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Weight Loss Exercise

How to Stop Overwhelm and Get To Your Goals

Sometimes we want to act and we will take the long view and allow external issues to hold us back. I have been running into this lately and see it as something that use to stop me but now I try to compartmentalise stuff so that I can keep everything I can control on track.

The issue right now in our house is our upcoming Kidney March.

Kidney March History

A few months ago we signed up to do the Alberta Kideny March. This is a 100 kilometer walk that raises money and awareness for Kidney research for people like our daughter that face a kidney transplant.

When we signed up I was a bit slow getting started, it was a few months away, I knew that I had stuff coming up now, I had training walks to eventually do and fundraising. My wife on the other hand started fundraising and having success with it immediately and pulled me out the door for some training walks.

Now after a couple or three months of not doing anything about our Kideny March stuff my wife is suddenly nervous. We have to raise more money, what will we do with the kids that weekend?, my stomach problems are bad, we haven’t trained enough. All of these issues and even a couple more problems are in her way while my procrastination finally stopped and I have started doing longer training walks and know that I will definitely be ready for three days of 30+ kilometer walks.

With all of my wifes fears heading towards us I just want to walk and get ready. She isn’t there yet, but she is close

How to Handle Personal Projects

personal-planningWe had a long talk last night and there are a few things we can do. We can handle each of our outstanding issues separately and look at these as single issues, not all intertwined as one giant project.

I hope that now that my wife is onside with this that we can start moving forward but I have to admit that in this light I am looking pretty good which is not really fair. I am always the one turning everything into a ball of problems and not breaking things out and can never move forward until I untangle feelings, fears, problems, and possible solutions to try and fix everything.

I know I am not the only one that does this, it must be common but really so often we will feel the need to straighten everything out before we take action.

  • I can’t fix my diet until I go shopping again and finish the food in the house and find the perfect diet for me
  • I can’t get in shape until I join a gym and find a trainer and schedule to workout and the perfect workout routine
  • I can’t look for another job until I find my purpose and passions, and get training, and acceptable knowledge and build out my social network
  • I will not write a book until I have researched the subject thoroughly, found a writing coach and researched successful writers
  • I can’t, I need, I want, I have to get it together

Does this sound like you? I know it often sounds like me. I overanalyze most situations until I feel I am ready and so often we do not even foresee the actual problems that will come up in real life. Usually I make the issues that would come up as far more insurmountable then they really are.

Take First Actions

The real secret to success in most things is the first action. Once you take that action you can see what the next action should be and even if you have not prepared for what is coming up later you don’t have to have a fix until later anyway.

When I first looked at the Getting Things Done system I, like a lot of others, didn’t like the lack of planning for projects. When you look though now at what I am talking about with just worrying about the next step then it makes things work a lot better.

Do you do this as well? Not act until everything is ready?

Try doing this yourself, make a list of all the things that you need or want to get done and look at the first step. I can tell you that when you take that first step all the pressure feels like it is off. I have seen the September 6th date for the start of the Kidney March and just shook my head. Once I started my training in earnest though I now feel a heck of a lot better. I can now see what kind of training that I need to do so the pressure is off. I know that I can get these training sessions in so the pressure is off. I know for me the only other part is the fundraising and I can find the time for that so the pressure is off.

If we look back at the issues my wife is worries it is the same thing. Start fundraising again and ask for donations. Call some people to find a place for the kids for a couple days. Go to the doctor for some antibiotics for the stomach issues. And go for some training walks to see how close she is for being ready to walk. All have a next step.

I hope this post gets you mind churning a bit. I bet you, just like me, have a lot of outstanding things that you have been holding off on maybe for months or years that you can finally start and get on the road to finishing.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Can You Lose 25 Pounds in 25 Days?


Have you ever thought that you could lose 25 pounds in 25 days? I am listening to an interview right now by Joel Marion, John Romaniello and Vince Del Monte. These guys are three of the top experts in getting fit and losing weight today.

Can You Lose 25 Pounds in 25 Days?

What these three guys are talking about is really wide ranging but mostly it is around the idea of one of the guys sisters losing 25 pounds in 25 days ahead of her wedding. This interview is really cool for no other reason than it is full of rambling and stories. Here is what is being covered.

How to Lose 25 Pounds in 25 Days

Intermittent fasting – taking a day off of eating one every few days.

Taking a cheat day once every 5 days – Cheating means that you can eat mostly anything that you want for a day.

Working out on a fasting day – I have never worked out on an empty stomach and these guys are saying that it is really great and the workouts are really good.

How to Lose 25 Pounds fast – There is no way it seems that you can lose a pound a day for any length of time.

Depleting Glycogen – This is the energy sitting in your liver and muscles and this should help you lose weight by not retaining fat on your cheat days.

Cycled Eating – You eat for a few days and then cheat. They have added the fasting day after though.

Well the reason that these guys are talking about this is because Joel Marion is going to be launching a new weight loss program called The Extreme Fat Loss Diet – That is a link to a free ebook. I am always intrigued by these diets as they come out so watching the run up to the diet and it seems like doing the intermittent fasting, cycled eating, workouts on fasting days and more stuff is really great.

