About Fogdog's Weight Loss

Don't Focus on the Goal...

If you've followed this blog you know that I've struggled for many years with improving my health. I've finally reached a point where I've managed to maintain a small amount of success. Now it's time to take the next step, but I believe it requires a new way of thinking.

Instead of trying to get healthy, why not shift focus toward learning how to build healthy habits instead. Follow me as I try to teach myself how to Engineer healthy habits that will allow me to take my health to the next level. Let's see where this experiment goes!

Friday, January 9, 2015

Day #5 - How I'm Doing Vs. How I'm Feeling

People ask you all the time how you’re doing.  This is especially true if they know you are trying to change something about yourself.  I get that question a lot from my friends and so far my response is the same… “I’m doing really good!”, and that’s the truth!  I’m smoke-free for the week and I’ve managed to eat healthy and exercise to boot!  When I stand on the scale tomorrow I have no doubt it will show a pleasing number.  I’m living to the commitment I made 5 days ago, what more could I ask for?

Gee I don’t know, I was kind of hoping that in the process of keeping to my promises, I thought maybe I would feel better.  Unfortunately, how I’m doing isn’t exactly the same as how I feel.  While I’m doing great focusing on living a healthy lifestyle, I absolutely feel like garbage at the moment.  I’m depressed, I have no ambition to do much and I’m struggling to find motivation to do anything other than keep to my promises about my health.

Fortunately for me, I recognize how I feel and I know that it’s only temporary.  Making changes in your lifestyle often trigger moods and I know that I just need to keep pushing through until I feel better.  I know that quitting smoking brings out the worst in me and the last time I quit I was told by someone that they liked me better as a smoker.  I’ve made it a point to not use my lack of smoking as an excuse to be a jerk. 

We all have a limited amount of mental fortitude each day and mine is at its limit.  Between eating right, exercising, quitting smoking, and not being a jerk about it all, I just simply don’t have much left each day.  I’m OK with that because I know it is temporary.  It’s already getting easier to exercise each day and the cigarette cravings have begun to subside.  I know that soon enough I’ll have a little more energy to burn and it will allow me to do more.  I just got to ride it out until I feel better.

It’s this mindfulness of my feelings that gives me hope that this time will be different.  I still don’t believe in myself yet, but I hope that also changes with time.

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So far I haven’t mentioned much about my alcohol consumption.  Typically I’m a weekend drinker so clearly I’m nervous as we come into my first weekend.  Mrs. FogDog and I agreed to abstain this weekend but we’ve said that before and ended up drinking on Saturday night.  Come to think of it, we’ve said that before and ended up drinking on BOTH Friday and Saturday night.  To be honest, I’m sort of glad for the crappy mood because I don’t really feel like drinking.  I might not get anything else done this weekend but at least I’ll be sober in the process.
You would think I would be looking forward to the weekend, but I’m more nervous about the weekend than I am the work week.  During the work week there’s not a lot of idle time.  Between the job and carting the kids around  too their activities there’s not a lot of opportunity to get myself in trouble.  Not true with the weekend.  We have a basketball game on Saturday afternoon but other than that my weekend is wide open.  I told Mrs. FogDog she should put together a list of things she needs me to do so I can keep myself occupied.  Otherwise, I could end up on the couch all weekend stuffing my face with things I shouldn’t.
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Another successful day;  I didn’t smoke and kept to my eating plan and also met my water goal.  I didn’t go to the mall to walk at lunchtime and instead opted to bang out 2 miles on the elliptical at home after work (didn't quite get to that!). 

Day 5 is in the books, time to face my first weekend and a weigh-in tomorrow morning!  On to Day #6.

-Stay Strong!

4 comments:

  1. I can't imagine how hard it is to attempt so many changes at once but I am rooting for ya. I hope you start feeling as good as you're doing pretty soon. Sending you good weekend and weigh in vibes!

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  2. Hooray for the strength and effort this week. Hang in there and keep reminding yourself that you are in this for the long haul. Trying to lose weight must be twice as hard when stopping smoking at the same time, so I applaud the week that you have had. The to-do list sounds like a good idea especially if you commit to a few things right away. Wishing you the best and hoping you feel better soon.

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  3. So good that you know yourself so well, and good work on not being a jerk! I get a teensy bit moody at a certain time of the month and I am not very good at not being churlish.

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  4. I love this post. I often tell my family and friends that people are far to short sighted to think past the end of their nose. It sounds like you and I share a character trait, in that I can deal with today's woes knowing that they are temporary and bigger picture is that there is a happy ending waiting for me if I stay the course.

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