I forgot to publish my goals for this week – so here they are.
Diet: Replace sugar-based deserts with fruit-based deserts.
Exercise: Exercise 4 days a week. Do cardio that takes my heart rate to 140 bpm and stays there for fifteen minutes at each session.
Well, it’s been just a little over a week, and things are going really well. One slip-up, but not bad.
Diet Goal: My goal this week was to cut out sugar sodas. Except for a rogue Black Cherry soda a week ago Saturday, I was able to do it. The biggest victory was on Wednesday when, after pulling an all-nighter, I went right into meetings with no Coca-Cola. It wasn’t even that hard to say “No”. I should mention that the difficult part of this is that my company provides soda free for the taking in the kitchen. (Along with chips, cookies, crackers, Cheetos, popcorn, and pop-tarts.) So, when I go to the fridge, I now reach past the Dr. Pepper and Coke and go for the Diet Coke and Diet Root Beer.
Exercise Goal: My goal was to exercise three times a week. I was able to exceed that goal exercising every weekday, except the Wednesday after my all-nighter. (It was straight to bed after my meetings!) Yeah!
On to Week Two!
I should have published this last week, but I’ll slip it in now. Then from time to time I will update the statistics as things progress.
So, my starting point is:
Weight: 232
Waist: 43”
There are other stats I will collect later, but this is where I start. And, hopefully, I will never have to see these numbers again!
I worked all night Tuesday-Wednesday to get a draft proposal ready for review. Not a good move for my health! Also, no time to exercise Wednesday because I had to go right in to the review meeting.
On the positive side, I did manage to avoid taking the easy route during the meeting and grabbing a Dr. Pepper to help make it through.
So this morning, I’m up and starting again – this time with a work out. One day at a time, people!
So, now that I’ve explained Baby Steps, where do I start?
I am going to start out with goals in two areas: Exercise and Diet. Ha! Yes, that’s Ric’s secret to loosing weight, diet & exercise. Shhh! Don’t tell anyone.
| Yeah, I let the Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola slip in and become a part of my daily routine – that late afternoon pick-me-up. These are just the poster child for “Empty Calories”, plus they cause a sugar rush in the body that throws off the rest of your chemistry to try to deal with them. |
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I think it’s important to have a good substitute when something is removed from the diet. So, in their place I will still have diet sodas to fall back on. (But wait until the caffeine challenge comes around!) Also I am drinking glasses of half fruit juice / half cold water.
I went to the gym by my house last Friday for the first time in many months and found that they had remodeled and added a whole new floor! What do you know! The key with this goal is to make the gym a regular part of my life again. I know many of you know the feeling that just making the commitment to get out of the house and into the gym can be difficult. There are so many other things to do! But you feel better after you go, don’t you! So that’s the purpose of this goal – to get me there and get my body moving and stretching. Not too hard, but just get it used to being active again. Later on, I can up the intensity and variety of exercise.
If you are thinking of setting your own exercise goal, remember the point is to get yourself out of a sedentary lifestyle and start moving, breathing hard, and sweating. You don’t need a gym to do that. You can walk, climb stairs, run, bike, play tennis, – there are so many options. Pick something that works for you and you like (or at least can live with).
 | The gym works for me because it’s a commitment to be in a certain place at a certain time. They also have equipment there that allows me to maximize my exercise time and easily add weight training into the mix later. And, for me, it’s convenient. My main gym is about a half mile from my house – an easy walk. And they also have a branch that is about a five minute drive from my office. |
So, those are the goals I am working with this week. Note the Baby Step benefits in these goals:
So far, so good. I’ll report back on progress at the end of the week.
Everyone’s body and life is different. So, what works for me won’t necessarily translate into your ideal road to health. But still, there are some fundamental ideas that helped me out last time that I think may apply to most people. They are just general tips rather than specific techniques, so I’ll write about them as I apply them. Let me know what you think about them.
The first is the concept of Baby Steps. Actually, I didn’t call them Baby Steps when I first used them a couple of years ago. That term is borrowed from Fly Lady – so I have to give her credit. She works with cleaning and personal organization – but it’s really all about slowly changing habits. And that applies just as much to those of us trying to adopt exercise and eating habits that work for us.
Like most of us, I want everything NOW! I want to lose 20 pounds NOW. I want to fit into my skinny jeans NOW. I want to get off sugar, caffeine, fat, carbs, diet soda, etc. NOW!
But while I could do any of those things quickly in the short term, they are very hard to make “stick” for the long term. And when I put a lot of effort into a personal project like that and fail, I am discouraged and unlikely to try again for a while.
The key to changing habits long term is to take things slowly. Break the big goal down into small, easy to accomplish pieces. Each mini-accomplishment builds confidence to take the next step. So instead of one big victory, you celebrate lots of small victories.
I implement Baby Steps by setting achievable goals for each week. If sweets are a problem, then maybe I make a goal of allowing one sweet thing a day. Rather than try to cut sugar out entirely, start by reducing. For exercise, maybe I commit to exercise for a half an hour three times a week. Not every day – you want a goal that you can achieve and be proud of. You can eventually get to a goal of exercising every day – but give yourself several weeks to get there.
The power of doing goals in Baby Steps comes from:
This all comes down to the fact that the real goal for me in this journey isn’t losing weight or looking better in my clothes. Those are byproducts. The goal is to change life habits. And that can only happen one Baby Step at a time!
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It happened very slowly. I had lost a lot of weight. From December of 2005 to May of 2006 I dropped from 210 pounds to 155. I went from a 40” waist to a 31” waist. Obviously I had to get all new clothes, but I loved the way I felt. Big success story, right?
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| Then I slowly started to drop the habits that had helped me get there. “Wow!”, I thought, “I can go back to eating homemade ice cream and not really gain weight!”. That was somewhat true, but only if I had a small amount and I kept my exercise routine up. |
Next was “Hey! Even when I miss some exercise, I don’t really gain weight!”. Again, somewhat true only if I was very strict on my eating and I continued to exercise, even infrequently. But I ignored the caveats, and just let the old habits creep back in to my life.
Very slowly my weight went up. It was just a small increase. And I had lost so much, gaining a little back was no big deal. I had lost more than my target goal weight, after all. And I had gone through so many trouser sizes on my way down, I just switched from the super-skinny 31” jeans to the 32” inch jeans. No big deal.
Every increment back up the scale was small and easy to justify or overlook. Then I got sick, which knocked me off my exercise routine. I never really got back on it. Work was stressful and busy, so I just stopped paying attention to what was happening.
Before I knew it, I was up 30 pounds. Which was very discouraging. And then, as if everything that I had done up to that point wasn’t bad enough, I just stopped caring. Which only meant that the pounds kept piling on and on.
So, here I am today. 232 pounds and a 43” waist. It’s so hard to get motivated to start changing habits. But what’s clear to me today is that 232 pounds is just a way station on the way to 240 pounds. If I don’t change things, it will continue to creep up.
But today, I have found a grain of motivation; a small energy source from which to draw to take a step. And it is this:
Loosing 50 pounds may seem like an impossible dream. But I can stop the gain and start sending it slowly in the other direction. That, in and of itself is a powerful victory and milestone for my health. Really, that’s all I have to do. I think I can mange that.
Of course, health involves so much more than weight issues. But it is all tied together. So, here I go. If you want to follow along, feel free.
