Mike’s Daily bREAD 11/14/2012 Topic: New Year’s Resolution

I have never made a New Year Resolution because I know I will not stick to it. It seemed a pointless waste of time.

I never make New Year Resolutions ... why wait? I get on with it now !

Totally agree.

Funny thing is that I made resolutions last year, and I had plans and assigned myself degrees of difficulty.

1) Get to bed at a reasonable time during the week.

Degree of difficulty: Minor

Plan to achieve: I'm going to need to make sure that food is cleaned up and put away and the dishes are in the dishwasher before settling in for TV or reading. I'm up too late now because suddenly it's past 11:00 and I have to deal with the dishes and leftovers before I can go to bed and suddenly it's midnight. However, Poker nights I'm probably going to be getting home too late as a rule, but if I bust, it's time to head home and I can find out later who won. Also no caffiene after 7:00

2) Read more.

Degree of difficulty: medium

Plan to achieve: I'm going to have to figure out a time where the TV goes off and the kindle, or actual book comes out. Maybe 10:00 except mondays. I have actual lunch buddies so reading at lunch is out, at least until the spring when I might decide I'm reading outside anyway and taking an hour lunch instead of a half hour.

I was reading quite a bit until Skyrim and the job, I need to fix that, especially since there's a lot of kindle content I want to borrow available from the NH public libraries.

3) Have a night out with my wife once a month

Degree of difficulty: medium

Plan to achieve: We need to leverage those people who have offered to sit and actually ask them to watch the pumpkin. Dave and Maureen have been very willing to sit unless there's a bruins home game but we should probably spread the asking around a little.

4) Lose weight

Degree of difficulty: Medium to high

I've done this before, the two pictures below were taken less than a year apart (about 11 months), and after I had my gallbladder out 7 years prior to that I went from 263 to 175 in just over a year

Plan to Achieve: There's a bit to it, but first and foremost, The South Beach Diet. It's time to bring back the ingreedient Nazi. No processed flour, no simple carbohydrates, as little bad fat as is possible, splenda rather than sugar, leaner cuts of meat and having healthy snacks between meals so I'm not starving and eating too much.

I'll also have to not have over a dozen beers every weekend at camp and not eat food just because its there.

Finally I'm going to hit the gym on the way home from work maybe 3 or 4 days a week just not until I'm past phase 1 of South Beach. It leaves me pretty wiped until I can add in some fruit and whole grains and I'm doing a LOT of walking at work anyway.

My immediate goal is to get into extra large shirts and then eventually size 38 and below pants (best I've managed in my adult life is 34 and Medium shirts)

5) Keep the weight I lose off.

Degree of Difficulty: Very

This is something I've had issues with my whole life. I took off over 40 pounds when I was 19. I took off almost 100 pounds when I was 27, I took off over 75 pounds when I was 34. Every time I've put it back as I fell back into bad habits I can't let it happen again. Yo-yo dieting is very unhealthy, some say it's less unhealthy to never take the weight off.

Plan to Acheive: I'm still working on it, it will definately involve still exercising and still watching what I eat.

I just really want to be the second guy and not the first. That shirt is in a space bag waiting for me to be wearing that size again.




Current status...

1) I'm not doing as well with this as I would like, mostly because I'm now going to the gym once everyone else is in bed. At least I'm usually in bed by 12:30am

2) I'm doing ok, but I could be doing better but since I will no longer read on the tread mill my amount of reading has been dwindling

3) We've managed this 10 of the 11 months because we will have one this friday night. Next month our daycare is baby sitting all day long on a saturday for super cheap so we will be taking that as our "night out" Doing fairly well on this one.

4) I am crushing this. However I've deviated from my original plan. I've added exercise and try to eat healthier but I'm not 100% following SB

5) I've been injured the last few weeks and I lowered my loss rate goals to make up for my reduced exercise time. I think I will be able to do this, but it still hasn't come into play.

Oh, and I totally fit into that shirt now.

JustAl313 you have done excellent! I also want to commend you on your strategy it may make things more possible to stick to the way that you mapped it out. Fantastic Job!

If you don't have a plan, resolutions are just words. It also helps to be able to measure your success and progress. It's why I'll never resolve to be a better person, care more about the environment etc.

Besides how could I be a better person? I'm rockstar awesome now. Oops, perhaps I should resolve to be more humble.

Well said! I stopped making them years ago...funny my decision to take charge of my weight happened around my birthday in May and wasnt a resolution but a required phase in my life. Though I am happy for those who make New Years Resolutions because the will all be in my Zumba class, business WILL be great the months of Jan-Mar, after that they will all forget the resolution they made, LOL But, I will make a little extra chaaaaaaaaachinggggggggggg!!! LOLOL

Back in college my last NYR was to never again make a NYR... and I've kept it! My perfect streaks rivals that of The Undertaker's victories at WrestleMania! :laugh: