It all starts with some traumatic event, which usually involves a photograph. After our trip to San Francisco, for example, my wife’s mother sent us a picture of our group sitting around a fountain. And there I was: large as life. “That’s not me,” I thought, and that’s how it begins.
I’ll start slowly at first, with modest goals. I know that the important thing is to start, and so I do. I work methodically, taking notes as I exercise, as I eat. I make quick progress. I lose weight. I feel good. I’m able to sleep well again.
After some initial success, I add a little more to my plate. I’m not really able to do both things well, but I do okay at them. And so I add some more. Now I’m doing three things. I’m pleased with my progress.
Then something happens. We go on vacation, or I have a deadline, or some crisis occurs. I let one thing slide. “Only for a little while,” I tell myself. But then a little while becomes a week. Then two. Before I know it, a month has passed. Other things have begun to slide as well. I’m not just “cheating” on food and exercise — at some point I’ve abandoned my plan altogether.
My weight begins to creep upward. Kris begins to scold me. I begin to feel guilty about my choices. “I should really start exercising,” I say. But that’s all that happens. I don’t actually exercise.
And then, after some time, I find myself in the DMV office renewing my driver license. The photo’s snapped and I look at the card. “Is that me?” I think. “That can’t be me.” I’m almost 40, and I look it. No — I look like 50. I feel like 50, too.
Most of all, I feel guilty. To assuage my feelings, I have a huge burger at Red Robin. “I’m an idiot,” I think to myself, so I stop by the sporting goods store. I price out treadmills. And elliptical machines. And stationary cycles. I look at the free weights. I wander back to the basketball stuff. I ask a clerk for a piece of paper so that I can jot notes to myself.
As I drive home, I wonder why it is that I let myself fall into this vicious cycle. I know better. There’s no question that I know better. Kris wants to help me. Mac wants to help me. Pam wants to help me. Lauren wants to help me. The readers at Get Fit Slowly want to help me. And I want their help. But I let myself go, and now I’m here, back where I started again.
And so I pick myself up, put on my shoes, and I walk out the door.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Man, I could write a BOOK on that vicious cycle. In fact, I’ve been blogging for two solid weeks now about how I keep screwing up this whole weight loss thing. I am just now starting to re-find the positive momentum I’d spent the last three months building.
Your last sentence there is the key: if you’ve stopped, just start again. Focus on the failure, and you’ll just fail more. It’s taken me decades to figure that one out.
Pictures do the same thing to me. I think in order to remedy the problem, I’m going to take more pictures that way I can gauge my progress and make sure I stay motivated whenever I start losing the weight.
J.D., I’m getting the sense that blogging about fitness for you is like drinking about alcoholism. While it’s comforting for a lot of people to see someone else go through these battles in public, I’m not so sure it’s the best thing for you. Please don’t use this blog to hold yourself accountable, it should be sufficient enough to simply look at your wife and loved ones to know why you want to be healthy.
@Ryan (#3)
The real issue is that I know how and want to do what’s best for myself, but something inside of me slips. And I make excuses. Right now I’m under more stress than I ever have been. This stress has an end, though (April 15th, and possibly earlier), so I keep telling myself “I’ll exercise then”. But that’s so dumb. I need to exercise now. And why don’t I always make good food choices.
What I told Kris the other night was, “I’m ready to pay somebody to get me straight.” I’ve been watching The Biggest Loser this season, and I find it inspiring. But apparently not inspiring enough to get off the couch. I wish I could bring Bob or Gillian here to have them work my ass off…
J.D.
— I am in the same boat. I know what I should be doing. I know why I should be doing it. I have ample motivation. yet-something knocks me off my rocker and kicks me off my plan. –
I am back near my highest weight ever.
–Which doesn’t surprise me: Considering recent studies state weight loss, exercise, and eating habits take at a minimum one year to become ingrained.
–
Ramit, blogged at Free Money Finance on March 18 titled: “Trying to Earn More Money? Stop Wasting Your Time”.
— Now, why do I bring this up? I think his plan for entrepreneurs can be the same for weight loss people. —
He asked two questions:
*What’s your goal?
*What are you doing to hit that goal — where do you spend your time?
—
Does blogging help towards your goal? (Don’t get me wrong, I need and want to hear what you have to say, because It helps me too.)
It’s easier said than done. However, I beginning to think I need to put a post-it-note on my wallet that says, How does eating this help me towards my fitness goals?
What do you think?
You sound like me. I do this to myself all of the time. It typically revolves around the seasons. The painfully frigid Minnesota winters keep me pretty well sedentary. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I can maintain and maybe lose a little weight in the “off” season, but I really struggle with anything else. Spring and summer are the months to thrive and get lean and healthy. If I can just hold a steady weight through the winter I’m really proud of myself.
