Break down your bigger goals

If you want to lose weight one of the best ways to help is to break down your bigger goals into smaller ones. Losing, for example, twenty pounds is a big challenge! After all, in a healthy world you only really want to drop 1 to 3 pounds a week. That means twenty pounds should take about 10 weeks.

10 weeks is a long term goal. It sounds so achievable at the beginning. That 10 weeks seems so far away that you are very likely to "take it easy" because you "have plenty of time!" Four weeks later, when you have been very lax on yourself and if you are lucky you may have dropped a couple of pounds. But now you have 6 weeks to lose 18 pounds! That's on the upper end of healthy and now it's a very hard to achieve goal!

So how should you break this down. Well it depends on you. I've found four week intervals to work the best. Four weeks is just long enough to give myself a little leeway for lapses in my goal, while simultaneously giving me the kick in the pants that I "ONLY" have a few weeks left! In addition it allows you to use another mind trick: the "I can do it for X" mind trick, because after all it's only a month, you can be super strict for a month!

By the time the end of that month rolls around hopefully you will be so well on your way to your big goal that you will just let it keep going! After all you already showed that you can be super strict for a month, and it wasn't so bad! So break up your big goals into incremental smaller ones. Gauge where you are when you get to that smaller one and adjust accordingly. Losing weight and keeping it off is a bunch of incremental changes over time! Going for the big bang is dooming you to failure before you even start.

Mind Trick: I can do it for "X"

I REALLY used to dislike cardio. I mean I had a serious disdain for the whole activity, the intense sweat, the shortness of breath, the constant monotony of being on a machine. I tried to take it outside, and run, but I was big, the concrete pavement hurt my knees and I live in the Atlanta Metro area. The Atlanta Metro area has some SERIOUS air quality issues. Running outside at the wrong time made me feel like I had been sucking on a tail pipe. So I stuck to indoor equipment. The thing is most of the time I was ready to give up after about five minutes. That's when I discovered this little gem of a mind trick.

I realized that every time I got on a piece of cardio equipment (usually a treadmill), I'd get to about 3 minutes and 30 seconds and want to get off. My head would be hurting, my knees began to whine, I was out of breath, the sweat started pouring from my brow, and my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. In my head the cursing would begin. I would just tough it out, call myself a wuss. You know the typical macho crap that you see on all those workout posters. When I reached about 7 minutes miraculously my head would be clear, my knees didn't hurt, my heart and breath evened out and the sweat only bothered me a little.

Now usually I'd only last another 7 minutes from that point and then cool down (I was almost 300 pounds at the time...), but I figured out something. If I could get past the initial 5-6 minutes I could do my cardio! I further went down the road of, its only 5 minutes! That's not so much! Anyone can do 5 minutes that's not so bad!

Fast forward 10 years (or so) and I still use this trick today! I've run a half marathon using this trick. In fact I used it this morning! I was 45 minutes and 6 miles in to a run on the treadmill. I didn't want to do anymore. I was tired, and I could already taste my after workout refuel. But I said to myself, come on Alex, just do five more minutes. It's five minutes, that's not too much longer! I ended up doing that a few more times pushing myself to 9.5 miles over and hour and ten minutes! Maybe that's not super quick, but believe me its one of my better times!

The best part about the trick is that it doesn't just work for exercise it works for your diet too! I did a juice fast a year or so ago. I used the same trick with the mindset of "It's only a week. I can do this for a week! It's not that long!", and you know what? It wasn't! I ended up doing it for two! So if you're dragging don't feel like exercising or sticking to your diet, just break it down to a tiny time frame. It will make it seem much more reachable and much less harsh.

A Quick Introduction

So with thousands of blogs about health and fitness already in existence, why did I feel the need to add my voice to the cacophony? I'm not a famous athlete, or coach, or personal trainer, or a nutritionist, or other health practitioner. So who am I to share knowledge, health and training advice? Let me to tell you a little story, and then maybe you will understand.

A long time ago (well maybe not that long ago, but stories always seem to sound better like that), there was a 5 foot 8 inch man graduating from college at a slightly hefty 320 lbs. There was no accident in getting to that point, no injury, no health issue, it just... happened. Now I know a lot of people wonder, how people can get to be so big. Well I'm sure you've heard the saying that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump right out, but if you put him in there and slowly raise the temperature he will stay in there and get cooked. For me, getting that big was like that. I was a big child, a big teen, and when I graduated college, a big adult.

I'm quite sure if I hadn't had a little wake up call, I probably would have gotten bigger. The reality was I wasn't taking care of myself because I didn't see the need. I could play Ultimate Frisbee (not well), play basketball (again, not well), and swim. I was ridiculously flexible (I could perform full Chinese splits), and capable of running enough to do all the stupid things that you might do during college. My weight rarely impacted me (though breaking a toilet seat in the middle of the night should have maybe been a warning...), so I didn't see it as a problem. Sure I knew I was "big", but I didn't really realize how big.

Fast Forward 10 years and I am no longer "big". In fact, I am quite literally half the man I used to be. I do my best to take care of myself (although I may or may not have a small coffee addiction... I will neither confirm nor deny that one!), and I try to work out at least 3 times a week. I have learned a lot in the last decade, most of it the hard way, and all of it from experience. So what makes my voice useful in this case? I've been there, I understand, and I just hope I can help.