Hungry.  Hungry and deadlift are the key words for the day.

I’m sitting here after writing my unResolution Month post for the day and I am starving.  Part of it was I skipped a snack today.  Work was so hectic that I just completely forget.  And I can tell at night when I’ve skipped a snack because I am so hungry.  So very, very hungy.  But it’s okay, I’m pretty sure it’s appetite over true hunger since I ate pretty reasonably all day, including a killer steak wrap with some fine, fine mock caesar dressing.  Mmmm mmm!

Okay, enough of that.

Work was so non-stop that I told everyone I was going to the gym at 11:30 today.  At 2:00, I finally said F it, I’m going.  The problem was I only had a little over hour to get there, get gas in my car, work out, and get back.  However, in that time I deadlifted (I can still deadlift 315 pounds.  Yay me!)  And burned 200 calories on the elliptical.  Not perfect, but I’ll take it.  That was pretty sweet.  315 pounds…6 plates.

Also on the weight loss front, I got my wife her own EA Sports Active thigh strap and workout bands.  Now we can work out together.  Or at least she can have one that’s not soaked in sweat.  She’s happy.

Weight-losswise, one thing I noticed was this week has been bereft of the very noticeable signs of weight loss from last week.  Not that I’ve gained it all back, there just have not been many major wins.  I’ll know if I am on the right track more tomorrow when I weigh in.  (In case you are wondering, my “week” begins on Friday since that’s when I started so that’s when I’ll weigh myself.)  I am hoping I dropped down to about 378.  We’ll see?

However, if you are starting your own weight loss journey, it’s something to keep in mind.  It’s also different this time since the last time I lost major weight, I gained a pound the first week and lost 9 the next.  Though I was 5 years younger and could work out 2 hours per night.

On the style front, on Jan. 5, I got my haircut and my beard removed and I’ve shaved consistently since then.  I am impressed with myself.  Normally I shave for about a day and then stop.  I guess I really can change myself!

Professionally… well, I didn’t take my planner into the office today and I once again reminded myself why I keep a planner.  I shan’t leave it in the car again any time soon.

Also, I continue with the nightly cube straightening.  It’s a good habit to get into.  I’m also not losing my temper as much as I used to, which is a real plus because I wanted to start screaming at various points throughout the afternoon.  Thankfully I did not.

More tomorrow.

Well, sitting back and looking at today, I can’t say if today was a success, a failure or what.  The reason for my confusion really boils down to two things: lunch and dinner.

For lunch, we tried a new Mexican place.  If you know me,  you’re already saying “uh oh.”   Mexican food is my passion and my vice’.  I would strongly consider trading my wife for a life time supply of good salsa and tortilla chips.  (Love you honey!)  This was a recipe for disaster.

I gotta say, when they plopped down that basket of tortilla chips and gave me my own bowl of salsa, I was tempted.  So very tempted.  I even started the internal negotiation process.  “Well, you already had a bad day, but that was for last week.  You can have another one.  What’s it matter?”

Then I remembered something… the number 17.  As in there are 17 grams of fat per basket of tortilla chips.  Seriously, look at the basket next time and think to your self “17 grams of fat.”  So, I’d like to say that I had no tortilla chips at all, but instead I instituted an old rule.  The 10 Chip rule.  As in when I go to a Mexican place, I can have 10 tortilla chips.  Which is probably 1/4th or 1/5th of a basket.  Not awful, but not great.

Oh, and for the record I only had 7 and everytime I ate one, I repeated to myself “17 grams of fat.”  Also, for the record my meal was chicken mole and I had left rice and beans on my plate.

So honestly, I don’t know how to score that.

Then there was dinner.  I was all set to have my leftover veggies, rice, and noodles from Shogun when I remembered that I had promised to make my wife steak wraps.  Now, normally this wouldn’t be a big thing.  There is about 3-4 oz of steak per wrap.  However, I am trying to perfect my recipe.  I can’t say why, but it’s critical that on Sunday I make the steak wrap of my life.

