It turns out that I haven’t been to a fast food restaurant in a little bit over 12 years.

No, I’m not “lovin’ it” at all.

There are some caveats to that statement, though. First, I do go to Dunkin’ Donuts for bagels with cream cheese and I do go to Chipotle for tacos. In the last 12 years I have gone to places like Baja Fresh (until it almost killed me) and sub shops like Quiznos and Jersey Mike’s. More than those places, though, I frequent local delis, pizzerias, and sub shops because I like helping small business owners with the few bucks that I allocate to eating out each month. I also go to local restaurants including the chain restaurants like Ruby Tuesday’s and the Brick House Tavern and Tap.

In the last 12 years, though, I haven’t had any McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, or any of that type of fast food. For some reason after my junior year of college (back in 2002), I made the decision to stop eating fast food. I distinctly remember driving by the local McDonald’s and thinking about how the burgers that they serve weren’t really burgers at all. Rather, they were mashed together meat parts formed to look like a burger. It made me sick just thinking about it – and this was before all of the stories and books came out about how eating that fake food is substantially worse for you than our society originally thought.

It was around that same time that I stopped drinking soda, too. I used to love drinking Diet Coke and eventually started drinking Diet Sprite (this was just before it became known as Diet Sprite Zero, which is the same formula as Diet Sprite). And then I just randomly stopped drinking the stuff altogether. I didn’t really miss drinking soda since I’m one of the rare people who loves drinking water regularly. Although, just like I have caveats to the comment above about not eating fast food, my one caveat here is that after my gallbladder surgery in July 2005, my doctor did suggest that I drink a little bit of a carbonated beverage each day for a few weeks so the bubbles would float around my stomach and help things move around. With that recommendation, for about a month after my gallbladder was removed I probably drank a shot glass worth of Diet Sprite Zero each day. It wasn’t much at all and most people don’t consider Diet Sprite Zero to be a real soda since it’s essentially carbonated lemon water, but that’s a different discussion.

Over the last dozen years, I have never missed fast food or soda. I have, though, from time to time (once every 3 to 4 years) wondered whether or not it would make a difference if I started consuming this not-quite-real-food again. In the 12 years that I stopped eating this garbage my weight has remained relatively the same give or take 5 pounds, I became diabetic and am on a ridiculous number of medications to control it, and my gallbladder had to be removed. When you experience these negative medical results years after you stop consuming garbage, it does make one wonder what’s the point of it all.

I understand why I should continue to stay away from fast food. There are both ethical reasons (the way that the animals are treated before they’re processed into food) and biological reasons (let’s face it – most of that “food” is really just comprised of chemicals) to stay away from that stuff. However, when it comes to Diet Sprite Zero – I have to believe that drinking that stuff won’t hurt me any more than not drinking it has hurt me (i.e. my becoming diabetic, not losing much weight, and losing my gallbladder).

That is a question that I’ll continue to ponder since I really don’t have a craving for soda and thus I have no real reason to act to find a final answer. I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether it would hurt or harm me. In fact, I might go another 12 years without drinking any soda before I find out.

Why is this person one of my best friends? Well, I don’t really know. Sometimes you just see through all of the addiction and all of the drama that surrounds it and find that you like a person for the human being that they are, right? I guess that’s the root of my friendship with this person – after it’s all said and done, I just like them because they’re a good person at heart.

Stories like this one abound in suburban America. And as a guy who grew up in suburban America, I always wished that there was some type of avenue or route for so many of my friends to have their addictions managed and cared for when they became major problems. And that’s where a group that I recently learned about comes into play: Advanced Health and Education in Eatontown, New Jersey with a specific focus on providing heroin addiction treatment and alcohol rehab, among treatment for other services.

Having a group like Advanced Health and Education in New Jersey is a great option for those of us who know people that really need this type of service. Heroin addiction is running rampant in suburban New Jersey, but particularly in the Jersey Shore area (where I currently live).

Just as Governor Chris Christie mentioned the other day – we need to find ways to help those people in our lives who are addicted to drugs – not continue to lock them up without providing any treatment. Sometimes I wonder what would have become of my friend had they been offered the type of treatment that someone can find at a drug rehab center like Advanced Health and Education. At the very least, that person may not be sitting in a jail cell right now without being provided any treatment for the very real addiction that they suffer from on a daily basis.

