Day 88 of 103in365: 24/103

Hey There!

Another week in the books and another 3 LBS in the books too!

This was a really stressful week for yours truly. I did things a bit differently in response to the stress than is my norm, and thus still lost 3 LBS instead of gaining or staying the same.

Thing the first.

I did not comfort myself with unhealthy food.

This is a big deal for me. My normal response to stress for most of the past 15 to 20 years is to hit the drive through, get a pizza, drink my weight in soda or pick one or more of any number of my goto unhealthy behaviors. Instead, I more or less stuck to the rules I have been following (Bob's Skinny Rules) and did not have soda or fast food and ate almost exclusively healthy food. (Total disclosure: I may have had one corndog and one homemade donut on Saturday, but that was it! Honest!)

Thing the second.

I moved around instead of sitting around.

Now, I did not do as many workouts as I had wanted to, but I was active more than my previous norm and I did not sit around waiting to forget my stress or for things to magically get less stressful. I worked out alone and with others, and moved.

Thing the third.

I reached out for support.

I am generally pretty good at asking others for support and advice, but this week I purposefully sought the council of more than one friend and planfully spent more concentrated quality time talking things out with my amazing wife. Through their support, especially my wife’s, by Saturday things smoothed over and now, as the kids say down at the schoolyard, “It’s all good!”

They say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Loving stuff like that as I do, I like to generalize that concept to other contexts in my life outside of employment. I tell myself that I need to act like the man I want to be in the future, not the man I may have been in the past. I also tell myself that I need to act, make decisions and respond to life like a person who has the body and the fitness level that I want to have, not the body and fitness level that I have right now. I have said this in the past and I will say it again. I need to act and think like a fit person, not a fat person. I need to listen to the fit voice, not the fat voice.

(Digression) There are some people that say, they are fine with being overweight or “fat”.  This may indeed be true. It also may instead be that they have accepted what they do not think they have the ability, motivation or courage to change. I have never been one of those people to say that I was “all good” with being fat. It is only recently that I have dug deep and found my motivations, my abilities and the courage to do something about it. If I can do it, then anyone can do it! If you are really truly OK with being large, then that is your right. More realistic though, is that you are not truly OK with it. You simply must find a way(s) to dig deep and figure out how to get something different for yourself. I had to start a blog and make big goals. I had to seek out exponentially more accountability than I have ever had in my life. Ultimately, I am just taking it day by day. I know you have the courage and ability to find out what you need to do! All that being said, I believe it distills down to what Stephen King wrote, “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

Take away for this week: Bob Dylan said, “Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you’d like to act.” Thanks Mr. Dylan. That is another way to say what I have been trying to say. Another oldie but goodie is, “If I do what I have always done, I will get what I have always gotten. If I want something different, I have to do something different.” That is not a Dylan quote, but it is still one that I tell myself almost everyday. When I try to talk myself out of working out or I try to talk myself into being OK with eating how I know I should not eat, I tell myself that quote and make myself chose if I want something different or not. It is not about the two or three more significant choices we make every week, but rather the hundreds of little ones we make constantly.  One way to measure if you are likely to get closer or further from you goals, is to take note of not how often declare you want something different, but how often you act like you want something different. 

Have a great week!

Scuba

Day 82 of 103in365: 21/103

Hey There!

Another LB down! Just 1 this past week, but I will take any LBS in the downward direction!

I wanted to talk about some goals this week. Goals in general and then I wanted to put my current goals for 103in365 out there.

Without goals to work towards, sometimes it is easy to feel like we are just pealing out or just doing the same things over and over again and just getting the same things over and over again. Sometimes, both of those are true. Goals give us something to reach for and focus on as we try to better ourselves.

"Keep your eye on the prize" is a phrase most people have heard before. To me it means that when we lose focus, hope or feel overwhelmed, we can get perspective again and become refocused by shifting our thoughts and efforts back toward our goals. The prize could be just about anything that we want. For me it is health and fitness, specifically through the losing of 103 LBS!

