Stand Up To Success

Rain, it rained while we were attending our son's soccer game yesterday. It happens. When it does, you can break out an umbrella, hang in there & tough out that which would deter you, or, you can flee from that which is unpleasant. What would you be more apt to do?

Keep in mind I am talking about a rain shower, not a hurricane. Sometimes, you gotta flee! But do those of us who struggle to get fit, stay fit; do we tend to flee too easily in the face of difficulty?

A whole post could be dedicated to what "difficulty" means to us, and I may do just that near term. But let me stay focused on my point; why we choose to stand down in the face of difficulty.

This analysis could go in so many directions. There is the science of the flight-or-fight response, but I'm not talking about facing a momma-grizzly bear protecting her cubs. There is the quest for convenience and ease in life; but I'm not talking about using the remote control to change the channel versus getting up and using the buttons on the television console - want to have some fun hide the remote at a time when you know your kids will watch television; odds are they will flee for something else to do before they push buttons on the television.

Instead, I believe why we most often choose to stand down the difficulties of weight loss is really quite simple; we don't step up and make decisions before we act.

Over the past month or two I've had so many opportunities to exercise, but quickly if not almost instantaneously decided not to. No, that is wrong, it wasn't a decision, it was a reflex reaction made nearly unconsciously. Why do I unconsciously not do what I know I ought to do?

Where does that come from? I'm honestly not certain. But what I am certain of is that when I am on my game, I am consciously determining the pro/con of options and making reasoned decisions. When I am off my game, I've checked out in the decision making department. That inner-demon has checked in and unconsiously decides that I will watch tevelvision versus go for a walk.

To be successful I need to stand up to the challenge of making difficult decisions. For some of us, choosing 30 minutes of exercise over 3 hours of television is a difficult decision. Choosing 30 minutes to prepare a healthy meal over a 3 minute drive-thru meal is a difficult decision.

Success is recognizing when a decision is before you that will impact your weight.
Success is standing up, spending 3 seconds reasoning the options and before we act.
Success is making a conscious decision in the best interest of you, not your inner-demon!


Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

In Short, In truth, Here I am

I've received a bunch, I mean a BUNCH,of inquiries as to ny whereabouts. I chose to reply to one of them, using that reply to organize my thoughts, and then after sending that email share them with all here via this post....

Hi Jody, thanks for checking up on me; I hope all has been well with you!

In short, everything is Ok here. Family is happy, healthy, everything is well with our home, work and school lives.

In truth, after we returned from vacation in early July I struggled to get my mojo back for forgoing ahead with my mission to slim down to 199. For a couple of weeks I kept doing the things I had been, but oddly the exercise was harder to get through, the meal discipline was harder to manage, the balancing of me-first in with my non-me priorities was harder to execute.

Even as I sit here and type now, I do not know why what was so easy, so enjoyable a year ago; I do not know why it suddenly got so hard. The best I can rationalize is that I was beginning to mentally burn out to some degree. Seeing that I knowingly decided to step back and take a break from what was proving difficult, I have no doubt that was it.

So here I am today, the weekend drawing to a close, August days away from closing as well. I've stayed away from the scale as its been a source of difficulty; difficulty in not seeing number continue downward. Today, I would guess it is 10 pounds greater than where is was a couple of months ago. Exercise has been very sporadic, my eating has been inconsistent from day to day.

Over the past couple days I've caught myself thinking more as I did a year ago. We (my wife & I) have put conscious effort into reversing the difficulty and regaining momentum. Over the next week we look to work on our consistency a day at a time. This morning we got off our butts and got them moving again in a big way with a 6.9 mile walk along a nearby forest preserve trail.

What is most frustrating is even through this difficult period, we have not forgotten how important it is to get healthy, to stay healthy. The reasons I started this mission some sixteen months ago have not changed. While the challenges and results of what we do vary from day to day, month to month; the reasons for living healthy lives are constant.

Understanding this, we must now harness the importance of these reasons in order to reclaim commitment and resume consistency.

I'll check in on your blog and those of others who I've missed this week!

p.s.. the picture at the top there is of my wife & daughter exchanging a tearful goodbye as we dropped her off at college nearly three weeks ago.


Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 461 - Impromptu It Is

Hot is the theme of the week. There you see the temp when I left the office yesterday. Ugh is an appropriate response. Or, perhaps Ahh if you are the Heat Miser; just a subtle reference reminder that Christmas is just 5 months and a few days away.

Yesterday my son waived me off from hanging out with him so that he could continue with his summer school assignments. Smart move on his part. With my evening suddenly free, I called my gorgeous wife and we went on an impromptu date night. The rest of the kids were out and about and already knew they were on their own for dinner.

We met up for dinner and had a relaxing, casual time together. Afterwards since we each had a vehicle I made a stop off at the mall to get a battery for my watch. On my way out these two just happened to latch on to me to escape the mall...

My wife loved the "Send The Pig" scene from the Winnie The Pooh movie so much, I thought they were an appropriate impromptu gift.

What? You haven't seen the movie yet? Well you must at least watch this clip...


Now that should have you planning a trip to the theatre this weekend. Or maybe today? Just go see this movie already!


Tonight, C25K-W1D3 is the goal. Heat or no heat, this I can do.

Got a goal for today?

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 460 - Kitty Kitty Shout Out

It is Wednesday, seems like a good day for some cat pictures, no?

Up top there you see Crush getting some scratching before dinner.

Below you see Crush & Zinger (w/ lazer-eyes) sitting oh so close to me as I eat my dinner...

My dinner was a delicious Jalapeno Bratwurst and Watermelon; no pictures of dinner.

Yes, I am on a Watermelon quest at the moment.

Before dinner I went for a 2.5 mile walk. No jogging of C25K was in order today. Just needed a good 45 minutes of walking to clear my head from the work day before dinner.

Today & tomorrow I'll be in training at work. Always grateful for training but never does training occur on a day where I feel I can just give up the tome for the day. As for exercise today it will be a day of rest. Tonight I will go see Andrew who is working through his last week of summer school. So there you have it, my day in a paragraph.

I mentioned work which jogged my memory of a photo I snapped the other day...

No, this is not my cubical.

I found it worthy of noting because of the over use if not abuse of sticky-notes.

Myself I dislike sticky notes, seldom use them, but I know some folks use them well.

This is not an example of using them well.

What is on your agenda today?

SHOUT OUT time... speaking of agenda, or plan; let me share with you a link to a fellow blogger who does a great job assessing her positive & negative actions of the day and laying out her plan for the next day. Give JW of Awake For The Dance - The Practice Of Mindful Living a read and enjoy!


Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 459 - Here Fishy Fishy

I know, I know; I showed you a picture of fish yesterday. But, those fish we did not eat, which is a shame I know. But this fish, this fish I did eat. And it was so good!

Up there you see it as I placed it on the grill. It rests on a cedar planked soaked in water & lemon juice. The fish, Steelhead Salmon, is seasoned with a fish seasoning I bought in Seattle (the fish I did not buy in Seattle), and crusted in Onion & Garlic Macadamia Nuts. The came from Hawaii and from this package to be specific...

Here is dinner after it came off the grill...

Before I closed the grill I tossed in a handful of apple wood chips while cooking to give it a lovely blast of sweet smokiness.

As good as it looked coming off the grill I must say it looked its best when I plated it...

Yes, I was in the mood for fruit with dinner. or maybe I was in the mood for sweetness without the bad news from the sweets in the candy counter or bakery aisle.

That dinner was a great way to cap off a great workout. After worked I got my youngest off the couch to join me for C25K-Week1/Day2. The 93F heat was definitely a challenge. A slight breeze tried to take some sting out of the heavy air but to little avail.

Cameron is a soccer player in high school so you would expect him to look at this workout as a walk in the park. But it was quite the opposite for him. He has become quite out of shape since the end of soccer season his freshman year. Even though he hit his final growth spurt over the past six-months, oh how we hope it is his final spurt; his appetite spurted as well and not with a desire for healthy eats.

Thus he struggled to make it through the 60 second jogging segments and his walking segments were quite slow. He knew it, and wasn't happy about it. Soccer tryouts are in a couple of weeks and the start of his sophomore year  five weeks away; yes summer break has begun its descent for landing.

