It is about this time in our journey we realized something had to change. Working 50+ hours a week while committing to a healthy lifestyle is difficult. We were also traveling a lot at this time. Life was getting messier and our weight was changing due to that. Despite knowing what we needed to do we weren’t doing it. In this post, we will talk about how we fell into bad habits. We will also talk about how we recognized what needed to happen and how we are adapting.
Our Stress Belongs To Us
We want to recognize that all of us have stressors in our lives. They can be different but we all have them. Our stress came from things like dealing with HR cases, being billable, deadlines, and clients. That may be a lot different stress than being a single parent raising two kids or someone with physical mobility challenges. Though different sources, both are equal in their impact on time and personal health if they create stress. The reality is our stressors are each our own and personal to that person.
We realized for us that those stresses are what drive many of our less-than-desirable behaviors. We realized we were band-aiding problems instead of fixing them. The harder we worked, the more important the playtime. If we had a long day we would compensate by eating out. Eating out led to more gym time to manage weight. The harder the job, the more we wanted playtime on the weekends. The more playtime we spend, the more we ignore the good habits we created and break them.
We Ignored Our Own Advice
We both hit points we didn’t like. It wasn’t just weight. Overall, we realized we were spending money to eat out and do other things we didn’t need to. Read that we were spending money to work harder to spend more money to forget how hard we were working. We recognized the cycle and wanted to put an end to it but needed a catalyst to make it become a hard-line approach again.
It was on a trip to the Badlands in South Dakota that this came to a head. I was well over what I wanted to be for weight. My BMI was 31. I was working out 3 times a week and still thought I was in good shape despite knowing what that number meant. I watched several people struggle to use a ladder on a trail.
Of course, my hubris lied to me and said, ‘You’ve got this, no problem’. I found despite my workouts, which I learned later I had cheated on (which is another post) I didn’t have the joint mobility to do it and injured myself. I spent the rest of my vacation in a lot of pain. It was time for something to give.
What are You Willing to do to Succeed?
We read an article that dealt with the concept of what are you willing to suffer for. The idea of suffering rather than following our passion resonated with us. It sounds grim but it was very positive and life-affirming. It made the point that you can do anything you want if you want to put in the work and suffer to get there. Change isn’t easy and very few things come for free. You can have all the passion in the world, but if you aren’t willing to put in the effort, things probably won’t happen.
This article became a catalyst for our conversations about our future selves. The older we became the more we realized time is finite and we can only be so many things. We had to take a hard look at ourselves in the metaphorical mirror. What we found was we wanted a simpler approach to life, not just a different body shape. We laid out what our future selves were and went to work on them.
Failure is a State of Mind
This reset has led us to many experiments. The good thing is there is no such thing as a failed experiment. Experiments result in data. There is no good or bad with data; data is simply data. By removing the emotional context of the worry of failure, we began to grow more quickly. We started using this approach to life. We got unstuck and changes started. Life started becoming more simplified.
This blog started with articles on weight management as that is where we started. They were a prologue of things we knew and studied, but lost along the way. As we re-engaged and reset in our weight management journey, we have revisited them and learned new things along the way.
Lessons Learned
Those lessons included everything from cooking to beer making. Once we learn a process, we could make connections to ways to capitalize on it for scale. For example, the process of making an emulsion be it for a salad dressing or a hand lotion is the same. Fermentation is the same process whether it be for bread or beer. Ironically, by becoming more simple in our approach, we gained many new skills.
It took a long time to peel the onion of what happened and where we were at. It has been an interesting journey back to discipline and goals. This blog isn’t strictly focused on health and weight management. We will share the experiments we have done in creating our future selves. The hope is that some of these help others in creating their future selves whoever that may be.