Greetings, Friends! Happy 2010. It seems nearly impossible that it’s already January, and even more so that it’s been five months since I started working on this blog. But here we are—and I’m glad to walk this journey alongside you. Whether this is your first stop here or you’ve been reading my entries since the start, I hope that you’ll find my story helpful in whatever lifestyle change you’re pursuing.
As I’ve gone about losing the weight I have, a lot of people have made comments about how hard losing weight is, how difficult it must be. While there is some reality to those comments, making this change in my life has been one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. Sure, there were adjustments that had to be made, I had to learn a few things about myself along the way and I’ve had to remind myself why I drag myself to the gym five times a week. But then I look at old photos of myself and I remember how much worse it felt to be the overweight person that I was, to be detached from the physically demanding activities I longed to be a part of—to feel like I was out of control.
With the new year, there are many individuals who have made the decision to pursue weight loss as a resolution. I remember what it was like to decide (nearly) every new year that I wanted to lose weight for an occasion in the coming year, yet every year I would fail at making that resolution a reality. Studies have shown that most diet and exercise resolutions last a mere four weeks before most individuals slip back into their previous routines. But this year could be your year to break that statistic! So that leads me to challenge you with a simple question:
What will you change in 2010?
When you make the decision to change your life in whatever ways you desire, trust that you can accomplish your goals—that you can do whatever you put your mind to. And remember that if I can do what I’ve done, you can do absolutely ANYTHING you put your mind to. Make 2010 your year for change—and believe it. I wish you all the best as you work towards a better you.
keep moving,
dane.
PS: I apologize for the lack of updates the last couple of weeks—but please stop by every Thursday for updated content, I’ve got big plans!
{author’s note: the photo above is me with a pair of the jeans I used to wear. If you’re getting started on your own weight loss journey I highly encourage you to keep a piece of clothing that will be a reminder of the progress you make, you’d be surprised how good a huge pair of pants can make you feel!}
A few months back I wrote to you about the Vocabulary of Doubt. It is the little voice inside of each of us that tells us that we aren’t capable of something, with the intent of getting us to give up before we even try. There are lots of these voices calling out to me constantly. I doubt whether or not I can lose weight. I doubt whether or not I can eat healthier. I doubt whether or not I will be able to handle the commitment necessary to be a leaner, meaner version of my now fat self. But as GI Joe taught me, now I know about the Vocabulary of Doubt, and knowing is half the battle. I can defeat this vocabulary.
There is another vocabulary however, that is stronger in tone, and generates more than just doubt. I am speaking about the Vocabulary of Fear. Unlike the vocabulary of doubt, which pops up in situations that aren’t scary to most of us, the Vocabulary of Fear tells us not only that we can’t achieve a goal, but also that we are going to get hurt in the process. This vocabulary will use words such as irrational, unnecessary or pain, all in the hopes of getting you to walk away from a challenge in order to be more comfortable doing something less strenuous or exciting. Just like the Vocabulary of Doubt, the Vocabulary of Fear can come from within and can come from others. Nevertheless, both seem like they are trying to keep you safe, while convincing you that what you are doing is just too crazy.
Just like the Vocabulary of Doubt, I know about the Vocabulary of Fear from personal experience. In fact, it is something that I go through during times like the one I am going through right now. It is during times, when Heather is away, when she is deployed, that I most hear the Vocabulary of Fear. All soldier’s spouses go through this I imagine. It is the fear that my soldier may not come home. It is the fear that I will open up the news page and see something about a Roadside Bomb or an Improvised Explosive Devise taking lives hear her base. People have told me you can’t think that way, but I tell all of you. Try and stop those thought.
I am not worried about Heather’s life after death mind you. Neither is she. I don’t fear her ticket to heaven isn’t stamped. Those who know my wife, know that she is definitely getting in. If something ever did happen to Heather, I wouldn’t fear for her. The Vocabulary of Fear in this instance is about me. How could I live without her? I fear a life without Heather in my life. I fear a life where I don’t wake up and see her smiling face next to me. I fear a life where I don’t grow old with the one I planned on growing old with. This Vocabulary of Fear has kept me up nights when her internet goes down and she can’t send me an email. It has made me go crazy looking for more information when I hear of attacks and explosions. It affects my diet and my workouts because I don’t care if I am healthy, if I don’t know whether or not Heather is.