So I ended up eating maybe 12 oz of steak and some of those veggies.  Again, it’s not perfect, but I honestly can’t say if it’s a bad day.  I didn’t give in to overeating nor did I let food control me, but I’ve certainly done better.  Much better.

On the plus side, I burned 467 calories on Wii Active.  So today wasn’t a total loss.

What do you all think?

Well, I weighed myself this morning.

First, let me say that if you decide to embark on a weight loss journey, the first time you weigh yourself, you should write down how much you weigh.   Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

Sheesh.

So my wife and I conferred and we have the same hundreds digit (sadly).  We then have the same two numbers for the last two digits.  I think it was 89 and she thinks it was 98.

I’m going with me being right, if for no other reason than I don’t want to brag I lost a bunch of weight I didn’t.  And besides, it won’t change the fact I’m now at 80.

So, if I’m right, I lost 9.6 pounds in one week.  If I’m wrong, I lost 18.

Even if I’m wrong, you know, I’ll take it!

Back on track.

Eatingwise, that wasn’t too tough.  I remembered to eat my shredded wheat Fiber One cereal on the way out the door and slipped right into good eating habits.  I even took the boy out to dinner.  I had 3 sushi rolls, a side salad, and a little mushroom soup.  I also ordered some veggies, but I wasn’t even hungry for them.  That is a huge sign and I have a delicious lunch for tomorrow!

Doing the exercise took a bit more pushing.  I really have a love/hate thing going on with my Wii Active right now, but I’m still doing it.  33 minutes, 470 calories.  I don’t know if I trust the measurements, but whatever.  I worked up a nice sweat.  And went yard in baseball like 10 times.

Tomorrow…the scale.  Wish me luck?

Forgive me readers, for I have slacked.  It’s been 3 days since my last post.

A lot of that, quite frankly, has been due to me just feeling like poopy.  Normally, when I have a cold the thing I try to do is hibernate for about 2 days straight and come out feeling better.  I didn’t do that this time for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I wanted to keep working out. 

Which I did.

In fact, from Jan 2 to Jan 9, I worked out non stop.  That’s 8 workouts in a row!  Granted, most of those workouts were 30 minutes on the Wii and not full 1 hour to 90 minute workouts in the gym, but I’m going to give myself a pass since I do have a cold and I still burn about 340-380 per 30 minute workout.  Plus, that’s not bad, right?  30 minutes a day?

However, today I took my first workout day off. Everything I’ve read about working out says that you go 6 days and take the 7th off.  I have found that in general, for my schedule, taking Sundays off works best because of Church and other obligations on my time.  Plus, it allows me uninterrupted writing time on Sunday nights, which I tend to use for writing personal “fun” stuff.  (My novel and non-freelance stuff.)

Today was also my bad meal day, which I somewhat regret and somewhat don’t.  I had planned to muscle through today and save my bad day for next week some time, but my schedule just didn’t facilitate that.  In fact, I only ate twice today.  I had breakfast when I woke up around 11:30 (thanks to my wife for letting me sleep off my cold) and then I had a small 140 calorie snack at around 2:30 because I was HUNGRY.

The plan was for us to have dinner around 4:30 right up until the boy put a small piece of rubber in his nose and I got to take him to the Emergency Room.  By the time I got out, I was starving so when we went to eat a Mongolian BBQ, I decided to go back for another plate.  (Incidentally, the take away is that I need to keep up on eating every two hours and perhaps do a better job of keeping healthy snacks handy.)

The good news is that my bad day is bad in quantity only since a lot of what I ate was vegetables and brown rice, but since one of my aims is to force myself to follow good portion size, the meal was an utter failure.  Fortunately, there was no fried foods, no soda, and minimal unclean carbs.

I own that.  But frankly, the fact I burned at a minimum 2,950 calories last week off cardio alone (not counting weight training) I’ll take it!

