Tag Archives: weight loss

I’m using a WIG. Or Four.

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by in Character and Competence, Discipline, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on I’m using a WIG. Or Four.

Tags

, , , , ,

Hello. I’m back.

I went away because I was a bit tired of espousing personal development philosophy while manifestly failing to come up to my own standards. Furthermore, as a direct consequence of said lack of integrity and the physiology that resulted, I felt bloody terrible. I had (still have) a dodgy knee, but carrying 42 lbs of spare weight wasn’t helping. All that weight was on my front, which probably didn’t help with the back. I was constantly tired when I woke up in the morning, and I was motivated only by virtue of the fact that I would do things only if they were on my prioritised action list in my planner. I could simply avoid doing things by not putting them onto the list. I needed space.

I booked some time off from work, and set myself only four WIGs – wildly important goals – for the 18 days available.

  1. Stick to a diet that had worked in the past.
  2. Go to the gym on every free day (i.e. those when I did NOT have whole days dedicated to other events – which only amounted to 2, anyway).
  3. Finish the edit of Police Time Management so that I can sell it through my professional body’s website.
  4. Clear and organise my attic.

Might not seem much but I had various events, meetings and other commitments to fill my time. Those 4 were the specific outcomes or strategies I chose that would address many of the physical and mental blockages that were causing my malaise.

How did it went?

  1. The diet I chose is known as the Natural Hygiene Diet (look it up). In a nutshell, only have EITHER a protein OR a carbohydrate ‘main’ accompanied by vegetables or salad, and avoid (as far as is reasonable) heavy sauces and other taste bombs. Eat lightly, and use fruit as your treats. It’s Slimming World without the sins. I also ate only four slices of bread the whole time. My only variance was a bit of a treat after a day-long conference and drive home, where I indulged in a sandwich snack and some sweeties.
  2. I surprised myself, here. I went to the gym every day but the two days when I had all-day commitments, sat on a static cycle for 45 minutes (and pedalled!), pushed some weight and did some gut-stressing leg raises. I even took my kit to an overnight halt before the aforementioned conference and did it in the hotel gym.
  3. I finished the edit far quicker than I thought and it will soon be available for purchase either on its own or as a freebie on an investigator’s course.
  4. This was a challenge because of an unexpected obstacle known as ‘other people’. I found it easy to sort out ‘my’ stuff – chuck, charity, colleagues, keep. Other people – predominantly ‘review, keep, put back’. And their proclivity for finding other things to do which could be done better/at other times/not at all, but seemed to pop up just when I was climbing the attic ladder.

How did I feel? Much to my surprise, by day 12 I felt physically much fitter, lighter, and more disposed to movement. On the final, 18th day, I weighed myself and I had lost 11.15lbs.

The attic is tidier and, most important, I can get at anything I need at short notice. (And I found some stuff I’d been looking for, for months!)

Success!

But why? Why did it work now and not before?

Anthony Robbins often says that when we change, it is for one of two reasons – inspiration, or desperation. The 100-Day Challenge, which I manifestly failed to execute, was born of the former, while the success of this moment was clearly, unequivocally and sadly founded on the latter.

I have said before that the principles (of successful living) work if you work the principles. The principles I worked this last 3 weeks were:

  1. WIGS. I set only four Wildly Important Goals, around which any other things were organised.
  2. Time Management. I recognised that I was sitting around ‘saving time’ and not ‘using time’, so deciding to use the gym at a specific time every day (4pm) was better than leaving it to ‘IF I have time’.
  3. Sensible eating. I realised that when I have been stuffing my face it has never, ever been because I am hungry. It is because I am bored. And I realised that seconds after a meal was completed, the ‘event’ was over and my mind and body had already forgotten. So why go to that effort? Just eat sensibly and feel just as ‘forgetful’, but healthier!
  4. I learned to cook omelettes, scrambled eggs and poached eggs. Thanks, Delia. Masterchef beckons.

One sobering event. Early on, I was at the gym when I met a friend I have known over 20 years, and I mentioned I was on leave and intended to use it daily. On day 11 I met him same place (and time) and he said, “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

What does that say about me? What have I been communicating over the years, at least in terms of my physical state? Evidently, I have been saying, “Here I am again, this week’s fad. It won’t last.”

No more.

Be the You that you were meant to be. REFINE.

25 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in Character and Competence

≈ Comments Off on Be the You that you were meant to be. REFINE.

Tags

, , , , , ,

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Michelangelo

Observant readers would have seen that I have changed the top of the page to better reflect the objectives of The Three Resolutions in three words. The ‘new’ R-word that reflect The Second Resolution is Refinement.

Please don’t think I am going to promote or counsel the adoption of better speech, tidier dress and the lifting of the little finger when taking tea, even if adoption of the first two of those suggestions wouldn’t please me. If you want to be scruffy and sound like a half-wit, good for you.

I am writing about, and proposing the adoption of a focus on making your own behaviour more closely match the behaviours that you believe reflect the ‘best you’ that you can possibly be. The Second Resolution covered this in using the words ‘To overcome the restraining forces of pride and pretension I resolve to work on character and competence’.

Refinement is the physical manifestation of the metaphor used by Michelangelo. It’s about chipping away at those things – habits, characteristics, emotions and activities – that don’t serve us or which get in our way.

Having decided (Resolved) where you aren’t behaving the way you know you should, Refinement means identifying and adopting the behaviours, values, etc. that you know will serve you much better.

Emphasise – YOUR behaviours, values, etc. – not mine.

That said, people of good character will, in the main, all behave in much the same way as each other. Their speech patterns and dress may be different but they will be honest, congruent, dedicated and just plain ‘good people’. Their values will be similar even if their way of executing on them may change.