But here is the thing about the Vocabulary of Fear. It doesn’t have to control our lives. In fact, there is a term that describes those who hear the Vocabulary of Fear and then shove their nose at it. We call these people courageous. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, rather it is acting in spite of the fear. When the vocabulary says, “You will get hurt,” courage gives people the strength to move forward. When the vocabulary says, “It’s over, you can’t handle this, courage allows us to look at our fear and handle any situation. Men much stronger and much weaker than me have had amazing courage. There is no reason I can’t.
When I think of my wife, I think of the epitome of courage. Once again, those who know her know that she would never call herself courageous, but lets face it after nine years in the army and 2 tours of duty in Iraq she is a brave Soldier who has done and is doing a great service for the best nation on the face of the earth. Whether she is on the base or off of it, she is honorable, caring, and duty bound with all of the other troops that come in her path. And even Heather has a Vocabulary of Fear. Yep, she does, and I know because I have to help her face those fears at times. During Basic Training we faced those fears together. During our time in Korea, she constantly faced her fears and not only did her job, but EXCELLED at her job. I am proud to call my wife the best damn Soldier on the face of the earth. And I proud of the courage all my other Army, Navy, Airforce, Marine and Coast Guard friends exemplify each and every day.
To all of the Servicemembers, I say thank you. To everyone I say…it is time for us to face the vocabulary of fear just like we do the vocabulary of doubt. We must face these fears head on. We must look deep inside ourselves and courageously announce that we are not going to listen to the fear. With all this being said…it is time to act. It is time to face the fears in our lives. For me, that means facing the fear that I can not lose the weight and am destined for a life of obesity. It is time to man up and get courageous about doing what is necessary to be healthier. It is time to come up with the vocabulary of courage to tell my fear to go away. It can’t control me anymore.
Of course I am afraid that no one will read this, but that is more the Vocabulary of doubt talking.
Now that I’m at a “healthy” BMI, I have one more basic goal to reach before working on stabilization and reevaluating my needs.
Goal weight is 150 or 25% body fat, whichever comes first. At the moment it looks like they’re going to happen pretty much simultaneously.
I’ll go by the average at PhysicsDiet.com for the “real” value, but at the moment I’m working toward getting the scale to say it, first. I will have to go below 150 a bit in order to stabilize there.
Over the past week my % body fat has ranged between 29.9 and 27.4 – I have a DXA scan scheduled on Jan 14 and that should tell me where I really am, at that point, and how the BIA scale numbers compare.
I’ve been working with the calorie tracker on my iPod and I think I’ve got the diet cycles / energy targets pretty well worked out. Part of what has made the transition complicated is that this tracker, unlike the one on Spark People, automatically takes into account my reported exercise. I gained weight through much of last week as a result of eating more. So I’ve had to adjust it down a bit. It turns out that even with my exercise schedule if I eat more than 1100 calories per day on average, I will gain weight.
The way I’m using the tracker is that when I gain weight I go on the very restrictive “-10 lbs per month” daily calorie target I’ve set up until it comes off, again. Once I get back to where I started I ease onto the “-9 lbs per month” target and see what happens. As I get closer to goal I’ll ease onto less restricted calorie targets and by trial and error figure out what target range will work for me for maintenance.
Because my metabolism is so slow I bet my eventual maintenance calorie target will say I should be losing weight. It doesn’t matter what the tracker software predicts, though, just what the actual SCALE and BODY FAT ESTIMATES say.
I went to the gym today, for the first time in toooooooooo long. It felt good. Going again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that….. I’m not gonna weigh myself for like a month because I dont even want to know how much weight i’ve gained over these last few weeks My ultimate goal is to get down to 125 lbs. Think I can do it??? I hope so!
