Change of Focus

So since starting this latest leg of my getting healthy and losing weight as much as I have fought it, I have placed a lot of focus and importance on losing weight on the scale. Yes I did, and still do have weight that I want to lose. I started at 230 lbs with a nearly 50 inch waist. Although I was saying here in this blog, and in my conversations the main thing was feeling good again and getting healthy, in my actions, and my internal dialog I was placing way way too much energy on the scale going down. Again, scale going down is an important part of this journey for me, but it should only be one source of feedback.

I have mentioned a couple times that I am feeling much better than I did when this all started and this is the truth. Chronic migraines have given way to two headaches in 4 months (a godsend), and even my back/neck/shoulder pain that was somedays severe, but always a daily thing in one degree or another, is so much better. Compared to how I felt on a daily basis in recent years, the last few months have been night and day. And really, isn’t that what is important?

I mean, I have made great progress. I am down nearly 30 lbs since March (although I have been stuck at 202-208 for 6 weeks). I am down 8-9 inches off my waist. With my nearly 130 days now of beachbody workouts, nearly everyday my fitness is improving week to week. I think that I should be focusing on the basics, eating well day to day following my weight watchers, and being more active. Walking more, biking/walking to work, walking on my breaks at work, as well as doing my workouts. If I eat well and move more, then getting hung up on what the scale reads is silly.

I had an experience in recent weeks where my scale at home read a certain number and I was estatic, only to walk out of the bathroom and get in the car and go to WW for those scales to say something else and I was livid. Now I didn’t lose any weight or gain, walking to my car certainly. To be estatic one minute and mad the next when there was no actual change is silly. So to combat this internal reliance on the scale as the ultimate method I am measuring my progress, the last couple weeks I have tried to stay away from the scales. Go to my WW meetings and weigh there, and the rest of the time focus on what I can control, eating better and moving more.

It won’t be something that is cured overnight. In my mind, I still place importance on the scale. I ultimately want to get down to around 180 or so, and get my bodyfat percentage down to a healthy level 12-16 percent. I am still 20 ish pounds from that. My waist is nearing sub 40 measurement, which is another big hurdle for me. Ultimately I want to get that down to 34 or so. Health is the ultimate goal, but how do you define “better health” or “good health”. For me its, healthy bloodpressure, cholesterol, and less/managable back pain. Less headaches. Being active, and not tired all the time. Not limited by my fitness levels for doing normal stuff I enjoy, sports, hiking, walking whatever.

So that is where my focus is now, cultivating a better and positive attitude. Focusing on not beating myself up because 38 year old me is not losing weight at the rate that 20 year old me could. I find myself whenever someone gives me a compliment on my progress, instead of being happy or whatever, I say something negative or “Still got a tonne to lose” or whatever. I need to focus on the positive stuff! I have lost 30 lbs. I am a few pounds away from being under 200 for the first time in 11 years. Thats a good accomplishment but not the be all and end all. But above and beyond the weight, I am getting leaner, stronger, more flexible. I have more energy and less pain. My quality of life is improving, and in the end, thats the best thing.

Bit of a disjointed post, doing it at work in between calls. These mindset posts are more written for myself, to try and get this stuff down in writing to make more sense of things. I hope someone gets something from them, as I am sure many of us walking this fitness journey struggle at times to time with mindset.

Headed camping for the first time this summer this weekend and will miss my weigh in this week at WW. I am bringing some resistance bands so i will do some light exercise while camping, and will be doing a lot of walking and stuff. Its going to be a different experience to go camping and not bring any beer for around the camp fire, but that is the plan. I will try and post again before I leave tomorrow after work.

Some Random thoughts heading into week 4 of P90x

Quiet Sunday night.  Today is my “day off”, but I am tinkering around with some dumbells while doing some reading.  Nothing too strenuous just doing some light shoulders and some stretching. Didn’t do a whole lot this weekend, got a couple walks in, worked out yesterday, and played a little tennis.  Was going to try and do some hiking but it rained.

Been working a little on my Vision, or long term fitness and health goals a little I will post them up as a page when I got something concrete down.  It will be a living document, that is it will change as I go, and its almost down to something readable now…lol.  Also been thinking of some other stuff this weekend, well to be honest, I am always in my head about this transformation/weight loss journey.  Here in no random order are some of the things I have been thinking about:

-Yesterday was a month since I drank ANY alcohol.  I don’t miss it most days, but come the end of the week, the last two weeks, I’ve been thirsty…..lol

-I bitch alot to people about getting old (I am 38 this year).  I know its a matter of perspective, and to people my mom’s age I am “a kid” and to my kids I am ancient.  Some days though, I feel 104 (but not EVERYDAY, like I did before the lastest trip down the road to get healthy)

-most days I feel better right now than I have in 10 years.  I had a flare up this past Thursday where I had to take muscle relaxants and pain killers for the first time in 3 months, but for the most part, in comparison to how I have felt the last couple years I feel great.

-I want to have a transformation video or set of pictures that motivates, just one person, anyone to take control of their own health and fitness.

-I give the number on the scale too much power in my life

-saw a quote by Craig Ballentyne, creator of the fantastic program Turbulence Traning, (paraphrasing) “What we do consistantly everyday, even on the weekends, leads us closer to our goals or further away”.  Great quote

-I need to be more vigilent in my tracking of my eats

-I need to drink more water

-I need to cut down on coffee (because of the sugar I put in it)

-I want to be in my best shape ever by my Birthday , 12/31/2010

Thats about it.  Just a smattering of stuff I have been thinking about.  I am going to go outside and get a little air/go for a walk.  Make it a great week everyone.

Balance, Vision, and Total Transformation

Balance.

This is something I have always strived for, wanted, and thought about, but something that isn’t the proper way to describe anything in my life.  I don’t do things in a balanced way.  I focus most of my energy on whatever I am pursuing at the time, and drive that thing into the ground until I move on to the next endeavor. 

This latest journey down the fitness path, as I have mentioned a trillion times since I started writing again back in March was having the shit scared out of me by health problems.  Most of my mental energy has been on getting healthy since then.  Progress has come “slow” (which is relative I guess, in 4 months I have lost 25 ish pounds) as far as weight loss goes but in terms of how I generally feel, most days, it is like night and day.  I have spent the better part of the last 8 years in agony with back/shoulder/neck problems.  I still have my moments, and there still is some daily pain there, but for the most part, physically this is the best I have felt in well over a decade, and a price cannot be put on that.

Focusing all of your energy on ANYTHING can be tiring.  Whether it is fitness, reading, poker, working overtime/your career, videogames,  insert other interest here-   if thats all you think about, concentrate on, it becomes, well, meh.  It’s the way I have always been wired though I guess.  I take up a new interest and pound that into the ground and move on.  Over the years, I have always been interesting in fitness, whether in shape/healthy or not.  That has never left me.  More than once I thought that fitness should be the career path that I walk down.  Ultimately I want to achieve more Balance in my life.  However to achieve my goals, I still need to focus alot of my energy on the fitness side of things.  I consider myself about half way to the first major goal I have (will talk more about that in a post to come) . 

I am a big believer in self improvement, positive attitude and positive thinking.  I am by nature a very cynical and serious person.  I know this.  I have been told 1,000,000 times that I always look pissed, or negative, or grumpy.  Truth be told I am just (mostly) a quiet, shy guy.  When you get to know me, I am friendly and more relaxed, and if I got a few beer/rye in me, loud, haha.  Even though outwardly you may not see it, or find it hard to believe, but I work VERY hard to improve my attitude. And its something I have been struggling with for 20 years.  I often say doing the Tony Robbins Personal Power course in my late teens saved my life.  My parents had split, my grandmothers passed within months of each other, and I was drinking a tonne to “cope”.  I was in a bad bad place.  I have a tonne of very good friends, some guys I have known for 30 years, (and others who I have become great friends with over the last 6 years accross a poker table, who have helped a great deal).  I am light years from the place I was when I was 17 years old, and thought the world was a very tough place (little did I know how true this is) but attitude remains something I work every single day to improve.  It remains a work in progress.

This brings me to Vision.  In many of the book I read, it says it helps to have a Clear Vision of where you want to go.  Have a Vision, know where you want to get, and then adjust your attitude and actions towards doing what you need to do to make that Vision happen.  Over the years my Vision has changed.  When I started I wanted to be a bodybuilder.  I wanted to look like Arnold or Skip Lacour, or Lee Haney.  Now, I want to just be healthy.  I want to look good of course, but I want to be pain free, active, energetic, and full of life.  I am going to add a page to the blog, that will be an evolving copy of my Vision.  What I want out of this fitness/health journey.  It will be a living document, changing as my goals and aims change.  I will start working on it immediately (have written down versions of my Vision before) and will post it up there when it is fleshed out a little.

And now the last topic from the Subject Transformation.

