Look, I’m only human. For the past few months, I have been working hard at this diet and exercise stuff. I have been doing pretty good at it too. A couple of months ago, however, I slipped and, well, fell off the wagon. Before I go any further with this self-flagellation of a blog post, I would like to get a couple of things clear. Firstly, I have been seriously grateful for the support of my family in this endeavour. Indeed, my wife has been great at encouraging me and enabling me to get this done. She’s been wonderful because she’s always supportive whenever I want to get some new gadget or gizmo “so that I can review it on the blog.” The dark side is that she is equally supportive when I have my 9 PM cravings for chips, and Uber Eats is RIGHT THERE on my phone…..dangit…. That being said, I’m not giving up. As a recovering fat dude, staying healthy is a struggle for me. One of the many problems that I’ve had while dealing with it is
1) I’ve scheduled my workouts – This will sound ridiculous, but even with all my todo lists and reminders and whatnot, I was having a hard time finding the time to do my exercises. Even with the Peloton in my house, I found that the only time I would be reminded that I needed to workout was at 10 PM, and that’s not a good time for me to do that. Now what I’ve done is I’ve found open times in my schedule to carve half an hour out for a quick 30-minute workout and put the time in my calendar. This is not new for me. I would (pre covid times) during my lunch hour if it was nice outside to go for a quick 20-minute walk. I do roughly the same thing now; I jump on my treadmill. I did a post previously about keeping your calendar and your todo list separate, and in this regard, I have to admit, I messed it up. The revelation for me is that going to work out isn’t a task to be completed; It’s an appointment where I have to leave my desk and do a thing; thus, it’s a meeting that should be on my calendar. I’ve been doing that for a week or so now and have found it extremely helpful. That being said, coughs, so my bosses pay attention, I do make sure my work comes first, so if a meeting overlaps with my workout times, I bump my workout to a different free time.
2) I’ve cut out the crap (Mostly) – I will say this, I have cut out as much of the nonsense that I used to eat. I say much because cutting it out entirely is just not realistic for someone like me. Cold turkey simply isn’t going to work for me, so I am going to allow myself a few treats from time to time. I have been on super strict diets before, and the fact that I still refer to myself as a “recovering fat guy” clearly means that none of them worked. The reason why they never worked for me? The stricter the diet was, the further I would inevitably end up rebelling (and by “rebelling,” I mean stuffing my face0. I’m hopeful that by increasing the workouts and (gradually) reducing the treats, I will get into a shape that I’m more comfortable with. Also, while cold turkey on treats can work for some people, I wouldn’t be able to do it. At one point or another, I would lose it….
3) If at first, you don’t succeed…. – I’d like to make a slight differentiation here. Weight loss, for me, is not a goal that I can get to and then move onto other things. It’s not just the getting in shape; it’s staying there. My problem is that I’m so goal-oriented, and goals at one point or another do, in fact, end. The trick here is learning that if I fall off the wagon, I need to give it another go and hope that I will be more successful next time. One of the phrases that I keep in the back of my head is, “Winners are just losers who tried one more time.” There are thousands of stories of people who failed, got back up, failed again, and got back up to eventually kick some serious butt in whatever they were doing. I’m going to get this sorted at one point or another, and it’s going to be, for me, all about getting back up and trying again.
I’m not a fitness guy, I’m not a diet and nutrition person. Heck, I’m not even a doctor. I’m an IT guy who does a blog about organizing your digital life, so I would FOR SURE take these health posts with the grain of salt. I am speaking from my own experience, and if you’re looking for some divine inspiration on how to go on a diet…..there are plenty of blogs for that, but this isn’t one of them. This post is about showing that I’m not perfect (nor am I trying to be). I’m trying to show that weight loss is a journey, and while I can and will occasionally stumble, I’m not giving up. I’m going to continue working on this and talking about it.
Ok, that’s it—enough self-flagellation for now. We’ll get back to our regular tech-related programming next week. Have you ever fallen off the wagon?
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