Some time ago, soon after getting back from China
Simply making a small effort to eat healthy and exercise has not worked for me in the past. I would also find a way to mess it up by being lazy or craving bad food. This time around, I didn’t set a goal for weight loss, nor did I limit myself to any kind of fixed diet. My changes in life started by the simple realization that life is much sadder when you wake up less than an hour before work or school starts. I’ve done this my whole life. Sleep until the last possible moment, wake up and rush around to get ready, and speed off to work or school just in the knick of time of often even late. What I have found is that this practice evokes the feeling that your life is about work. I wake up and work all day, I’m tired when I get home and do a few things until I go to bed and do it all over again. My first lifestyle change was simple, wake up early enough to allow at least an hour of free time before work. That one hour changes my reasons for going to bed at night and getting up in the morning, and it makes work feel like something I need to do in the middle of my day instead of it feeling like all of my day.
My other changes were a natural flow of that one decision. In order to wake up in the morning and have energy to do what I wanted, I needed to get a good night’s sleep. In order to get a good night’s sleep, I needed to get into a regular routine and most importantly, eat healthy. Eating the right food in the day is the single biggest factor in the quality of my sleep. Now I need to eat healthy, not because I want to lose weight, but because I want to sleep well and be able to enjoy life. All I had left to do is figure out what to do with my free time. Occasionally, I would just hang out or play some video games, but I ultimately discovered that the early AM in the summer is the best time of day to be outside. Spending time outside led to a walk, which led to jogging. I also decided that I wanted to get back into golf, and the early morning is a great time for that as well. Now I am walking 18 holes of golf a week, and running 2-4 times a week. With all of these things combined, I dropped 25 pounds in 2 months and I didn’t even set a goal to lose weight. I have set some small goals here and there, but the only real goal I set was at the beginning of the year when I decided I wanted to run 365 miles in 2010. I’m happy to say that I just finished mile 180 leaving me about 25 miles behind schedule. That’s not too bad since I took off 35 days for the China
I have to say that life has been more enjoyable for the past couple months which is funny because I always thought being overweight was worth it to enjoy delicious food. The only other life change I would really appreciate is moving out of central PA. I’ve just been here for way to long and I would really like a change. The opportunity to discover a new area, and make a town our home instead of Liz and Wes living where I grew up would be excellent. I haven’t had very much luck in my job hunt, but I am hopeful for the right opportunity to come up in the not too distant future. I have a meeting with my boss this week to see where she sees me a year from now. Perhaps I’ll find that I need to stay here a while longer, or get an opportunity to transfer to a different location. Worst case, I’ll discover that I need to kick my job hunt up a couple notches.
With vacation days and family events over the past few weeks, I’ve dropped the ball a little bit on the front of eating healthy and waking up early. I also haven’t applied for many jobs recently, so I hope to pick back up this week. I did shoot an 89 this morning at Range End, so things aren’t going too bad.
Thanks for reading.