If you’re suffering from addiction or if you know someone suffering from addiction or who needs treatment for alcoholism, then consider giving a place like Advanced Health and Education a try. Lord knows it beats the alternative that my friend is suffering through right now.

Sometimes, I’m so jealous of Garfield’s life. This guy just sleeps all day and then wakes up and pounds lasagna.

And when I mention that I want to read more in 2014, I mean that I want to read material on a variety of topics. When I was younger I would read both fiction and non-fiction books just for fun. In the last year, I’ve primarily read non-fiction books for different professional development classes that I’ve been enrolled in. And I coupled those scholarly assignments with additional reading from a variety of blogs, which I think you’ve noticed in my randomly-updated Start the Weekend Right Series. All of the links that I post in the Start the Weekend Right updates come from blogs that I have in my Feedly RSS reader. Feedly has an option where you can bookmark an update from a website for future reading and, increasingly, I’ve been bookmarking articles that deal with sleep.

After reading many of those articles, I think that another one of my not-quite-a-resolutions for 2014 is to learn to be a better sleeper. I’m hesitant to write that my sleeping patterns are horrible, but I am writing this entry at 3:00am on an early Monday morning (I’m off from work this week, so being up this late doesn’t mess up my overall schedule).

Much like other areas of our lives where we know we need to improve, I know that there are certain things that I can do immediately to improve my sleep. For example, I know that if I adjust and recalibrate my diet, then there will be a direct impact on the amount of sleep that I get each night and, more importantly, on the amount of quality sleep that I get each night. Further, I know that if I work out more often during the day (especially in the morning), then my ability to fall asleep at a more decent hour will be improved. As it stands now, I typically sleep between 5 and 6 hours each night. On top of that, I wake up several times each night for different reasons from tossing and turning to going to the bathroom to getting some water to drink. The Harvard Business Review recently published an article about how some men announce how little sleep they get in act of hyper masculinity. I’m not walking down that path by a long shot – I genuinely want more and better sleep.

In 2014, I want to learn more about the causes of my sleep deprivations. The Week suggests that one of the major causes of getting less sleep is that we are exposed to too much light during the evening hours. In my case, this is definitely a problem as I park myself in front of my laptop for a few hours each night to do work to meet different deadlines. The folks over at Inc.com suggest that getting into a regular routine can help a person sleep better. For the last two months or so I’ve gotten into a routine of washing my hands before I go to sleep. This may not sound like a big deal (or it may sound like something that a person should already be doing), but elevating this action to a daily routine has helped me make the mind-body connection that it’s time to lay down and get some rest.

Getting poor sleep certainly is not a good thing for my health, either. As they recently wrote about in The Saturday Evening Post, there are real connections between a lack of quality sleep and an inability to shake off Type 2 Diabetes (which I’ve had for almost 5 years). The Post writes that an optimal amount of sleep to fight off diabetes is between 7 and 9 hours each night – I’m not even close!

There are other parts of the sleep puzzle that I’m looking forward to learning more about in 2014. For example, what affect does one’s circadian rhythm have on their sleep quality? Why is it that I often find myself wanting to doze off behind the wheel both on my way to work and on my way home from work, but not while I’m actually at the office? Does it matter if I hibernate on the weekends to make up for lost sleeping hours during the week? And just what is the real connection between not sleeping enough and gaining weight?

What I’d really like from all of this reading and learning is to be a better sleeper twelve months from now than I am today. Achieving that not-quite-a-resolution would be something worth truly celebrating.

“Getting into debt beyond means of repayment” is ranked No. 5 on the Society of Occupational Medicine’s 2001 “Life Events Inventory,” which ranks the psychosocial stress of 100 life events. “Stress is one of the drivers for health conditions related to cardiovascular disease, allergies, diabetes (and) gastrointestinal disorders,” says [Carole] Stovall. That’s why paying off debt can result in physical healing. “When people pay off debt, they’re going to say ‘My stomach feels better, my heart feels better,'” says Stovall.

Regardless of what my doctor thinks is going on with my body, I’m convinced that my enjoying my return to the gym is directly related to not having a six-figure cloud hanging over my head. Now I workout not just because I need to for my health, but because I actually enjoy the entire working out process. It’s fun!

