Author: steve

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Does your significant other sidetrack your fitness goals? (Part 2)

Read part 1.

Okay, so you’ve had that moment, you’ve decided to eat healthy, but your significant other is not on board. That’s fine. Difficult, but fine.

You simply need to eat separate meals. Sorry, but you gotta do it.

Well, not necessarily. You can do it like a friend of mine, and make food for both of you — or all of you, if  you have others in your family — and then you just eat what you can. But that gets old. Fast. For example, if you choose to go low carb, you end up peeling the breading off fried chicken, eating burgers without the buns, having a delicious BLT sandwich — without the bread. You are making do, instead of creating meals that are right for your goals.

You just have to have to get over it, get over the trouble it is, get over the psychological drama that may ensue, and just fix yourself separate meals.

I know, it’s tough. For me, there was a problem with the invisible rift that put between me and my wife. We were dining together, but not really, because I almost always had to have different food than she did. But, you know what? It was only weird for a while. Now it’s normal.

That’s why I say get over it. It’s all psychological. What the heck is wrong with eating what you want to eat, especially if what you want to eat is aimed at creating a healthier you? Sometimes you really need to put yourself first. This is, after all, your life we’re talking about.

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Does your significant other sidetrack your fitness goals?

I often have been sidetracked from my fitness goals by my significant other.

It’s not her fault. Honestly, I don’t expect my wife to make every dietary turn with me in my quest for fitness. That’s not fair to her, now, is it? But, too often I give in. The cupcake is there, and I cave in and eat it.

NO MORE!

I am not sure what changed in me. Perhaps it was reading Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories, which convinced me that sugar is a poison. Perhaps it was watching my waist shrink with my new higher protein, lower carb lifestyle. Perhaps it was just because I had reached the end of my rope and knew I wanted to be fit. Whatever the reason, I swear, you could put a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting right next to me and I would not be tempted even to taste it.

Where are you in your fitness journey? Have you reached a point where you are determined to be fit? Or are you still able to be knocked off track?

I guess it’s kinda like quitting smoking. I tried to quit many times, even quitting for 18 months at one point, only to start back. But the last time I quit, I never again had any temptation to smoke. Right from the first second of that decision. I was done. Hell, I even dated women who smoked, took puffs off their cigarettes (without inhaling), and never restarted.

Breaking ourselves of our laziness and, more importantly, our eating habits, is a lot like breaking ourselves of other addictions. At some point we just say, “Enough is enough!”

How close are you to that point? When you reach it, no one can deter you from it, not even your significant other.

Read part 2.

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Have you had your wake up call?

I was fat for a long time and didn’t even know it. How could that be? I’m not sure.

I was always a thin kid, didn’t start really chubbing out until I hit 30 or so. I kept buying larger waist-sized jeans: 34. 36. 38. 40. 42. 44…. 44!!!! That was a mini-wake-up call, but not definitive.

I remember going to a reunion of people I hadn’t seen in 20 years back in 2003. I saw a friend of mine who had gotten much larger and thought to myself, “Wow, Jeff sure got huge.” I didn’t see the photos of that event until many years later on Facebook, and you know what? I was huger than Jeff! But I didn’t realize it at the time.

My true wake-up call came in 2007, when I saw photos of myself on vacation. I was just large, larger than I thought I should be. 5’10”, 235. That’s obese. Plus, I was on two blood-pressure medications, and my insides would hurt for no apparent reason. I guess the fat was probably squishing my organs.

It was then that I woke up. Gotta lose weight.

Have you had your wake-up call? Have you been buying larger and larger jeans, but not thinking, “Hmmm…. Maybe I need to lose a few pounds”? Maybe you are like I was at one point and just figured — and this makes sense if you look around — “Well, I’m getting older and that automatically means getting fatter.”

WAKE UP!

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Sometimes I just don’t feel like working out

I have been working out with Tony Horton’s P90X and One-On-One DVDs for about a year now. I was, and continue to be, amazed at the differences these workouts have made in my body.

But some days I just don’t feel like working out, and today was one of those days.

I’ve learned over this past year that these “lazy” times appear for different reasons. Today’s reason was an attack of allergies that had given me a huge headache.

I was going to just do Ab Ripper X, which is a 15-minute ab workout, and some yoga, but, man, my head was splitting, so I only did the Ab Ripper X workout, and quit after that.

Do I feel as if I failed because I didn’t get a full workout in today? No. At least I did something, and that counts for a lot in my book. Now, I can’t do that every day, or then I have failed, but is taking a bit of a break for a day all that bad? Absolutely not.

Today I listened to my body, and it was telling me to only do the abs.

Tomorrow will be a different story.

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FitnessFor.Us – What it’s about

I’ve decided to start this website to let people know about the experiences of me, as a regular guy, with fitness and nutrition. I’m not a gym rat. I’m not a bodybuilder. I’m not a low-fat fanatic or a primal eating devotee. I don’t always eat healthy. I drink alcohol and consume caffeine. I live my life, but still want to stay in pretty good shape and keep my body fairly healthy.

This blog will contain my thoughts, struggles, successes, and failures.

I will try to post something here on most days, because there is no point to a blog that is not updated frequently.

I started on a fitness journey a few years ago, and have had varied levels of success. I have learned a lot along the way, and I hope to pass some of that along to you. My journey is not yet complete, nor will it ever be, so I hope you’ll join me, and we can help each other reach our reasonable fitness goals.