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Week 1 – And so it begins…

September 19, 2011 By 1 Comment
This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series The Long Path To Health

Julie and I arrived home three nights ago after an amazing two weeks in Croatia (which I highly recommend for anyone looking for a beautiful place to go).  I’m tired, I’ve had a miserable weekend because I caught a cold on the flight home but I’m also incredibly happy. The honeymoon showed me just how much I love her and how wonderful our life together will be.  However, since this is a health and fitness blog and not a marriage blog, let me focus on a couple of thoughts that occurred to me while I was gone.

First of all, my choices are no longer mine alone.  In the past, if I wanted to eat poorly and not exercise that was my choice and the consequences were mine and mine alone.  That’s no longer true.  My health is now Julie’s concern as well, especially when we’re talking about kids and a future together.  The consequences of my choices are hers as well as mine.  This is difficult for some people to accept and I can see why.  It’s not easy to take responsibility for another person, to be accountable for what they do and to allow your own actions to be dictated in part by them.  In effect, it means I’ve abdicated some control of my body, my decisions and my choices to her, just as she’s done for me.  That’s a lot to accept but I accept it willingly because it’s part of our commitment. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Announcement, Diets, Eating Healthy, Editorial, Exercise, Gyms, Running, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , ,

Week 3 – The Battle Of The Bulge Continues!

October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series The Long Path To Health

I’m writing this on a Saturday afternoon.  I went hiking this morning and I’m about to head out later this afternoon for some outdoor fun at the park.  I weighed myself on Friday and the scale showed 230lbs.  Goal Achieved!  However, what about all my other goals? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Muscles, Cardio, Diets, Eating Healthy, Exercise, Monthly Update, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , ,

Week 5 – Speed Bumps Encountered

October 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series The Long Path To Health

Speed Bump AheadThis is week five of my project to get back to a healthier lifestyle.  If you recall from a couple of weeks ago, my goals at this point were:

Plan:

  • No drinks other than water
  • No sweets other than fruit (no dried fruit either)
  • No beef
  • No bread
  • Three runs per week
  • Three weights workouts per week

And The Goals Were:

  • 1 hour run at 5.5mph
  • 1 set of bench press at 255
  • weight 225lbs (this has changed)

How am I doing? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Fitness, Gyms, Healthy Habits, Monthly Update, Motivation, Running, Stress, Time Management, Weight Loss, Work Tagged With: , , ,

Week 7 – Slow and Steady

October 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series The Long Path To Health

Little Things MatterNot much to report this week.  I’m back down to 225, which I was disappointed with at first because I was hoping to be lower than that by this point.  However, then I thought to myself, “holy crap!  I’ve lost 12lbs in the past month and a half and I did it in a completely sustainable way.  AWESOME!”  Sometimes, you just need to remind yourself how well you’re doing overall so you don’t get too depressed with the little setbacks. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Motivation, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Going The Distance

November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 5 of 7 in the series The Long Path To Health

longest roadI’ve been making some minor changes to my life over the past six weeks and I feel like things are finally falling into place.  So, here’s the way I intend to live the rest of my life, and yes, I am very serious about that.  If you’re making any health changes that you’re not willing to live with for the rest of your life, you may as well forget about them right now.  Temporary changes make for temporary results. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Eating Healthy, Exercise Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Are You Listening To Your Body? You Might Be Surprised At What It’s Telling You

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series The Long Path To Health

Water = HealthI used to be awful at paying attention.  In college I would sleep through half my classes, probably because I was working 60 hours a week but that’s another story.  When I drive, I tend to zone and not pay attention to the road in front of me or the cars around me (or the screaming of my passengers as I almost hit things).  However, one thing I do pay attention to is my health.  I like noticing what’s going on with my body and then trying to figure out why those things are happening.  It helps me solve problems and improve my health in ways I never imagined.

As an aside, this kind of critical thinking is important in every part of life.  If you want to know why things are happening, pay attention to when they happen and then figure out what happened before, what happened after and what happened during.  Do this enough and you’ll notice patterns that will help you avoid and mitigate problems or take advantage of opportunities.  For example, with enough critical thinking and pattern recognition, you too can figure out everything from when the next recession is due to ways in to increase your sex drive.  Trust me, it’s all a numbers game and you just need to pay attention to the numbers.  However, that aside, let’s get back to the topic of listening to bodies, mine specifically.

Since I’ve changed my diet somewhat over the past few months, I’ve been focusing on what’s going on with my body a bit more than usual.  What I’ve seen ranges from the expected but enlightening to the pleasantly surprising. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Diets, Eating Healthy, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How Can I Lose Weight?

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 7 of 7 in the series The Long Path To Health
day 1 of 30 - 135 lbs

135???!?! I'd be dead if I weighed this much.

Actually, before I answer that question, let me fill you in on a few details.  As you can see from the rest of this series, I’ve been making some lifestyle changes in the past couple of months and the results are really nice.  I’m down to 213lbs, a weight which I haven’t been to in a long time, I’m benching pressing more weight than I ever have before and I just starting running again as training for a marathon.  The key things that got me here were a new eating plan, new drinking plan and a new exercise plan.  To summarize:

  • New Eating Plan – I’ve been following the 4 hour body diet pretty closely.  I’m not tracking my calories too closely but I eliminated most carbs from my diet with the exception of a (non fried) potato here and there and some fruit.
  • New Drinking Plan – Ok, so this wasn’t actually a big plan, it was just a single step.  Namely, I eliminated diet coke and switched completely to water.  I realize diet coke should have no impact on weight since it has zero calories, but I figured it was crap my body didn’t need.  By the way, it was after I eliminated diet coke that I started seeing some great weightloss results which could have been coincidence or maybe not.
  • New Exercise Plan – I’m now doing weights 3 times a week and running 2 times a week.  I made some adjustments to my workout routine to fit in better with my new job, but the upside is that I am now walking to work a lot more, which is nice.

So what now?  I’m back where I was three years ago and the weightloss is slowing.  I still haven’t hit my goal weight of 200 and I’m wondering what else I can do in order to hit it.  In fact, I’m wondering if I should really try to hit that goal weight or just be happy with where I am.  I’m really happy with this progress and I feel great!  My energy levels are up, my physical last week was great (doctor tells me I’m her best patient) and I feel good.  Actually, let me correct that, I feel AWESOME!

Temporary Changes Suck!

I suppose I can make some temporary changes that will get me down to 200lbs.  I can eat less or workout more for a few weeks and hit that number, but do I really want to do that?  Temporary changes bring temporary results and I have no desire to torture my body just to get some temporary results.  So I’m stuck.  There are no more lifestyle changes that I really want to make which means whatever weight I finally plateau at is pretty much the one I will keep.  And you know what?  I’m perfectly happy with that.  My life is great and my health is excellent.  That’s the important part.  5lbs plus or minus mean absolutely nothing compared to that.

 

Filed Under: Building Muscles, Cardio, Diets, Eating Healthy, Exercise, Monthly Update, Running, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , ,