Day 352 - New Week, Plan-Awareness-Family

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New Week, starts today; all weeks start on Monday's in my book. The calendar may say Sunday, but Sunday is part of the WeekEND, not WeekNEW.

New Week, it happens every seven days without fail, ready for it or not, it is here for you!

Are You Ready For It?

Myself, I am ready for this week. How do I know? Because I have a trio of things working for me.

ONE - Plan... I have a plan for the week, it is as follows...
Eating plan contains a F/C/P nutrient mix of 25% / 25% / 50% with no more than 2000 calories a day.
Exercise plan consists of 3x Cardio, 3x Weights & Stretching with each of those six.
Employment plan focuses on leading via accountable goal setting, open communication, mutual trust and just recognition.
Enjoyment plan starts today attending my daughters soccer game, and everyday this week I'll have fun at work, home and on the blogs.

TWO - Awareness... I am aware of what is to gain for executing my plan, and what is risk should I choose not to.
Anything I/we need and want is attainable if I engage my plan honestly and earnestly.
Everything can end in a heart beat if it's certainty is taken for granted or assumed.

THREE - Family... I have the rich fortune of a supportive family. My immediate family I've spoken of here previously on several occasions. Recently, motivated by the need to rally support in my cancer battle, I made my situation known to my family coast to coast. The word I sent out saw some supportive words returned to me.

An Aunt of mine who engaged in this same battle in the 90's shared a very strong & sound approach to the beast, she said, "I chose to assume that I would beat it and refused to allow the fear to grow any more than I couldn’t help." 
-Strength and Strategy decides battles, wins wars. I find her approach to contain both and I embrace it.

Another Aunt of mine offered very unique aid in my quest for both health and victory, she said, "So I could drink a liter of water for you or eat your brussell sprouts. I think your plan is sound, just keep at it and keep laughing."
-Anytime someone offers to eat brussell sprouts for you, take them up on it I say. While those veggies will certainly benefit her more than I, her reminder to keep laughing is key to getting well and staying well.

Like I said, I have the rich fortune of a supportive family.

How about you?... Have a Plan for the week?... Are you Aware of the stakes?... How does that someone, or many someones, in your Family support you?

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 334-335: We Deserve a PBR

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For most of life PBR meant Pabst Blue Ribbon, good stuff if flavor is not key to your beer drinking experience. Oh, and NO, I did NOT pose for that photo!

Today & in recent years PBR is a popular acronym in the business world including I.T. (Information Technology) the industry I work in.

P-Plan, reduce time/cost associated with determining how to build what we've been tasked to build; e.g. physical vs virtual platforms, online vs nearline data storage, blah blah more i.t. speak

B-Build, increase throughput/capacity to deliver more builds; e.g. standard vs custom, pull vs push processes/methodologies, blah blah more flavor of the day speak

R-Run, reduce time/cost associated with keeping what we've built running; e.g. preventative vs predictive maintenance, system redundancies & availability, blah blah more captain obvious speak

This week I spent 3 hours at work immersed in PBR. During this time my mind wandered & began to ponder how PBR correlates to my health mission. Here is what I came up with...

P-Plan, Reduce my trigger-finger mindset to fire off excuses and increase my knowledge; learn best practices to lose weight & keep it off. In other words you can only do what you plan to do, don't leave success to chance or accident!

B-Build, Create a schedule & menu consisting of a variety of exercise & foods to build a healthier me. In other words create a healthy lifestyle to live!

R-Run, Consistently, one day at a time, Do what I know I am supposed to do; don't just want it, don't just plan it, DO IT! In other words maintain the plan which I have created changing the approach as needed to prevent slipping back into the days of excuses and complacency.

Hey, you deserve a PBR, now go get it!

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 167 - Fun, Need More

Our picture riddle yesterday was fun for some good guesses. The most popular guess was the tassel rope/cord on a on a graduation cap. And that certainly was close, but not quite right. My fave guess was it being "polypropolene rope to keep my black silk shorts up during runs", thanks Ann :-)

Becky over at First Steps did get it right with her guess of "the gold honor cord I got to wear around my neck at graduation". The difference being that this was the honor cord I wore when I graduated, finally, in 2007. Thanks to all for playing and congrats Becky on nailing the answer. Good times.

The picture there is me on that day. It is actually a photo of a photo, our scanner died; hence the cruddy quality. Look at the face! Easily I am 310 if not much closer to 320 in that photo. Cheeks, chin, even my ears are fat! Not sure what exercise to do to slim the ear lobes. And the gown, it was huge. They had three sizes if I recall; Small, Large & Tent. So glad I have left the tent sizes and a chin or two in my wake recently.

Thursday was fun for me in many ways...

• Blogging, fun; so many of you posting up good news I can't get enough. I need more time to comment and draw even more inspiration from you. Oh, read a good one today here at The Right Fit.
• Twitter, fun; some of you connected up with me after yesterdays post and we got busy chattin up being healthy and goofing off a bit too. I had to let it be know to FatGirlvsWorld that the Giants will fall to the Bears Sunday night. She'll get over it.
• Work, fun; yes it was fun too. Someone tried to ruin my day with a project delay & I disarmed them with humor and understanding. Once the chip was off his shoulder we got the schedule re-set in a way that satisfied all.
• Eating, fun; I kicked butt keeping temptation at bay and chomping down on good quality choices. Well, um, maybe I did have a few too many beans in my salad.
• Exercise, fun; knocked that ball so far out of the park that it filed a flight plan with Captain Kirk. Or do you prefer Captain Picard? Sit ups, Push ups and walking. Then round two was a one mile walk/jog combo for time, the first time I timed such a combo; 15:14 minutes. So we'll use that as a benchmark to improve on going forward. This and Lake Andrea will be my personal challenges for the near future same as Stanton Hill was over the summer. Thanks Jody for giving me the inspiration to have such a personal challenge to keep exercise fresh, fun and meaningful.
• Family, fun; my wife is gorgeous, sexy and I can't keep my eyes off of her when she gets home. My daughter was accepted to her first choice of colleges and raked in a good size scholarship to boot. So now I wont have to sell as much plasma as I feared. My boys, well they didn't get in trouble yesterday so a thumbs up to them too.

October is here, I am having fun, and I want more!

What do you want more of?

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 45 - Busy To Lose

Hope all enjoyed the holiday weekend. A good weekend for me and my clan. And generally a healthy one too. Sunday we had our family gathering and while a majority of the food was fried, it was largely a catered event, I didn't over eat and kept the belly filled with water and veggies & fruit.  Got in a couple of exercise sessions too. Saturday my son & I thrashed the home gym and I also hit the elliptical for 30 minutes. Yesterday my wife & I went for a walk around the Nippersink forest preserve. It was just a 1.3 mile walk around the place. We were planning to do a 2nd loop but the rains were so near and we just didn't care to get caught in the rain. And rain it did. So in the end the holiday weekend did no damage to me in my efforts to get healthy.

Back to work today, I am sure that is the same story for many of you. While I would certainly like to spend less time working than I do, or not have to work at all; I do find that it is easier to maintain attention to healthy behaviors on work days. Simply there is less time for the mind to wander to temptation. Oh sure, before I started this mission over 40 days ago my mind did wander to temptation, and it still does. But the difference now is that I have adopted an attitude that doesn't allow me to give into temptation so easily. Being at work helps shore up that attitude. When tempted I can dive into my work and more easily push temptation aside.

Do you find keeping the mind and hands busy helps with living healthy? What do you look to busy yourself with to push temptation aside?

Hockey update: Blackhawks beat Philly in game 2 last night and lead the series 2-0. Sweet, but not getting over confident or complacent. Last year the Red Wings took a 2-0 lead on the Penguins to then lose the series 3-4. So nothing has been won yet. GO HAWKS!

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 26 - Tick Tock

Super busy day today so I need to speed blog here. Ah, speed blog, that made me recall dinner with my son last night at Applebee's. Not a favorite place of mine, not even close, but I tried a dish off of their new 550 calories or less menu and was quite pleased. Good idea and glad it was on the menu. But that’s not what speed blog reminded me of re: dinner there. There were signs up all over the place advertising speed dating. At Applebee's? Never done speed dating, I am married and have not been on the market for many years and when I was the concept would not have appealed to me I'm sure. But at Applebee's? Well, whatever generates business for them I suppose.


So, short on time, but regardless this day shall be mine. Can't find motivation outside as it is monsoon season here in Chicagoland. Therefore I have to look inside myself for motivation today. And I shall gain it through a series of victories I intend to chalk up. They are as follows…

1-I have a storage-area-network for our enterprise system (SAP) that needs to be replaced. Today I must align the project plan our vendor so that we can meet the fresh request to replace it months earlier than originally planned; this will be done.

2-I have a salad bar in the cafeteria at work that see's me make the same salad most days; today I will change it up and snap that rut.

3-I have a file & print replacement project that has hit a wall with regards to which back up technology to use; that won't be the case at day's end.

4-I have an elliptical machine that hasn't been used in about a week; I am going to make it wish it had never been assembled.

5-I have a wife, an amazingly gorgeous and lovely woman of a wife; I am going to… well let's stop right there.

What victories shall you chalk up today?

Responsibility 199... Gotta Do It!!