BUT don’t be scruffy and tell me you’re rebelling. (Have you noticed how anarchists all dress the same?) Don’t say ‘actually’ and ‘obviously’ and ‘like’ every second word and then deny that you’re allowing yourself to be subject to environmental determinism. (Or use the new opening word that appears to have replaced ‘Yeah, I mean’, – the insidious viral term ‘So’.)

When you do those things you are no longer in charge of you. You’re not living. No. YOU’RE BEING LIVED. You are allowing outside influences to subliminally dictate your behaviours for you.

Refinement means YOU decide what characteristics you want to possess or demonstrate – and then chipping away at the marble until the real, self-designed you finally appears.

It isn’t easy. Right now I am battling with a constant desire to pick at food when I should be losing weight. (See my weight loss plan, below!)

But in the final analysis you can only say ‘I am who I intend to be’ when you have refined yourself enough to be exactly that. Until then, resolve to (re)design yourself – and then get to it!

weight

Good start….

 

Oy! Are you listening, or what?!

22 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Discipline

≈ Comments Off on Oy! Are you listening, or what?!

Tags

, ,

“Without conscience, there is no peace.” Stephen R Covey

Today, I shall keep it really simple.

Why do we do things that don’t serve us? Because we ignore our conscience.

Why do we do good things when perhaps we don’t feel like it? Because we listen to our conscience.

My conscience made me go running even when I really wasn’t in the mood, and as a consequence I lost 3 stone.

My conscience helped me lose weight. I now, finally, have peace in that department.

What will you achieve if you listen to yours? And what personal peace/satisfaction/justified pride will you obtain as a result?

Just sayin’.

Here I go (again….)

20 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Discipline

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

At the end of June 2014 I formally retired from my job, which meant that I no longer have the ‘excuse’ that I’ve been using to justify inactivity – that at the end of a tiring work day I don’t have the energy left to do anything else except mellow in front of the telly. Or that other peoples’ needs take precedence because I only have limited time to fit everything in after work.

As an aside, I was and remain surrounded by people who manage to do 12 hour workdays and still have time to train themselves physically. They rise at 5.30am and train before office hours. Dr Covey did it, too. I find that concept hard to understand. When I have tried this I have found it to be a horrendous experience! But when I have done that I had always been conscious that I had to go to work afterwards, and that meant arriving in work sweaty and tired just in time to start! Retired, and without an immediate replacement job, I had the opportunity to reframe that thinking.

The only challenge at this stage was a knee injury I had picked up in April, which was still causing pain in June. I had seen a physiotherapist who assured me that it was temporary and would soon sort itself out, but by the end of June I was concerned that it was never going away and that training for the Death Valley Run was as impossible as the Cardiff Half Marathon was now proving to be. But I had three months before the latter and nine before the trip to the USA so there was still some hope. And July the 1st was fast approaching.

Status at this moment: could run 15 minutes if the knee held up; I weighed 16st 9½ pounds (233.5 pounds) but I was being disciplined in rising on weekdays at 7am even though I had nowhere to go.
What was going wrong? Put simply I still wasn’t living in keeping with my intentions. I was allowing outside influences to change my mind, to go with the flow, to live in the moment, and so on. I ate like a fool – not in terms of ‘bad’ or even ‘lots’ in the greater scheme of things, but still ‘too much’ given the issues I was having over an inability and occasional unwillingness to train. I couldn’t seem to satisfyingly cut back to a level of intake that was commensurate with output.

And I couldn’t help thinking that a lot of this was down to one simple and upsetting fact – I still didn’t know what I was doing it for, or if I did know, I wasn’t as convinced by it as I needed to be.
In mid-July I decided that one way to make progress in the weight loss department was, if you like, to delegate responsibility to someone else for meal planning. Having seen a colleague or two make significant progress using the Slimfast Meal-Replacement Diet (terminally annoying adverts saying you could eat “a delicious nutritious shake for breakfast and lunch, and a normal meal in the evening” had finally kicked in), I opted to try it for two significant reasons:

One – instead of struggling to decide what I could and could not eat for breakfast and lunch (and not being able to cook – don’t ask), this diet made it easier. I only had to choose what flavour ‘nutritious, delicious shake’ I had to prepare.

Two – I had an ally, as my wife was also keen to lose weight and agreed that this method was worth trying. This meant that I could also delegate the need to decide what evening meal would be prepared, which had been the cause of a lot of difficulty over the years!

The parallel I could use is this: for any organisation to work it institutes systems. The systems are designed to make routines effective, to ensure that things get done the way they need to be done, with minimal input. For example, to avoid having to rethink how to do things every time you have to do them. In other words, the effort required to create a result is minimised because the system takes some of the load. By taking out the need to think about food (in terms of what to eat) we took away the influence food had over us. And by us both applying ourselves to the same end and by using the same method, we also reduced the influence that other people can have on our eating habits.

In the first 7 days I lost 5 pounds. This was a great psychological boost, because if I lost 3 pounds in the next week – easily achievable on most diets – I would be back in the 15 stone bracket, like having jumped over a marker, the 16 stone ‘fence’.

This sent me back to the goal-setting forms I had designed, and to re-establishment of goals based on lag- and lead measures, thus:

Weight Goal

As you can see I had the what (the goal), the why (the mission statement headings as applied to the particular goal) and the how, with lead measures appropriately made. Those lead measures – the staged weight loss targets – were easily achievable and at the same time, if missed, could be achieved in a reasonable ‘catch-up’ effort the following month.

Let’s see how I get on next week.