Exercise

I am 5 feet 11 inches tall and weigh 218 pounds. Ya, I'm just a bit over weight. About 40 pounds over weight to be exact. I've been pondering loosing the extra flab for a few years, but I am finally doing something about it this year.

Over the years I've been collecting a lot of useless facts about dieting and loosing weight and storing them away in the file cabinet in my head.

Facts such as:
1. If you are hungry while you are dieting, that is really bad. It's best to eat every two hours so your body gets used to the idea that there is plenty of food, so your metabolism will rise and your body will burn more fat. But if you allow yourself to go hungry, your body begins to believe there is a shortage of food and your metabolism will slow to save your fat stores for when there is nothing left to eat.

2. A diet is absolutely useless unless you exercise. It doesn't really matter what kind of exercise you do, just as long as you will either raise your heart rate above 120 beats per minute for a half hour a day or build muscle, or both if you wish. But the most important part of the exercise you chose is that you enjoy it.

3. Three pounds of new muscle burns as many calories as running 1 mile
per day.

4. Water is an extremely important part of any diet. It helps to clean out all the waist and toxins.

5. Although walking helps, it should never be used as your only form of exercise unless you're race walking.

I called these useless facts because what ever knowledge you have in your head is totally useless unless you put them into action. And I haven't been putting this knowledge into action until January 2nd of this year. Why? Because I discovered that in order to tackle the really big fat challenges in life, you have to contend with your subconscious mind first.

You need to be able to get your subconscious ready for the fight, but that is not all that is required. You also need to reaffirm the subconscious every day preferably twice a day. Once in the morning as soon as you get out of bed and once before you go to sleep.

The way I do it is by using a technique which is fully described in a book called "Think and Grow Rich" by a gentleman named Napoleon Hill. This book is the original self help book and despite its cheesy title, the ideas in it are not just for getting rich. They're about being successful, no matter what your definition of success is.

Anyway, I wrote out 5 statements.

1. I stated my goal. I chose a specific weight goal which I came to through a little research
2. I wrote out a statement on how I will use my success to help others. This is important because, according to the theory, you need to pay back what you "demand" from life and how you do that is by helping others along the way.
3. I then wrote a statement of the specific date when I plan to reach my goal.
4. Then I formulated a plan of exactly how I plan to go about doing what I need to do in order to reach my goal.
5. Finally, I wrote out one single statement summarizing everything I had written in steps 1 through 4.

I make a point to read these statements twice a day. Trust me, I'm no angel. I have already had failures, but a part of the struggle for success is recognizing that there will be failures and know that you just have to get back on your horse and keep trying.

So far the system is working. I started on January 2nd and am still following my workout schedule faithfully and eating as healthy as the plan I made says although I tend to struggle with my caloric intake on the weekends. Even then I have already lost 15 pounds and am doing nearly twice as many push-ups and sit-ups as was my maximum when I first started out.

It is said that when you first start a workout that you need to get in shape before you get in shape. Sound funny? It really isn't if you think about it. If you're that out of shape, which I was, you need to get your body to a point where it can carry your great big fat frame easily enough to take the grueling exercise of actually getting in good shape.

After three months of light exercise I'm finally at that point where I can begin to push myself every day.

I'll be checking in every now and again to let everyone know how things are going and maybe I'll have a new exciting goal in the future.