Mastering the Balance: Enjoying Life While Staying Fit and Healthy

As you may remember from earlier posts, my health is vital to me. My #1 goal is to age in good health to enjoy life with my loved ones. I do so by investing in healthy food and daily exercise. Discipline has helped me a lot to get into the daily routine of getting up in the morning and starting with half an hour of yoga or fitness workout. Inspired by the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, I made it as easy as possible for myself to build this habit.

One of the ways to inspect how I'm doing is to notice how I look at my body when I stand in front of the bathroom mirror. I want to feel proud and strong, and as long as I'm not there yet, I know I need to keep going or even step up. I've learned to remain objective and be mindful of my thoughts when looking at myself. The same holds for weighing myself, another routine I do every morning. The number on the scale is just a number, not an opinion or conviction. But it's an essential metric for me to see if my efforts are eventually paying off.

Whereas building a daily routine of daily exercise proved relatively straightforward (and fun!), I was struggling to get my weight down to under 90 kilograms. Every week, I set this goal to break 90. During the week, I was doing well and approaching the 90 breakpoint, but every week, I had to start over again on Mondays, thanks to pleasant weekends. So my wicked question was this: how do you lose weight while enjoying good food and drinks?

As I was dedicated to losing some excess kilograms but unsuccessful for a few months, I conducted several personal investigations to understand what was happening and experiment with different approaches.

Here are a few personal lessons that helped me tackle that question...

Preparation

Better preparation helps as well. Looking at the day ahead, I can make more intelligent choices on what to eat and drink when. For instance, I will skip breakfast when there is a catered lunch at work. When preparing a plate of tapas to enjoy with my wife, I am now more critical about the quantities so I don't set myself up to feel bad about overeating afterward.

Mindset

Instead of feeling frustrated that I wasn't breaking the 90 kg barrier for weeks, I accepted that this might take a little longer (as the universe was already showing me, duh). So, Break 90 became a longer-term goal. As a result of changing my perspective, my mood improved, and I felt more motivated to stay loyal to my intentions.

Focus on outcome

Revisiting the why behind my #1 goal helped me to stay focused in the long run. Hitting a number on a scale is only inspirational once you realize what is at stake. It also helps me make decisions during shopping, when ordering at a restaurant, or when feeling hungry. I'd ask myself: do I want this right now, and does it make me strong and healthy? And if not, can I enjoy it without regret when I treat myself to this? These questions helped me stay loyal to my goal.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps me pay more attention to what and how I eat and drink. I am not watching television or scrolling on my phone when eating. I focus on my meal and enjoy the company at the table. It also helps me observe how full I'm feeling so I can stop when satisfied and before feeling overloaded. Even better, eating mindfully makes me enjoy food even more!

Beliefs

One of the remarkable insights I got was about certain beliefs I had developed over time. For one, I discovered that I believed that I always needed to finish my plate. It's easy to blame this on how I was raised, but sticking to a belief when you find out it doesn't serve you is silly. The same holds for throwing away good food. Eating leftovers reduces waste, but not my waist. Consequently, we reduced the portion sizes when cooking, which is also more sustainable.

Discipline

Discipline helped me to train myself into healthier habits and remain consistent. For instance, no more eating after 8 PM, swapping coffee for water, eating fruit and vegetables as snacks, and not opening a new bottle for one more glass of wine. Small steps are more manageable.

Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most - Abraham Lincoln

The result

At this moment, after a few more weeks, I finally broke 90! I weigh around 89 kg consistently and might even lose a bit more weight. I feel comfortable to keep going because my habits are easy to maintain. My actions and results spark the motivation to continue.

How about you? What do you do when your goal seems out of reach? Do you have any tips or experiences you want to share?

Take care and till next time!

Kind regards,

Herman / Scrumpy Dad

I help people stay loyal to their goals and values and create more happiness for themselves and their loved ones. ??

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