A Random Pattern

You’re going to have to make a trade.  Accept it, internalize it, and move on to the next step: what are you willing to trade?

Some ideas (you only need to work in one of these):

• Drink water instead of soda.  This works for me by supplementing with Gatorade or juice whenever I get bored with the water – and I feel much better.  In fact, soda no longer even tastes good or appeals to me.  I used to drink at least 1-liter of Mountain Dew a day, so you can change this.
• Cut down on the coffee in some significant way.  Again, water is a good thing to have handy when you need a drink.
• Add in one vegetable to your dinner every night.  Or one meal of the day.  Maybe buy a bag of carrot sticks and add them to your lunch.  Try to eat the veggies first – this will get them out of the way, and help fill you up, while you can end the meal with something that leaves a nice taste.
• To complement your exercise regime (you did read Part 1, right?), add some fruit to your diet.  It makes a great mid-afternoon snack.  If you can’t fit that in because of your work schedule, then you need to decide what’s more important to you, your crazy work or your life.

The bottom line is: find something in your regular diet (the things you eat and drink every day) that you are willing to give up or trade in.  If you can’t find something, then you’re willing to be fat and unhealthy.  Maybe you can have less bread with your meals, or less condiments.  Maybe you eliminate some of your sauces, such as the mayonnaise, from your fridge.  Maybe you commit to eat out less, or eat some of those pre-made “healthy choice” meals a couple times a week.

Whatever it is, find something that works for you and is a real change to your regular diet.  This isn’t “going on a diet”, this is “I’m going to change my lifestyle and eat better”.  You’ve only got to make one change now, and stick with it.

So, is getting healthy still important to you?  If it’s important enough to read my rambling, it is important enough for you to spend 5 minutes figuring out what you are going to change in your life.  Get to it!

If you came here from a search engine looking for an undiscovered “magic” diet that will trim you down in weeks….

you’re going to be disappointed. Not because this won’t work, but because it will require changes you aren’t willing to make. Yes, I know you’ll eat cucumbers and tofu for a month, or puree all your food and drink it for two weeks – there’s nothing you wouldn’t do, right? If that’s really true, this’ll be a breeze for you.

All you need to do to get in shape is change your life, in a couple specific ways. Here’s the plan:

1. Change how you spend your time. Decide on something to give up every day so you have 30 minutes for exercise.
2. Change something you eat or drink. By change I mean eliminate or replace with something healthy.

That’s it! It really is that easy, I promise. The scariest part of the whole thing is “Change”. But you can do it, and it won’t be that bad. In fact, I think you only need to worry about point number one – exercise. If you can commit to that, you’ll find the rest to be easy.

Are you wondering why this would work? Why no bran flakes or fish-only? Why no carb-counting or points or formulatic hand-waving? Shoot, you could just take all the time you used to use planning and implementing a fad diet, and exercise instead – you’d be there, baby! This works because our main problem isn’t that we eat too much, or exercise too little.

Again, our main problem isn’t that we eat too much, or exercise too little. Our problem is that we don’t listen to our bodies. The reason you need to give up 30 minutes out of every day is so you can learn to listen to your body. The exercise is a nice conduit to this goal. I’m going to assert that if you are committed, and do this right, you won’t have to worry about anything else. Food? You’ll actually want to eat healthier, and eat less. Exercise? You’ll start enjoying it, wanting to do it. Time? You’ll actually look forward to your “exercise time”, a little peace and quiet where you can actually think.

In fact, you’ll become willing to fight for your exercise time. Which is good, because you’ll need to fight for it. You’ll need to fight hard to keep at it, 5-6 days a week, all year. There are two tips I can give you that might make this last challenge a little more doable.

1. Give up something in your own life. I know this is hard, but it’s going to be impossible if you don’t do it. This is a very hard lesson for me, as I like to “have my cake and eat it too”. But it is a simple fact that you only have 24 hours a day, so something’s gotta budge for you to have an extra 30 minutes. Oh, and taking that time out of your sleep – nice try. You’ve already done that with too many other things, it sure won’t work during the critical first 3 weeks of your new exercise lifestyle. I suggest you commit to giving up a single T.V. show that you now watch. If it’s that important, you can buy (or Netflix) the season DVD later to catch up.
2. Buy a Wii. Seriously, if you’re having trouble getting started, try the “Wii Sports” exercise regime. It will get your body moving, and help you find 30 minutes a day. You might not take my advice for your health, but if it’s fun….

And on that note, we’ll end today. I’m going to take my own advice, and let you know how it goes this time (after falling off the wagon this year). I’ll be putting more up on the Wii soon, so come back later this week.  I’ll also cover how to change what you eat in an effective way.