Healthy Tomorrow Starts Today! My Weight Loss Journey
Today was a fun day! I decided right before my walk that instead of going to my normal area I would try something new. I decided to call a friend and see if they wanted to go for a little hike. What was so fun […]
Today I was mowing the lawn yet again and it was becoming overwhelming obvious how productivity increases with this lifestyle change. The thing I realized yesterday, and was so obvious today was that I had zero back pain. Up until now I have been enjoying […]
Weight loss to Date -32.8lbs
Today I feel very strong, not just physically but in many aspects. I am learning the strength you gain when you convert your lifestyle is not just the weight you can lift. The lifestyle change strengthens your ability to withstand many forces. One force to deal with is the very impactful feeling of stress.
Stress is not supposed to be an enemy. We evolved stress to deal with life threatening situations. It has served us well in our species survival. Unfortunately these things that we evolved stress to deal with are no longer primary threats in modern life. Stress hormones being released into the body were originally a response mostly to a physical threat. A large predator was nearby, or we needed to hunt something dangerous. It helped our muscles exert maximum effort at critical times to escape or overcome some physical and life threatening event. It helped keep us alert and ready for fight or flight at a moments notice. Today however our bodies do not always know the difference between a threat from a Sabretooth Tiger and being stuck in traffic on a hot day on the way to the airport. The latter doesn’t allow us to burn off that stress so it often builds up in us. Stress is still a functional safety device our bodies have, but it is important to remember that it is not always being deployed how it was meant to be.
Right now there is a lot going on in my world. In days of past I dealt with this stress with an impulse to make things only worse. That impulse was to find something comforting to eat. Eating something that brought me some enjoyment was a way to divert that stress into something I perceive as positive. Right now though I have completely changed what my impulse is to deal with that stress. Today my response and desire was to go and do my 4km walk, and follow that up with some push ups and weightlifting. The difference is of course, that unlike overeating a bad food choice, exercise has made the stress better after it has been completed.
Some Weight Lifting this Afternoon
We don’t fight sabretooth tigers anymore, but that doesn’t mean that legitimate stress doesn’t happen. When things do occur where you need be more active and engaged it makes such a difference to have that added energy and mobility. This is what I mean by building strength that is not just muscles. It is the strength to deal with what needs to be dealt with and not be impacted by the physical demands placed on you. Exercise doesn’t just help stress when it happens, it also prepares yourself to deal with it better in the future.
I am very pleased with my progress so far. I feel more prepared to take on whatever comes my way and feeling stronger is so many ways. My outlook for the future is getting more and more positive.
Weight loss to date -30.2lbs Trying to quantify how much better I feel on week seven is hard to do. Not because it is hard to find what is improving, but so many things are improving at once. I am now noticing a difference and […]
Weight loss to date 29.8lbs As I am progressing through this weight loss and lifestyle change I am constantly reassessing things. My activity, my eating, my reasons for doing this. It seems like each day my activity increases and my ideas around food seem to […]
Weight loss today 24.2lbs
Every day I feel more motivated to do more and today is no exception. This day has been very rainy and wet, we even had a weather warning regarding the rainfall. However I was sitting on the sofa in the morning thinking about how we make excuses regarding our health. Today it would be easy to sit inside after my lifting and hide indoors. I decided that was silly, it is August, warm and a little rain is not going to hurt me.
Few pushups in the morning, getting easier !
In spring I dug out my old heavy bag I used when I was young. I did have some notions of using it at the time but my main motivation then had more to do with getting it out of the way. I decided to set it up on a tree branch just outside an outbuilding, and there it has sat unused for months. That is until today when I dug out my old bag gloves. I started on about 1 minute of combos, left jab, left jab, right cross etc. Rain flew down off the tree with each hit. Contrary to being uncomfortable it was nothing but refreshing. To start I began with different combos with different forces and was able to produce some decent intensity. I rested between each minute of work for about 20-30 seconds. I had no real plan for intervals or combos and I am far from any kind of expert at boxing. Despite this I managed to put in a good effort and added a decent little addition to my activity for the rainy day.
What doing activities like this means to me is that I am growing my portfolio of activities to use in bettering my health and life. Like any good portfolio, diversification is a good thing and this is just going to be another tool at my disposal. It really feels remarkable to be moving like I am now, with only just shy of 25lbs of weight loss. I can’t imagine what I could be capable of with my goal of 100lbs. That is in my calculations a year away and I am not going to try to focus too much on it. However I really can’t help being excited about the possibilities that could be down the line.