Myself, I got through D2 much better than D1. A day of good eating and anticipation of the workout helped that progression occur. Later this week I will get Day3  in and conclude the trio of workouts that make up a week. Hopefully I can grab Cameron for another workout; doubt he shares that same hope.

Got any recent successful grilling experiences to share?

What about exercise experiences?

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 457-458: In Heat Monday

Good weekend for me, hope yours was good as well. Some of my highlights...


As noted already my wife & I started our weekend with a date night & saw Winnie The Pooh movie which I have renamed appropriately The Eeyore Movie. Best line from the movie, "Send the Pig." -Roo

Did C25K-W1D1, felt great.

Brunch w/ Mom. Gave her a gift from Hawaii; Koa wood wine stoppers. She gave me my birthday gift; Bass Pro gift card which I'll use towards my hunting license; sweet!.

Saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Should rename this film to "HP7, The Rise of Neville Longbottom". We went at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, my wife & I were the youngest in the theatre by at least 10 years, kind of funny.

Grilled a delicious Garlic-Dill Halibut fillet. OMG it was so good.

Went to see son play in a soccer camp, on way home we got some ice cream because y'day was national ice cream day; I went with pretzel-marshmallow ice cream! Thankfully it wasn't liverwurst day.

Listened to the world cup game on radio, what a let down that was. You are welcome Japan!

Wife downloaded all of the Hawaii pictures from the cameras. Up top there you see one of them, our deep sea fishing trip results; 2 mahi-mahi (left) and 3 skipjack tuna (right).

Monday is here & so is the heat wave. Bring it on I say, but please let the power stay on. Today we get to better ourselves in any & every way we choose. How cool is that?

For me that means doing C25K-W1D2 after work. Going to drag our youngest son with me, he jiggles more than he ought to.

What about you, at days end how will you be better than when you woke up?

 
Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!

Day 453-456: Lets Talk EEYORE, Shall We

This weekend sure seemed like it took a long long time to get here. Odd because I was so stinking busy with work and getting kids to and from places thsi week that I would have thought the week would have flown by. No doubt the power-outage we endured at the beginning of the week messed up our timing and left us playing catch up the rest of the week.

Our power came back on Tuesday afternoon. In all for us it was out for 30 hours. Total cost to me was $30-40 of dairy products, lunchmeat. No big deal. Some of that I probably could have saved but just to be safe I pitched it.

When I opened the freezers after the power resumed, they were still frozen solid. You really must avoid opening these during an outage. Let just a little warm air in there and the time to defrost drops faster than the weight of a recruit in boot camp. Get this... some 30,000 people not far from us, still do not have power! Thats 5days and an since the power went dark on them; yikes!

Since returning from Hawaii I have not been able to get my mind back into doing the things I need to do. Not sure why, guess I have mentally still been on vacation. Cardio particularly has not been something I've been able to get going again.

In effort to kick start my Cardio Caboose again I have decided to go through the nine-week C25K program. Even though much of it I can do when I get out there and do cardio, I feel right now I need some structured help to get back to where I want to be with my fitness. So this morning I went out there and did the first week one workout. If you don't know what C25K is, google it, I used this link.

The walk/jog combo ofthis workout felt good, and was just what I needed to be sure I accomplished a workout. So I will keep at this program until done if for no other reason to join the ranks of C25K veterans.

Lets talk EEYORE, shall we... last night was date night for my wife & I. A movie & dinner was on tap. A brief debate about which movie to go see took place. Allot of desire was there to go see Harry Potter 7 naturally. But since it was also opening day for Winnie The Pooh, or as I call it, The Eeyore Movie. The debate was short really, we wnt I saw Eeyore!

Eeyore also went to the mvoie with us. Up top you see him buckled in for the ride to the theatre. Since soda costs so much he brought his own to the show...

My wife wouldn't let him bring the pop into the theatre. Even worse, when we were watching the movie she took him from me and stuffed him in her purse! So he didn't even get to see the movie he starred in. I am thinking Academy Award for him by the way.

Have a great weekend; which you will if you go see the Eeyore Movie!

Responsibility 199 - Gotta Do It!!