My Best Life

Recently, some of you may have been watching the Oprah special series on making your life the best it can be starting this year. So have I and in some ways its made re-evaluate my life's direction yet again. Yes, you read the name of the author of this post correctly - that would be me, Grant, the guy. Locally, we have a station that rebroadcasts the Oprah show at around 9:00pm and Stacie has been (perhaps cunningly so) making sure that its on when I'm in the room. So, honey, if you were trying to send me a message, it arrived. ;)

But, back to the best life and re-evaluating. The longer my life goes, the more I am coming to understand what is meant by building line-upon-line. Everytime I start to get things in order, something else unravels (this blog being the perfect example). Just when I was really getting into the habit of posting and doing well life kinda fell apart in some other aspects and I was forced to re-balance my time and priorities. The result? I'm back up in weight almost 15 pounds from where I was. That puts me with a total loss for 2008 of like 7 pounds. So, a gain, but not much of one. Part of the year, I feel I was living my best life. Part not so much. So, welcome back to me and to you.

Last year a lot of my posts and my focus were on getting my life healthy. This year will be no different in terms of health, but it will be different in terms of focus. This year is about peace. Happiness can sometimes be transitory, but I believe that peace is eternal and when we have it, we can keep it. I have not been at peace with my own health recently and I've started to change that. The thing that will remain the same - I will still be using calorie counting as my "diet" methodology and I'm going back to the strictest sense by weighing out everything I eat that doesn't come in pre-determined sizes. My exercise will be changing however.

Last year, I started on a quest for 100 consecutive pushups and running a 5K. Those got off track when I figured out I had a sinus infection and the pushups where giving me seriously bad headaches when performed for too long. The 5K went better but was still not completed. I got up to about 2 miles before "seasonal sickness" set in (AKA Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas). These were intended to give me a functional base from which I was going to start practicing Parkour. If you have no idea what that is, a simple Google or YouTube search should end all misunderstanding. ;)

Why Parkour? Because I feel it is the physical expression of my own mental directive. I am inherently a problem-solver. It's why I gravitated to the career I did, it's why I attach myself to projects I enjoy, it's why I hardly ever pay full price for anything, it's part of why I am me. Parkour has a philosophy in much the way martial arts do - a set of guiding priciples that provide both framework and boundary for the practice. That philosophy is about overcoming obstacles, of finding a creative way to make a path and thinking outside the standard and established ways of moving through this world.

Is It Okay If I Just Cry Real Soft?

So, I was getting ready to do my push ups on Wednesday evening all resolved to do the lower intensity level as I start week 2 of the push up challenge. And wouldn't you know it? The plan specifically DOES NOT LET YOU! I was so flabbergasted! It says specifically to "not cut corners" which I felt left me no choice.

So I started week 2 of torture. And you know what? Mentally, it's like I made it over the hurdle. Forcing myself to keep going and using the mental discipline to stick to the plan suddenly made it easier. No, the exercise itself didn't get any easier, but it became easier to force my body to keep going, having the mental stamina to keep going on.

I think it had to do with a class that Stacie and I are taking right now to learn about home finances. In the class recently there has been a lot of talk about the idea of personal integrity as a financial skill - integrity to stick to your budget, integrity to talk to your spouse of money and be truthful with you feelings, integrity to keep savings goals, integrity to not splurge.

So, I ask you faithful readers - appears to be only two at this point ;) - do you feel you have the personal integrity to keep your fitness promises to yourself?

Or are you just a liar?



Harsh. Yep. Every time you wimp out, you are a liar. Did that wake you up? Are you angry now? Good. Hold on to that for just a second.

That is the thought that went through my head when I found myself trying to decide if I kept moving forward on the push up plan. You see, I made a promise to myself about getting fit. I made it to Stacie. I made it to the world when I posted it on this blog. I committed myself to reaching certain goals in a certain amount of time using certain plans. And there I was, re-reading the rules and realizing that if I backed down, I was nothing more than a liar. I didn't even have enough integrity to keep a promise to myself.

Now, that's not to say we should try to keep goals that are impossible or that potentially could hurt us. But see, each of the plans I was following - one for running and one for push ups - have ways of adjusting the plan to meet my needs. The running plan says to "jog" - it doesn't specify how fast a jog should be, but leaves it up to me to scale to my abilities. The push up plan says do a certain number of push ups per set, but it lets me vary how much rest time comes between the sets. These variances allow me to adapt these plans to make them possible/achievable for me at this time. However, at the same time they force me to be honest about the weaknesses that I have.

And that is the mental hurdle I cleared, the obstacle that was in my path. So what if I can't do the push ups perfectly or don't run the 5K I'm planning in under 22 minutes? The goal was to run the 5K and finish and do 100 consecutive push ups. So long as I do my best to accomplish those, I have won. I have kept my honor. I have learned to workout with integrity.

So, again, without beating up on yourselves, I ask you - do you have the personal integrity to keep those fitness promises? And if not, what do you need to do to change that?