All of the support in the world can’t always get a person over their emotional impulses to eat/not exercise. Life continually provides us with opportunity for the reassessment of self. Sometimes it just happens to be in the middle of a 1000 calories burger and fries. Sure you feel like an ass at the time but tomorrow you are ready to change.
I think a more pertinent question is: why do you want to lose weight, really? Is it really “for you” or because “you should,” because you’ve been listening to the oft-contradictory news about nutrition, fitness, and obesity, which I swear is as bad or worse than listening to financial news?
You’ve done well with getting out of debt because, I think, the gains from not buying “stuff” and living frugally are a far better reward than having the latest comic books. But I suspect that you’re not getting the reward for the risk when it comes to fitness, because if you’re doing it for “should” instead of a concrete reason, it’s a pleasure-stealing chore. (Food tastes good. Caloric deficits are bad for keeping up energy and concentration. Running is usually not fun for most of us.)
I would really, if I were you, try to sideline weight loss as a goal FOR NOW when you’re considering fitness, and think, “what personal reward do I gain from eating something that isn’t a Red Robin burger? What do I like about running? Is there a physical activity I like more than running? Would I get more out of it if I invested my Red Robin money in joining that activity?”
Like, there needs to be some decentering of weight loss, because I think you’ve tied them together and in that mindset, eating right and exercising is a punishment, chasing a futile goal, and you can always find an excuse to do something you don’t love that’s not showing results, especially if you feel like you’re doing well in other things and that you should get to have SOME fun in life.
There must be something in our genetic code that makes us do this to ourselves. I’m not in the middle of week three of ‘i’m going to take off a week’. I know I should get my butt out of bed and exercise every morning. I know I should stop drinking Coke. I know I should stop buying candy, french bread and all the other delicious things I love but can’t seem to eat moderately…but here I am, three weeks into my *week* off and hating that weather is getting warmer and I’m not going to be able to hide under my baggy sweatshirt anymore. And that I’m still going to be wearing the same big, ugly swimsuit this summer at the rate I’m going.
maybe you are trying to change too many things at once. perhaps a focus on one thing, either food changes (and only one or two at a time) or exercise goals, not both together. It’s like paying off debt, you can either apply a little bit of money to each debt, or a lot of money to one, and either method will work, but it’s a personal comfort thing.
I started really slowly with food changes. First, I gave up having a soda with lunch — and amazingly that did have an effect! After that was really established, when I didn’t even think about it any more, I moved on to something else, again something really small, I stopped buttering my toast or waffles in the morning with breakfast and started switching to whole grains. I haven’t made a complete whole grain switch, but we’re getting there. same thing with moving from a meat-based to a non-meat based diet. but food changes do take a lot of time to be real, not just temporary…
Thanks for sharing JD. I am going through the exact same cycle right now. I can’t seam to get these healthy habits to stick — before they really become habits something comes up. I’m sure if I could had these healthy habits as ingrained habit then I could handel those ‘somethings that come up’ a lot better.
I love reading along with your blog partner as Mac embarks on his weight loss and half marathon training but honestly it often makes me feel worse about my own situation.
Been there done that. I have been a member of Bally’s for 15 years. Yet I am not nearly as fit as when I joined.
On the other hand, I have been going strong since November 15th. I have lost nearly 30 lbs and am starting to get fit. I can see my Goal in site and I think we all experience the cycle, but we just need to celebrate our victories.
The cycle is life.
I agree with Jen and Elisabeth. Weight loss is a huge mental commitment and I think your head is telling you it’s just not up for it right now. So let yourself off the hook. Take your walks for enjoyment, period. No running with Mac or comparing your fitness level to his — he’s in a different place. Write down what you eat — not calories or measurements, just your menu in general. And not judging yourself, just observing. Do these two things for six months, and then see where you are. If you’re up for one more small thing, add it – and nothing else — for six months. If not, keep walking and journaling and reassess in another 6 months. Let go of the guilt. You’ll do it when you’re ready, and trying to force that is just making it more painful. Been there.
I think you need to try again. But this time just focus on one thing at a time, for a Long time. Just focus on your walk every day. Once you have kept it up for like 4 or 5 months then add something else in. You said yourself that you do one thing then add the next, then things go down hill. The benefits you will gain from just walking a single mile every single day for 4 or 5 months will have a better gain then adding something else and failing at both. Master one skill at a time. The rest will follow naturally.
On your other blog you’ve mentioned a few times that you’re trying to sort out what the next stage of financial fitness is for you… and I wonder if perhaps there’s a link? Maybe part of getting to a more comfortable financial place means being able to pare back some of the time you’ve been devoting to working out your money things so you can spend more time riding your bike, just for the pleasure of riding your bike?