As much as I need and want to transform my body physically, as stated through out this post, as well as this blog,  its as much about attitude and mindset , as it is about the physical side. Its about the inside as much as the outside.   Sometimes I have written or not written posts here because I am aware that alot of people are reading this, or have read through and at least looked at the pictures, lol.  Friends.  Family.  Ex’s.  People that love me, and people that are indifferent or don’t like, or for that matter, know me at all.  As quiet as I am when I don’t know people.  People that know me probably quickly find out I live my life as an open book.  I am writing this blog first and foremost to help myself.  To get healthy inside and outside,  and fit.  But part of the sharing of this journey is the hope that I help at least one person take thier own journey.  Part of my vision is to have a great Before and After montage or video, and hopefully Inspire one person to walk thier own journey to better health.  Yeah some of this post is kinda touchy feely, but it is what it is.  I will not be embarassed or afraid anymore to write this stuff, because well its part of the journey and part of the package.

Am off to do some exercise.  Be back later. 

Reinventing me

When I started this lastest journey down the road to weight loss and health back in March it was necessitated from a health scare.  I have been walking this road for 25 years, from the first time i saw Arnold on the cover of a Muscle and Fitness (Muscle Power back then) magazine.  When I was young I wanted to be BIG and powerful like my bodybuilding heroes.  Now I want to be healthy and be around to walk my children down the isle and be around for my wife, and play with my grand children.  As I have mentioned several times, lying in a hospital bed thinking you had heart problems is quite a jolt back into reality. 

As much work as I still need to do on the outside, on the scale, chipping away at the fat that I am still carrying (and at 205 ish pounds, 41 inch waist and 28 percent bodyfat there is a lot still to go) I still have ALOT of work to do on the inside.  Attitude, confidence and mindset as I often talk about are things I struggle with daily.  Over the last few months, I have received tremendous support from friends and family who say I am doing great and to not give up, but yet I still struggle to enjoy and celebrate the progress.  I HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS.  I do see it when I look at my progress pics, but because of my ingrained negative thoughts, I still see what still needs to be done, or am unhappy at with the speed the progress is coming.  In my mind I know that I am doing well, but yet still beat up on myself for it not going as fast as I want.

During my blog reading this am I saw a fantastic post here that compares losing weight to one of my other passions, Poker.  He states how if you concentrate on the decisions, eating healthy and on plan, and exercising and continue to make healthy decisions, the results will take care of themselves in time.  They have to!  Wise words that I am trying hard to take to heart and live by, in both weight loss AND poker.  It’s a work in progress. 

Enough rambling for now, but I will be back later today. 

Frustrated

The scale is a frustrating tool.  I have to keep in mind that is just a tool, and not the end all and be all.  I am up this week on the scale at Weight Watchers, after a “perfect” week of eating and starting P90x and not missing a day of exercise.  I ate as well as I can eat, and the only real mistake I made I feel is I didn’t drink enough water.  I will have more to say about this tomorrow as I am headed out for poker with the boys.  I am not drinking, although I could easily drink a case of beer tonight with the heat in town, and the mood the scale has put me in. 

I worked out the last three days including today, and I will be working out tomorrow.  Things are going well in that regard.  But the scale is driving me nuts.

Some rambling

So, as you can see with me posting regularly again, I seem to slowly be coming out of the mental funk I have been in and got myself entrenched back in the fitness and health game.  Through June, I didn’t really stop working out, and I didn’t eat  horribly off plan, but my head just wasn’t in the game.  I have had a solid week of focused exercise and mindful eating and I feel I am back where I was a month ago.

Why do we go through these mental ups and downs?  I am not 100 percent sure.  I guess part of things was I am feeling better physically than I have in years, as far as aches and pains go, and the memory of just how bad I was feeling on a day to day basis is getting further and further in the rear view.  It gets easier to make excuses and justify bad decisions when you are starting to feel better etc in a weird way.  I have a million reasons why I need to continue on this path, and I have a million reasons why I do not want to fall back into the old negative, unhealthy habits.

Getting under 200 will be a huge weight off my shoulders mentally.  Just like getting under 210 was.  I truly feel if Ican get to see 199 on the scale, there is a good chance 190 will follow in short order.  Its been 11 years since I have seen a 1xx on the scale, and I have been playing mind games ever since.  Kinda just assuming or settling for being 2xx for good.  I keep remembering how easy I could gain or lose weight in my late teens and 20′s and have to remind myself, that I don’t have the same body (literally) i did back then, and I have to work a little harder and a little smarter then I did back then, but I can still get there with some hard work.

Anyway, just wanted to get a few thoughts down, I am done work for the day, now off to the beach!

Stuff

So this morning before work, I dragged myself out of bed and did some exercise at 5:45 in the morning.   It wasn’t easy and I didn’t want to do it but I needed to get myself used to back in the groove of moving with a purpose and exercise with a purpose rather than just going through the motions.  For all the bitching and moaning I have done in recent weeks I haven’t regressed much, as I am still in the 206-208 range, but I am not progressing either.  In a rut.

