In My Journey Updates, you follow along with my journey to get and stay fit and to live my best life.
Are you ready for a dad joke?
I offer you this "dad joke" as a light "amuse-bouche" to entertain your mind before we get serious. My dad joke may be groan-worthy, but it's worth every penny you paid for it, right?
A bear was robbing a bank and told the teller, "Stick em up!" The teller raised her hands and the bear's face turned to an expression of terror. "Aargh… how'd you get so big?!" The bear yelled and ran out the door.
Decisions Are Powerful: Let’s Celebrate a Fantastic One
Treat every small victory like you just won the Super Bowl.
Lewis Howes
Holy crap… it’s been two years since my last post about my personal journey! For a blog that started as a tool to chronicle my journey, that seems like an unreal amount of time. It has been way too long, and the universe (and the calendar) told me this would be an excellent time to talk about my journey.
In today’s post, I will share three things with you:
- Changes to the Operation Melt blog
- Celebrating a big anniversary
- Re-sharing a classic post related to the anniversary
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
This week marked the official start of summer. With the arrival of summer, a few factors will impact the Operation Melt blog.
- My energy: I have a few summer activities and projects that will require some of my attention. I’m not ready to discuss these projects yet, but I want to give them the energy they deserve.
- Your energy: During the summer, you also have unique seasonal activities requiring your attention, so you will probably spend less time reading weekly blogs.
So… I will be changing the cadence of Operation Melt blogs. Instead of publishing new blogs every week, I am moving to a biweekly cadence through the summer. I still plan to publish a monthly Interview with a Goal-Crusher on the first Sunday of the month, with one additional blog in between.
I may fill in the off weeks by re-sharing a classic Operation Melt blog post, but I haven’t decided whether I want to do that.
When fall arrives, I plan to return to my weekly schedule – probably including some upgrades (hinting at summer projects).
My Anniversary
On June 15, 2017, I wrote this after my first doctor’s appointment in more than fifteen years:
I stepped on the scale and….. 325! Holy shit! How in the world did I get to be 325 pounds?! That is very disappointing, frustrating and embarrassing. [Then, the doctor’s advice was] all pretty bad. The worst part about this is that none of the concerns we had discussed so far were things out of my control. They are problems I have caused for myself over the years, and I am the only one to blame…. What am I going to do about all of this? Doing nothing isn’t really an option unless I want to die early like my dad. I need some time to think….
Spoiler: I did A LOT to make changes, and seven years later, I am living a far different life.
Check out this ninety-second video celebrating the seventh anniversary of my decision to transform my life… the birth of Operation Melt!
I ended that quote above with the statement, “I need some time to think.” Well, I thought. Then, I created a plan for what to do that fit who I am. When I launched the Operation Blog, I shared this plan in a post taken from my journal. I want to re-share that post today to commemorate this anniversary.
Let’s do this my way (with some help from Lord Kelvin)
Reposted from 6/18/20217 blog (errors and all)
I have a plan!
1. First off, I am going to start taking action now. It won’t be perfect, it may not be the successful approach, but I am going to start today and I am not going to stop.
2. I am an operations guy to my very core. That is just how I think. So, I am going to build my strategy around a quote from Lord Kelvin (later restated by Peter Drucker) that has worked for me in the past. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Or, stated differently, if I can measure it, I can manage it. That is what I am going to do. I will measure everything! Plus, I will hopefully mix in bit of another scientific principle, the act of measuring something changes its outcome.
3. I am going to embrace technology to aide in measurement. There are thousands of apps for my iPhone that can help. The first app is Apple Health which is built into the iPhone. Plus Apple Health is already tracking steps, stairs climbed, etc. I supplemented with Lose It to track food and drink consumption and My Water to track water intake. I will also start researching fitness trackers like Fitbit. Plus, I am going to look for a wifi-enabled smart scale to track weight.
4. I am going to focus on a few areas that will have the biggest impact. My goal is to have calories in be less than calories burned.
