Category: Motivation

Don’t you hate it when you pass the conference room or the workplace break area and someone has brought in a bunch of donuts, cinnamon rolls, or other foods you shouldn’t be eating? It smells delicious, and often even looks delicious, but you know that it’s something you shouldn’t eat. I used to hate it, and it used to be a temptation for me, but now, it’s more a curiosity.

I don’t get cravings from seeing sweets anymore. I used to, and sure, I can imagine how wonderful a cinnamon roll would taste, but I no longer have the overwhelming desire to have some of it. I think it’s because I’ve weaned myself off sugar and the cravings that go along with being addicted to sugar, but it’s also because of the changes I’ve made in my mindset and my relationship with food.

In the past, I’d see sweets on a tray and I would start planning how I could get away with taking more than 1. Maybe 3 or 4? I could never get enough. Of course, I didn’t want to be rude and take more than my share from anyone else, but at the same time I was a big guy, and if I was going to have sweets, I had to have THE SWEETS. I would eat one right there. Immediately. That would fulfill the immediate need. Then, I would take 1-2 with me to my desk and eat them at my leisure. After finishing those, I would walk by the tray again to see what was left after a few hours. I figured that if there was food still there, everyone had ample time to get something. At this point, everything was fair game. I would then take at least 1, and sometimes 2 more back to my desk again for consumption later during the day.

Looking back at it now, I can see how horrible that was for my health. At the time, I hadn’t a care in the world about my weight or my health, and it seemed completely normal to me. My new normal is to look at the tray, imagine how delicious the foods are, and then scan for any fruits. Sometimes there may be fruit present for those who are healthy minded, but it’s usually bananas (which I like, but they contain too much sugar for me now). I then switch my attention onto something else and put it out of my mind completely. Yes, I Jedi Mind Trick myself away from temptation. It wasn’t always easy, and sometimes it’s still not (Cinnabon, you bastards). But now, after nearly two years, I can finally walk past a tray of sweet or bad foods and it doesn’t tempt me.

It feels liberating, and I feel great about that. It’s another victory in my journey toward being healthy and fit.

When scrolling through Facebook, it’s hard to avoid ads that are targeted to your interests. Since I write and post a lot about health and fitness, I find many of the ads targeted to me are fitness related. One that made me chuckle was an ad for a video that allegedly helps “Melt stubborn fat.” So much wrong with that sentence.

First, it’s marketing BS. They want you to believe that through exercises they show you how to do in this video you pay money for, you will finally be able to get rid of fat that you’ve been unable to get rid of through any other means. They’re promising a quick and easy fix through exercise.

Second, they are perpetuating the myth that fat melts off the body. No, it doesn’t. That’s not how weight loss works.

Third, you can’t target fat areas of the body. You can’t do sit ups until the fat goes away on your stomach while it remains everywhere else. That’s not how losing fat works. Fat goes away at an even rate spread across your body. Period.

Fourth, and this is the most important fallacy, is that there is no mention of diet. Diet is what makes you lose weight, or in their parlance, fat. Exercise will make you stronger, but diet makes you lose weight. Watch what you put into your body and your weight will respond accordingly. Feed it pizza, burgers, and beer and your weight will hold steady or continue to increase. Feed it a reasonable amount of meat, veggies, and fruits and you will lose weight or get to a point at which your body will equalize to the input of calories.

Don’t fall for the hype. There’s only one way to lose weight: eat good food in the right amounts. Exercise helps your heart and muscles get stronger, but it’s the quality and amount of food you eat that regulates your weight. I don’t care if you don’t do a Whole30 or go Paleo like I did. If you take away only one thing from me and my blog, it should be this (and I’m repeating it here because it’s so important):

Exercise helps your heart and muscles get stronger, but it’s the quality and amount of food you eat that regulates your weight.

There are times when I start blogging and I don’t know what I’m going to talk about. I’ve covered so many topics not just once but two or three times that I’m afraid of boring those who have been following my blog for a while. But then I realize that even though I may write about the same topic time and time again, I typically have a new angle or fresh perspective I share. Then, there’s also the fact that a lot of these topics bear repeating because they are important, and my revisiting them is not just for you, the reader, but for me as well.

There are times I want to revisit a topic or a theme because I need to reevaluate my own progress on this journey. I need to actively think about a certain aspect of Paleo or fitness to re-motivate myself or to remind myself of the reasons behind doing certain things. I figure that if I need these reminders, then certainly others do as well.

Eating healthy is a journey. While the rules are simple, the execution is not. Eating healthy isn’t always easy. For most of us, it’s constant work. Practicing restraint, preparation, and discipline. Lots of planning. Expense.

If you get anything out of these blog posts of mine, I hope it’s that you realize that this isn’t easy, but you can do it. Life doesn’t allow us to follow plans perfectly, and there are times when things get in the way and we face some temporary setbacks, but they are just that: temporary. My weight is finally in the range I am happy with (within 7-8 lbs of my final goal) and I am able to control my weight loss successfully through my strict adherence to the Paleo rules and portion control. I am active, and I exercise regularly. It’s not easy, but the formula is simple. Eat well + exercise = be healthy and fit. The hard part is making it happen, but you can do this. Just keep doing the best you can. That’s all we can hope for.

I was thinking today about how I used to enjoy eating until I couldn’t eat anymore. It was nice to have this ability: to do something without limits or restraint, and just gorging myself until I was physically unable to do so further. This realization made me think deeper about all facets of life, and how we have to use restraint in everything else; why do we think it’s okay to eat without limits?