Eliminating debt is more than just a numbers game. It’s an act of breaking free from difficult past experiences. Debt associated with rough events — such as divorce or a reckless phase in life — is painful to carry around. So when you finally cut that debt from your life, you’ll likely “experience tremendous emotional liberation,” says Dallas-based financial adviser Derrick Kinney.

I guess I’m not the best person to make a comment on this particular outcome of paying off your debt because I don’t really carry around any emotional baggage. How this particular blurb translates to my life is that I can now actively plan and work towards achieving certain life goals that I should have achieved 6 – 8 years ago (for example, buying a permanent residence, building a sufficient retirement fund, and fully funding a just in case savings account). The article actually talks about these types of life goals in the context of buying a house and starting a family, so if you click on the link at the top of this entry, then you can read their take on achieving major life goals for yourself.

When you pay off a big debt, you strengthen your resolve to stay financially solvent. That comes with one important caveat: Your ability to stay out of debt likely depends on how you paid off your debt, says [Derrick] Kinney. If you worked hard to steadily pay off your debt, you likely have practiced discipline to keep your finances in check going forward.

Not only did I work hard to steadily pay off my debt, but I worked hard for years on end to pay off that debt! Even though I had a strong work ethic heading into my major repayment all of those years ago, there is no doubt that my work ethic and determination were both honed during this process. By adding precision to determination I believe I’ve developed a dangerous calculus for those obstacles that may get in my way in the future. There are a lot of ancillary skills that come along with devoting so much time and effort to a successful debt repayment – too many to list here. However, suffice to say that I agree with the point in the blurb above and I believe that my financial discipline is stronger than most individuals my age.

Click on the link above if to read more about the connection between psychology and paying off debt. Enjoy!

In an effort to reduce this mess, I wound up adding to it.

Oh – and all of those realities that prevented me from going to the gym at 5:45am over the last several years… well, they still exist and they are still a problem. I deal with it by getting a little bit less sleep each night and a lot less high quality sleep throughout the week. Again, no one has invented a workout routine made for the honestly busy person or the long commuter, so I just have to do what I can and deal with the consequences (i.e. general exhaustion).

Along with the vague goal of getting healthier, I’ve opted to focus on my health in an attempt to reduce the number of medications that I take on a daily basis. Those medications include 8 pills each morning, a shot in the stomach each morning, and then another pill each night. The picture above is a quick snapshot of four mornings’ worth of pills (minus the shot in the stomach). I should note that 3 of the 8 morning pills are optional (they are my brown-colored multivitamins and the orange turmeric pill). The majority of the remaining 6 pills that I take each day (and the shot) are all related to controlling my Type 2 Diabetes. Since I was diagnosed back in August 2009, I’ve been on a rather unsteady amount of daily medication – sometimes the number of pills has been higher, sometimes it has been lower. And other times the amount of medication that I’m taking changes based on other factors including my weight and level of physical activity.

And it’s those weight and physical activity factors where I can make a real impact on my daily pill intake. So I’ve been working out consistently for the last eight weeks and trying to drop weight, get mildly stronger again, and reduce the amount of medication that I take each day. I bet you’re wondering what the results of that activity are, right?

The results not good.

In addition to having a poor quality of sleep like I noted above, I’ve only lost about 10 pounds. Now granted, I understand that if someone else were to lose 10 pounds, they may have a massive celebration. I get it. For me and my physical state, though, I should have lost 10 pounds in water weight during the first week that I started working out. That didn’t happen. Instead, it took me about eight weeks to drop those 10 pounds and I truly feel that if I stopped working out for a week or so, then those 10 pounds would come rushing back. But that’s just the weight part of the equation. My bigger aggravation and bigger frustration right now is that in addition to only dropping 10 pounds, my doctor decided to increase my daily pills by 1 each morning starting last week.

After having worked out for so many weeks and feeling better and stronger overall, you can’t imagine what my face looked like when my doctor prescribed the additional pill.

What’s worse is that he prescribed it for high blood pressure. My response to that diagnosis was, “What?! I’ve never had high blood pressure. I’ve always had low blood pressure.” And that’s the truth. I (like so many other overweight people) have marveled each of my doctors over the years because my blood pressure has always been low. And then, randomly, my doctor tells me that my blood pressure is high because it tested at 118 over 94? Really? I was at the gym earlier in the day for goodness’ sake!

