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People Focusing On Health January 29, 2007

After my previous article on The Power Of Focus, I’ve discovered a few other Steve Pavlina readers who have chosen ‘health’ as their primary area of fitness:

There were also a few interesting thoughts posted in Steve’s Forum regarding his blog post. Worth checking out if you’re interested.

I’ll post more on this topic in a month or so, and see how things are progressing. Feel free to comment below - make your own public commitment to a single area of focus, or post something to your blog and leave a link.

The Power Of Focus

Rather than setting New Years’ Resolutions and setting myself up for failure from the start, I’m going to try a variation on Steve Pavlina’s suggestion of Setting Your Primary Focus.

Steve’s idea is basically to set a primary focus for the year ahead, and to make everything else secondary to that. For example, last year his primary focus was to improve his financial situation. He fixed up his business structure, improved his financial education, explored new revenue sources, and developed lots of great content for his web site to increase its traffic. As a result, his earnings went from $2-3K/month at the start of the year to $30-40K/month by the end of the year!

I’m focusing on health

For me, the one area of my life that trails all the others is my health. Although I made great improvements last year, I’m still overweight and I’d like to be fitter. No other area of my life nags at me the way this does, so it’s a no-brainer what I need to work on.

I’m going to go a bit shorter-term, though, and make this a quarterly focus rather than a yearly one. I think it’s quite possible for me to reach my goal weight (about 80 kg) and achieve my desired level of fitness (running 10 km without stopping) within 3-6 months. By that time, the monkey will be off my back and I’ll be ready to switch focus to something else (likely something like developing passive income sources).

How does this help?

I’ve had this ‘primary area of focus’ attitude for a week or so now, and I’ve found that it definitely helps me.

I no longer feel guilty about going for a jog when I have work to do on my web sites, family photos to organise and print, or a TV show I want to watch. The jogging always comes first, and I still have plenty of time left to do some other stuff before bedtime. As long as I’ve done something to move forward in my primary area of focus today, I can do other things guilt-free until bedtime.

Desserts, snacks and large greasy meals no longer entice me like they used to. My primary focus is health, and a big part of that is losing weight. It feels wrong at a very basic level to be doing something that goes against your primary focus.

I’ve made the mental decision that nothing else is more important right now than fixing my health. Not money, not relaxing, not surfing the web, not watching TV. A switch has been flipped in my head, and nothing will stop me from reaching my goal.

If there was a way to pay $5,000 to magically be at my target weight and fitness, I’d pay it. Happily. So if I need to spend some extra money on gym membership, running shoes, or healthy food, I’m happy to. If spending time exercising means that I earn less money from my other web sites, miss a few of my favourite TV shows, and read a few less web sites this quarter, that’s just fine by me. At the end of the quarter, I’ll be at my weight and fitness goals. That other stuff just isn’t as important to me right now.

Part of what makes this work is tricking yourself into thinking that the change you’re making is only temporary. It’s similar to what makes the 30 Day Technique work. I don’t really feel deprived of all those other things because I’m only putting them off for a quarter, not permanently removing them from my life. I’ll soon be able to catch up on my TV shows and web sites, enjoy a greasy meal (with a chocolate dessert!), and curl up with a good book.

Soon, but just not today :-).

Weekly Weigh-In 2007-01-28 January 28, 2007

Weight loss chart for 28 January 2007 All time weight loss chart up to 28 January 2007

So, I’m back. And as you can see, I had a blow-out over Christmas! Although, to be fair, about 2 kg of the weight gain is due to using my new (and presumably more accurate!) digital scales.

Still, a few kilos of weight gain is not going to be a major problem. I’ve shifted many times that so far - I know what it takes, and I know how to do it.

I’ve got a little extra short-term motivation, too. A good friend is getting married on February 9th, so I tried on one of my old suits last week. I haven’t been able to wear this suit for 5 years or more, but it now fits (albeit rather tightly around the waist!). I figure if I can lose a couple of kilos over the next two weeks, I should be able to wear those pants comfortably. Let’s see what happens…

In other news, I’ve started jogging at night time. Mornings have been too inconsistent, with G waking up early some days and sleeping in others, and the weather, and tiredness, and a bunch of other pathetic excuses. I also had to give the jogging pram back to its owners, which means I can only walk when I take G out now.

So I’m jogging at night. Usually I go out at about 8 pm, after the kids are all asleep. My wife usually puts on some girly TV show and does a session on the exercise bike, so it’s a good time to get out for a run.

After all the excesses of Christmas and my lack of running lately, I was surprised to find that I can still run 3 km without walking, and I’m still doing it in around 16 minutes. I don’t know why my fitness hasn’t gone backwards, but I’m really pleased!

My usual run is now 7 km (doing 4 minutes running/1 minute walking), which takes me around 45 minutes. If I’m feeling lazy, I can just do a 16-minute 3 km run. I never thought running 3 km would become my ‘lazy’ option! A long run takes up a 1-hour block of time (adding in getting changed and showering), whereas a short run only takes half an hour. Looked at that way, it’s not so hard to fit a run into my usual night-time routine, especially a short one.

I’ll try to post some more stuff soon!