Musings

“Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It’s a state of mind – you could call it character in action.”

– Vince Lombardi

A suitable quote for Superbowl Sunday, and one that highlights some of the key learnings on the project this week.  The ability to deny self (ie, deal with hunger) is critical to any project of self-improvement, and to a well-balanced life.

Observations on the Week

A few observations on the 5th week of this year-long project.

• Making time for exercise and eating healthy means giving up time for other things.
  • There are only 24 hours in a day, and they all get used every day; it’s possible to save a few hours to use later.
• The wise use of time requires as much (or more) self-discipline than waking up and exercising.
  • So many time-wasters are like mosquitos – they suck away time and you don’t feel the itch until after it’s too late!
• It is simultaneously gratifying an frustrating to lose weight.
  • Gratifying, because you’re making progress toward your goal, you feel better, and all the other stuff that’s been written about losing weight.
  • Frustrating, because even though you have a goal (such as the 10×10 in 2010 goal of this project), progress seems…so…painfully…slow.
• Staying busy is something of a blessing, because you don’t notice you’re hungry.

Week 5 Results

• 

  Week 5 - 23 pounds overall weight loss

  Starting Weight: 328 lbs.

• Last Week: 309 lbs.
• This Week: 305 lbs.
• Weight Lost: 4 lbs. (23 pounds overall)

Put another way, the project is 23% of the way toward completion, but is only 10% of the schedule.  As the chart illustrates, the project is substantially ahead of schedule.  If the weight loss were to continue at roughly this pace (it won’t), it would be completed sometime toward the end of July.

Maintaining this pace of weight loss isn’t something I’m chasing.  Unlike the contestants on The Biggest Loser, I’m not medically supervised – this whole project is being done at a reasonable pace, with reasonable effort, integrated into a real daily life.

Comments are closed.