Very frustrating. For me, working out hasn’t really worked out. I don’t know what the problem is, but I know that buying into the bullshit in the healthcare and gym industries isn’t going to help – my doctor just managed to prove that outright. So where do I go from here? Well, in addition to not losing a substantial amount of weight, disrupting my sleep schedule, and increasing my daily medication I have to admit that I’ve actually enjoyed going back to the gym and lifting weights. My entire workout regime is based around lifting weights and I enjoy that aspect of working out. So I’m going to keep at it, but not because of any health benefits (clearly, I haven’t realized any yet). Instead, I’m going to keep at working out because it’s fun and waking up at that ridiculous hour is now a habit that I wouldn’t mind keeping for the foreseeable future. Why not?

There are dozens of different reasons for why I wasn’t able to get into the gym and maintain my health. And unlike the arrogant, self-important, idiotic blogs out there who go crazy telling people that they are their own worst enemy, I fully realize and accept that nearly every single one of my reasons for delaying the focus on my health was valid. I realize and accept this because I’m a realistic person who understands that not everyone is in a personal, professional, or financial position to drop everything and work out like a maniac every single day. If you read any “health” blogs that tell you that all of your excuses for not working out are bullshit, then I highly recommend that you stop reading that website and find a blog where real people congregate and talk about fitness. For my part, just as I realize that not all excuses are bullshit I also realize that many of the excuses that prevented me from working out in the past are no longer valid.

I go to a gym in the basement of the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown.

And since those restrictions are no longer in place, I recently started going to the gym again on a regular basis. I had to make some big changes in my approach to working out since 2004 and 2005. For example, I lost those 125 pounds by going to the gym once each morning for a swim and then again each night to do either cardio or weightlifting before taking another nighttime swim. Those were probably two of the healthiest years that I had as a young adult and even after losing 125 pounds I was still probably 80 pounds away from the government suggested “healthy” weight for my age and height. Unfortunately, the gym with the massive swimming pool is no longer in business and so swimming is not part of my new workout routine. In fact, I can’t even go to the gym after my workday is over because of other employment and volunteer obligations. And the truth is that the long commute and spending most of my day sitting behind a desk is absolutely exhausting, so I’ve switched my primary workout time to the morning… early in the morning. Very early in the morning! I always woke up early, but now I’m getting up at about 5:00am and leaving to go to the gym at about 5:45am which allows me to workout from about 6:00am until about 7:00am. I’ve found that the hour I give myself in the gym in the morning is all that I really need to get myself pumped up and going for the day.

On that topic, I’ve decided to change up my approach to going to the gym. For instance, instead of trying to find a few free moments to go and work out everyday, I’ve committed myself to going to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday only. Can I go on another day if the feeling hits me? Sure. Why not? Am I crazy if I can’t go on one of those three days each week? Well, I haven’t missed one yet so I don’t know. However, I know that I’ll be in Washington, DC for work next Monday and that I obviously won’t be able to go to the gym that day – so I guess we’ll see! Of course, I’ll probably try to use the gym in the hotel where I’m staying, but that’s another story because some hotel gyms are a total disaster.

The other big change that I’m doing this time around at the gym is I’m moving my focus off of cardio for now. I’m a big guy and one of the reasons why I’m a big guy is because I used to lift a lot of weight when I was in high school. At one point, I was bench pressing 385 pounds and squatting 660 pounds. No normal-sized high school student is able to put up those numbers – especially some 15 years ago when I was doing it before these silly supplements became popular. The only supplement that I needed was the pasta and meatloaf that my Dad used to make for dinner. That’s it! Anyway, I’m a big guy and every time that I’ve attempted to lose weight since those high school days I’ve hyperfocused on doing much more cardio than weight training. I’m not doing that this time for two reasons. First, I always enjoyed lifting weights. Maybe it was because I was always lifting a lot more weight than my peers or maybe it was because I enjoyed the pumped up feeling that you get after a good weight training session. But for whatever reason, I enjoy weightlifting and if I’m going to the gym at 6am, then I’m doing something that I enjoy, period. Second, over the last decade I haven’t been the most successful in losing weight by just sticking to heavy cardio with light lifting except for when I was swimming twice a day. Proper weight training not only builds and works out your muscles (a side effect of which is making it easier to move this big body around each and every day), but it also helps burn calories to aid in weight loss.