I realize now that I have not had the personal integrity I need to keep getting fit, especially not in the food department as Stacie will mightily testify to my midnight snacking weakness. Where then does that leave me?

Remember that email about Alma the Younger and repenting and not getting converted all in one go? Take some time to repent and fix things, then move on. Because that's all I or you can do.

Title: OneHundredPushUps - Day 1; Subtitle: OUCH!

Well, I will not be so confident in my push up abilities any longer. Stacie will certainly confirm that I got pretty beat up last night trying to do the first night's work out for the OneHundredPushUps challenge. And I am definitely feeling it today. Over all a good first work out - humbling maybe, but good.

Now, I admit that I am one of those people for whom reaching individual goals is much easier than maintaining something I already do. If I set a goal to do 100 hundred push ups, then I'll do it. But after I've reached that goal, if I don't have something set up and ready to go for the next round I'll just revert back to my old, wicked, flabby ways. I'm just really horrible at maintaining. Remember how I said I thought I could continue using diet to keep loosing weight? Fat chance of that (no pun intended). For some reason, the pain of last night's efforts really focused my mind an helped me admit that I'm just human sometimes.

So, new goal - I will weight at or less than 200lbs by the time this six month period is over. There. Hah. Now I've gone and done it. I've committed myself.

Oh boy...what have I done.? This is probably going to hurt. More.

Talk about a Break!

Well, it was summer and I guess I got so busy doing work that I forgot to have some fun to. (Wait, does that seem backwards to anyone else? Oh well...)

So, I'm getting back into the swing of things with two new challenges for myself. Anyone is welcome to come along. Back in February, my goal was about loosing weight and I reached my goal, though barely. My goal was to lose enough weight to fit back into some pants we had bought for me to go to work in. I fit into them, but snuggly. So I still have little bit more to lose. However, I also told Stacie that the first 6 months for me were only about loosing weight, to learn how to control what I ate.

I freely admit that in the last 4 weeks, I've been horrible. Yet, even with that horrible eating, I only gained back 5 pounds and I put the kabosh on that this week. So, I've changed enough of my lifestyle the things are working and apparently made it enough of a habit that binging still only results in a few pounds upswing.

Now, the next six months are about getting fit and I've chosen two standard measures of fitness that many of you will recognize from your gym years in middle school:

1. Running - I want to run in races again. Not to win, just to run. That's the only part I like about running - races with other people. And the Tulsa area was always a good place for races. The training regime has been provided courtesy of Cool Running's Couch-to-5K Running plan (Found here - http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml). My goal is to complete a 5K race in the next 6-8 weeks and I'll be starting as soon as my new shoes arrive which should hopefully be tomorrow. That means I have two potential runs I could try for - the annual Tulsa Run on Oct. 25 and the Run for Life~Walk For Adoption on Nov. 9. I am really shooting for the Tulsa Run just because it's the Tulsa Run which is awesome!
2. Pushups - Yep, that old nasty pushup is back and I've chosen a doozy of a challenge: 100 consecutive pushups! The challenge and training routine come from OneHundredPushups (http://hundredpushups.com) who claim they can have you doing 100 pushups in 6 weeks. I'll be starting that today to make sure I don't overlap on running days.
   

Now, I know that looks a little overboard, but I'm really giving myself 6 months not 6 weeks to get these both done. Yeah, I'd really like to run the Tulsa Run, but if it doesn't work out, I'll be ready for next year's 15K instead. And for the 100 pushups, once I reach that goal I'll be moving on to other stuff. But who am I to complain if I do get them done that soon? If so I'll have to post some new goals. I like that both of these will be working different areas of the body and give me a good foundation from which to build other goals. In all honesty, I will be doing rows and back exercises to help balance the workout I will be getting from the pushups so I don't get too lopsided so that may pull a bit of stamina away while trying to do the pushups.

So, thosre are my new goals. Come along for the madness if you dare.

New Goals

So....I didn't quite make it to the finish but I was really close I missed 3 days of the workout goal...

Now I am back it is time to start another goal. I hope that this challenge will get others committed too...Please let me know. I seem to do better when I am competing with someone. I have decided I am going to work out 30 min 6 times a week for 12 weeks. Who is going to join me? Ann? Andrea? Grant? Tricia? Mom A? Mom G? Dad A? Leroy? Linds? Tam? All of you? Thanks for committing!!!

Goals Update

Well, Stacie already told you where her goals were for getting in shape, and what she gets if she does it. I guess today's a good day to do mine so that I can also mention what this week's goals are.

My goal is to loose 6-8 inches off my waist and be running 5k's again within 6 months. I haven't set how many I want to run, and think I need to, but a decent number at least. My reward will be the Canon Digital Rebel XTi DSLR camera and one lens.

For this week, since I'm already seeing what the problems are, my goals are to have some kind of exercise during the day (walking the shop floor, desk push-ups, whatever), getting plenty of water (at least 2 of my Styrofoam cups worth for every snack and meal), and avoid the midnight munchies.

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