The longer I remain on this path of personal growth, the more aware I am of all the snares and pitfalls that seek to sidetrack and detour me.
I’m convinced that we live in an extremely toxic and dysfunctional culture. Our food, our ethical lapses, the way we look to blame everyone for our what amounts to our own lack of personal responsibility–all of these things pull and tug at us, pushing us in a different and unhealthy direction.
Last night I sat in a training session for the employer I’ve been on seasonal assignment with since October. I looked around the training room filled with 25 bodies and realized that all but three or four people in the room were overweight and obese, with several morbidly so. Why are so many of us so damn fat in 2013?
In my own life, after being successful taking off a great deal of weight and keeping it off for three years, I ended 2012 recognizing that I’d gained 25 pounds back of the nearly 60 I had lost. I committed to changing and getting back to what had been successful before.
What is it about our American way of life that finds so many of us overweight, unhealthy, with excessive weight gain just one of our multiple maladies?
Going against the flow in a culture committed to dysfunction and all the wrong values requires diligence, steadfastness, and a word we don’t hear much of anymore–vigilance.
Just how vigilant are you willing to be in order to stay the course that you’ve set for yourself? Will you set your face like flint towards your goal and target, or will you allow any little excuse or concern to sidetrack you from what’s important?
I’m up at 4:00 so I can get this posted and then I’m off to the gym for a workout I’ve already committed to.
I worked last night and didn’t get home until after 10:00. I’m tired this morning and since I’m only two weeks into my new fitness regimen, it would be easy to excuse my early morning workout. Instead, I’m headed out into the frigid January morning air at 5:00 for my workout.
Life and culture wants to push me backwards, undoing all the effort I’ve invested to get to this point. Only by remaining vigilant in all areas of my life am I able to keep rolling forward.
One thought on “Remaining vigilant”
Now I’m going to say something that will cut across the grain of what you’re doing… Sleep. It’s the secret to weight loss. 9-10 hours per night. Fix your life so you’re not running around like crazy, getting the sleep you need, and you’ll find the weight just goes away, 1-2 lbs a week, with no other adjustments.
Given your life over the past year, I would look at stress as having the greatest effect on your weight gain. Your body is generating cortisol, which for men especially causes accumulation right around the navel line. The only way your body has of breaking down and eliminating the cortisol is through sleep, through chemical processes that only occur then. Sleep is key to your body cleaning out toxins; don’t sleep enough, the toxins don’t get cleaned out.
This becomes harder to manage with your physical training goals. Running, swimming and cycling long distances generates a lot of cortisol because your body figures you wouldn’t be running, swiming or cycling so far unless you were in mortal danger. The training regimen you’re on demands sleep, or you’ll find it’s counterproductive, that the fat around your waistline just won’t go away.
Now I’m going to say something that will cut across the grain of what you’re doing… Sleep. It’s the secret to weight loss. 9-10 hours per night. Fix your life so you’re not running around like crazy, getting the sleep you need, and you’ll find the weight just goes away, 1-2 lbs a week, with no other adjustments.
Given your life over the past year, I would look at stress as having the greatest effect on your weight gain. Your body is generating cortisol, which for men especially causes accumulation right around the navel line. The only way your body has of breaking down and eliminating the cortisol is through sleep, through chemical processes that only occur then. Sleep is key to your body cleaning out toxins; don’t sleep enough, the toxins don’t get cleaned out.
This becomes harder to manage with your physical training goals. Running, swimming and cycling long distances generates a lot of cortisol because your body figures you wouldn’t be running, swiming or cycling so far unless you were in mortal danger. The training regimen you’re on demands sleep, or you’ll find it’s counterproductive, that the fat around your waistline just won’t go away.