Things and People I Thank for My Recent Fitness Successes

After I took possession of my new place in August 2009, I started to half-heartedly pursue my next big goal, which I figured would be necessary to boost me to better things: working toward personal fitness and a healthier lifestyle. However, my motivation for that dwindled down along with the ending of that summer as I made settling in my new condo a priority; directing my time and energy to that challenge instead. I gave thought to it again as that year closed, but then came a series of new energy-sapping incidents, which included a mystery eye infection, a serious betrayal of my trust, an infestation, and a couple of other emergencies, starting in December 2009; lasting right up until August 2010. Again, I attempted a half-hearted effort for better health and fitness during the fall of that year, but my commitment to that bout deteriorated as quickly as the previous time as a new round of adverse things transpired during the early part of winter of that year to again test my wits. I suppose around December 2010, the stress, fear and anger from it all led to a depression, and when January 2011 came, I felt pissed off enough to resolve to get myself back on track with things, no matter what else came, no matter how badly things got, no matter how I felt about it all, or how things ended up. What I really needed to do was get in a headspace where I tune into some good, sound motivators. I could credit some stuff like walking my dog more, or biking more to save gas; but having more recreational time with my dog, and living greener and saving money are things that I like to do. The truly more powerful motivators are things that get you off your ass, to make you face up to the stuff of life that you don't want or like to do and force you to cross barriers to bring you to something better in the long run. Here is what I would consider to be the top ten of them (in no particular order) since the beginning of January of this year right up to now.

1. The Threat of Cancer – Perhaps it's strange to mention this as something to be thankful for, but it's true. Part of the thing that was giving me so much grief through the winter of 2010/2011 was a nagging, gnawing sensation around the left side of my lower abdomen. Sometimes it was just a mild discomfort, other times the intensity of the migrating pain felt like it could put me on the floor, especially when I felt it reaching right down into my groin. When it came to be that intense, I thought it could be prostate problems, which seem to run in the family. Weird fluctuations in my weight, energy and appetite levels occurred as well. I got checked out in my upcoming physical, and some freakish numbers concerning my pancreatic enzyme activity sent up warning flags for my doctor. More tests were issued. My diagnosis turned out to be appearances of haemangiomas, basically tumours growing around my blood vessels, somewhere in my abdomen. They are assumed to be around the vicinity of my pancreas, causing some abnormal pancreatic enzyme production. For now, all this stuff is speculated to be benign, but this was shocking news to hear at first; I vowed that I was not going to allow myself to get sicker than this. I was not, through my own ignorance, going to set the stage to let things progress or worsen to a greater state or chance of getting pancreatic cancer. This is probably the greatest primary motivator for taking the actions that I have so far, for living a less toxic lifestyle, getting more active, and losing some excess weight. I've been feeling a lot less pain now ever since doing all this.
   
2. MJ – My best friend throughout all of this. I've watched her progress onward and upward with her challenge of getting healthier. She still managed to do it all while struggling through a time of recuperating from past physical injuries. That has been inspirational for me. She has been supportive, and sharing with me things that have worked for her, and gifted me some stuff that helped set me on my path. She reminds me to stay disciplined. She is the M, to my inner 007 (see next point).
   
3. The Craig Plan – No, I'm not talking about the friggin' Jenny Craig Plan. I'm talking about...the Daniel Craig plan. The reasons are numerous as to why I chose this route to follow which flow into a separate topic all unto itself, so I'll just hyperlink this point to another blog entry so you can read at your leisure about my Fitness Role Model.
   
4. Men's Health Magazine- A great publication to help get an average guy like me started off with some basic fundamentals. Several of the workout techniques are doable without having to go to a gym. This was perfect for me for beginning some strength training as I started off in the middle of winter; avoiding wasting time with warming up a vehicle and dragging a change of clothes around elsewhere for much of the week. My only complaint of this publication is that most of the material seems to be targeted to guys between the mid twenties through to the mid thirties age-wise.
   
5. Tim Ferriss- Men's Health Magazine provided me with endless options; Tim Ferriss is the guy who helped narrow them down for me through his book The Four Hour Body. I don't have a lot of time throughout a typical day to devote purely to diet and exercise. His book helped to shatter a lot of illusions as to what I would need in terms of time and other resources to achieve my fitness goals. The most valuable lessons I gleaned from Tim's book was the power of scaling things down to MED (minimal effective dose), and bringing to mind the effectiveness of Kaizen (big gains made by using small, cumulative changes and improvements). I like his general take on life too, and I feel that stuff in his other writings are going to have a big effect on the future I chose to create for myself.
   
6. InBody 230 – This is a body composition analyzer. I needed feedback as to where to start from, and what acceptable for me in terms of muscle mass, body fat percentage, and bone density, and what is realistic for me to achieve through whatever fitness efforts I do. This unit tests all of that for you. When I first got tested, I was shocked to see just how close I was to getting where I felt it was good to be health-wise. I'm curious as to what the next readout will tell me.
   
