The One Thing

Putting it into perspective

I have said that most of the success I have had with losing weight lately is mostly due to having the right mental attitude. However, if I had to boil it all down to the one thing that I had to get my mind wrapped around in order to be successful, it would be this:

“It’s going to take longer than I had hoped.”

If you can get that through your head, that it’s going to take longer than you had hoped, then I think you are on your way to having a more successful attempt at losing weight and getting in shape. I’ve been trying to lose weight off and on for 20 years now. This time around, I’ve been more successful than I have ever been in the past. I started 7 months ago and I have lost 28 pounds. That’s twice as much as I lost 2 years ago when I tried then.

Here’s what has changed:

 When I first started calculating out how long it would take me to lose the weight I am trying to lose, I figured I could lose 2 pounds a week. Two pounds a week is the upper limit for losing at a safe rate. Okay, I wanted to lose 68 pounds. So, that would take about 34 weeks or around 8 and half months to lose all that weight. IF I could lose at a steady 2 pounds a week. However, here I am 7 months later and I’ve lost less than half of what I want to lose. Am I discouraged, no, because, heck, I’ve lost 28 freakin’ pounds so far.

Let’s do the math. In order to lose about a pound, you need to burn around 3,500 calories. In order to burn 2 pounds a week, you need to burn an additional 1,000 calories a DAY consistently. That’s pretty difficult to do unless you are constantly controlling what you eat and training hard every day. Now, if I calculate back to what I have lost over the last 7 months, I’ve been burning a steady 450 to 500 calories a day more than I’ve been taking in. With the new calculations, it’ll take me a year and 4 months to get to my goal. That’s longer than I had hoped, but what the heck am I waiting for? What else am I going to do? It needs to be done, it’s just going to take longer. Once I have accepted that, I can deal with it. And that new calculation puts me at achieving my goal right around Christmas this year. What if I don’t make my goal by then? So what? I’ll still be working toward my goal and, guess what, it’ll just take longer. But in my mind, it’s going to get done. So, like I have said, don’t set yourself up for discouragement and failure, get your mind wrapped around the notion that it’s going to take longer than you’ve hoped. Embrace it. Be okay with it.

Just remember though, if you don’t do anything, it’ll take forever. And 1 year and 4 months is a LOT shorter than forever.

I don’t just consolidate your debt, I ELIMINATE it!

One way of looking at the amount of weight I want to lose is thinking as if it’s a mortgage. Here’s how I do it: I want to lose 68 pounds. In caloric terms, that’s 238,000 calories I need to burn. If we say that those calories are actually dollars that I am in “debt,” we can do some fun imagining. (Well, I think it’s fun.)

Okay, so I am staring at $238,000 mortgage and I want to pay it off as quickly as I can without killing myself. Well, in real life there are things like electric bills, water bills and incidentals that you have to pay in order to live. We’ll call those things your basal metabolic rate. There are some calories you have to take in (meals, healthy snacks) that you need in order to live day to day. These calories function to keep us alive. So, you have to eat, it’s just a fact of life. Just like you have to pay those monthly bills. But you want to get that mortgage paid off as quickly as possible.  So, you cut out expenses elsewhere. Maybe you don’t go to the movies as often, or put off buying a new computer. In the calorie world though, a movie could be compared to a World’s Finest Chocolate Candy Bar. One serving of one of those is 330 calories. Well, if you eat one of those, that’s like adding $330 to your debt. Now, it’s going to take even LONGER to pay off that mortgage. Sometimes it feels as if you’re never going to pay off that mortgage if you don’t reign in your expenses. The same thing happens to your weight if you don’t reign in your eating. You either get more in debt or you start working toward getting that debt down. So, the next time you have the urge to splurge by eating something that’s not necessary, think “do I want to add this to my already huge mortgage debt?”

But in the same vein, if you go workout for 35 minutes, you might burn off 330 calories. Well, would you rather that time be spent paying off the mortgage or just getting rid of the World’s Finest Candy Bar? Me, I’d rather keep paying down my calorie mortgage. But like in the real world, it’s okay to celebrate once in a while. We spend money on things frivolously from time to time and that’s okay. But if we spend frivolously all the time, then we’re going to get in serious debt trouble. The same thing happens if we eat frivolously all the time, we get into serious calorie trouble.  It’s up to you.

Time for another perspective

Maybe money isn’t a good analogy for you. In that case, I like to look at time. When I work out on the treadmill, or elliptical trainer or rowing machine, I burn around 600 calories an hour, which works out to an even 10 calories a minute. That’s a nice round number we can use. So, when I work out on the treadmill for 30 minutes, that’s 300 calories down from my 238,000 calorie debt that I need to pay off. If I burn off 2,000 calories a day from simply existing, then I need to take in 2,000 calories a day to stay at the current weight. But by adding the exercise, I burn 300 extra calories a day and that goes toward paying down my debt. But what does this have to do with time, Shawn? You said we weren’t talking about calorie mortgages any more. Okay, fine. Use the 10-calorie estimate when you look at food labels. If I want to eat some Doritos and I look at the label and it says it’s 250 calories per serving, that’s 25 minutes on the cardio machine to burn it off. TWENTY-FIVE minutes!! YUCK! That’s 25 minutes that I WON’T be using to pay off my calorie debt. Twenty-five minutes doing cardio BEFORE I start losing the weight I want to lose. If you are pressed for time, (like everyone says they are) why would you want to ADD time to your workout by eating something you don’t need? So, when you pick up that World’s Finest Candy Bar (guess what someone at work was selling this past week?) think to yourself “Do I really want to add time to working out? Time I supposedly don’t have the first place?”

Starting Tight End for the Saints

If you grew up in the 70s, you probably remember the “After School Specials” and all the other things thrown at us about the things we can accomplish if we “just put our minds to it.”

Most of the time, the phrase “You can do anything if you just put your mind to it,” is baloney. No matter how much I try, I am not going to be starting tight end for the Saints, I’m not going to be a rock star, or president. A lot of times, if you want to do “anything you put your mind to” you need luck, circumstances, and lots of talent. BUT, there is ONE area in which the phrase, “you can do anything if you put your mind to it” is absolutely, 100-percent correct and apt. And that’s in the area of getting in better shape. We can all get more fit if we put our minds to it. We can all do something, anything to get in better shape. We just need the mind to do it.

So, whatever makes it easier for you to understand and comprehend, figure it out and use it to help you be more successful. I’ve analyzed and calculated things for 20 years now. I’ve figured and made analogy after analogy to myself. There’s very little I haven’t used to try to get myself in shape and this time I’ve got a positive attitude to help me out and I know it’s going to work because, well, I’m a guy who’s been there.