I was chatting with my personal trainer a couple of days ago and noted how I was surprised that the gym was so empty the day after the biggest resolution making day of the year. He noted to me that a lot of people take this week off, but the next week was going to be overloaded. Fortunately, I’m booked in my time slot for a couple of months out, but it got me thinking about New Year’s resolutions and why they’re such a bad idea.
Everybody does it. At some point in your life you’re going to make some kind of resolution to quit smoking or lose weight or something that feels like a lofty goal. You might go to the gym, or pick up a pack of nicotine gum, do it for a few days. Most often, you have a bad day and pick up a pack of cigarettes, or come home super tired and decide you’ll skip the gym for a day, and then settle into your bad routines again.
I’m not chastising anyone for doing this because I’ve been there. I’ve done it. But if you’ll humour me for a few thousand words, I can share with you what I’ve done, and maybe it’ll help you stick to a program. Programming being the key word.
Routines Are Hard, Horrible, and Necessary
Humans are creatures of routine, not habit. Interrupt our routines and we might as well be wearing a blue screen of death on our foreheads. We can have a small panic attack if our routine has been interrupted. Habits are things that we do in our established routine. Habits can be exceptionally easy for usto pick up, but are also easy to change.
Why do we eat too much food, or things that are bad for us? Habit. When are you eating the food? That’s routine. Why do we have to have that coffee at exactly 9AM with a particular co-worker? Routine. Why do we need to have a cigarette at a certain time of day? Routine.
Are you seeing my point here?
How do we change this? Change the habit, but keep the routine. How? Well this is a longer answer.
Smoking
I used to smoke about three packs of cigarettes a day back in my aircraft mechanic days. Back then, of course, smoking laws were a little bit more lax, and so were our managers. As long as we weren’t having a smoke while we were leaning on a bottle of oxygen, or while refueling a plane, our supervisors didn’t really care. If we could work and smoke at the same time and not blow anything up, we were golden.
Times changed and I started working in the office, but I still had the habit. I’d sneak out between meetings for a quick smoke. Feed the beast, and get right back to work. I quit when I got married, a thing by necessity, but I still quietly yearned for a cigarette, having one occasionally during a night of drinking. When I separated, the first thing I did was head to the local store and pick up a pack of smokes. The habit restarted.
When I started dating again, this of course became problematic. The musky smell of burnt tobacco apparently has the same appeal to someone in their late 30’s as Axe Body Spray. I knew from my previous experience that I couldn’t just quit cold turkey. I needed an alternative. So I took up vaping.
There’s a lot of conflicting information out there about it, and I highly encourage you to read on what you can. I’m not here to push my opinion on what study is valid and what the news is saying. What we can all agree on is this – if you’re smoking, you are doing irreparable harm to your body. My take is essentially this: If you’re going to kill yourself slowly, you might as well at least smell better doing it.
If you decide that it’s time to put away the cigarettes, then vaping is a good way to go about doing it. Why? Because you’re replacing the habit while keeping the same routine. I went to a vape shop and consulted with a sales rep. Told them what my daily habits were and they recommended a nicotine strength. That was about four years ago.
Now? I still vape, but I don’t use nicotine in my liquids. It was a long road of whittling it down, but I was able to get to zero. I still vape out of habit and have my routine set accordingly, but at least I’ve managed to knock at least one (and probably a ton more) toxins out of my body and smell a lot more appealing to my partner.
Truth be told, I feel a lot better doing it too. I don’t cough up a lung full of greenish, brownish stuff first thing in the morning while I shower. I can take a brisk jog up a flight of stairs without wishing I was dead at the top. Overall, I would call that a win. I actually find myself vaping less now that I work almost exclusively from home too, but that’s a blog for another time.
Weight Loss
Listen, I know what it’s like to gain massive amounts of weight. Let me share with you a little graphic of my journey.
Drastic, eh? In high school I was about 165, and while I wore a lot of loose fitting clothing, I was pretty well built. At my worst, I had ballooned up to 280 lbs. And that picture of me on the far right is right about where I’m at now. Probably about 15lbs heavier actually than my current weight. I’m at about 197 right now, and I fully intend on getting to 165 with the final goal of settling on about 185.
I can make excuses all day long about why I got so heavy, but none of it matters. What does matter is that I was that size, and I hate it. Hate is actually a very powerful motivator in fact. So what did I do about it? I changed the habit, but kept my routine. I added some things, like tools to the mix to help track and fix what I was doing. But more importantly I fixed what I was putting in my body. So what did I do?
- Before you diet, get an app.