And speaking of spending money on your physical fitness… why not? This could be part of your next financial phase, part of your investing in yourself. No one said hiring a trainer has to mean meeting up with someone at the weight bench three days a week for an intense month or two. You could probably work out a business arrangement to meet with someone once a week for a bike ride–with the understanding that this kind of trainer would be pushing you to ride a little harder or a little farther than you would on your own–and of course, if you’re paying a trainer to meet with you, it’ll be a lot harder to come up with the reasons why you can’t do it right now.
In general though, it seems like even if you slip around a bit on actually doing the things you know you need and want to do, you’ve already moved past the the “zeroth” stage of physical fitness, so count that as a small victory.
Anyway, thanks for the post… and the reminder that I should step away from the desk right now and go for a walk outside.
@Leanne (#14)
Mac called me this morning. He wanted to talk about this post. Believe it or not, we discussed the very things you bring up in your comment. In particular, I confided that I’m ready to spend money on fitness. I can afford it, and I think that the expense would repay me quickly. I have my finances under control. Now it’s time to focus on fitness.
There are some excellent suggestions and ideas here in the comments. I am going to refer to these to further my weight loss goals! Thanks everyone.
J.D., I know I’ve said this before, but I really think you should read Judith Beck’s “The Beck Diet Solution” (or get the Beck Diet Solution Workbook, which is a little newer…there’s no need to get both, they provide the same information).
Beck’s method focuses precisely on the issues you describe in your post and helps you come up with ways to overcome them. It recognizes that diets and fitness plans are easy to follow in the beginning, but become hard to maintain when life gets busy or stressful events occur and we fall off the wagon. Beck’s strategy is to give you the tools you need to help you continue through those stress points, counteract your sabotaging thoughts, and maintain your momentum.
Another thing I like about her approach is that she believes you have to train to be on a diet, just as you have to train to do a marathon. In fact the first two weeks of her plan are spent training for dieting; she doesn’t want you to actually start dieting until the third week.
Even if you don’t follow her plan exactly you can gain a lot from reading the book. But she warns that if you try to take shortcuts and don’t follow the program exactly, your chances of failure increase. She’s right.
The one thing you should promise yourself when you start again is to set yourself reasonable goals. You have a tendency to get all fired up and set very ambitious goals, which in turn set you up for near-certain failure, which is part of the vicious circle. You might want to start with “process goals” like the one you have for walking a mile a day. Maybe start by saying you will exercise for 30 minutes a day, every day, at 8am or some other time that works for you, instead of, say, setting a goal to run a marathon and do a 700-mile bike ride in the same year.
I find that I get comfortable and then I start the same cycle as you. Fortunately I’m on a yo you that is trending downwards over the last 5 years so I’m definitely getting better.
But it does frustrate me that I still have issues with food even after all this time.
@Brad (#17)
Thanks, Brad. I’ll check Beck out. You’ve provided me with many great suggestions over the years, so I’m always willing to listen to what you have to say. I’ll check to see if my library has Beck…
I used to be in that cycle, but two years ago I broke it, and I’ve never “relapsed.”
My problem was that losing weight seemed to be this enormous “thing” for which I couldn’t find the right formula. It involved working out at the gym and protein shakes and diet foods and running…and…and…
…and I HATED all of those things. The exercise routine was often a drag, running is painful for this hourglass figure, and diet foods don’t satisfy.
What changed for me was that I decided I didn’t need any of the STUFF. I’m not knocking personal trainers or gyms, but I never looked forward to those things, so I quit. I bought a jump rope, a weight bench, and dumbells. No excuses, no need to drive, the stuff is right there at home. Two years later, that’s still all I use.
On the food front, I consider my diet sort of European. Great food in moderation. Instead of eating a fast food burger, buy grass-fed beef and make a burger. I know it’s not as quick and easy, but when you develop a real appreciation for good food, the craving for the junk starts to dissipate. You also feel more satisfied on less food. I thought real butter and French bread and the like would make me gain weight, but I’ve kept it off.
Instead of focusing on the scale, start focusing on eating great food. Take a 30-minute walk everyday to clear your mind (think of exercise as a by-product), and lift weights maybe a few times a week. You don’t need to spend an hour on a treadmill every day (Here’s someone who agrees: http://lifespotlight.com/fitness/2008/10/02/is-your-exercise-keeping-you-fat/).
JD — You should try this guy: Adam Gilbert at mybodytutor.com. He’s a personal trainer/nutritionist sort of, but really more of a therapist/personal motivator. I started using him 6 weeks ago and without anything fancy, have lost 12 pounds. He is the happiest, most positive person I have ever worked with. Finding him has been a huge relief for me. You should at least call and talk to him.
Oh, we’ve ALL been there. Be compassionate with yourself, and get back on the horse.
I looked at myself (in my birthday suit) in the mirror today. I mean really LOOKED…
NOT PRETTY! The diet starts TODAY.
(When I renewed my lisence in February, the DMV guy said I looked like I was still 120 pounds (HAHA more like 150), so he wasn’t going to change my card. Bless his heart.)