Which reminds me….VICTORY DANCE (my friend Rob’s term).  I went 7 days of straight working out and eating well.  That’s one week of my year down!  I’m doing it.

And you know what’s weird?  Food isn’t on my mind ALL THE TIME like I was afraid it would be.  Sure, there are times, especially coming back from the gym when all I can think about is food.  (For instance, there is 1 BBQ restaurant, 4 Italian restaurants, 2 Chinese Places, 1 Panera, 2 Sandwich shops, 1 Mexican Place, 1 Chipotle, 1 Thai restaurant, 1 Japanese Restaurant, 2 Sonics, 1 Popeyes, 1 McDonalds, 1 Mediterranean place, 2 grocery stories, 1 Chilis, 1 Bob Evans, and a Papa Johns on the way home visible from the street…what can I say, on the 3rd I was HUNGRY.)  On the other hand, I am finding that as long as I eat something every 2 hours, I don’t worry about it.

Quick week in review

The hardest moment this week:

When my son asked for a chocolate chip cookie for a snack.  I never knew how good a chocolate chip cookie could smell until that moment.  But I didn’t take one for myself.

The best moment this week:

I thought it was going to be when the button didn’t open up on my shirt last week, but instead I’ll take this week when I had to move a second notch on my belt.  It’s probably only water weight, but who cares?!  Go me!

Okay, here’s to another 7 days of healthy eating.

Oh, and I weigh myself on Tuesday.  I am dying to know how much I’ve lost.

Okay, Day 6 of my reimagining is in the bag and I am not only tired, but hungry!

I am definitely fighting off my son’s cold, but I did go ahead and work out.  I did the Wii Active since I can’t get out of my driveway, ruling out the gym.  378 calories.  Not too shabby.

Internal dialogue was something Rob brought up earlier and I wanted to address it in depth because I think it’s important.

Let’s start at the basics:

What is an Internal Dialogue?

So, I don’t want to belabor the point, but basically your internal dialogue is how you talk to yourself about (and by extension how you think about) your goals and your journey towards completing them.  Basically, are you generally positive/supportive when you think about your journey, are you negative/insulting, or do you lie somewhere in between?

Why Does it Matter?

Your internal dialogue may well determine if you are successful with the changes you want to make to your life.  Why?

Well, as much as I hate to say it, Dr. Phil was right.  About 6 years ago, I had a Dr. Phil calendar that had one weight loss tip per day.  And one of the tips was basically that if you beat yourself up about your weight, you going to stop trying to change it.  Why?  The whole weight loss process becomes so negative that you want to remove yourself from it. 

The problem is, I see overly negative internal dialogues all the time when I talk to people about losing weight.  Some people very close to me get on the scale every day even though they know their weight fluxuates.  Still, if their weight goes up, they freak out and start individually lamenting each dish they ate which might have caused them to put on weight.  It’s sad because they’re hurting emotionally themselves when all they did was gain half a pound.

I’ve seen the same for other goals.  I have friends who see every misstep as a major failure and that is met with wailing and gnashing of teeth.  The human psyche can only take so much beating before it will give up and you will end up abandoning your goals.  (Not good.)

On the hand Dr. (well, not really Dr.) Perrin also thinks that there is a danger in being overly positive.  There is a point where you can be so upbeat that you ignore the obvious problems.  In my experience, this is a far less common issue, but it does happen and can lead people into believing that everything is fine and that their missteps aren’t really missteps, they’re blips or one-time issues and they’ll “do better tomorow.”

The Right Internal Dialogue

So, somewhere between happy-happy-joy-joy and I-am-a-total-loser is where I believe the  proper internal dialogue lies.  I guess I would call it “firm, but fair.”

I danced around this issue some when I was talking about Self-Assessment when I said that I had to be honest with myself and list everything that I wanted to change and that I couldn’t flinch or ignore my faults.  I also said that I had to forgive myself at the end of that assessment and realize that I was basically a good person even if I had things I wanted to change.  I was firm with myself, but at the same time I didn’t overaccentuate the negative and I was generally positive about my potential to achieve my goals and stick with it.

