I didn’t recognise you!
You're not half the man you used to be.
That’s a phrase that can be taken any number of ways. Fortunately for me, it was meant as a compliment as I have managed to shed some excess pounds recently; which is nice to know since I have been trying to lose weight for a while, I have been pursuing this PRIZE for about 9 months.
It’s not the first time I have tried to lose weight - the first time was some years ago and was soon accompanied by a new and exciting passion for cycling. I had managed to become quite overweight and I sought advice from a friend who had recently lost a large amount of weight. One of the lessons I learned from this exercise is that to achieve a new and challenging goal it really helps to have a strategy and to incorporate something new and exciting to keep the journey fresh and engaging.
"To lose weight, eat whatever you like, just don't swallow."
On that journey, I started out by following the example that my friend had used by joining a slimming club. After getting started though, although I achieved some initial wins (or in my case weight losses) the slimming club didn’t hold much excitement.
Instead, I spent the money on a Gym membership, and then added some cycling with some Mountain Bike Racing included, and before long I was making my daily commute on a bicycle too. I found a local cycling club and joined that and started taking part in some regular club runs with other keen cyclists and also in some local races. That opened up a whole new healthy lifestyle that helped me lose weight and maintain a good level of fitness for many years.
After a while, circumstances changed though, and I found myself gradually gaining weight again. My daily commute to work by bicycle with a round trip of over 35 miles every day had been replaced with running to work - except that by now I worked from home. I discovered that maintaining a healthy weight for me is a lifelong process. I am one of the lucky ones that can choose my body shape. I know some people that really struggle to put on any weight however much they eat!
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.~ Jim Rohn
So when I decided it was time to start getting into shape again I didn’t have the opportunity of a daily commute on a bike, so I had to find some another means of achieving my Prize this time. I knew that if I was going to succeed this time I was going to have to be intentional; I was going to have to focus on something NEW - my Next Exciting Win. I would need a strategy that came to my aid when motivation waned and pick me up to find my way back to the path I had chosen.
This time I elicited the help of my trusty Fitbit, some culinary support from my wife Sue, and my personal diet model I've used before and found helpful. For my diet to work I simply focus on encouraging and embracing feelings of being "half empty" rather than "half full". Embrace the feeling of being peckish and reject the feelings of being over full, to reinforce the idea that when I am feeling peckish, that's when I am actually losing weight.
Finally, I gave myself some targets along the way that I could strive for in order to reach the Prize of getting back to a healthy shape, and that included purchasing a new suit when the old one had become too large. My intentionality has paid off; I bought my new suit today.