If you’re interested in seeing the weightlifting routine that I’m doing, then you can check it out by clicking here. If you scroll down on that page to the Version 2 workout, then you’ll see the routine that I’m using each week. Much different from the approach that I thought I was going to take back in June. What you’ll notice about the workout routine that I’m following is that it is a short workout. I try not to spend any longer than an hour in the gym between lifting the weights that are noted in that Version 2 workout and doing between 10 and 20 minutes of cardio (split with half at the beginning of my workout and half at the end).

Eventually, I’ll move on to an intermediate workout, but not yet. I’m enjoying getting reacquainted with the gym and the different machines that I haven’t used in ages. It’s fun. Once I feel like the gym is a second home again like it used to be, then I’ll begin expanding my “beginner’s workout” into a more intermediate routine (and beyond). And when that time comes I’m sure that I’ll write about it and discuss it here. For now, though, I’m content with the beginner’s routine so don’t look for that entry any time soon.

That’s the update for now. I’ve gone to the gym every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in September. The soreness that comes along with starting to lift weights is all gone and I feel stronger and more able to move around. I’m definitely not close to “mid-season form” (a reference for all of the current and former athletes out there), but I feel good; I feel much better than I did even just a month ago. Will I be able to maintain these Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning workout routines over the long-term? I don’t know for sure, but I know that I’m enjoying them right now. I have no intention of stopping the workouts, so I guess we’ll see how far this thing goes and whether it does anything to move the bar on my health. I have a doctor’s appointment next Friday – so we’ll know soon.

If you have a few free minutes, I encourage you to sit down and read Rollins’ commentary. I think you’ll enjoy it.

I believe that the definition of definition is reinvention.

To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. Completely.

When I was young I had no sense of myself. All I was, was a product of all the fear and humiliation I suffered. Fear of my parents. The humiliation of teachers calling me “garbage can” and telling me I’d be mowing lawns for a living. And the very real terror of my fellow students. I was threatened and beaten up for the color of my skin and my size. I was skinny and clumsy, and when others would tease me I didn’t run home crying, wondering why. I knew all too well. I was there to be antagonized. In sports I was laughed at. A spaz. I was pretty good at boxing but only because the rage that filled my every waking moment made me wild and unpredictable. I fought with some strange fury. The other boys thought I was crazy.

I hated myself all the time. As stupid at it seems now, I wanted to talk like them, dress like them, carry myself with the ease of knowing that I wasn’t going to get pounded in the hallway between classes.

Years passed and I learned to keep it all inside. I only talked to a few boys in my grade. Other losers. Some of them are to this day the greatest people I have ever known. Hang out with a guy who has had his head flushed down a toilet a few times, treat him with respect, and you’ll find a faithful friend forever. But even with friends, school sucked. Teachers gave me hard time. I didn’t think much of them either.

Then came Mr. Pepperman, my adviser. He was a powerfully built Vietnam veteran, and he was scary. No one ever talked out of turn in his class. Once one kid did and Mr. P. lifted him off the ground and pinned him to the blackboard.

Mr. P. could see that I was in bad shape, and one Friday in October he asked me if I had ever worked out with weights. I told him no. He told me that I was going to take some of the money that I had saved and buy a hundred-pound set of weights at Sears. As I left his office, I started to think of things I would say to him on Monday when he asked about the weights that I was not going to buy. Still, it made me feel special. My father never really got that close to caring. On Saturday I bought the weights, but I couldn’t even drag them to my mom’s car. An attendant laughed at me as he put them on a dolly.

Monday came and I was called into Mr. P.’s office after school. He said that he was going to show me how to work out. He was going to put me on a program and start hitting me in the solar plexus in the hallway when I wasn’t looking. When I could take the punch we would know that we were getting somewhere. At no time was I to look at myself in the mirror or tell anyone at school what I was doing.

In the gym he showed me ten basic exercises. I paid more attention than I ever did in any of my classes. I didn’t want to blow it. I went home that night and started right in. Weeks passed, and every once in a while Mr. P. would give me a shot and drop me in the hallway, sending my books flying. The other students didn’t know what to think. More weeks passed, and I was steadily adding new weights to the bar. I could sense the power inside my body growing. I could feel it.

