Day 6 Building On Successes

Remember in yesterday's post, I talked about how I was successful all day even with going out to eat? Well right up to the offer of free cake anyways. I also said yeah that was not the best choice I could have made, but what I was choosing to take away from yesterday was that I was successful for far more of the day than I was not successful. Today, I was down at my mom's house waiting on Kathy to be done working when her and Dad offered to take us out to eat at the steak house, which is what they call the Western Sizzlin' here in VB. We accepted and went right on with them. Well I am not a huge fan of their steaks and quite frankly, I had the urge for a good salad, and they do have a great salad bar there. Well it is actually cheaper to get the food bar than it is to get the salad bar for some reason, so I did. I got my salad and loved every bite of it. I was particularly pleased with myself for going very sparingly with the bleu cheese dressing, since I usually soak a salad down with dressing. I had also spotted some fried okra and some baby back ribs on the way back to the table, so I went back for them, but in very sparing portions. I also grabbed some steamed broccoli while I was at it. I finished off my meal with a few slices of kielbasa. So having been to this bar many times before, it was a far better bet that I was going to hit up the sweets section than it would be that I was going to completely ignore it. But if you had been betting against me tonight, you would have lost!!! Not even a sniff of ice cream, cookies, cobbler, NOTHING! I came home and entered all my food on my app that I track calories with and I came in with 100 calories left for the day!! and I haven't done my walk for the day yet, so I should be in the 750 calorie deficit for the day range!! How awesome is that? Building on small success baby!!

Day 5 Still Work To Do....

Did great all day, even up to ordering a meal that was within my calorie budget when we went out to eat. But then it happened. "want some free cake to go with that?" Fail for Shane. But will I dwell on that part? Nope. I will be dwelling on the good decisions I made all day, and thinking how to prepare better for that temptation next time. Nuff said, right? D

Day 4 Despite a not stellar Day 3 ending......

Here is the thing. I owed Lauren an ice cream date, so I managed to convince myself that it would be rude to take her on an ice cream date and not get ice cream to eat with her. So we went to Goody's. I got about 4-5 ounces of the yogurt, then got some coconut topping and shouldnt have but did get a little bit of the chocolate syrup on top. Historically, that would have convinced me that I suck. I am a loser. No chance I will ever get this right. But it did not phase me. In fact, this morning, I headed out for my walk and I have to admit, I felt studly. All my muscles were working well, my joints got oiled up quicker than usual, and I was just feeling good about me and life generally and thanking the Lord for all multitude of blessings I get but don't deserve even one little bit. That is what I have been missing in my efforts lately, that (insert manly growling noise here). That love for what I am doing right now and the studly feeling that goes along with exercise. My attitude all day was great! That great attitude makes for less effort on my part to not eat. Not eating too much, well it makes me lose weight! Wild and crazy chain huh? Another cool moment for me was when we went for the family walk tonight, a certain 10 year old girl was talking smack and trying to stay just out of our reach. I took off in a sprint up hill and wound up catching her just to show her I could! It was great! Recognizing that my worth is not tied to my grades and my job was one of the greatest epiphanies the Lord has ever given me. Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, but wisdom is of the future. Heard that somewhere once. I want to say it was a spiritual quote but it may not have been. At any rate, it really is true. I KNEW I had a problem, but I needed the WISDOM to overcome it. I have actually prayed many times for the wisdom to overcome, and I now have it! Thank ya Lord!! And the great thing is that I am tracking my calories and exercise with an app and the raising up my calorie limit that I used and was successful with in 2010 has not freaked me out. I hope to see SOME movement on the scale this Friday. But even if I don't, I can already tell one thing. My sternum is poking up now when I lay down!

