After one week on my program I'm down 10 pounds. Current weight is 320 lbs.
That is with no exercise. Why no exercise!!!??? Well, I actually intended to exercise from day one, but I found that with the extreme change in my diet plan I just felt I needed to make only one massive adjustment at a time. In hindsight I am really glad I did it that way.
I've noticed this week a different focus to my efforts that has had a very positive effect on my overall outlook for being successful. I used to look at my New Years resolutions as a time to get really psyched up, make overly ambitious goals and start a diet and exercise program in a blaze of glory, only to fizzle out after my ability and desire to fight against my emotional crutch of overeating bad food is smothered down to embers. Then I try to reignite those embers with a fresh infusion of self hatred that inevitably produces the 'need' to lose consciousness in a Chinese buffet induced dopamine coma. Hooray! 10 years later you're still fat and out of shape.
This New Year I'm taking a different approach. I'm trying this time to change the very nature of my relationship with food. What events in my life cause me to want to overeat? Because life is full of the conditions that produce these events I need to retrain myself to replace my inclination to eat with more healthy and productive thoughts and behaviors. That effort needed all of my attention last week, and I'm sure it will continue to take considerable effort and focused mental energy for some time to come.
Though I've begun exercising as of this week, I'm really not being that particular about what I do, I'm just doing something. This morning I through a my Biggest Loser Boot Camp DVD in and worked out to the point that I could really feel just how out of shape I am. I'll continue to do some sort of cardio workout, and some sort of resistance training 5-6 days a week. For now its the Biggest Loser Boot Camp DVD.
At some point in the next few days, weeks, or even months I'll begin to focus on changing the very nature of my relationship with physical activity in my life. I have a few ideas about how that will look, but I think that just like my relationship with food, that change will be an organic one and will probably evolve as I go, do, and learn.
I know we joke about what your dad says "if you keeping doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten," but it's definitely a valid statement. I think your approach this time is much more reasonable and sustainable in the long run. It's much easier to make small changes and maintain those before moving on to more and more things. I'm so proud of you. And I know you posted this last night, so you went with your weigh-in as of yesterday morning, but another pound down this morning... it's so great. I hope you are feeling your efforts are worth it. I <3 U.
ReplyDeleteWay to go on 11 pounds Dan!
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