Got some things I am a little stressed about, but I am, as always, working to improve my attitude about them and things in general.  I have some changes I am going to implement in my life, that I am sure that I will talk about at some point just not right now.  Being purposely vague about it, basically just going to do what I can to make, good, healthy decisions each day, and focus on making the small correct decisions, in all areas that will take care of the progress and the long haul. 

All in all, my health is in a pretty good place right now.  Knock on wood, no migraines/tension headaches of late, and my back /shoulder/neck stuff is feeling good.  My right knee is a little wonky but nothing serious.  I feel like a million bucks in relation to how i felt a few short months ago, and I look to improve upon that over time.  Healthy eating and continued exercise will get me there.

I guess the biggest area of my life that requires work is in the mindset/attitude area, as I have mentioned a trillion times.  I can’t even put my finger on what exactly is the trouble, but just a feeling of indifference in many areas.  I am well aware of what needs to be done, and I am truly working to improve on my attitude in all areas, be it work, fitness/healthy etc.  I am reading some positive books and trying to keep the negative shit that beats a person down to a minimum.  As I have said a million times, with a positive/correct attitude ANYTHING is possible.  But with a negative/wrong one, boy it sure makes the smallest task seem like a mountain.

I continue to play around with the layout of my blog til I get one that I like. You may see this change a few times until I settle on one I like.  Just doing some housekeeping and some tinkering.  Anyway all I got for now, its getting late and I should get to bed to get a descent nights rest. 

Back to Basics

Here I am. No excuses for the last couple weeks. I have been struggling mightily making correct decisions in regards to eating and exercising. This week I am refocusing though (since Sunday) and have exercised 3 days in a row (including at 5:45 am this morning) and I am back on plan. Going to get out of my own way, and just make better decisions every day.

I am getting back to basics and just following the programs I am doing. As always its Weight Watchers for Nutrition, and P90x for exercise. Move more and eat less. You’ve heard it a million times, but thats what I need to do. If I do that everything else will fall into place.

I have thought alot about why I haven’t been writing and why I have struggled so much with food and exercise lately. I was doing so much better when I was writing everyday and taking the once a week pics, and updating facebook. Holding myself accountable was working, and when I started to struggle mindset wise I got away from that. Time to do what I know works. I am 3 days into refocused efforts. I will strive to write, through good and bad 5 days a week minimum. I will not worry about what anyone thinks about the struggles (or the small victories) and I will just write about the journey, because I know that helps me. And thats what really matters.

Not going to be one of those bloggers anymore

As the lack of my posts of late, as well as the topic of the few that I have posted over the last couple weeks, have stated plainly, I have been struggling.  I am not going to fade off into the blackhole that is the internet and fall of the wagon only to reappear down the road when I am “motivated” again.  I have done that far too many times.

I still cannot put my finger exactly on what is going on with me mindset wise.  Why have I consciencely or sub-consciencely tried to sabotage my efforts?  Why have I slowed down on some great momentum that I was building?  Why have i missed a workout here and there, and ate off-plan here and there?  Why have I started to get a little too loosey goosey once I had started too feel better?  Am I afraid to succeed?  Do I think I am not worth getting healthy/in shape etc?

Fear of success is a funny idea in alot of ways to me.  I think in some ways it does describe me, and in others not.  It’s not like I actually think to myself “I am scared to reach my goals”.  Maybe its more that down deep in my thoughts part of me feels unworthy?  Part of me knows I have travelled this road 100 times and backed out when it got tough.  I dunno, its something I am working through.

What I do know, is this blog is here to stay.  I do better when I journal.  I may have lost my 3 readers by disapearing but in the end I am writing this for me.  I am writing to remain accountable.  I am writing this to chronicle the journey and hopefully when I do reach my goals, inspire one person to strive to reach their own.  I will continue to post, when things are going well, and when they are hard.  I will continue to describe the journey, both the potholes and the smooth sailing.  I will continue to be here struggling along , inch by inch, clawing my way to my destination.  I hope you will continue to read.

Bad blogger

Yeeeesh where did the week go?  I am off today, and heading out in a minute to enjoy the first Sunny day in two weeks! 

Been an interesting week or so.  I have been doing my workouts, struggling along with my eating, and fighting a bad mindset.  Got some stuff going on, and rather than leave it and not give it any power to affect my efforts or moods, I have been letting it get to me.  That being said, I am going back in the right direction scale wise and I am happy where I am today given the week I have had.

Will be getting today’s workout in this afternoon and will be back to regular posting shortly.  Have a great day everyone.