Is Weight Loss Success the Same as Success in the Anything

My brother-in-law turned me onto an ipad app called Stumble Upon, it’s an interesting free app that gives you random websites based on your selection of specific categories or topics.  I’ve picked a handful which include; automobiles, recipes, travel, health, and a few others, while “stumbling” I came across an article posted to the Harvard Business Reviews blog site by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. who is a motivational psychologist, and author of the Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals. 

The title of her article is “Nine things successful people do differently”.  The general content of the article is obvious based on the title, and is geared towards people to achieve success in business; however the principles she points out are universal to success in any endeavor.  I found it interesting that these nine points could almost be a road map to weight loss.

Get specific – meaning generate tangible goals, a concrete purpose, she actually uses the example of weight loss to address her point, she compares the vagueness of “losing weight”, to “losing 5 pounds”.   Just losing weight is an idea, where as losing 5 pounds is a goal. 

Seize the moment to act on your goals – take advantage of the opportunities to make progress towards yours goals, she writes to seize the moment “decide when and where you will take each action you want to take” by being this specific about your actions she says your brain will naturally seize the opportunities when they arise.  So if I create a routine to workout Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7 AM each of these days, my brain will recognize the importance of workouts and perhaps on a Thursday evening I have free time with nothing to do, I will find myself running. 

Know exactly how far you have left to go – without having a measure of how far you are from your goal you cannot make adjustments or determine if what you are doing is taking you towards your goal.  With knowing how much ground you still have to cover how do you know you are moving?  All of you scale haters, for me this is an important tool.

Be a realistic optimist – don’t set yourself up for failure but set yourself up for success, I have to believe that I can lose 200 lbs yet until I undertook this endeavor I didn’t truly understand how difficult it would be, I think until I started putting the work in I didn’t realize the effort needed to make incremental progress.  In planning your weight loss shoot for the stretch goal yet be realistic about your day to day.   

Focus on getting better rather than being good – don’t believe your abilities are fixed; you have to constantly believe that improvement is possible, because it is a necessary belief to know your skills stay fixed if you choose not to work on them.  In building my fitness I am always finding things to improve on, in fact this evening as I type this I am trying to figure out a way to incorporate more running because I hate it, I hate it because I’m not good at it.  I can only become more athletic by improving my weakest skills.  By increasing my athleticism I am going to improve my health and change my body type.

Have grit – commit, commit fully, and don’t turn back.  It’s the dogged pursuit; I will not give up until I see 185 lbs on the scale, even if it kills me.  Think Curt Schilling with blood seeping through his sock on the pitcher’s mound (which was from a tendon he had surgery on that year) he continued to throw strikes and win game 6 of the ALC and lead his team to a World Series, that my friends is the definition of grit.

Build your will power muscle – like all the other areas that you have to improve in weight loss, intentionally work on overcoming temptations.  Make a concerted effort to overcome a food desire which is your downfall, or go to the gym the day that you feel like crap, it’s the ability to do what you are supposed to rather than doing what you’re are used to…

Don’t tempt fate – even with strong will power, don’t put yourself in a situation that will cause undue harm, if you are trying to eliminate refined carbs from your life, when you go out to eat ask them not to bring the bread, even if you are with people who will eat bread, just tell them you would appreciate it if we could keep the bread away.  I assure you no one is going to call you an asshole. 

Focus on what you will do and not what you won’t do – Don’t focus on the bad habits; focus on what changes you will make to eliminate the bad habits.  Dr. Halvoroson points out that studies on thought suppression show that trying to put an idea out of your mind causes it to be more active in your mind. 

Trying to lose weight is difficult, perhaps the reason why most people fail at it, is that no one has taught them how to succeed in other areas of their lives.  It still boils down to what’s in your head.  This entire evolution starts in your head with an idea, which turns into a plan, acting on that plan we create motion and kinetic energy which fuels the belief in the idea, from this belief we act harder and begin to focus on the end goal, the energy growing exponentially, as we make progress towards the goal we forget all the things which held us back, and only focus on those things that propel us forward, forward motion builds momentum, the momentum helps us break pas the moments of frustration and disappointment, by this point the belief is no longer a belief but an eventuality, it’s the new reality. 

Where are you today? 

Can you reach your reality?

Let’s go!

08/01/2011 Daily Recap

In the interest of getting extra sleep I woke up late, and didn’t go to Crossfit until 9:30 AM.  Today’s WoD focused on squats, and leg movements. 

After the warm-up we had to do 3 sets of 5 doing back squats.  I warmed up with relatively light weights, and at the suggestion of the coach Allison started my work sets at 175 lbs. 

The first set of 5 reps at 175 lbs wasn’t that bad yet I wasn’t sure if I should go up to 195 lbs on my second set, after having problems last week attempting too much it made sense to me to go up only 10 lbs to 185 lbs.

After my second set doing 5 reps at 185 lbs I thought I had made the right decision.  I was really focusing on technique, and felt I had done a good set of squats.

After the final set at 195 lbs, I was a bit pissed because I felt that I could have done more weight, if not for running out of time I think I would have done a fourth set at a heavier weight and used the 185 lbs as the start of my work sets. 

Following the squats we went right into the Metcon, which was doing 5 power cleans, 3 front squats, and 1 jerk.  This was my first attempt at doing this type of metcon, so I chose a weight that I was manegable, especially because you are supposed to transition right into each portion of the workout.  Each of three motions had to be done for five rounds.

I am Asian, and allegedly genetically predisposed to be good at math, yet I can’t count, what was supposed to be 5 rounds of work turned into 6 rounds.  I lost count after round 3, and the guy behind me has been going to Crossfit longer than me, so when I finished round 5 I thought no way I could be done before him, so I must only be on number 4.  5:34 for 6 rounds of work. 

Good job Asian guy way to disgrace an entire continent of people, while giving yourself a “bonus” of extra work.

I didn't do the extra cardio, I didn't get home until after 8:00 pm, after walking the dog, writing my blog post, and cleaning up it was time to go to bed to start this all over again tomorrow.  I am thinking it's supposed to be hot as balls out tomorrow, and I won't be able to get to Crossfit until noon ebcause of a Doctors appointment.  Maybe i'll get up early and do the workout at home, so I can work on the running at a fast pace on the treadmill.