Welcome to my weekly Operation Melt update where I share progress updates from my continued fitness journey and the important lessons it is teaching me about life.
Inspiration in Unlikely Places
I was watching Men In Black this week and a line that I had heard hundreds of times jumped out at me in a whole new way.
The two agents had just finished chasing an alien when one agent came to the conclusion that it was time for him to retire. Then he looked longingly at the sky and said the line.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they? The stars. We never just look anymore.”
He had the realization that, because the stars are a sign of their work, they never just look and appreciate their beauty anymore.
They weren’t fun anymore.
Three Years of Work
I am more than three years into my fitness journey. This means three years of hard work and tracking my activities.
- For three years, everything I have eaten or drank has been logged, tracked and evaluated in the context of the rest of my day. Then every day evaluated to determine if it was a win or a loss.
- For three years, every walk or run has been tracked, pace monitored, calorie burn tracked and evaluated to determine if I am making progress.
- For most of the three years I have closely monitored my weight and every increase or decrease evaluated to determine why.
Essentially, for three years, things that most people take for granted in their lives every day have become a form of work for me. I went from disregarding these things to making them my focus, to them becoming my hobby and then becoming an odd work/hobby mix.
Not Fun Anymore?
Because eating, walking and running feel a little like work to me, I don’t always have fun with them. But I have started making some changes to help make sure that I still have fun.
On a few occasions lately, I have gone for a walk and I haven’t tracked it as exercise using my fitness tracker. One example was when my wife, Liz, and I went out walking one evening this week to try to find the comet that is visible in the sky. We didn’t see that, but we did see both a raccoon and a skunk in our city neighborhood.
On my first day of vacation, I allowed myself to go way over my daily calorie target. This included Mexican food and margaritas for lunch and pizza and wine for dinner. This was on a day with almost no exercise.
During my average walk or run, I try to listen to inspirational or funny things to keep it light. I also try to stay in tune with my surroundings and environment by looking for cool things to take pictures of while I am out.
Plus, as my long-time readers and social media followers know well, I have never deprived myself of my favorite foods and beverages throughout my journey.
I have done an ok job with not getting burnt out with my journey but I need to continue to remind myself to have fun.
Remember to Have Fun
It is important to keep finding ways to have fun in everything you do, especially the things that feel most like work. Otherwise, you will get burnt out and give up. That’s not the destination that we want for anything that is important to us.
This applies to every aspect of our lives, not just our fitness journey.
When I was a kid and everybody was giving advice on how to choose a career, I heard one piece of advice over and over. People said to look at your favorite hobbies and passions and then figure out how to make them into a career. This advice is really a double-edged sword!
If you take something you really love and turn it into your job you risk wearing out your passion for this thing. You have to keep injecting fun and appropriate breaks into it to keep it fresh and attractive to you.
This same advice applies to lots of other things including your relationships with friends and spouses. When it only feels like work the passion can fade away and that isn’t good for anybody.
Go Have Fun Today!
Do you have a hobby, passion, interest or relationship that is important to you but has started feeling like work? What can you do today to inject some fun into it? Go do it today!
Now, excuse me while I go out for an un-tracked walk while eating a cookie. Then Liz and I will just look at the stars tonight by the lake as we prepare to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary on Tuesday.
I want to hear from you!
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Learn more about how I used project management as a tool for success in my weight loss journey? Pick up your copy of my book Operation Melt: How I Used Life-Changing Project Management to Lose Over 100 Pounds In Under a Year.
About Operation Melt
Operation Melt started as a blog to share my personal transformation and weight loss story. After achieving success with that goal, Operation Melt has evolved into a platform that to help inspire, motivate and equip people to achieve their own personal and professional goals so they can live their best lives. My vision is to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.
