Halfpounder’s Blog

I want to start today’s post with an outstanding quote about motivation and doing:

“Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome.”

-Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr.

Arthur Ashe was a dominant tennis player during his 12-year career between 1968 and 1979. He is considered one of the 21 greatest players in the game. I have never followed tennis, but I remember seeing Arthur Ashe play. He was the Tiger Woods of tennis in his day.

I like the quote because it reminds me that my journey towards good health is a day-by-day process. It’s likely I won’t remember the actual day I weigh in at my goal, but my guess is I will remember this two year journey for the rest of my life.   And once I arrive at my goal weight, my journey isn’t complete. As I have said before, this commitment to good health is for keeps. I won’t be finished until I am laid to rest for my big dirt nap.

Another well known phrase comes instantly to mind “The way to eat a whole elephant is one bite at a time,” and it is certainly appropriate (please forgive me, the whole “eat an elephant” thing is not intended as a pun.) If we think about how much we have to lose or how far we need to go to be more healthy it can be daunting. When I weighed 450 pounds and thought about losing weight I often thought, “why bother.”

Does your journey feel overwhelming? Trust me, you are not alone. As I’ve struggled this past week I have felt like giving up. I’ve been hungry and frustrated and have felt like my world turning upside down and inside out. Why not eat some of that stuffed pizza my son brought over last night? (which by the way I did—and it was ALMOST worth it. The only thing I have to justify now is whether what I ate last night is worth the weight gain I’ll certainly see on the scales—definitely not.) But I haven’t lost sight of my ultimate desire: I want to be more healthy and I know how to get there.

Don’t give up and don’t despair. Our journey towards good health is worth every sacrifice. Make good nutritional choices. Get up off your two-spot and move more. You’ll feel better and like Arthur Ashe suggests, the journey will be much more meaningful than the destination.

To follow up the article I shared yesterday about weight lifting, I read this next piece from Jillian Michaels. It gives very helpful ideas about how to make your exercise more effective.

Have a great day and phenomenal week. I’m going to drag my carcass into physical therapy today. I do not want a gimp knee the rest of my life.

Kirk

Shake It Up
By Jillian Michaels, Losing It with Jillian Michaels, Online
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Ever hear the expression “Nothing changes if nothing changes”? If you do the same resistance routine the same way week after week, the day will come when your body will have adapted to that particular workload. In terms of weight loss, that’s not a good thing. If your body isn’t challenged beyond its comfort zone, you won’t see continual results.

Mixing things up to prevent plateaus doesn’t take much. That’s why every two weeks, my program will challenge you in new ways. Varying the number of reps and sets will constantly surprise the body, which is one way to make sure your workout continues to push you forward.

Apart from changing the number of sets and reps per exercise, you can also change the way you perform a rep. During a weight-lifting exercise, your muscles contract in three distinctly different ways:

• When you lift the weight, your muscles contract positively, or concentrically.
• At the midpoint of the exercise, when you stop moving the weight but you’re still holding it, your muscles contract statically, or isometrically.
• When you lower the weight, your muscles contract negatively, or eccentrically.

You can adjust the way you do your reps by shifting the emphasis among the three forms of muscle contraction, which provide you with three ways to do almost anything in the weight room — and endless ways to switch around your routine to keep it fresh and motivating.

Jillian’s Tip for the Day

Good for the Body, Good for the Mind

We all know that change is good — and that holds true for fitness too! After all, challenging your muscles will help you reach your fitness goals. Varying your routine is also good for your mind! Doing the same thing over and over can get stale and dampen enthusiasm. A change in focus — however slight — will keep you coming back for more.

If your dog is fat, you’re not getting enough exercise.

 

~Unknown~

 

The moment you stop striving for excellence, you have already failed.

 

                                                ~Unknown~

 

 

 

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

 

~Albert Schweitzer~

 

 

Those who think they have no time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.

 

~Edward Stanley~

  

I have to exercise in the morning before my brain figures out what I am doing.

 

~Marsha Doble~

  

If it weren’t for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn’t get any exercise at all.

 

~Joey Adams~

 

 

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

                                                ~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

  

Bad excuses are worse than none!

 

~Thomas Fuller~

  

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal!

                                                ~Henry Ford~

  

Today’s preparation determines tomorrow’s achievements.

 

~Unknown~

  

A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time – pills or stairs.

 

~Joan Welsh~

 

 

Fitness- if it came in a bottle, everybody would have a great body.