Right before Christmas break I was walking to class, and from out of nowhere Mr. Pepperman appeared and gave me a shot in the chest. I laughed and kept going. He said I could look at myself now. I got home and ran to the bathroom and pulled off my shirt. I saw a body, not just the shell that housed my stomach and my heart. My biceps bulged. My chest had definition. I felt strong. It was the first time I can remember having a sense of myself. I had done something and no one could ever take it away. You couldn’t say **** to me.

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.

It wasn’t until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can’t be as bad as that workout.

I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks lifting weight that my body wasn’t ready for and spent a few months not picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you’re not prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and self-control.

I have never met a truly strong person who didn’t have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone’s shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. It is the difference between bouncers who get off strong-arming people and Mr. Pepperman.

Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the heart.

Yukio Mishima said that he could not entertain the idea of romance if he was not strong. Romance is such a strong and overwhelming passion, a weakened body cannot sustain it for long. I have some of my most romantic thoughts when I am with the Iron. Once I was in love with a woman. I thought about her the most when the pain from a workout was racing through my body. Everything in me wanted her. So much so that sex was only a fraction of my total desire. It was the single most intense love I have ever felt, but she lived far away and I didn’t see her very often. Working out was a healthy way of dealing with the loneliness. To this day, when I work out I usually listen to ballads.

I prefer to work out alone. It enables me to concentrate on the lessons that the Iron has for me. Learning about what you’re made of is always time well spent, and I have found no better teacher. The Iron had taught me how to live.

Life is capable of driving you out of your mind. The way it all comes down these days, it’s some kind of miracle if you’re not insane. People have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole. I see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly. And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the Iron mind.

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind. The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it’s impossible to turn back.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs.

Friends may come and go.

But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

-Henry Rollins

Pretty inspirational stuff, right? I told you so!

I need to get a handle on what, exactly, it is that I’m going to hyperfocus on. Being in “good health” is a goal that can be approached in a general sense (i.e. regularly working out, eating fewer calories) or something that can be approached in a very specific way (i.e. going on a specific diet, using a certain training program in the gym).

I’m not sure which direction I’m going to go in yet – general or specific.

I might start eating a lot more of this stuff if I go on a Paleo Diet.

On the one hand, I’ve been incredibly successful with a general approach to “good health” in the past. As I’ve noted on this blog time and again over the last decade – I once lost 125 pounds over a 6 – 8 month period. I’ve since regained about 100 of those pounds, but I initially lost that weight by taking a very general and yet time consuming approach to getting healthy. When I lost that weight I did a lot of cardio, lifted weights in a unorganized manner (i.e. I knew what I was doing with the weights, but didn’t have set days for lifting certain body parts or regions), and went on a low calorie diet. That was it. No tricks and no gimmicks. In essence, my successful approach boiled down to “eat less, workout more.”

Pretty powerful stuff.

This time around, I don’t think that I’ll have the free time that I once had to take such a general approach allowing me to just “workout more.” Since I realize that I need to efficiently use my time if I want to achieve better health, I’ve spent the last few weeks unofficially toying around with certain specific approaches to getting healthy. There are three specific approaches that I’ve attempted and each of them have some merit. They are listed out below.

The Paleo Diet
The first specific approach that I toyed around with was the paleo diet. If you don’t know what it means to “go paleo,” then you should know that this diet focuses on returning to our roots as cavemen by eating more fruits, vegetables, and meats versus grains and processed foods. But more importantly, this type of diet all but removes the highly processed foods from a person’s diet and returns the person to eating natural, organic foods. Personally, I’ve been trying to eat organic foods more often than not over the last decade so I’ve got that change down already. And because of making this change over the course of the last ten years I’ve seen significant changes in my digestive tract. For example, my digestion of organic milk versus processed milk and organic apples versus apples grown in a genetically modified way is unbelievable. In other words, I’m already a believer in eating organic!