I will do a full review of the program sometime in the next few days but this really looks like something interesting. Whether you lose 25 pounds in 25 days is up to you.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Change your life with a bunch of little questions


If you want to make changes in your life you need to look at two places, where you are today and where you want to be in the future. The trouble with these two questions is that they are far too wide ranging, are these really fair questions or is there an easy way to break them down.

Change your life with a bunch of little questionsI have asked this question of myself many times because it seems that some people make great strides in changing their life and some people seem to be stuck in a rut for years at a time. I myself have occasionally made big changes but my life but just like most people these changes are a bit more random than I would like.

So what is the secret to making changes in your life that are lasting and are what you really want? What do you really want?

Well a little while ago it dawned on me, the real secret is to make the small decisions in all parts of your life and then incorporate those changes.

What do you want in the future

Look through your day and see what you want to get out of it. Go through your weekend and see what you want to get out of it. Go through your workday and see what you want to get out of it. Take a look at your life in general today. How does it look? What are you happy with? What are you disappointed about. Take a day and write these things down (You didn’t think nirvana was a 10 minute process did you?).

Let’s say that you now have a broad idea of what you would like to keep and what you would like to change in your life. This is a very broad list so do not get hung up on it. The list is a general direction that we can look at and then apply then next step to try to put our life into alignment.

A lot of little questions

The next process is 100 questions or so that you need to ask yourself in a deliberate manner from the moment you wake up in the morning until the moment you go to sleep at night. Some of these questions you ask too often and some of these questions you never ask yourself. This is the stuff of your life and once you question it you can make 100 little changes and your life will never be the same

Here is the question list

Morning
What time did you get up?
Should you get up earlier or later?
When you woke up what did you think, and I mean the very first though? Positive or negative?
What did you do next? Shower? Eat? Exercise?
What do you want to do?
Get in shape?
Sleep more?
Organize before work?
How long is the time that you take to get from bed to leaving for work?
Would you like some relaxing time?
Do you get too much relaxing time?
Do you eat at home?
Do you read the paper?
Watch TV?
Listen to the radio?

Going to work
After leaving for work do you stop to eat?
Do you go to a restaurant for breakfast?
Do you have enough time to get to work?
How do you get to work?
Do you take a bus?
Do you drive?
Do you walk?
Do you carpool?
Do you go to the home office/ desk and work?
Once you get to work do you plan your morning?
Surf the net?
Have a meltdown because everything hits you at once?
Look at email?
When you get into work do you eat breakfast?
Do you drink coffee?
Do you have a donut or Danish?

The Workday
As you go through your day at work do you get hit with tasks or do you create your schedule?
Do you go to meetings or set meetings?
Do you allocate your time or do you just get hit with whatever is someones bad planning?
Lunchtime hits, do you go out for lunch?
Did you bring lunch?
What kind of food do you eat?
Do you have lunch at your desk?
Lunch with others?
How long is lunch, 30 minutes? An hour? 2 hours?

After Work
After you get off work do you go straight home?
Out for drinks?
Out to a park?
Out for dinner?
Stay at the office until you are too tired to work?

Evening Schedule
In the evening do you stay home to watch TV?
Do you go out to the bar?
Do you go to a hockey or baseball game?
Do you rent a movie?
Do you have friends over?
Do you go over to other peoples homes to visit?
Do you go to a gym or fitness center?
At night do you read a book?
Watch TV some more?
Fall asleep watching the tube in bed?

Sleep and rest
Now that the day is over do you sleep 6 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours?
Do you get enough sleep?
Do you pack the sleep in on the weekends and sacrifice weekday sleep?

Was that a lot of questions or what? Actually that is only about 63 questions so you could ask a lot more if you would like. Now in answering all of those questions do you think that you have a better method of changing than just using an affirmation of  “I want to lose weight” or thinking about exercising? This method should really give you a better set of ways in which change can be made

Time is on your side

I think that realistically we all have about 16 hours of time between the time we wake up and the time that we go to sleep and even if you go to work for 8 or 10 hours a day this still leaves a lot of time that we have a lot of control over. These are just all of the questions for a weekday. You can probably do the same for the weekends, or planning vacations, or changing jobs to something that you want to do more.

The essential thing is that if you are not happy with the answer to anything in your life then ask yourself more and smaller one or all of the questions what do you do about it? You have the opportunity to change any part of your life and just by asking a lot of small questions you will make those big changes that you want to make but do not know how.

I am sure that this process is the easiest way towards change. If you want to lose weight ask all those eating questions and exercise questions and research a good answer. If you are single and want to change that ask all the questions of the things that you do yourself and get others involved in them. If you want to take more control of your life ask all of those questions for work and home that you let others dictate and answer them the way that you want.

The real key to all this is to go to those first few questions that I said to ask about your life and what you want. The really broad questions are a direction and get hints from all of these little questions as to what you do next to make that big thing happen.

After 40 years of living a happy as well as unhappy life I wish someone had told me to ask as many of these small questions as I have laid out here. I hope that all these little things do in fact change you life into the type of life that you are looking for.