Exercism

You'll probably notice a theme here that I will talk about food a lot. So I'll take a break from that to talk about the harder part of the health regiment - exercising regularly.

Exercise and me go together like beer and ice cream. Okay, so there is a wonderful thing called a Guinness float (which is exactly what it sounds like) and Guinness ice cream is good too, but you get my point. Anyway, my history has always been to get too ambitious on a program, make excuses for why I can't go to the gym, and then end the program quicker than a Hollywood marriage.

So my challenge in developing a new program was to find a way I could convince myself to succeed, or more correctly, talk myself out of failing. The only way I could do this was to strip all of my pride out of the situation. People get very self-conscious when they go to the gym, and for good reason. All around you are people who look like they live there, that clearly have the whole working-out thing down to a science. You pick the 25 pound dumbbells off the rack while Hercules is taking the 90s out to do the same exercise. You're walking on the treadmill while Athena next to you has it at 8 MPH. Am I even doing this exercise right? Do I look stupid? It is humbling.

The worst thing you can do is try to keep up appearances, and stress about how it looks. Nobody gives a crap about you and what you're doing. So just do it, and make sure you don't burn yourself out. Too often I fry my muscles working them too hard at the beginning, setting me back for days and giving me "dead legs" that don't allow me to do any cardio at all. So once I kill my legs, I give myself an excuse to fail, and then failure becomes the norm. Next thing you know the bench is replaced by the couch, and we're back where we started.

My goal this time is to keep my heart rate up for as long as I can, an hour a day when doing cardio and an hour and a half total when lifting. Starting out slow, walking, doing half sets if I get tired... just keep moving and keep going forward. Eventually my stamina and strength will increase, but I don't need to kill myself right now to get there. This mentality has helped me sustain and helps me do that critical hour per day, which is all I need to focus on right now.

Critical to this is not making excuses. I'm the master at making excuses - hey, I've been in sales for years. Unfortunately, my excuses for myself only give me reasons to suck, and pathways to failure. Yeah, they're good excuses - I can't fool myself that easily - but they are still excuses, and that has to be inexcusable.

Last night at the gym while on the elliptical machine one of the employees of the gym came up to talk to me. His premise was that I looked goofy on the thing due to my height, like a baby giraffe on a frozen pond I imagine, but my spidey sense was tingling that he actually wanted to upsell me on one of their programs. So he asked me a lot of questions about what I was doing, and I answered honestly, and he let me know at the end that I was on the right track, had thought things through well, and (most importantly) didn't try to sell me anything. It felt good to have the right answers, and actually be doing those things instead of having them as a "vision".

Oh, the scale at the gym gave me good news as well. 6 pounds down in a month, which was very comforting.

I've actually evolved to the point where going to the gym or on a run doesn't suck for me. My wife has always told me that she needs to run, and enjoys doing it. I never understood how running could be anything but painful, but now I do see where it could be pleasant. It isn't quite pleasant yet, mind you, but it isn't horrible either, which is a huge step in the right direction. If I play my cards right I'll become addicted to exercise. Which will make these changes more of a life change and less of a temporary fad, which is the goal.