 

                                                ~Cher~

 

 

The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, sidestepping responsibility, and pushing their luck!

 

~unknown~

 

 

My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.

 

~Phyllis Diller~

 

 

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental states.

                                                ~Carol Welch~

 

 

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

 

~Jim Ryun~

 

 

If you don’t change what you are doing today, your tomorrow will be no different than yesterday.

                                                ~Unknown~

 

 

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise saves it and preserves it.    

~Plato~

 

 

He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.

 

                                                ~Arabian Proverb~

 

 

Strength is not gained overnight; it is cultivated over time.

 

~David Shaw~

 

An hour of basketball feels like 15 minutes. An hour on the treadmill feels like a weekend in traffic school.

~David Walters~

 

 

Aerobics: a series of strenuous exercises which help convert fats, sugars, and starches into aches, pains, and cramps.

 

~Unknown~

 

 

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental state.

~Carol Welch~

 

 

Nothing will work unless you do.

 

~John Wooden~

  

Yesterday’s failures are today’s seeds that must be diligently planted to be able to abundantly harvest tomorrow’s success.

 

~Anonymous~

 

 

You have thousands of choices and decisions to make everyday. You have the right to not go to the gym, you have the right to follow poor nutritional habits, you have the right to overwork yourself and not get enough sleep. You must accept the fact that your physique has suffered because of the choices that you make everyday.

                                                ~Robert Cheeke~

 

 

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

 

~Beverly Sills~

  

I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.

 

~Elizabeth Cady Stanton~

 

 

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.

 

~Jim Rohn~

 

 

The higher your energy level the more efficient your body. The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results

                                                ~Anthony Robbins~

 

 

The groundwork of all happiness is health.

 

~Leigh Hunt~

 

 

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.

                                                ~Abraham Lincoln~

 

 

To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life.

 

~William Londen~

 

 

True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.

                                                ~Og Mandingo~

 

 

Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man (women).

 

~Thomas Carlyle~

 

 

While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.

                                                ~Ben Franklin~

 

 

The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.

 

~Anne Morriss~

 

 

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.

                                                ~Charles Caleb Colton~

 

 

Our health always seems much more valuable after we lose it.

 

~Unknown~

 

 

I really don’t need buns of steel. I’d be happy with buns of cinnamon.

 

~Ellen Degeneres~

 

 

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.

 

~Paul Dudley White~

 

 

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

 

~La Rochefoucauld~

 

 

Eating healthy is a lifestyle not a diet.

 

~ Gayle Avilla ~

 

 

Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body-it just wears it out.

 

~Norman Mailer~

 

 

Before age 40, good health is a gift from god. After age 40, good health has to be earned.

                                                ~Unknown~

 

 

Someday healthy people are going to feel really stupid, lying in hospital beds dying of nothing.

                                                ~Unknown~

 

 

Exercise is like a combination of psychotherapy, physical therapy, and stress management all concentrated in one 30 minute session.

 

~Dr. Steven Aldana~

 

 

Better to hunt in the fields, for health unbought,

Than fee the doctor for a nauseous drought,

The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;

God never made his work for man to mend.

 

~John Dryden~

  

I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down a street.

 

~Neil Armstrong on jogging, in an interview with Walter Cronkite.~

 

 

Rest is a good thing, but boredom is it’s brother.

 

~Voltaire~

  

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.

 

~Plutarch~

  

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.

 

~Goethe~

 

 

The word aerobics came about when the gym instructors got together and said, “If we are going to charge $10 an hour, we can’t call it jumping up and down.”

 

~Rita Rudner~

 

 

Processed foods not only extend the shelf life, but they extend the waistline as well.

                                                ~Karen Sessions~

 

 

Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork.

 

~English Proverb~

 

 

Life is not living, but living is health.

 

~Martial~

 

Walking 20 minutes can add to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $7000 per month.

 

~Unknown~

 

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

                                    (All of us at one time or another)

 

~Unknown~

 

Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia.

 

~Barbara Ehrenreich~

 

Whenever I feel like exercising, I lie down until the feeling passes.

 

~Robert M. Hutchins~

Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.

 

~Oprah Winfrey~

 

I have to walk early in the morning before my brain figures out what I’m doing.

 

                                                ~Unknown~

 

Every time I start thinking too much about how I look, I just find a Happy Hour and by the time I leave, I look just fine.

 

~Unknown~

The only reason I would take up walking is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

                                                ~Unknown~