Let’s look at another example.  Person A (who is a guy since I’m a guy) wants to lose weight, but for whatever reason decides to have a really extravagant meal.  (I’m jonsing for Mexican, so let’s use that as an example.)  Person A has a margarita, all the chips he wants, cheese dip, a chimicanga with beef and cheese sauce, and fried ice cream for dessert.  (Told you, I am jonsing for Mexican.)  Let’s also assume that this happens outside of the rules of his diet that he set.  (In other words, it’s not his bad meal.)

So, someone with a negative internal dialogue thinks: “I am such a loser.  Why the [bleep] did I do that?  Why can’t I lose weight?  I’m such a bad person.”  A person with a positive internal dialogue might think the opposite: “Eh, it’s okay.  It’s not a problem because it’s just one meal.  I’ll do better next time.”

Neither of these viewpoints are right, in my opinion.  First, Person A is not a loser.  Nor is Person A a bad person.  In the grand scheme of things, that meal hasn’t sealed his fate.  He can still hit the gym and work the meal off.  It’ll be okay.  On the other hand, to dismiss that it happened with a simple shrug isn’t so great either because he did do something which is counter to his goals. 

My prefered internal dialogue is to think of this as a (here it comes) a teachable moment.  Every misstep is a chance to get better.  When I give in to overeating like Person A, what I try to do is pause and understand the conditions which drove me to eat that meal.  I know I’m an emotional eater and when I emotionally eat, I try to find out the conditions which stressed me out and recognize them.  I may not be able to keep them from happening again, but hopefully I can sense that they are happening and try to channel the stress towards something other than eating.

I hope that makes sense and I don’t sound like a jerk.  I just don’t want you to beat yourself up and when the missteps happen (and they will) I want you to take them just seriously enough that you eventually learn not to make them again.  That’s all anyone can ask.

Celebrate Good Times

Point of order!  No matter your internal dialogue, don’t forget to celebrate.  In fact, celebrate like we celebrate my son’s accomplishments.  What does that mean?

My son can spell one word: his name and he’s done it like 500 times.  Still, we want him to learn to read and write so ever ytime he spells his name, we party like it’s 1999.

Do that.  Feel free to overcelebrate.  Today, when I didn’t cram down the BBQ and fries when I wanted to, I told Twitter.  I wanted those accolades because I did something big and I deserved it.

You do the same.  That’s an order!

Day 5 of the my reimagining and things seem to be moving along better than expected.

Major developments today:

1.  I put on a collared shirt with buttons and didn’t have any problems with it!!

Now, unless your an overweight male with a big tummy, you may not know what problems I’m talking about.  But sometimes having a large stomach can open the buttons around the midsection.  It’s kind of embarrassing.   But it didn’t happen to me today.  Aww yeah!

2.  I went to the next notch on my belt

Okay, so it wasn’t but a week or so ago that I had to loosen my belt, but hey, progress is being made!

3.  I didn’t pig out

As I shared on Twitter earlier, we ordered BBQ for lunch at work today.  Items not consumed: fries, beef.  Items consumed: turkey, grilled veggies.  Reasons for not eating the fries: I didn’t want to blog that I had fallen off the wagon.  Awww yeah!

4.  I worked out

Okay, so that’s not so weird … except … I’ve been feeling kind of under the weather.  My son has bronchitis and perhaps the flu or RSV or something else and I think I’m fighting it off.  Plus, I got like 4 hous of sleep, but it didn’ t matter.  I worked out. 

I used the Wii Active for 30 minutes so it wasn’t a super gym workout, but I did burn 370 calories.  So I’ll take it.

Where does that leave me?

Better than the last couple of times I’ve said I was going to lose weight and I owe it to you who read these words.  I’m keeping my promise!

I…uh…promise!

Okay, I’m exhausted, but I wanted to report in.  I’ve been to the gym four days in a row.