Day 3-Toil and Tranquility- Ecclesiastes 4:6

I am a type A personality at the heart of things. I am that guy that can’t be ok with doing the speed limit, I am that guy that can’t sit and watch a movie without having something else going on in my mind; planning for next week, figuring out what to do about the bills that are still due after the money is gone, whatever else may be going on in my head. I do not do nearly enough going with the flow. Another problem I have is that I demand efficiency and speed of myself. I can’t just do stuff at a comfortable pace. When I take up the task, I am looking for the fastest way to do it. I lost 100 pounds in 8 or so months. I kicked that tasks butt! Wait, look at that scale and tell me I kicked that tasks butt….. negative Ghostrider. I went after that goal of 199 with a vengeance. It worked for the short term, but what ultimately did my toil gain me? Not permanent weight loss obviously. So one of the things I am trying this go around is to not go at it like a wild man, but to take some common sense steps and not starve myself and exercise a little too much. I am going to try to do a little less toil, and use a little more tranquility. That is the lesson in the above verse. “It is better to have one handful with tranquility than to have two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” Long story short, dump the type A tendencies, and enjoy this long leisurely journey down the scale. Make some changes that aren’t so drastic as the last time but that will lead to success. If I don’t drop 3 pounds a week, that is ok. My body will be less likely to go into “damage repair mode” and put it back on when I am not “on”. Plus if it takes me two years for 60 pounds, then I will have rebooted and made new habits that I have been creating for a couple of years. I know that this all sounds good on paper, but I have no doubt it will be a struggle to be ok with no loss one week and 1 lb lost next week. I will want to make some change like cut back 500 calories and add some more cardio, or find some supplement that may get me over the hump, or some other move that will cater to my need to achieve fast results. Guarantee that it will be a difficult instinct to fight, but if I want to find that tranquility at the end, I will need to employ some tranquility at the beginning and in the middle. I am tired of toil and chasing after the wind.

Day 2 When I... Then I......

One of the things I enjoy about Mount Olive Church is that Pastor Barry, without fail, gives me something that not only helps me in my walk of faithfulness, but also tidbits that help in life generally. Perfect example was Friday night. The staff at Mount Olive wanted to give the volunteers a special night where it was all about us. There were top hats and bow ties and tieras and boas aplenty! it was a hoot of a time, and I got to see someone tap dance in real life!! So after the entertainment, and after the awards were handed out, Pastor Barry took a moment to do some vision casting about the direction of Mount Olive. One of the things he said was that people generally have this issue with "when I do X, then I will do Y" which means once you meet some checkpoint that you have set up, you will then go do something you want to do but are too scared to do right now. We have all done it. I am the victim of that phrase right now. I decided when I noticed all my progress slipping away that I did not have the resources to deal with it head on at the moment since my first year of law school was kicking my rear all over the place. So i said "when I finish my first year of law school, then I will jump back on the path of good eating, plenty of exercise, and get back to where I was in March of 2011." So my first year of law school has passed, I have put on 50+ pounds from my low weight, and I am currently spinning my wheels. why is that? My guess is the putting it off for a little bit made it easier to put it off a little longer, and longer and longer, till I am now worse off than I was when I decided I needed to get my rear going again, and so then that further loss of ground made it easier to retreat again. My "then I" never came to fruition. Addendum: As I stated, I think this blog helped me a ton in being successful before. I was not sure why before this morning. While I was getting the walk I talked about in, I didn't listen to music as usual, but I took that time to think and reflect. And I think I know why the blog helps me so much.... because it makes me think and reflect! But rather than it being abstract thoughts that go away fleetingly, I am giving my thoughts life and making them real and relevant. Rather than inspiring or guiding me for 10 minutes, they are there for me to look at and think about for extended periods of time. It occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons I am not able to recreate the fire that was there when I was achieving phenomenal weight loss and gaining great health was that I was on top of the world at that time. I was about to be done with undergrad, I was still making straight A's, I was making more money after switching jobs, long story short, I was on top of the world. So adding one more accomplishment made sense. I had quite the great image of myself, I was able to do anything! Skip to the second half of 2011 and all of 2012 and what do I have going on now? I am not making the A's in law school, I am not even working at a crummy job, and now it makes sense that with all that "bad" stuff going on, why not lose all my progress I made in weight loss and health? Long story short, I started feeling bad about myself generally and with that attitude, I began to just not achieve any longer. I just did not have the motivation to try. See where I am going with this? I lost my achiever identity and my self worth. In order to succeed, the first thing that has to be true, you have to believe you are worthy of succeeding. Here is what I have come up with moving forward. I am probably not about to start catching fire and making the A's in law school, and I probably won't have even a crummy job anytime soon. But that stuff is not what makes me who I am and does not represent my worth to this world. Quite frankly, my family, my faith and my friends are what gives me my value. I have the best family a person could ever ask for, Mount Olive Church has provided me with the groundwork to begin a wonderful spiritual journey that has proven to be such a blessing in my life that I just can't begin to express it well enough in words, and I have such a diverse and awesome group of friends that span from friends I have acquired from chance meetings, to a phenomenal bunch of people that I am blessed to be in a life group with, to people I have met at church and finally a great group of guys and gals I know from law school. Each of those people add something to my life and inspire me to adopt certain characteristics I admire in them. Long story short, I am worthy of being more than I am right now. I do deserve to be lighter and healthier, and my self worth is not dictated by my job or my grades. Thank you Lord for imparting the wisdom I prayed for on me and getting me back to blogging.