I really need to start a drawing and/or finish the painting I started for emily. …..Maybe this weekend? Now that I only have my ONE job I have enough free time to do it… I just need to pry myself away from this computer once in a while, ya know?! I feel like I just blogged this exact same subject the other day, did i? I guess i’ll check after I post this. If I’m repeating myself, sorry!
dying my hair this weekend! back to just normal plain brown. this weird reddish/carmely/brown thing ain’t working for me anymore.
no gym today because it got too late …no worries though, the gym isn’t going anywhere! i will go tomorrow!
eating wise let’s see…today was uneventful. i ate within my points. i had some juice throughout the day which i didn’t point. but you know what, i can easily keep my points under 31 if i don’t count what i’m drinking. why is that? i think i just LOVE juice. i gotta get over that and fast if i hope to see results.
any suggestions for alternatives to juice? flavoured water maybe? any particular brand or flavour?
before i go to bed tonight (which should be soon even though it is ridiculously early) i hope to do some quiet meditation while stretching for a few minutes, reread my devotion for today and pray. it was a quiet day and it will be a quite night.
i’m also working on another aspect of my life this year. i’m trying to get myself, my inner self, in control and in order.I want all of my actions to honor God. i want to become a better person and that is inseparably connected to my becoming a better Christian. That said, i’m learning (painfully) to surrender every thought to Jesus before I say it. What that means is that one MILLION times a day, I have to bite my tongue to prevent me from saying something meaningless! Today was tough in that regard but, the quieter i keep my Spirit and then my mouth, the more at peace i am within my soul…i complain less, i listen more, i get stressed less. i thank God for ALL the small victories of today.
Psalm 19:14
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.”
Proverbs 17:9
“He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends”
Matthew 12:36
“But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.”
Ephesians 4:29;31
“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers… Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”
1 Peter 3:10;16
“Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech…keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”
James 3:5-6 “The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”
James 1:19
“My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,”
I’m a bad blogger. Yep, it’s not a big priority in my life, but I still enjoy it to a degree. A year ago, I dumped most of my blog because it was mostly just me talking to myself. It still is, kind of. But I really want to be a good blogger. I see a lot of good blogs, but mine will probably never compare in quality. Frankly, real life (and Facebook) is far more interesting than anything I could blog about. Sorry I didn’t finish my advent series if you were interested in that.
I really wanted to talk about my resolutions for this year, but there’s one big one that I’ve been working on since last week. I have the goal this year to lose weight. At the moment, I’m working toward 1 pound per week, but it’s hard work. I haven’t been exercising nearly enough, and staying within my daily food intact limit is very challenging. We have a Wii, which has some good physical games. Actually, we only have one good game I can play, Wii Sports, but it has a lot of challenging games. I plan on starting to do a little bit of each game every night, but I have some projects to finish before I can really get into it. We’ve had the Wii for almost a year, and we haven’t used it very much, I really plan on changing that this year, since we paid a lot for it, and I don’t want to see that money wasted.
The new year always sends me into an excited frenzy of ‘change’ but I really feel like this year I need to focus on the weight loss, and let little habits change each day.
My recent experience with food labels in the Starbucks Protein Plate is not an isolated incident. Misinterpreting food labels is Weight Loss Myth #4 on a list compiled by James A. Peterson, Ph. D., FACSM in a 2008 Health & Fitness Journal.
Peterson’s complete TOP 10 list of common weight loss mistakes:
Severe calorie restriction
Having a narrow perspective of the problem
Failing to maintain muscle mass
Misinterpreting what some food labels are saying*
Trying to lose too much, too soon
Believing the myth of spot reduction
Mistaking water loss for fat loss
Buying into the “magic beans” theory
Following unproven dieting advice
Considering surgical solutions
* Peterson states that “[i]t is extremely important for individuals who want to control their weight to be aware of the fact that…’no fat’ or ‘no sugar’ does not mean ‘no calories’.”
I would add that food labels other than the standard numbers chart (see above) are misleading by design. How else could Starbucks take a product that is 41% fat, 41% carbs & 18% protein and call it at ‘Protein Plate’?
My ultimate goal is to get down to 125 lbs. Think I can do it??? I hope so!
…no worries though, the gym isn’t going anywhere! i will go tomorrow!