Reality Check

I was tasked with bringing cookies into work this morning. Kathy made them for my co-workers as a thank you for not killing me for my antics. Honest and truly, I wanted to drop them on the kitchen table and never look at them. But not being that self-disciplined, I broke into them. That was a great opportunity for me to do the "quittin' thang" again. But I decided that the 5 cookies I just ate didn't knock me off the train tracks, it just slowed the train down. I can keep on those tracks, but the speed the train goes is up to me and my choices. 5 cookies means I went from 35 mph to 15 mph. But I can start putting the better fuel in my body, and get back to 35 mph, then 55mph if I keep avoiding the crappy fuel! That is the reality, one bump is not the end. 5 bumps are not the end. The goal shouldn't ever be to have no bumps, but to make the bumps further and further apart each time!!

Make This Journey A Conscious Part Of My Day

I have come to find that I am good at either sub-consciously letting myself go into what I called "float mode" or I am just too lazy to keep on track. I am not sure which it is, but I know it is lethal to my progress. So without getting too much into this, I have decided that perhaps one of the reasons I did well before is because I blogged my rear-end off. I said something about this journey each and every day, which kept it at the forefront of my mind.

So one of my new goals is to find a time, even if it is five minutes, to come on here and more or less just journal something about my journey. Doesn't have to be an epiphany, doesn't have to be profound. I just need to address it in some form of concrete form, and not just in a phantasmic way.

For example, I had to fight a small battle this morning, but I won it this morning. I have gotten into a bit of a habit of having two eggs and some cheese for breakfast at home. Then, I reason that since I ate at 5 a.m. this morning, it makes sense to get a mid morning breakfast too, because (insert some excuse here). Ok, maybe on the days I have no idea how long court is going to go, that isn't the worse plan (I can't bring food into court obviously) but for all the other days, that is ignorant. So it took some real self-control, but I did manage to pass all my usual breakfast spots.

Reset The Goals, Reset The Focus, Avoid A Non-Starter Maybe?

I want to run a half marathon. So in my planning, one of the staples is that I want to lose pounds. So I work on that first. The driving force behind my motivation is to see the scale say I am making progress. If I fail there, then my half marathon is a non-starter. So starting today, I am going to search out a half marathon for next year. I am going to put all my focus into training for that half marathon. And if I happen to lose a few pounds a long the way, then so be it.

I Walked, I Was Honest, And I Got Lucky

So yesterday was basically another Day 1 in the search for my groove. I was pretty excited that the day wound up with quite a few positives. First off, I walked. I often gripe about wanting to be able to run. And I often get a wild hair and take off running every once in awhile. But who am I kidding. I am almost always setting myself up for failure when I do that. I wind up not being happy with my speed, my distance, or both. But still, I keep doing it over and over. So yesterday, I banned myself from running. I left the office and headed out on my running route, but walked the entire thing. I made myself do it. Even when I got good and warmed up and all I could think was I want to just run the next mile or so, I stopped myself. I still weigh 265 pounds, I have old knees and fragile ankles. At this point in time, I need to cast aside my pride and my go get'em attitude and be smart. I need to walk consistently and get my muscles in shape, my joints tightened back up, and my weight down.

I was honest on the My Fitness Pal app. I had clicked the button for "I'm done for the day" option, but it turned out I woke up hungry and had a piece of bread with a tablespoon of peanut butter on it. In the past, that would have fell in the no man's land region and never made it to MFP. I put that bad boy in there this time. Complete honesty, every day, regardless.

I also had the good fortune of Kathy fixing me a very healthy and low cal supper! Tilapia and corn baby!! That left me room at the end of the night to make myself a protein shake with frozen cherries. My new favorite end of day snack I do believe!!

The RAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRR Doesn't Work, I Need To Practice the HMMMMMMM

So this morning as I am getting ready, I had one of my commonly held session with myself which usually takes place on Mondays. I am not doing what I know I need to be doing. I need to find that discipline I had in 2010-11. I need to quit being stupid and get to getting!! Basically, I am trying to pump myself up and get the adrenaline going, like I did for football games and track meets. But here is what I came to realize suddenly. That is something you do for a short term challenge. You get psyched up and you go and perform and then the game is over. I am good at that, but history shows that once the "game" is over, I go back to terrible habits. I need to quit trying to get the raaaaaaawwwwwrrrrr feeling of getting ready for the game. But what is the alternative? As any athlete of any organized sport will tell you, the practice is the part that everybody hates. It is the same thing, over and over and over. And it is boring! But anybody that has been an athlete long enough will tell you that while practice is the hmmmmmmmmmmm of competition, that it is also where games are won and lost. Nobody gets up for practice, you just put your time in. It is somewhat anticlimactic, and I think that in this effort to change forever, that is exactly what one needs. Anti-climactic. There is no big finale, you just keep doing it. It is no longer practice, it is just doing.

So I am shifting gears once again (and that is fine, I have to find my "thing" that will lead to long term success) and making a few changes. I am going to get back to blogging, and not worry about how many people comment or have viewed it. My blogging is for me. I want to get a conscious handle on what is going on at all times. I want to stop letting myself go into float mode. The diet and exercise I need to be engaging in need to get my attention every day. Only then will I be able to have a good "practice."

I am a little on the fence on the next change, but I am going to try it and see how it works. Pictures will be taken of every bite I take during the day. I want to not subconsciously or instinctually eat any longer. I want eating to be a real thing with real consequences, rather than some harmless act, undertaken with no conscious thought to the act. And to go along with that, I am going to track the food too. And to get rid of a dirty little secret, I am going to do it in complete honesty. I have fudged my MFP before, and that will no longer be an option. I want to see that I did a bad job if I did a bad job. Evidence of the truth is part of my job, and now it will be part of my lifestyle.

Despite how many times I have said this before, a new chapter starts today. It doesn't matter how many times we fall, it matters how many times we get up. Cliche? Maybe, but also true.

I Want To Be Where I Want To Be Now!

Last night, I had a long talk with my wife. I am a very driven person, and I have high expectations of myself. I am never satisfied right where I am. I have to be progressing. That causes me much angst in my life when I am evaluating where I am at this moment. Because I am never where I want to be at that moment. I always have aspirations. I never ever live in the moment of triumph and enjoy it. That's done, what's next? I was thinking about this,and how that can be such a roadblock to so many areas of my life. I know that we have many different characters we play in life. And it seems like my unhappiness lies in almost every character's life right now.

As a husband, I want to provide my wife with the finer things in life that she didn't get to enjoy growing up. I want her to be able to walk out the door and say I'm going to browse the mall a bit and maybe do some shopping, without my accountant character having bells and whistles go off, and run to the bank account to see how big of a hit we could take. As a father, I want my kids to never incur debt to get an education. I would love to write a check for tuition each semester and get them going in life without the saddle of student loan debt. As an attorney, I would love to never have to stop and think about how to handle this issue or that issue with a case. You get the idea. And my reality is that I am not anywhere I want to be, and I am not appreciating that I made it to many of my where I was trying to get to's a while back. I want to be where I want to be, and I want to be there RIGHT NOW!

Kathy has had the unfortunate task of having to talk me off the ledge a few times here lately. I was back to beating myself up for the fact that I haven't taken my family anywhere cool for a year and some months now. I feel as though I have failed my family miserably because I don't make a ton of money and take them cool places and to experience cool things. And in reality, wanting to do those things serves another purpose. I have a lot of pressure on me a lot of the time. I make so many decisions and work out so many situations on a daily basis. I take each one very seriously. I don't make offers to defendants off the cuff, I think each one through. I don't take my position as the family accountant lightly. I try to make the best decisions possible every day. I am especially sensitive to trying to spend quality time with the kids because as a kid, no one gave a rip about me, and I don't want them to know what that feels like. To sum up, I put a lot of pressure on me. And referring back to that problem I mentioned earlier, I don't make a ton of money, so I don't really get to have many blowing off steam opportunities. You see, the one thing I do know about me is that as long as I am at home, I am not ever going to relax. There are things that need to be getting done around the house or house business. There are kids who require attention and have needs. There is always just SOMETHING. When I leave the house, at least SOME of it is left there. But I am caught in this weird situation where I can't even really afford to go fishing for a day or go camping for weekend without some planning a month ahead. So I guess what my real gripe is is that I can't take a spontaneous trip. And frankly, I need some spontaneity!