- I use an app called Lose It! (#NoSponsor #NotAnAd). At first, I just used it to track what I was eating and more importantly, how many calories I was taking in. There are a lot of apps that will have assigned calories for foods, including dishes you get at major restaurants. The app I use can actually read barcodes and let you set the serving size you consumed.
- Get the 2500 calorie “recommendation” out of your mind.
- Everyone is different. Every body is different. Even if you’re taking in 2500 calories a day, can still gain weight, or maintain an overweight state. If you’re in an office job, more than likely you aren’t moving around very much and therefore aren’t burning the calories. After you’ve tracked your diet in the app for a couple of weeks,
- Talk to your doctor about what an appropriate amount of weight loss per week looks like. They might direct you to a dietitian. That’s fine, go with it. With your data in hand and a plan, you can appropriately set the amount of calories per week a healthy weight loss will be.
- Example – I used to sit on my butt all day at a desk and not moving around. Furthermore, my caloric intake was closer to 3000 calories a day. My doctor and I were able to plot out my caloric intake needed to maintain a weight of 185 lbs. And then figure out what would be needed to lose a pound a week from that point. Have doubts on the process? Refer to picture above.
- Don’t set a weekly loss goal – set an overall goal. Make it a year or two out.
- You are going to lose a ton of weight fast – in the beginning. As you lose the fat, and your caloric intake starts to line up closer to what you should be getting at your target weight, you’ll taper off. That’s fine as long as you’re losing it. If you set too aggressive you won’t follow it.
- If you have a spouse/family, get their support and participation.
- This is going to be crucial. If you have family members that insist on keeping things like cookies, candy, or ice cream in the kitchen, it’s going to be that much harder on you.
- Go to the fridge and throw everything out.
- Seriously. Having food available to eat means you’re going to eat it. Consider going grocery shopping twice or three times a week. I realize this is an addition to the routine, but having a large mass of food at the beginning of the week means you’ll have more temptations to snack on when you do. Maintaining a lower amount of food in the fridge with fewer snacking options goes a long way to keeping your hands off.
- I’m single, so this makes things exceptionally easy. I only have a few meals worth of food at a given time. I actually caught myself just last night getting up and rummaging through the cupboards looking for something to munch on. I was a little unhappy last night that I didn’t, but much happier this morning when I weighed in.
- You can also replace certain foods with other lower calorie options. There are ice creams out there now where you can eat the entire pint and it’s only about 340 calories. I myself enjoy a nice Cherry Coke Zero on occasion. We can talk about aspartame later. If something sweet is in your routine, replace it with that.
- Get a scale. Weigh in twice a week.
- Weighing in daily is also going to frustrate you. Some days you might lose a pound, others you’ll gain a half a pound. Let the averages take over. Also, weigh in first thing in the morning before you take a shower or consume anything.
Going to the Gym
Everybody talks about going to the gym. Truth be told, I’m one of those people. Why doesn’t it work? It’s because it introduces a major impact to our daily routines. Taking an hour or two a day to go someplace new and do more work can create a lot of stress in our lives. Moreover, humans work better in daily routines, and who has time for that noise?
If you’re going to make the commitment, you need to put a carrot on it. I did with a personal trainer. Paying to have someone yell at you if you don’t show up for your scheduled workout might sound dumb, but it works – and a good personal trainer will do exactly that. They’re being paid not just to show you how the machines work and what routines you should be doing; but they are also there to encourage you, and help you establish your routine.
So how did I get started? Here goes.
- Find the right time.
- I am not a nice person at 4AM. So getting up that early to workout doesn’t work for me. Likewise, at the end of the day, I sometimes just want to be a vegetable. Since I’ve started working from home exclusively, I’ve scheduled a time in the middle of the day to head to my local gym and workout with a personal trainer. It provides a good break between tasks in my day, helps me clear my head, and prepares me for my afternoon work. If you have the flexibility to do this, I highly recommend it.
- Pay the money for a personal trainer.
- Yes, there’s a cost to that. But having someone to call you up and yell at you can be beneficial. If you can’t afford to have a trainer long term, at least get a short term package deal. They can at least get you started on the right path to do what you need to.
- Go every day.
- You don’t have to lift every day. As a matter of fact, a lot of trainers will tell you to do your training two or three times a week. On the off days, go to the gym and get on a bike or an elliptical or something to solidify the gym as a daily routine. If you’re skipping days, it’s way too easy to just stop going.
Again, these are things that worked for me. Your body is different. You have different needs. The important thing is that you recognize that habits can be changed far easier when you maintain your established routine. Experiment!
New Year’s resolutions aren’t important, and most oftentimes are made with quite a bit of cynicism. If you really want to change, you need to plan, and that’s probably best done without consuming mass quantities of alcohol first.