Do Something
Apparently, the 60 Day Challenge was too much for me to handle for more than 120 days. Here are some impressions from my experience with The Challenge and a few lessons I've learned:
Discipline and consistency is tough! With all the things I do during the course of a week, watching what I eat and making the time to exercise gets pushed lower and lower on my list of priorities. That's really what caused my whole experience to fizzle - changes in my work responsibilities, various little projects, extracurricular activities were all huge walls for me. Not to mention my tendency to ritualize exercise and my bad habit of using any excuse to get out of exercising and eating just a little bit more of that unnecessary snack.
In short, I was lazy and lacked the discipline for a long-term approach and used excuses to keep me from accomplishing the tasks I set for myself. Problem acknowledged, now for the solution: move. Keep moving! Keep going! Besides dependence on God and Christ's strength in my effort to be a good steward of my body, I have to be conscious and intentional with my eating and exercising. I have to remind myself as much as possible to choose wisely what goes in my mouth and to do something, anything, to get my body moving.
I know this sounds hokey, but Michael Phelps inspired me to be more disciplined. More like his eating habits inspired me while he was training for the Olympics: he ate whatever he wanted and as much as he wanted because he was training several hours a day. That's all I have to do. I need to move it! I watch all these infomercials on special diets and special exercise routines and machinery and they all have two major things in common, the secret to losing weight, keeping it off, and staying healthy for the rest of your life: eat moderately and move a lot. You'll effectively save hundreds if not thousands of dollars by keeping to those two ideas. It didn't matter how often you eat or even what you eat, as long as it's done moderately and as naturally as possible. And it doesn't matter what exercise you do, as long as you move and stretch every part of your body as much as possible every day. If you know how the body moves and how the muscles work, it's not hard to put together a personalized daily exercise plan. Here's the catch, though: it takes discipline. Exercise programs from infomercials or even a gym give temporary motivation and the hope is you'll have the discipline to follow through. As evidenced in most gyms by the end of January, the novelty wears off, the motivation is lost, and the discipline is short-lived. I noticed that back in college. Every year for three years, the athletic center was packed right after winter break. Then by early February, only the truly disciplined and die-hards stayed. I was proud of my martial arts students at the time for training consistently. They weren't driven by "The New Year's Resolution." The same number stayed from the beginning of the year till the week or so before finals. (It also helped that we were a small group to begin with.) What I found is that self-motivation is what's necessary in having a healthy lifestyle. Doesn't matter what you do, what program you buy, or where you are, it all comes down to self-motivation. I have to keep asking myself, "What can I do to stay motivated?" especially when the daily challenges become a tsunami. What is your personal motivation?
One way I've been motivating myself is saying, "I can do this. It's not that hard." I break my mental inertia by talking to myself, something I was trained in years ago, but didn't practice all the time. Since Nike already took "Just do it" I'll go with "Do Something!" I yell that to myself in my mind when I realize I've been sitting in front of the computer or TV for too long. Yeah, there's a hint of desperation in those two words, but I have to work from the ground up.
I need to do whatever it takes to stay in tip top shape. This isn't just a matter of staying healthy or being in fighting trim. In the greater scheme of things, this body will get old and pass away. No, this is a matter of stewardship and discipline, important roots, a reflection of my character. The result is a healthy body. If the physical is my focus, the tendency is to go the other extreme as well that I'd become obsessed with my physical body. This is all about balancing the important things in my life. When I am intentional and conscious of what I do, then consequently my priorities will be balanced. I will stay healthy in every aspect of life.
Discipline and consistency is tough! With all the things I do during the course of a week, watching what I eat and making the time to exercise gets pushed lower and lower on my list of priorities. That's really what caused my whole experience to fizzle - changes in my work responsibilities, various little projects, extracurricular activities were all huge walls for me. Not to mention my tendency to ritualize exercise and my bad habit of using any excuse to get out of exercising and eating just a little bit more of that unnecessary snack.
In short, I was lazy and lacked the discipline for a long-term approach and used excuses to keep me from accomplishing the tasks I set for myself. Problem acknowledged, now for the solution: move. Keep moving! Keep going! Besides dependence on God and Christ's strength in my effort to be a good steward of my body, I have to be conscious and intentional with my eating and exercising. I have to remind myself as much as possible to choose wisely what goes in my mouth and to do something, anything, to get my body moving.
I know this sounds hokey, but Michael Phelps inspired me to be more disciplined. More like his eating habits inspired me while he was training for the Olympics: he ate whatever he wanted and as much as he wanted because he was training several hours a day. That's all I have to do. I need to move it! I watch all these infomercials on special diets and special exercise routines and machinery and they all have two major things in common, the secret to losing weight, keeping it off, and staying healthy for the rest of your life: eat moderately and move a lot. You'll effectively save hundreds if not thousands of dollars by keeping to those two ideas. It didn't matter how often you eat or even what you eat, as long as it's done moderately and as naturally as possible. And it doesn't matter what exercise you do, as long as you move and stretch every part of your body as much as possible every day. If you know how the body moves and how the muscles work, it's not hard to put together a personalized daily exercise plan. Here's the catch, though: it takes discipline. Exercise programs from infomercials or even a gym give temporary motivation and the hope is you'll have the discipline to follow through. As evidenced in most gyms by the end of January, the novelty wears off, the motivation is lost, and the discipline is short-lived. I noticed that back in college. Every year for three years, the athletic center was packed right after winter break. Then by early February, only the truly disciplined and die-hards stayed. I was proud of my martial arts students at the time for training consistently. They weren't driven by "The New Year's Resolution." The same number stayed from the beginning of the year till the week or so before finals. (It also helped that we were a small group to begin with.) What I found is that self-motivation is what's necessary in having a healthy lifestyle. Doesn't matter what you do, what program you buy, or where you are, it all comes down to self-motivation. I have to keep asking myself, "What can I do to stay motivated?" especially when the daily challenges become a tsunami. What is your personal motivation?
One way I've been motivating myself is saying, "I can do this. It's not that hard." I break my mental inertia by talking to myself, something I was trained in years ago, but didn't practice all the time. Since Nike already took "Just do it" I'll go with "Do Something!" I yell that to myself in my mind when I realize I've been sitting in front of the computer or TV for too long. Yeah, there's a hint of desperation in those two words, but I have to work from the ground up.
I need to do whatever it takes to stay in tip top shape. This isn't just a matter of staying healthy or being in fighting trim. In the greater scheme of things, this body will get old and pass away. No, this is a matter of stewardship and discipline, important roots, a reflection of my character. The result is a healthy body. If the physical is my focus, the tendency is to go the other extreme as well that I'd become obsessed with my physical body. This is all about balancing the important things in my life. When I am intentional and conscious of what I do, then consequently my priorities will be balanced. I will stay healthy in every aspect of life.
posted by L at
12:38 AM
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