Day 127 A Chat About "Doing Just Enough" and "Doing Everything I Can"

Day 127

A Chat About “Doing Just Enough” and “Doing Everything I Can”

I was talking to a friend today who is also losing weight. He expressed frustration at only losing a few pounds in two weeks. He's about ten years older than me, and he's convinced it's his age that is slowing down his progress. It may be the age thing, but it also may be other factors. Like me, he admitted that his water consumption wasn't the greatest. And since water can help boost your metabolism, then that's one thing. He also suggested that he wasn't completely satisfied with his workout, and that's another. He's also learning about calories and how some things that seem harmless enough, are horrible and can wreck your calorie limit if you're not careful. Like my friend, I use to be convinced that salad dressing, since it had the word salad in it's name, couldn't be that bad. But as you probably already know, putting full blown ranch dressing on a salad can multiply the calories in your meal by numerous times. It's loaded, and so are many other salad dressings. Who knew that the harmless looking saltine cracker was full of evil calories. Just one little saltine is 12 calories, and my friend is like me, when I eat soup I like a bunch of crackers. I use to have more cracker calories in my soup than soup calories. Tonight I didn't have a single cracker in my soup, and it was still good! Staying under 1,500 calories is completely doable if you can educate yourself before you take a bite. Never assume something is completely harmless, unless it's lettuce or celery, or pickles, in that case knock yourself out. I have a very short list of things I refuse to eat: Real mayo, butter, peanut butter, ranch dressing, and any liquid other than milk that has calories. There's a little longer list of foods I rarely eat, but I think I put that on another blog already. You can find the calorie count of almost anything, just look on the label, or google it with the word calories. Any progress is good progress. Could my friend do a little more to boost his results? Sure, and so could I.

I have to admit, that even with the ten pound goal time limit less than 48 hours away, I still can't say I'm doing everything I could possibly do to get there. And that's really disappointing. My water consumption has been horrible lately, I've had a lot of times where I had to guesstimate the calories in my meal, and I'm still not where I know I could be in the exercise department. Why is this? Why is it that “Mr. Good Choices” can't seem to turn in a 100% effort in a two week period? It's the “line of least resistance” I tell ya! It's like a little devil standing at the line and saying... “come on Sean, you know you'll still lose weight over here, and it won't be so much work.” “You don't even have to drink too much water, or exercise every single day, and calories? Just guesstimate 'em, come on man...this is easy.” “Here, have some crackers in your soup.” This is what happens when I'm a little off focus. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely on the wagon, but I feel horrible because I can't honestly say I'm doing everything I know how to do to get it done. I may look into a trainer at the YMCA to develop a workout routine for me. As for the rest of my issues, I only have one person to blame and one person that can change my performance, and that's the guy in the mirror. One thing you can always count on in these writings is 100% honesty, I'll tell you when I'm screwing up, I'll straight up admit it, and I'm telling you now...If I come short of my 10 pound goal on Wednesday then I have no one to blame but me. Because I know I'm capable of more. Aren't we all? There's just a big gap between what we're comfortable with and what we're capable of doing. I know I've got to push myself to achieve greater things and that requires better discipline and harder work. Some might read this and think I'm nuts, because I've lost nearly 100 pounds so far, but those of you that follow this blog know what I'm talking about. The same principles apply to my professional life too. I know that extremely successful people have worked really hard to get where they are in life (except for Ryan Seacrest—wow, did I just write that? OK, I'm being jealous and completely wrong in writing that—You go Ryan, congrats!). Anyway, they don't just settle somewhere near the bottom. They reach for the stars, they strive for something greater than their current station, and they don't make excuses, they make plans to succeed, set goals, and they follow through on whatever it takes to reach those goals. When it comes to weight loss and fitness, I believe I have what it takes to be a phenomenal success. In my career, same thing. If I don't do everything I can to get there, then I'm settling for something less. Man, I'm firing myself up!

Our workout tonight at the YMCA was a great one. Once again I did at least two miles on the treadmill, and although I needed to do the weights, I ran out of time, we should have arrived earlier. My calories were on target today, and best of all: No guesstimates today. I even enjoyed my favorite kind of cereal for breakfast and had an ice cream bar for a treat this afternoon. I feel good about all of the big milestones a short ways up the road. It'll be so nice to break on through to the other side of this journey. By that I mean past 125 or 130 pounds lost...into the “second half” so to speak. When I get there I hope to have that personal trainer ready to give me a good half time locker room speech! Until next time, good night and...

Good Choices,
Sean