When developing new habits there are times that for whatever reason I cannot continue, my daily walk was interrupted the other day by torrential rain. No big deal, until the rain stopped. Getting back on the horse was a very big deal. Motivation can be pretty illusive, the brain can almost instantly conjure many excuses to not continue on course, really the only way through is to put my head down and get on with it, get workout clothes out and put them on one piece at a time, put socks on then shoes, stand up and walk outside. It is harder to not start something once I have already begun doing it.

One of the advantages of keeping a journal containing all of my diet and fitness numbers is the ability to make good decisions when something unexpected happens. Losing a day of walking would impact my weekly numbers but I still end up with more miles this week than last and that is perfectly OK. Progress not perfection as they say.

By logging all of my calories each day I can track whether I am eating too much or not enough. Eventually, with steady hydration, the calories in/out will roughly follow the daily weigh in. This is why it is important to get on the scale first thing in the morning before I eat or drink anything.

Net calories = Calorie intake – (Basic Metabolic Rate + Calories from Work) -1417 = 1280 – (2397 + 300)

Using the equation above I can evaluate where my weight should be week to week and eliminate some confusion caused by water weight variations. It is still not perfect but it will enable me to ignore incorrect assumptions from daily weight numbers.

Just to be clear, I am not writing this blog to tell my readers how to lose weight, I am leading by example, all of the charts that I post and the numbers for workouts, etc. are mine. I am your example, if I am writing about it, rest assured, I am doing it. Any one can write about ‘you can’, I write about ‘I did and you can to, here’s how’. Now, I used to be a real workout junkie, Crossfit addict, Oly lifting geek, but life and work and everything else sort of jammed itself in there and I stopped working out entirely about 4 years ago. And now it is time to get back on that horse and ride like there is no tomorrow, because if I just laze around the house all of the time, there isn’t. The thing is, I can’t motivate you. Only you can do that, it has to be a conscious choice, heck, I can’t even motivate me. When I get up late, or didn’t get really good sleep, or just don’t feel like it, I just have to do it, or it doesn’t get done. Sorry if I said that already but there it is.

I am planning to go up to 3 miles a day every other day next week and every day the week after. This is snail slow progress but it has to be this way to prevent injuries that would bring progress to a grinding halt. Once I get to 3 miles a day I will add cycling to the work mix, I really like it and it will be a new way to burn off some of the padding.