Something a little funny but something that also helped to change my perspective on current goals within a matter of days recently happened, I was given very similar advice
when discussing my actions and plans for losing weight and getting healthier. But
first, a little background, since the beginning of 2015, I have been gradually
taking steps to help me lose weight. Surprisingly, the real beginning was while
I was on vacation in New York for New Year’s Eve. New York is very walking
friendly. I had just purchased a Fitbit Charge in early December, and was trying
it out. I wore it on vacation and was averaging 15000 steps to 20000 steps per
day and 20 flights of stairs per day. We had very busy days exploring New York,
so it wasn't really exercise. After returning home, I really wanted to keep up
the momentum and devised a plan for moving forward and making this the year
that I take off the weight I have been accumulating over the last decade.
I had hired a personal trainer late last year and started
really focusing on my sessions with him and after a month moved from once a
week to twice a week. I also kept up the walking and focused on getting at least
10000 steps per day and taking an hour walk most days. During this process, I found
days that were more of a struggle. I found motivating myself to get out there
and walk on Mondays and Fridays really hard, so when I added the second
training day, I made it Monday. Now I don’t have to worry about walking on
Monday because that is a gym day. For Friday, I made that my rest day; I was
using Sunday as my rest day, but found that I can more easily motivate myself
to walk on Sundays and Fridays. This has really helped set myself up for
success.
Of course there is more to weight loss than just activity,
so I also needed to start looking at my eating. Since this is an even harder
struggle for me, I decided to go with baby steps. I first planned healthy easy
to prepare breakfasts and lunches to be packed for work. I made it so preparing
lunches nightly was a quick 5 minute chore and very hard to make excuses to not
follow through. I became a lot more consistent with bringing lunches, but still
like to eat out, so I target 4 days bringing food and eating out once a week
for breakfast and lunch during the work week. This made it much easier to
follow. But knowing that can’t be enough because there are still nights and
weekends to tackle, my next step was to start a food diary. I have used them
successfully in the past, but this seemed to be a much bigger struggle for me
to consistently track my food intake. Discussing this with another, with the
feelings of possible future deprivation and guilt, I try to look at it more to
track patterns and look for room for improvement. Also, I give myself the leeway
to eat whatever I want and if I want to overindulge, don’t say no, but eat
half, save the rest, and move forward. This has really helped me stay on track
with my food diary. I have successfully completed two full weeks of entries and
I am starting to realize that even on what I was thinking was a bad day was not
as bad as I thought. Of course, I am still very aware of what I am eating and I
am making very different choices, but I am not feeling like I am being deprived
of anything.
So here I am – I am moving forward, seeing a lot less
backward stepping, but allowing myself the occasional misstep. I feel like I
have set myself up for success and I have even seen a 10lb weight loss. I am
feeling very positive and looking forward to the days ahead. I am especially looking
forward to smaller clothes, keeping up with my father during his runs
Thanksgiving weekend, and some very special pictures for my birthday. The
pictures are not the reason for the weight loss, but a happy coincidence.
Now back to the original point of the story… I was
discussing the above with my trainer with a lot less detail and ended my
comments with “I’m trying”. And he quoted Star War’s Yoda – “No. Try not. Do...
or do not. There is no try.” And he said that if I was trying, then I was
setting myself up for failure. And not too many days later, I was having a different
but similar conversation with my father and mentioned that I hoped I would get
there. And he said “Hope is what you do when you play the lottery.” Their advice
has been running through my mind especially during my long walks and I feel
better about my progress and my future progress. It really helps me focus on
succeeding rather than fear of failing. I know that I may fall down, but I can
get right back up and keep going and succeed with my short term goals and move forward
with my healthy self-journey.
More to come as my journey continues…