But here is the thing, if I take all that griping above out, I would see that wow, I am blessed. God has done some wonderful things in my life, and I need to appreciate them. I spent most of my youth going from no relationships to bad relationships to substance abuse to wasting my potential in a factory (nothing against factory work, I just was never happy and it turns out, because I could do more than that). And now, I have two college degrees, a law degree, a wife that I don't really deserve, three kids that ultimately love me, thought sometimes I can't tell! haha. And here is the answer to the I don't make enough money gripe. I DO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY. My family has seen it's share of shut off notices and collections letters and phone calls, and eaten ramen 4 nights a week, etc. etc. And none of that is true now. All bills are paid, all meals have meat, and all kids are enrolled in some type of extra curricular activities. I have a mini van (not sure if I am bragging or hanging my head on this one) that runs well and gets the kids where they have to be, and a paid for truck that I love to drive. I actually have a few bills on auto draft, and that never happened. I had to have the flexibility to not pay it one month if need be! I can now go to my bank and get a loan if it came to me needing that. I have come a long way. I really need to recognize that.

How does that relate to my lifestyle change? I think my angst about my position in life plays a role in my poor diet habits. I am not satisfied or settled in where I am and that underlying unhappiness is being filled with food. Fix one, fix the other, right? The question being, how do I fix it? I am who I am, and I don't know how to change that!

A Shift In Perspective

I am a type A personality for the most part. And as a type A, I am not one to go at things lightly. It is full force ahead if I am undertaking it. I am that guy that will never take a break because if I am done with the project, that is the break. But to go along with my type A personality, I have the flaw of thinking that if I am not 100% succeeding, I am 100% failing. Perhaps I am not progressing fast enough, perhaps I am not meeting my progressive goals I set for myself, or perhaps I am being an idiot because at some point, I didn't use my brain and now feel like it set me back from making my goal and that is unrecoverable time for me. Basically, I am really hard on myself. I do recognize this, but I can't seem to beat it out of me. And I feel like that has become a stumbling block on my road to a healthy lifestyle.

So I am writing this down, making it real and telling all of you too, so that if you see me slipping, you can call me out on it. I am not going to be mad at myself for not being Mr. 100 mph. I am not going to decide that being 150 calories over budget is a blight on my character. I am not going to believe that a loss of 20 pounds over 6 months is a joke because last time I lost 20 pounds in 2 months. My hard charging may have gotten me ahead in some facets of my life, but I think that it has only sabotaged me in my quest to eat healthier, and lose weight at a healthy pace. I told someone the other day, the worst thing that has ever happened to me is having been so super successful at my last effort to gain a healthy lifestyle (well relative success, being as I didn't stay at my healthier weight)

So I want to list what I have done here and recognize that despite what I may believe, these are significant accomplishments from where I started to where I am now. For example, I never, even on the weekends, eat a big, fat laden, calorie dense, unhealthy breakfast. It is some combination of 2 oz of spicy sausage, 2 eggs, oatmeal, and some fruit, usually an apple. I don't eat much for lunch, if I eat an actual lunch at all. Most of my snacking is protein bars or shakes, some almonds or a pumpkin seed and other grains snack bar. 2-3 days a week, I have some form of left over chicken breast for lunch. The weekends are a little less certain lunchwise, but not too far off. I have cut waaaaaaay down on sodas. I used to buy a 6 pack of the 20 oz bottle twice a week. Now I have the fountain drink version every other day or so. And even in the fountain drink soda realm, I have made progress. I used to get the 44 oz cup, then I graduated to the 32 oz cup. I am currently on the 20 oz cup and eyeballing the 16 oz cup next! I did that because I am trying to retrain my brain to not believe I need the biggest everything. I can't help but realize that has also been the biggest issue in my life. If I like it, give me the biggest one, or fill up the plate, or go back for seconds! Now I am working on no seconds at supper, which isn't as big a problem as it used to be, but I am trying to make it be never an issue.

Long story short, I am working at being ok with being consistent but not kicking ass. I am trying to be ok with a medium pace and not expecting that I excel in pounds/inches lost like I did previously. I am retraining my brain with respect to my journey to a healthy lifestyle. I think that if I can take the pressure I feel to excel off of this aspect of my life, then my disappointments, deserved or not, will not be able to derail my efforts.