As I mentioned in my last post, I've gone from a 10 to a 14 in the time Janet and I have been together/married. I've always been a yo yo weight person and haven't ever worried to much about it, but over the past two years, its been an up up up, without in troughs in the graph.
Let me start with excuses first:
• After learning a little bit about my biological family, being chunky is in my DNA.
• I got a promotion at work, you know the kind where you job responsibilities and staff double, but you don't receive additional compensation because its a "growth opportunity"? With the new job, I'm spending way more time at work or at home after work. Add to that 3 graduate classes that are kicking my butt, and taking the hour out to go to the gym or go run just seems crazy.
• With my crazy/late nights during the week, the 7:30 am running class I signed up for on Saturday mornings- not happening.
• I'm tired. All the time. I've spend more on Starbucks this semester that I think I have in my entire life. Not in the morning- but on the drive to school or on my way home.
The rebuttal:
• I must combat the chunky or I will eventually become obese, increasing my risk for heart disease, diabetes, etc.
• This is only going to get harder when Andrew is born, so I should take control of my time while I have a chance. I need to learn to be more self motivated when it comes to my health
• I'm most likely tired because I'm not exercising and eating erratically and poorly. I should stop relying on caffeine and instead rely on the natural high from exercise. I've found that when I start working on a class case assignment after a run, my responses are far more creative.
The goals:
Get a physical. I haven't had one since I've learned more about my family history.
Take charge of my time. Relaxing on the couch will be far more pleasurable if I'm not thinking about all the things I should be doing instead. This means:
• Carving out 4 hours a week for exercise. If I have 16 hours per day to play with (24 hours in a day - 8 hours for sleep- best case), then 4 hours per week only takes up 3.6% of my week.
• Formalize school/study time. I'm horrible. I wait until the last minute to work on cases, sometimes using my theoretical lunch time at work to finish them. This is all while I probably wasted an hour at home watching the ever so craptastic CSI Miami. 4 hours on Sundays and 2 hours on Mondays should do the trick, so 6 hours per week? (5.4% of my week)
• Wife time. I'm terrible horrible about multitasking during my downtime with my love. I can't be a good mom if we don't have focused us time.
Focus on eating more deliberately. I eat out of need for emotional satisfaction, whether that be to relieve boredom, stress, whatever. This will never fully change, but I can be more mindful of it, and make some percentage of choices to satisfy my emotional need in some other way. This means:
• Refocusing behavior. If I find myself wandering for a snack at the office, ask myself the question, why are you doing this? Keep refillable bottles of water in my office fridge as a sidetrack device.
Chill out with the caffeine. Some is good, relying on it to get through an evening- perhaps not the best plan.
• I'm really not sure how to set this one up. I really have nothing left at the end of the day, especially if exercise is involved, so I'll have to address this later.
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