Saturday was chest day
Sunday I tried the Wii Active
Monday was leg day
Tonight was arms

As I said before, I’m tired.  Very, very tired.

I’ll review the Wii Active, but I want to use it a few more times.  For now I can say my legs seem to be weirdly shaped because the leg holder just likes to slip.

Now, also, I may be crazy, but I’ll be darned if my pants are looser.  Maybe I’m crazy.

Good night!

Okay, this post gets way more personal reflection-y than I wanted, but there’s a point to it I swear.  What I want to focus on is three themes:

1. Time
2. Honesty
3. Forgiveness

Like I said in my introductory post, the thing that got all this kickstarted was the health problems, but even before that I was finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with some parts of myself.  Just little things here and there that I know I could be doing better.  Perhaps after a while, my dissatisfaction with those things might have led me to make some of the changes I am talking about here, but my guess is not.

See I’m pretty good at kidding myself or settling or doing the small amount to partially fix a problem and not really solving the root cause.  You know, that whole thing about treating the symptoms and not the disease.

I say that not to beat myself up, but rather to say this whole reimagining thing didn’t just happen.  I didn’t decide that I wanted to change my ways and then launch the website, first I had to figure out what I wanted to change.  Even though I had been feeling sort of psychically “off” for a while, I still needed a period of reflection and criticial analysis of myself then and myself how I want to be.

It was a tough process which ranged from stepping back at times when I was angry and asking myself “Why am I losing my composure?  Why is something so small making me so mad?” to thinking on several occassions “I liked myself better in high school.  Is that because I was naive or was I truly a better person?”

Basically, overtime, I had to be honest with myself.  Unflinchingly honest.  I had to look at myself in the mirror and not look away.  Not gloss over the imperfections and the things I didn’t like.  (In case you’re wondering, that was both literally and figuratively part of the process.  One of the ways of dealing with being overweight for me was never looking below my neck in the mirror.  Makes it easier to pretend you’re not as heavy.)

At the end though, I had to be honest.  I had to know the things that were bothering me about me and I had to know how much they bothered me so I knew in what order to tackle them.  By now, you can probably tell the thing that was bothering me most was my weight.  It’s why I am tackling it first.  Even if nothing else falls in line, I will at least feel better about myself because of it.

Lastly, after I had picked myself apart, clear down to the bone, I had to do one more thing or else I wouldn’t be able to do this.  I had to forgive myself or at least accept myself.  I had to remind myself that yes, I have issues, but I’m not a horrible person.  I’m not even a bad person I don’t think, just a person who would do well to change his ways.

And I can accept that.  I can accept that I would prefer to be skinny, but my wife and child still love me even though I’m fat.  I’m not going to hell because I dress shabby.  I still have a good career even if my hair is a bit shagified.

I thnk that, ultimately saved me.  I am pretty sure psychologically I would reject this whole thing if I had to wake up every morning and recite every reason I had F—ed up my life.  I’d fall off the horse and go about my merry way, never the better.  Instead, I have resolved to say that I got here through a series of actions or inactions I would prefer I hadn’t made, but I did and I can live with it.

And that honestly, is something I can live with.  It’s how I can have a huge list of things about myself that I want to change and not delve into piles of self abuse.  I don’t know about you, but accepting my nature as one who has made mistakes and working past them feels a lot better telling myself what a loser I am.  I think if you try it, you would find it works better, too.  Just guessing!

With that said, I think a quick recap’s in order.  So I could start my reimagining, I first had to figure out what I wanted to change.  Even though I had some ideas, I still spent a goodly amount of time figuring out exactly what I want to change.  During that time, I had to be completely no-holds-barred honest.  Any fault, any problem, any issue had to be noted and I had to keep my eyes open.  Once I had that list though, I then had to sit back and say that, at the end of the day, I wasn’t a bad person because of all the stuff I wanted to change.  Merely a person in a state of flux.  And that was okay.