savvy

I haven’t been here for a while, for personal reasons.  I’m still fighting the alcohol, and winning for the most part.  But I have been exercising like crazy partly as I’m looking for a new job and that has lead to much walking and blisters and partly because I have just needed to work through a lot of stuff and exercising gives me great focus.  The good news is I’ve shed 15lbs in three weeks and I feel great.  I have started eating four to six small meals a day and just  making sure I get exercise.  It really does work, with focus  and consistancy, you can lose weight, you all can.  It takes a lot to make the necessary changes but I know you can all do it.  I was told earlier this week that I wasn’t keeping my end of the bargain when it comes to alcohol.  That person was right, I wasn’t.  I’d give in when the going got tough, when I was unhappy.   I have learned this week that giving in  is no answer to any problem.    If you want something , truly want it, why on earth would you give in?  I wish you all the best, keep strong, keep focussed and you will all achieve your goals.

Let me start this off by letting you all know I’m an alcoholic.  Not the “drunk off my face 24/7″ kind of alcoholic, more the, “drink for the wrong reasons and never sure if I’m going to control it kind of alcoholic”.  So why am I telling you this?  Well because the battle we face is much the same and I think some of the approaches taken to beat acoholism can be applied to weight loss and life in general.  The main approach taken is “one day at a time”. 

If you think about your end goals, for example, “I’m going to lose 50lbs and look like this six months from now!” that to me sounds like a big goal, one that requires the means to be thought out, “to achieve my goal I’m going to gym everyday for six months and I’m never going to eat fatty food again!”  Just thinking about your life over the next six months seems daunting and failure to go to the gym everyday and the odd slip up on the diet can make you feel like a failure. 

This is where the one day at a time approach helps me.  I don’t think about the week to come, or tomorrow, just today.  I say “today I’m going to do these things which are good for me, and I will not do these things which are bad for me.  Tomorrow is another day and I’ll worry about that when it comes.”  Thinking this way makes the task at hand much smaller, easier to handle and far less daunting.  You’re not going to lose 50lbs today, so that target no longer exists, however your target of doing something about your weight can be reached as you do what you set out to do.  The weight loss will take care of itself.  Thinking on this smaller scale can, I think, help avoid the downers when weight loss doesn’t occur as fast as you hoped and helps create good habits as you continue to go day to day. 

Don’t get me wrong, you still need a goal, but climbing an ant hill seems so much more achievable than climbing Everest to me.

I hope this makes sense!  but if it doesn’t, well my tummy has gotten a little smaller since I stopped drinking… :D  Now I KNOW that makes sense!

Being a member of a gym is a funny thing.  To some, myself included, merely being a member means you get fit, you lose weight, all because of that cool little key fob they give you.  I’ve been a member of a gym for several months and irritatingly, the above statement isn’t true. 

Lindsay and me have been “going” to the gym regularly during this time, about once a week, every third week or so.  Our confusion as to how this was not helping us attain our goals (which we didn’t really have) led to much sole searching.

Since last Tuesday, we’ve been 7 times, that’s right, 7 out of the last 8 days we’ve been running, cycling, doing weights.  With each other’s encouragement, there has been no “oh this is too hard.”  It’s been “push harder, run longer.”  The transformation between last Tuesday and today is tangible.  There is no sense of dread anymore, more anticipation of the feel good rush from accomplishing something positive, another little step in the right direction.  What we’ve found is the harder you try on one visit to the gym, the more you can do the next time you go, even the very next day. 

So no matter what level of fitness you have, what weight you are, pushing yourself to exercise beyond the comfort zone, even just a little will, if done regularly, bring huge rewards, not just physically, but psychologically too.  Whether it be walking a little further everyday, or working out in the gym, I promise you, the “gain” is worth the “pain”.  I ran 2.6 miles yesterday with a smile on my face.  Why?  Because a month ago, I couldn’t.

I live in Atlanta but I’m from
Scotland originally and as such can lay claim to come from one of the unhealthiest countries imaginable.  We drink too much, smoke too much and when it comes to diet, well let’s just say we mock southern style cooking for being too easy on your heart.  We fry chocolate, not because it tastes good, but because it doubles the fat intake while reducing the effort required consuming it.  We’re clever like that.

So it’s not so hard to imagine how I ended up here, right?  Well, it’s not so straight forward.  When I was younger man I was a very fit and athletic.  Over the past few years in my head I have remained that, fit and athletic.  I weight less now than when I was a rugby player, so what’s the problem?  Well it took a very brave stance by my girlfriend about her weight to let me see how I have just let things go and that reality wasn’t quite what was in my head.  I started giving her advice about how she should do this and how she should do that.  It’s all good advice by the way; I just wasn’t listening to myself and acting as I preached. 

Bottom line, I don’t like my wibbly bits, or my jibbly bits although I’m a firm believer that everyone needs some silly bits…:D

So, I’m stopping smoking (eeep!), and I’m going to get my weight down, my fitness up and Lindsay and me are going to have fun doing it together.  Sometimes it’s hard to keep going at something like this because you don’t always see results straight away and it can be hard.  To me, ensuring that you have fun will add tenfold to the determination levels.  It’s a change of lifestyle for me, I’m not 18 anymore but I can still have fun (it’s what the silly bits are for).  So good luck to you all!