Coming into week 8

This week is week 8 of our DDPYoga program. On Thursday we’ll do our pics and take our weight. I have to admit I’m still a bit nervous. What is the scale going to have for me? I’m trying not to make a big fuss over how much weight I’ll lose come Thursday morning but I’m really hoping for a solid 10 pound loss. I know I’m already seeing some slimming going on. My pants fit better as do some of my shirts. My goal is to get back into all the 34 inch waist jeans I bought when I had lost all that weight during Whole30.

What I can say for certain is that I have a greater range of flexibility and the pain in my back and my knees are gone. I can even get down on my knees for work without being in excruciating pain!

One of the things I really enjoy about the DDPY app are all of the great resources it offers. Motivational Mondays are a must watch for me and my wife. This time DDP was talking about people who inspired him, guys like Tony Robbins, Jake “the Snake” Roberts, and Dusty Rhodes. What made them great, especially the ones in his choice profession of wrestling, was the fact that they came into whatever they did believing no one was going to out work them. Who are you gonna say that to? Who are you going to look at and say, “you can’t out work me!”

With the hebrew month of Elul beginning and heading toward the Jewish High Holidays I feel like the answer to that has to be myself. We have to always be striving to be better than who we were, reaching for those new heights and milestone and never giving up. I hope everyone has a great week!

Small set backs but staying focused

As I mentioned, this past week was the birthday week and I got a little off the rails over the weekend with snacking and drinks, but I was having a good time with my wife so I REGRET NOTHING!! But it’s been a new week and it’s been back to clean eating and we’ve bumped up our DDPY to 4 times a week. Next week we’ll go to 5 a week and the weeks after will be 6.

I know I’ve talked about DDPYoga before in my old blog but this is the first time I’ve been this consistent with it and I’m almost at the week 8 mark. The thing that has helped me the most in sticking with it is that my wife is on this journey with me. Seeing her grow in strength and endurance and her own surprise at what she can do has been a huge motivator for me as well to keep up. I believe she has an even more difficult journey because her goal is getting healthy and for her that means putting on weight, which is only done through increased caloric intake. Basically she has to eat like a hobbit.

So she’s doing weight gaining shakes, all plant based powders, in order to up her calories. Of course, our doctor has told her she doesn’t HAVE to, she’s healthy by every way he can measure. But to have her with me has meant everything. Our workouts have become our own personal time together, everyday. That has been an unexpected bonus in all of this and it is something we look forward to. If that’s not a NSV (Non Scale Victory), I don’t know what is.

It’s the little things

Sometimes the NSVs, or Non-scale Victories, are the best. For example, today I was able to put my work pants on without having to jump around to button them! I’d say that’s a win.

On top of that we’ve decided to up the workouts. We’ve been doing 3 a week but that window from Friday to Monday really does a number on our bodies. We’re stiffer again and the progress is lost a little. So next week we’ve got workouts Monday-Thursday and the week after we’ll have 5 work outs over 4 days.

Also, it’s birthday week! Got some plans this weekend to celebrate with the wife AND apparently the universe knew about my birthday because over the next 3 days there’s going to be a meteor shower, the Persied Meteor Shower to be exact. I plan on staying up and then sitting out and watching it tonight.

Feeling better and stronger every day. Just have to keep swimming.

Progress comes in small steps

As promised. Spent about an hour or so cooking up lunch for the next few days. Ground turkey, paleo spices, and veggies. Boiled a bunch of eggs and cooked up some sliced potato.

Also, if your aren’t using “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning, where have you been??? Not unlike Affleck in “Phantoms” it’s the bomb. 10 nerd points if you got that. I’ve started and stopped better eating programs all year and this is the first time I’ve made it to a Thursday and not sabotaged myself and that is all thanks to prepping beforehand.

It will be these little changes to routines, and maintaining those routines, that will make this process successful. Reminding myself that the answer to a stressful day isn’t shoving carbs and processed foods in my face (even tho that carb or sugar high is soooooo tempting). I even went to the 7-11 and got junk food snacks for the kids to watch a movie tonight and I only got for them. Small steps. Little successes.

Slowly slowly.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

One of the challenges in healthy living, for me anyways, has been the meal prep. By the time I get to the end of my day, especially now when I’m exercising, the LAST thing I want to do is spend another hour in the kitchen when all I want to do is crash, watch something, and pass out. Also, don’t recommend mornings as a time for me to get my food together. Most mornings I can only muster enough time to do the necessities to start the day.

So I have to make myself do that meal prep either in the morning or on a Sunday. Sundays have been good days to do that kind of stuff in the past and when I’m not picking up extra work I tend to use that time. As I’m writing this I’m going over some ideas with what I have in the house.

Some ground turkey, I’ll cook that up, toss in some diced veggies and make lettuce wraps with that. Breakfast we’ll boil some eggs and slice up potatoes and bake that. I’ll do some pictures to share tomorrow, right now it’s getting late and if I don’t get up now and cook it’ll never happen.

I’ll leave you all with a quote from Diamond Dallas Page, DDP, “Whether you say you can or you say you can’t, you’re right.” Stay safe, stay healthy.

Hello WordPress my old friend…

Back in 2017 I started a blog, mostly about my weight loss journey, but about pretty much anything I wanted to talk about. Much has changed since then and one of those things would be my health. After dropping down to the lowest and healthiest I’d ever been I allowed stress, depression and anxiety to dictate my eating habits. The end result was not good. As I write this I am back to 223 lbs, basically where I was when I started my very first Whole30. I am disgusted with myself.

I’m also celebrating a birthday in a little over a week and will be entering the last year of my 30s and staring down the barrel of my 40s. I’ve taken the last few weeks to reflect on what the next year, and beyond, will hold for me and I came to a conclusion. What I want is to get my health back on track. I’ve already started by finishing the first month of DDPYoga. For those who remember I’m a huge fan of Diamond Dallas Page’s program and this time I’ve been doing it with my wife, Rachel. I told her I needed her help and partnership in this to help keep myself on track. Today is also Day 1 of round….4? I think? I’ve already got a headache from the lack of sugar. My plan is to stay focused on a compliant diet, maybe do 2 rounds, and then switch to a predominantly paleo diet. I expect I’ll still have things which won’t always be great for me, but the hope is to remain focused on the overall journey and goal of being healthy.

The big goal I have for myself, the theme I want to stay focused on, is that my 50s are going to be my 20s. Why 50, seeing as it’s 11 years away? The thing is, those 11 years are going to be gone in the blink of an eye and I don’t want to waste a moment between now and then. My two oldest children will be in their early 20s and my youngest will be 16. My wife and I will be celebrating 25 years when I’m 52 and at that point my youngest will be 18. I want to be in a place with my health to really take advantage of that new phase in our life together.

This blog, which is on a different page than my original one, is meant to also help me stay accountable. It’s hard to lie to yourself when you are exposing yourself to the world (giggity). If I feel the need to armchair quarterback something in the news or whatever I’ll do that over there. I plan to make this exclusively about my health journey.

This will be a struggle for me, perhaps for the rest of my life, but I can either let it control me or I can try to control it.