- I will ensure that I am consuming sufficient water for hydration based on my weight and activity level.
- I will ensure that I am reducing calories to a level where I am losing weight but not starving myself.
- I will increase exercise through walking to try to get to the recommended 10,000 steps per day. Hopefully I can find a way to convert to calories burned.
5. I am not going to give up anything I like. I am going to keep drinking and going to bars. I am going to keep eating the things I like (pizza stays, juicy steaks stay, etc.). I a, not going to deprive myself and am not going to let this suck. It has to be a good experience not horrible or it won’t last.
6. I am going to reduce my alcohol intake. I plan to shoot for 2 days per week without alcohol intake at all. Then, the other 5 days will include a reduction. The calorie monitoring will help with this.
7. I am going to embrace an important life hack I have learned about myself to make this work. In the mornings, when I complete my shower, my brain switches into work mode. I am in a rush to get out the door and anything that stands between showered Tony and work is going to get removed. I don’t know why, but that is just how my brain works. So, anything I want to accomplish in the morning has to be before I take my shower. Plus, pre-work morning activities are way more reliably in my control and likely to be completed than any other time of the day. This is something I learned over the years and proved when I started daily journaling in November of 2016. So, in the morning, pre-shower, I will start going for walks as long as weather supports.
8. I am going to share my goal and progress along the way with people around me (Liz, family, friends, coworkers, social media) so the can help hold me accountable. This reduces the likelihood that it will just be a flash in the pan because failure will be very visible.
9. I am going to reduce my work hours by coming in later in the morning. I can reinvest this time for exercise and begin managing stress. I will target arriving 8:30-9 in the morning instead of 7-7:30.
10. I will make this my priority. This is what my mission is right now and other things (like work) are secondary. The good news about that is that this is a project where success in in my control. This will make it a lot better than the perpetual daily failures in my other projects.
So, I have a strategy/plan for how I am going to accomplish my goal. But, I don’t really have a S.M.A.R.T. goal yet. I need to quantify my target – long and short term. Since weight loss is my focus, I will use weight targets as my metrics.
At my height, the BMI chart defines me as obese. I will move from obese to overweight from a BMI perspective at the 225 mark. So, that is my long term goal, to get out of the obese BMI range. So, I guess my long term goal is to lose 100 pounds and get to 225. An average of 2 pounds per week is considered the most aggressive weight loss rate that is considered healthy based on my research. At 2 pounds per week, factoring in some setbacks along the way, I am pretty much looking at a 1 year timeline.
So, my long term goal is… Lose 100 pounds and reach the 225 pound mark by June 18, 2018.
Now, to set some short term goals so I can stay motivated – the bigger you are, the easier it is to lose weight quickly. So, I am going to be more aggressive in the beginning.
- Lose 5 pounds by July 4th
- Lose 10 pounds before vacation, by 7/21
- Lose 25 pounds by Oktoberfest (9/23)
- Lose 50 pounds by Christmas 2017
- Lose 75 pounds by St. Patrick’s day 2018
I will see as I go if those goals are realistic or not. Now, time to get started putting my plan to work!
Do you want to work with me?
My seven-year journey has been amazing; I can’t believe I waited so long to start. What goal or dream are you still keeping in the “someday, maybe” category? Life’s too short, and we eventually run out of “somedays.” I am a master life coach and would be honored to help you turn “someday, maybe” into “today, definitely,” as you start your transformational journey.
I believe in you; let me help YOU believe in you!
Meet Coach Tony
My name is Coach Tony, and I am a coach, author and project manager on a mission. I am working to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.
I almost allowed one of my biggest life goals to die without ever being attempted for forty years. My goal almost died, not of failure but of loneliness. But, I took a risk and leveraged a simple, logical process that helped me wildly exceed my goal.
I transformed my life, and you can do the same with the help of Operation Melt.
Operation Melt provides engaging, practical content and hands-on coaching to inspire, motivate and equip project managers and other left-brained high-achievers to pursue and accomplish their biggest goals.
Breathe new life into your goals
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