Posts Tagged ‘goals’
4 Hour Body or The Next Crazy Idea
I’m losing weight.
For as long as I can remember, I have been (within 700g of) 78kg. It’s really frustrating. For me.
A couple of months back we tried not eating any grains for an entire month. We both lost weight. We both had more energy and we both think that it was easier to not fly off the handle during that month. I found out about it via Tim Ferriss’ blog and was very happy that we tried it out. Only problem was; we just sort of tried it out; we didn’t measure anything and tried to stick to the plan, but weren’t too phased when we didn’t. Well, Emma did spend a bit of time feeling guilty, but that’s her favourite past-time.
So I have been very interested in Tim’s new book The 4 Hour Body. Great read, I highly recommend it for people who want to see things differently.
So, I’m doing a new experiment:
The Slow Carb Diet
- Avoid “white” carbohydrates (Wheat, Sugar, Potato, Corn, Quinoa)
- Celebrate Festivus once every week (consume as much, of whatever, as you want) [We party on Saturdays]
It’s not easy to follow, and I have paraphrased it down to the fundamentals because Tim makes some great suggestions as rules that are really reiterations of the first rule.
I did this for two weeks, went from 77.9kgs –> 73.9kgs and watched the fluctuations when I deviated from the plan. My body fat is now 6.9%. This part works!
So now, I’m going from Geek to Freak.
Target: 90kgs of raw Ben.
Same basic diet, but lots more protein. I went to the gym today, it was pretty entertaining. I am sure I looked mighty thin in the mirrors-of-self-love lining the long wall. Another fortnight and we’ll see who’s sneering at who, Conan.
So here we are, end of the year and it’s time to check back on the stated objectives and their results. I picked up this idea via The Art of Non-Conformity, although it’s a common enough theme at this time of year.
The high-lights
- Got married!
- WAAPA
- Nine, the musical
- Survived school and The Gum-nuts
Other successes
- Shopping for clothes (in the second hand/recycling boutiques of the world)
- Housing arrangements (We have two, still)
- Conversations on the increase (arguments are on the decline)
- Emma paid off huge chunks of her loan (in fact, it’s all gone now because I was sick of listening to her whinge about how impossible everythingnwas going to be while the loan loomed large above her)
Stuff we hope to learn something from
- Getting hot makes things difficult for us.
- Family is great.
- Just cause you didn’t get the job doesn’t mean your life is over.
Unmentionable things like
- The fact that I still haven’t got around to building the amazing web app I intended to make this time last year.
- Emma is getting shorter, or more precisely, continues to wear flat shoes more often than I would like.
Thinking otherwise is just going to frustrate and confuse us.
For instance, Emma wants to (literally) sing and dance in front of an audience; I do not. How, then, are we “competing with each other to win”? We are not. We can’t, but the pervasive mind set of the masses is pushing, pushing, pushing us to some kind of elusive end goal that can be attained through competition (a race) with the rest of the competitors.
Madness.
Instead of saying, “I want to be happy” try, “I am happy”. End the competition and give yourself the prize, after all, you are the only actual judge that matters.
How long will you take to realise that?
Every now and then I like to think that I am really organized and try to make some sort of plan for my life, or at least the next little bit of my life. It looks like a really good idea on paper and I think I am super awesome for having figured out the secret to happy living but when I try to apply it to real life situations suddenly everything goes askew. I get so caught up in the first thing that goes wrong that I end up throwing the plan out the window completely and can’t move past the sense of failure.
Well that time has come again!
Post wedding I have decided to try and figure out some sort of plan again. I have made a budget of all my income and out-goings and was surprised to find I should actually have a fair bit of money left over at the end of each pay, whereas before I was desperately living from pay-check to pay-check. I have also made a list of things I would like to have achieved or at least be on the way to achieving by the end of the year, personal goals such as auditioning for a new show, finish writing one of my own shows, and paying off my astronomical personal loan.
There will be a lot of work involved, I’m not denying that. Some of my goals will take a little longer than others and some I know I will struggle to achieve but I am going to try something different this time around. I am not going to give up at the first sign of failure, I am going to look for the positive side of things. I am going to put everything I can into these goals. From the simple ones of riding to school everyday, to the difficult ones of putting on a full scale production, I am not going to give up at the first sign of difficulty. If I don’t believe in myself then how can I expect anyone else to. If this is what I want to do then I have to do it, no one else is going to do it for me.
As cliché as it sounds, I am going to think positively and believe in myself.
The results may not be that noticeable at first but even today I feel better for having got out of bed, stopped complaining about how much I hate school and got on with something productive.
Image by IvanClow (flickr)
I used to sing a lot. In fact I used to have a chart where every day I would tick off a new square when I had sung. There was barely a day that went by when I missed practising my singing. Slowly though I stopped practising. At first I thought I had legitimate excuses like:
- I didn’t want to disturb the neighbours
- I had a bit of a cold coming on
- I was tired
- I didn’t have anything to sing
When I looked at my excuses though I started to realise that none of my reasons for not singing were any good at all. It wasn’t that I now hated singing, in fact it was the opposite. I enjoyed singing so much, the sense of freedom it gave me I can’t even describe but here I was not singing! So what happened?
I don’t know. I still don’t know. It was like something in my brain said “You are having too much fun and happiness doing this thing that you love. It can’t possibly last. You should just stop now rather than be told to stop in the future.”
How often do I do this? How often do I stop doing something I love for fear that someone or something will tell me to stop. In order to avoid the failure I just make sure that I fail before I even begin.
Well this week I am dusting off the music books, searching for my singing tapes and warning the neighbours, because I have had enough of making myself unhappy and damn it I want to sing! One of my goals for this year was to sing again and four months in I haven’t done anything about it, until now. So now I am going to try and sing, maybe not every day like before, but at least three times a week to begin with. I’m also not going to be too hard on myself if I do miss a day when I shoud be singing. Rather than punishing myself I’ll keep reminding myself of why I am singing in the first place, because it makes me happy, and in the end that should be all the reason and motivation I need.
Image by . 7 (Flikr)