7. Orthotics – The most useful activity that has helped me to trim and burn off most of the excess poundage, by far, has to be the jogging. However, the problem before was that, for the greater part of my life due to certain foot deformities, I wasn't ever able to run very fast or far without extreme shin splints, shock to my knees, or other debilitating cramps and foot pain. It wasn't until about five years ago, when I finally went to a proper podiatrist to get my step gauged and measured for getting fitted for a suitable orthotic appliance. I was told straight off that if I continued walking without them, I may be using a cane or crutches by the age of 50 because of all the excess joint wear my particular deviations in my step were causing. If someone told me five years ago that someday I'd be able to run past fifteen, or even past five kilometres, I would have laughed or scoffed at them. I wish I would have had the sense to get these things earlier in my life.
   
8. Nike +/Apple Running Sensor –"What gets measured gets managed", was one salient thing for me that I saw quoted in Tim Ferriss's aforementioned book. That is very much true for me, especially when I'm doing both the measuring and managing. I find being able to track and monitor my own performance with some tool very empowering. I hate it when other people are involved, looming over my shoulder, and tallying some score through conditions of which I'm not in control. That greatly annoys me. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Nike and Apple, for their development of the tracking sensor which signals into my iTouch, and records my statistics and progress during my runs. I set it then forget it, there's no subjective guessing of performance, and no chance of cheating the system. It gives me feedback through the headphones as to anything I want tracked for myself (distance, time, calories burned). Whenever I sync my iTouch and recharge it, the results are automatically uploaded to the Nike+ website. The site also allows you to plan and create maps of any running course you're thinking of attempting. It has options for setting goals, on any dimension of running you can think of (speed, distance, frequency, calories burned, etc.). It's a terrific thing, especially if you are an analytical nerd attempting something athletic, like me.
   
9. ITunes – Just running alone would be too boring without any good music, or motivational lectures/podcasts to listen to. I custom programme my own playlists for my stints of running. Here are a few tracks I use. Through iTunes, I also have downloaded some useful calorie monitoring and diet/fitness apps, like My Fitness Pal, and various other exercise logs. Again, if this weren't available, the inner nerd in me would never allow myself to get motivated for fitness at all.
   
10. Larry Winget – Finally, I get to mention the toughest, hard-nosed, in-your-face, put-a-cowboy boot-up-your-ass, motivator out of all of these I've listed. Actually, Larry Winget is not what you would call a true motivational speaker/writer. He is, more accurately, what he is self-acclaimed to be... an irritational speaker. Let me warn you now, if the help you want for facing hard reality and dealing with life's big problems is the kind that's all fuzzy and cutesy; wrapped up in sweet, politically correct language and tender words, then you sure as hell won't get it from a man who has written books titled, People are Idiots, and I Can Prove It, and Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get A Life!. I have some of the literature and audio books of this man. He talks loud and boldly, he dresses even more so. He is direct. He can be obnoxious. He will be argumentative. He wouldn't care if he made you cry as he lambasted you about your very personal flaws and deficits (in fact, he'd probably love to see that happen). He does his damnedest to bury the truth down deep inside your skull, like a madman wielding a hatchet, about what your delusions and self-defeating behaviours are, what they are doing to you, and how you have failed to do anything so far about them. He is no hypocrite. He freely confesses his own screw ups, and shares the hard lessons that he went through to set himself back on the road to success. The only absolving feature about him, that keeps him from being branded as a purely and plainly mean son of a bitch, is that after all the criticisms he makes he also presents and shares solutions and practical steps toward action. Indeed, he does come through with sharing practical advice; it's just that using brutal honesty for getting you so irritated about the mess you've made for yourself is Larry's style, and he sees it as an important step for you to do to make damn good and certain that you'll want to get out of it, and never screw up that way again. Larry genuinely would like to see all people be successful and do better for themselves; he just won't bullshit you about what it takes to achieve it, i.e. good old-fashioned hard work. In regard to health, work, money, and lifestyle, Larry uses the naked truth to put a Kung Fu grip on your stubborn parts of your psyche that are left immersed in the toilet of denial, and then he'll bitchslap you back into reality with some good rhetoric of logic and common sense. Goddamn it, I love this guy! It's his method of tactical questioning that really enthrals me. Whenever I'm put into the position of having to help people realize some facts about the consequences of what their ignorance or poor conduct is doing to themselves and others around them I, at first, try to be polite, kind, and tactful in addressing them about it. However, if they fail to accept or acknowledge that approach for the first time (or, Good God, sometimes even a second time!) then I get into a state of what I term as "going Winget on their ass". For those times when my own positive, polite, tactful self-talk fails to encourage me to do the right thing, I imagine what drill sergeant Larry would be saying to me if he had the chance to. It tends to at least get me moving in a better direction. For myself, along with using the 007 attitude, taking hold of Larry's approach and using it on my own self has helped me to be disciplined enough to fix some big problems, and to gain the personal fitness milestones and successes that I have made.