You already know my main goal here. It is the title of this blog and I give you my progress towards that goal in the title of every post. Big goals are great, but we are exponentially more likley to reach them if we set and acheive smaller goals along the way. Planning out smaller goals also provides us specific times to assess and celebrate our progress and it can also be a time to make adjustments that can lead to even more success.

Here are some smaller "milestone" goals I have right now. I want to be 40 LBS down by Christmas, for starters. That means I have 63 days to lose 19 lbs. Since Christmas is only 9 weeks away, I need to average just a Cheerio more than 2 lbs a week. Totally realistic, but not easy. It is going to take commitment and I am ready. I am excited for this goal specifically because at 40 lbs down, I will surpass the most I lost in 103in365 round 1. That will feel really good to get there!

At that point, I will be 5 months in with only 7 months to go until August 1, 2014. More or less, I need to lose an average of 2 lbs a week for every week until then. The good news is I can sometimes lose more than that in a week. The bad news is, I cannot do that very often, so I really need to focus on a steady and slow burn.

To achieve that much progress in the remaining roughly 9 months , I will need to focus on the fundamentals that I set out with in the first place. Namely, having fun so that I can stay invested in the process! This is one of the big things that I have not always had in previous attempts to lose the weight.  I need to focus on the day to day journey and not get caught up or overwhelmed with the 82 lbs I have left. If I do what I need to do and what I have been doing, the weight loss will follow!

Take away for this week: Ernest Hemingway said, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”  Keep your eye on the prize, but also don't forget to look around and find (or create) enjoyment during the journey too!


Have a great week!


Scuba

Day 75 of 103in365: 20/103

Hey There!

So that number on the blog title is finally growing again and has grown for the past 2 weeks!

Another Weigh-In Monday in the books and I lost another 3LBS this week! That makes an even 20 since I began Round 2 on August 1!

This week I worked out a bunch. I woke up and did a workout before work a few days, and did a few after work workouts too. It is getting easier, as I knew it would because it did last time, to get myself exercising once I get started. (I guess technically, most things are easier to do once you start doing them, since at that point you are actually doing them.) For me, once I get into a routine of making exercise a part of most days of the week, I notice I really miss it on days that I "take off." I guess that is a good indication that I am enjoying my workouts too.

Since so much of getting fit and staying fit is about what we eat, from time to time I am going to share a recipe that is helping me to eat healthier. I will not share anything that I am also not really enjoying as well. We are so less likely to do things and eat things that are good for us if we are not enjoying ourselves. Part of this journey I am on is figuring out how to get and stay healthy and fit and have fun doing it!

This week's recipe is a simple one and one that we have been eating a couple times a week for the past few weeks. This is most times the only side we have with our dinner. You can eat a lot of this since it is healthy.

Sesame Grilled Green Beans

Fresh Green Beans
Sesame Seeds
Sesame Oil
Olive Oil
Soy Sauce

Take the fresh green beans and cook them with a splash of olive oil in a frying pan. After the green beans start to shrivel up and/or blister, add a dash of sesame oil and a splash of soy sauce. (try low sodium soy sauce or some other soy sauce replacement to make it even healthier.) Stir all that together and then add some sesame seeds. Serve and Enjoy!

I like to get them off the fire before they get completely soft. I like them al dente  ("to the tooth" in Italian.) This is also sometimes described as cooking something until it is "tender crisp" which is different than not cooking it all the way.

In case you missed it, I exercised my brilliance just over 9 years ago when I married my amazing wife, who also happens to be a chef! I learn a lot of tips and tricks in the kitchen from her, and I will share some ideas from time to time.

Take away for this week: Keep finding new ways to make and keep it fun! Also, keep finding new ways to make and keep it healthy and tasting good! Take some time to learn about and try out some healthy recipes. Going about cooking some of the same things you already are cooking a different way has the potential to make them even more tasty and healthy!

Have a great week!

Scuba

Day 67 of 103in365: 17/103

Hey There!

So I am retro naming (and yes, I can do that) last week "Money Where Your Mouth Is Week!"