I’m no psychologist or any kind of “-ist” for that matter, but in my limited experience, I think it has to do with the fact that we have to practice restraint in every other part of our lives. Being able to eat without restraint is like a release valve, of sorts. Maybe. That’s the best I could come up with because nothing else can explain it (that I’m aware of; please feel free to correct me!).

Take your finances. If you live paycheck to paycheck, living without restraint would quickly run you into trouble with some of the basic necessities like paying your rent, electricity, buying food, or (heaven forbid) paying for your Internet service or cell phone service! For these reasons (and I’m sure countless more), most people know that if they receive $1000, they can’t just go and spend it all on stupid stuff without repercussions. Sure, they may have a shiny new laptop, but it won’t help to have that laptop if you’re without a place to live, electricity to power it, or Internet to use it with. Restraint.

Farmers and gardeners know you can’t over-water, over-fertilize, or over-plant ground. Pilots know you can’t over stress the air frame with too many G’s or the wings will literally rip off the fuselage. Students know  you can only cram so much before a major exam. Restraint.

Think about how you eat, why you eat, and how much you eat. Eating until we are comfortably full is what we’re wired for. Unfortunately, that wiring also makes us feel great when we go a little past comfortable. It’s a left-over survival mechanism from our pre-agricultural days. We have to learn to live with those feelings of gratification and learn to reset the volumes at which those feelings are triggered. Portion control is one very important part of eating that I don’t see mentioned enough. I’m not talking about eating all things in moderation. That is demonstrably false. What I’m talking about is eating the right foods (meat, veggies, fruits) in the right amounts for you. Find that amount and stick with it.

There are times when I eat something ridiculously delicious and I want more. I stop and think about why I want more food. Am I not satisfied with the amount of food I ate? Or do I just want more because it’s delicious? More often than not, it’s the latter, and I force myself to stop. I wrote an earlier blog post about how this is hard for me to do with sweet potatoes. I’m getting better at it, and I’m always reevaluating my eating habits and the volume of food I eat. Eating healthy is a journey and not a destination. I’m on this trip for life.

Slow and steady wins the race. We hear it time and time again. Tortoise and hare. It’s a concept taught to us since kindergarten. But do we really live it? Do we really embrace why it’s so important?

In our high-tech modern culture, we want everything right now. Yesterday isn’t soon enough. People get impatient after 2.3 seconds when clicking a hyperlink online. If it takes longer than 2.3 seconds, the majority of persons who clicked that link will either scroll on or click another. We are an impatient people. That works against us in many ways.

I am only going to concentrate on diet and exercise here. When I set out to lose weight and get healthy, I set some pretty aggressive goals for myself. I wanted to lose 20 lbs the first month, and 50 lbs total four months later. The crazy part is that I was able to do it. That wasn’t a good thing, though, because it could have set me up for disappointment and failure later.

You see, when I weighed nearly 300 lbs, it was easy for me to lose a lot of weight quickly because the weight I was losing was actually pretty small compared to my total weight. When you weigh 290 lbs, 20 lbs isn’t that much. When you weigh 173, 20 lbs is a lot! As I was losing weight at a rate of 10 lbs per month, it felt like it was taking forever. I weigh myself every morning, and seeing the weight fluctuate as it went on its downward trend ever so slowly was, at times, a little disappointing. However, upon reviewing those trends at the end of each month and finding I had lost the 10 lbs was always a great feeling.

And then it stopped.

My weight hovered around 177 for a very long time. Months, in fact. I had the toughest time reaching my penultimate goal of 175 lbs, and my ultimate goal of 165 lbs was beginning to feel like it was going to be out of reach. But, through the long plateau, I persisted. I kept eating right, and I introduced exercise into my regimen.

Even after five months of exercise, I managed to only lose about 2-3 lbs (depending on which average weight I used as a starting point). It wasn’t until last week that I finally dipped into the 173 range. This is a big deal for me, as it means I’m finally making progress again on the scale, and the hard work is paying off.

So, what changed? Nothing, really. Just perseverance. I decided that I didn’t want to engage in any drastic activity to try to drop any weight because any weight lost that way would be temporary. I needed to lose it naturally in a way that would be sustainable in the long run and in keeping with my lifestyle. I made a mental picture of this last block of weight being a huge piece of errant stone on a statue. I was the artist holding the chisel working to get the errant stone off without damaging the work I’d done so far on the statue. I knew at some point, the errant stone would fall away, and it seems it finally has.

With that said, I have been seeing changes in my body that haven’t been reflected on the scale. My waist has shrunk as has my face. My cheeks are deeper, and my fitness levels are soaring. I’m running sub-9 minute miles regularly now, and I find myself able to do physical tasks without exertion or minimal effort. It’s truly amazing how rejuvenated I feel as a 49 year old man. I can only imagine how someone in their 20’s or 30’s would feel after losing the amount of weight I’ve lost and begun a fitness program.

It’s taken me a long time to get where I am at today, but at the same time, it feels like it happened in a moment. That’s the tricky thing about time, effort, and delayed gratification. While you’re going through the transition, it feels like it’s taking forever. But then you finish, and you realize that the time and effort were well worth it. For me, the journey never ends, but at this spot on the road I find myself on, I’m very happy with the results so far, and I am optimistic for the future. I can’t wait to see where I’m at by September. How fast I’m running, what I weigh, how many push ups I’m doing, and what other fitness or exercise I’ve added to my routine. I have no firm goals other than eventually reaching 165 lbs. All in good time. It’s been a great ride so far.