Day 1 v2.0

So my wife just came back from the gym pumped up from a great workout. My wife lost 4 pounds this week. Notice I am not in any of those sentences with great declaration in them? Yeah, I am not there. So after a good talk with my mom and a rereading of day 1 of this blog, I am thinking counting down the days of good and consistent activity and an ongoing monologue about my triumphs and tragedies of the days that follow this one, maybe I can find that fire, that burn that got me going the first time. I took the best punch that law school had to offer and now I need to get up, dust off and get back to the Shaniac ( thanks Kenz for that moniker!) So day 1 version 2.0 here we go! Ok, I wrote the above as I was waiting in Kathy to finish showering after which we were going to be going to get Lauren from our friends the Hunters. So while we were out, we decided to have some lunch. Epic fail on my part. We went to Harry's Hamburger Barn, a nice little local restaurant downtown. I got the Cajun Burger, which is huge, and the fries that come with it. I realized how big the burger was and decided to formulate this plan of don't eat all the burger, and don't but a few of the fries. Well as per my usual MO as of late, fail and fail. I can honestly say I don't get what it is that I am missing here. Where did the lock tight, on course, no problem with self discipline Shane go? I have to find that guy. I have to bring him back and get him back to work. I need some sort of victory, I need something. so here is my goal. I will finish this day out successfully. I will have a sandwich for supper, I will get me a walk in tonight, and tomorrow morning. Those are small goals, but that is how big goals get met, several small goals met. Onward and downward!

Reality Bites

So as some have noticed, I tailed off on my blogging after a lot of sound and fury apparently signifying nothing. I cannot figure out what it was that got me going so strong last time. It just isn't happening for me. I have sat around contemplating it, and have come up with no solid answers. I only have one theory. I am not handling the stress of my life very well. and so I hang on to the idea of eating my stress away. Another thing that occurred to me is that until I started contemplating this thing, I never really acknowledged my stress. I am that guy that has to be put together and capable all the time. No chinks in this guy's armor you know. But once I started thinking about this whole failure to get back on track, it occurred to me, yeah, I am stressed and there are chinks. I hate to write a whiny post and if you blow past it after few sentences, that is fine. I am really just trying to get this out in black and white, more for me than for anything. First and foremost, it really does seem like I am languishing right now. I am next to positive that I will be a capable attorney. However, I can't do that until I finish law school and pass the bar. But that seems so far away and my family has needs now! I want to provide well for my family, I want to be able to be generous within the community, I want to do so many things, but I am handcuffed! No money, a life that is busy without financial fruit, always having to be congnizant of what money is being spent and what money is going to be coming in. It weighs on my mind constantly! With me not working, the stress I felt before is now exponentially worse! Second, I have somehow become my mom's fascination. She thinks I should just run down there every chance I get and hang out with her. And I don't deny I love to spend time with her, but with all my family obligations, my school obligations, church obligations, then the other smaller miscellaneous obligations, it seems like there is pretty much no Shane time. If there happens to be some, it usually comes at the expense of another obligation and I feel guilty when I am "relaxing". Third is my health issue. I am declining in my fitness as I put on pounds that I thought for sure were gone forever. I am hurting in my hips and knees, I am not able to run anymore without major consequences the next day. To have lost the majority of my progress depresses me. and so when I get depressed, I tend to eat to compensate. So that eating and not as much exercising means I go even further away from the good health I was enjoying! self perpetuating failure I say! So wow. having put all that out there feels like some sort of release. I feel better now that I have admitted I am not Superman, and I do have chinks that need to be fixed, but not by eating. I need to learn to deal with those chinks, and admit them and challenge them! Ok, I have decided this. No more long term goals right now. I will have a good day TODAY. That is my goal. Here I go!