I put it there and I lost 4 LBS this week! That's right 4 LBS! That officially drops my under the 300 lb mark. I was there earlier this year and then went back. This time I am never going back. 

It was what is to become a normal week for me, but it was not the way I have been recently spending my weeks. Here is were some of the differences.

For starters, I worked out 6 out of the last 7 days! 2 workouts after work, 3 workouts before work and 1 workout at home. I am pretty gosh darn (excuse my language) proud of that fact. I am going to do that again this week!

Next, I put some real effort into planning what and how much I was eating and not eating "dinner 2." 

Another thing is following "The Skinny Rules" more closely. I am not doing all 20 of them yet and I am only doing about half the ones I am doing all the way. I have been working on doing about 10 of them for now, and adding more in incrementally. 

I feel better about my journey today than I did this time last week. I was beginning to feel  discouraged that I had not been losing a lot of weight and feeling like I was getting my PHD in "The Talk" but still in junior high when in came to "The Walk."  Now I feel I am really on my way and I hope to have my PHD in "The Walk" in 10 short months!  Nike did not make their slogan "Just Talk About It" Uncle Phil says "Just Do It" for a reason. "Talk" is easy,"doing" takes effort and dedication. All the talk in the world is not going to lose me another 86 lbs. Only by stopping just talking about it and getting off my duff and doing it is going to lose me another 86 lbs. So stopping just talking about it and getting off my duff is what I shall do!

Take Away for the Week: I found a great quote from Colin Powell. He said, "Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty and persistence." I like this quote a lot. I love specifically that he puts so much emphasis on hard work, learning from failure and persistence. Without those three, success is really not likely to happen. We are more likely to just be hoping for success and talking about success and not getting any closer to having success. I found another great quote this week. This one is from Scuba. It goes "Get off your duff!"

Have a great week,

Scuba

Day 63 of 103in365: 13/103

Hey There!

So (ellipsis) no progress on the scale this week.

Here's the hic-up in the giddy-up for last week, if you will and I hope you do.  (I have already made significant improvements on this for this week BTWs)

This problem goes by different names. A fast food chain is currently calling it "4th meal." A few weeks back I called it "dinner 2." Whatever you call it, it is eating when you should be going to bed.

One of Bob Harper's Skinny Rules is "Go to Bed Hungry." That is one that I am focusing on this week. I am also really working towards "No Carbs after Lunch." (I did it today)

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to (so I did) go to bed full or almost full. It has always felt comforting and even if mostly psychological, it seems to help me to fall asleep. There is maybe a bit of truth to that, but most of it is in my head, I think.

I have been very successful in the past not eating past dinner or eating just a bit of lean protein if I was very hungry. That is what I am doing this week.

I am sure it makes sense to everyone that this is a good idea. Mostly it makes sense that our bodies do not burn off much of those calories, because we are sleeping. Then our bodies just stow those calories away for a rainy day. I am trying to tell my body that every day is that rainy day and that it needs to burn all that it has stowed and stop stowing more!

This week I am also working out every day. (I did not work out Monday however. That's my Fun Day. My I don't have to run day.) I did work out the past two days and I will do some sort of working out each of the remaining four days. (there I wrote it, so I have to do it! If I do not, may millions of sugarplums dance non-stop in my head for the next 7 years!) (I dont even like sugarplums, so I can not have them doing a perpetual cha-cha.)

It is October 2. My goal for this month is to lose 8 lbs by November 1. Totally doable goal, but those 8 lbs are not going to lose themselves. I need to lose an average of 9 lbs every month for the next 10 months to reach my goal. That is totally doable, but I need to get off my culo and make it happen everyday! Challenge Accepted!

Take away for this week: Continue to have the courage to face the barriers that are threatening to keep you from success! What defines us is what we do with those barriers and how we overcome them, no matter how long we have allowed them to keep us away from our goals. Take 2 barriers this week and do them at least Half as much. Just at least Half as much this week. After you start seeing and feeling the difference from that, you can figure out how to take it the rest of the way!

Rome was not built in a day, and real change is not determined by what we are able to accomplish in a day.

Have a good week!

Scuba