can be moving quite a bit slower. Being 6′ 3″, I just lengthen my stride. And when both feet are off the ground the track just goes by underneath.

The last and most important difference, to me, is the texture. You can feel the difference when it comes to running on pavement, sand, “trail”, and even the treadmill. Each has its own give or softness, its own resistance which is something different. In fact someone who is used to running on pavement can be slower if they try to perform the same on sand, or trails. Your body has to learn. So to prepare for my race, I have to run on roads and pavement since it has been awhile.

Which leads me to today’s numbers. Didn’t wear a watch, but in feeling my pace the first 1.5 miles was cruising right along at an 8 minute mile. After that I slowed down to a 10 min mile. Which isn’t bad. But slower than my personal goal right now.

And in case anyone wants to donate, visit here to donate straight to Habitat, or follow the instructions here for me to donate in your name. Have a great day, and to those that run, waddle on!

Step 2 - Set long-term and daily goals.
Now that you’ve recorded a starting point, it’s time to set some goals. There were three types of goals I set - goal weight, daily achievements and dream goals.

• Set a goal weight.
  

  First, you need a goal weight. Personally, I know I was pretty fit in high school when I weighed 185, so I chose that as my goal weight. If nothing else, you can use the BMI calculator from Step 1 to determine a rough estimate of your “healthy weight”, keeping in mind this is not an accurate measurement. Subtract your goal weight from your current weight, then divide by two - that’s roughly how many weeks it should take to reach your goal, assuming an average weight loss of 2lb/week . For example, last September I weighed 265 with a goal weight of 185:

  Read the rest of this entry »

  Table of contents for 10 steps to jump start your fitness

  1. 10 Steps to Jump Start Your Fitness: Step 1 - Get Started
  2. 10 Steps to Jump Start Your Fitness: Step 2 - Set Some Goals

The Simple Dollar led me to a great post this morning at An English Major’s Money; this paragraph in particular resonated with the paradigm shift I’m going through:

I guess the point here is that the way you spend is determined by the way you live and the way you think. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately: money is so much more than math. It’s about personality, and conscience, and comfort, and childhood, and habit, and belief, and culture.

I think that’s spot-on.  I recently came to the conclusion that my spending habits and eating habits were inter-related, and as I made lifestyle changes that slimmed my waistline, my wallet grew as well.  I decided that eating and spending are both under the umbrella of “consuming”, and realized my lifestyle dicates my consumption and my thoughts dicate my lifestyle.

Ok, so the words are nice, but how does it apply to my life?  When I look back at how I set weight-loss goals, I realize I have followed a pattern that illustrates how some small changes I made resulted in a tremendous lifestyle shift.  Some of the early small changes were:

I wanted to change.  The catalyst for me was cholesterol - my doctor wanted to put me on cholesterol medication, and I decided I wasn’t that person.  I emotionally invested myself in the lifestyle change I wanted to make - I did not want to be the dad that couldn’t keep up with his child’s first bike experience.  I did not want to be the fat man at Disney that couldn’t fit into the Mount Everest ride.

I redefined how I thought about my self.  The trick here was to think positively about the change I would implement, not negatively about the person I was at the time.  I am the choices I make, not the way the world makes me - by redefining my “self” as a choice to live a healthy lifestyle, I overcame being overwhelmed or depressed about my weight and appearance.

I kept a positive attitude.  I consciously sought positive changes and celebrated them - less fat in high-profile areas like my chin and armpits; stopped snoring; more endurance; less appetite.  I found that just by having a positive attitude, I actually starting enjoying those things that I resisted before, like broccoli and exercise.  Now, not only is it part of a routine, I do really enjoy riding the bike, eating raw veggies and drinking 3 quarts of water a day.

I studied my own reactions.  Impulse buying, impulse eating - it’s the same thing, a mindless reaction to an outside stimulus (Dave calls it his unconscious acts).  I began practicing a point of awareness - consciously recognized my choices when otherwise I would mindlessly react.  Walking through the DVD section at Best Buy, where normally I would almost subconsciously reach out and grab any movie I had an emotional attachment to and purchase it, I now consciously stop, pick it up, look at it, make a choice on purchase and usually put it back.  Trent at The Simple Dollar calls it his ten second rule, and I like that description (although sometimes it takes a little longer than ten seconds, like that durn scale I want) - take ten seconds to give yourself a chance to consciously make a choice rather than subconsciously reacting.

For me, lifestyle change started with the way I think.  I needed to think positively, consciously and diligently.  Thinking about the food I put in my mouth every time gives me time to evaluate what I’m eating, how much I’m eating, how fast I’m eating, and those ten-second evaluations become lifestyle habit changes.  Thinking about what I purchase every time I buy something gives me time to evaluate what I’m purchasing, and those ten-second evaluations become lifestyle habit changes.

No matter what I’m consuming, be it food, retail purchases, opinions, mass-media TV, or a spiritual leader’s statements, I now approach it from a place of power - I evaluate my responses and choose instead of react.