Nerd Fitness
The second specific approach that I toyed around with isn’t necessarily a diet program, but rather a workout program that comes with some guidance on how to eat better (in a paleo style, actually). There is a website called Nerd Fitness and the kid who runs it – Steve Kamb – produced a training program called the Rebel Fitness Guide. I’ve been reading Steve’s blog for a few years and I like it. He manages to successfully blend a nerdy type of entertainment in his writing along with an inspirational message about getting healthy. As a writer, I can tell you that successfully blending these two paradigms is a particularly hard task to achieve – and Steve does it well. I went through a cycle of the Level 1 Rookie workout (the beginning of the program) and I liked it. What drew me to the workout was that it doesn’t necessarily require you to go to a gym since most of the movements can be done in the privacy of your own home, out in the yard, a public park, or wherever you feel comfortable. And while the freedom of the workout drew me to it, the fact that it is achievable made me stick with it for the entire cycle.

DDP Yoga
The third specific approach that I attempted was utilizing the DDP Yoga program. For those of you that don’t know what “DDP” means, it stands for Diamond Dallas Page – a former professional wrestler. DDP created this yoga workout program to help him recover from back surgery that doctors said would put him out of the ring for good. Before you ask, the program has nothing to do with professional wrestling (though he does make professional wrestling references from time to time on the videos). What drew me to the DDP Yoga program was the fact that real people are achieving real success with it and they are posting their successes on social media sites. I’ve looked over the results that these folks are achieving and they are impressive. I tried using DDP Yoga a few times and the workouts were achievable and I felt nice and loose after completing the routines. Improving my flexibility has always been a goal of mine and DDP Yoga might help me achieve that goal.

And there you have it, folks. On Monday I wrote about the two areas that I would consider hyperfocusing on once my student loans are repaid later this summer. Then on Wednesday I wrote about why I chose to hyperfocus on improving my health of obtaining a doctorate (right now… I’ll get that doctorate at some point or another!). And above you have the completion of this three part series where I share some of my thoughts about three specific approaches that I am considering taking to achieve the goal of being healthier.

Stick around at JerseySmarts.com – the next adventure begins soon!

Our health is that ever-present aspect of being a human that we cannot get away from because we are an active participant in our health each and every day of our lives. If we don’t focus on our health, then we run a very real risk of becoming unhealthy. And being unhealthy manifests itself in so many ways. For example, I stopped sitting in booths at restaurants a number of years ago because I just don’t fit comfortably in them any more (same goes for those chair/desk combos in most college classrooms). Further, finding good clothes with a decent fit and modern style is nearly impossible for someone who is overweight. Another constant reminder of not being in good health is the variety of pills that I take on a daily basis to combat my type 2 diabetes. And, of course, there’s the guy staring back at me in the mirror every morning.

My next big hyperfocus will be improving my health – it has to be!

Reading Monday’s entry and the beginning of this entry makes it seem pretty apparent that the next big hyperfocus for me is… improving my health.

However, this is a much different goal to achieve than paying off a financial debt and the methods by which I might achieve this goal are altogether different than the methods by which I was able to accelerate repaying my student loan debt. For instance, I could live frugally to stockpile additional funds so that I could afford to make a larger payment on my loans each month. There’s no easily equatable variable that I can manipulate to achieve being a healthier person overall. Sure, I guess you can make an argument for calories being a somewhat equatable variable, but money is more of a set variable where you can reasonably predict the amount coming in and the amount going out over a long period of time. Calories can change by the day – even by the hour! – and calculating them is not an exact science.

The inexact nature of achieving “healthiness” is another one of the apprehensions that I have about diving into this thing head first. With money there is a level of exactness that you can achieve. In the American monetary system everything is built off of a base of ten. It’s a very easy system to understand and master. However, with health there isn’t an easily understood system that you can grasp and master. Instead, you’re tasked with mastering a series of lifestyle changes with the hopes that they become habits. You’re tasked with learning about food and exercise both in general and in certain specifics. Health isn’t an exact science and because it’s not an exact science it has the potential to be a very frustrating area to hyperfocus on.

Yet so many great things spring from being in good health. I have minor aches and pains now that I shouldn’t have at this age. Sometimes, I get odd internal feelings (not the emotional kind, the physical kind like pains in my stomach) that I know must come from having a destabilized system. Each morning I take a handful of pills and I’m the type of guy who doesn’t even like taking an aspirin when I have a headache because I don’t like putting foreign entities into my digestive system. Ridding myself of these inconveniences (and so many more that I won’t write in this space right now) is reason enough to hyperfocus on becoming healthier.

I’ve got a few ideas on what I’m going to do to hopefully achieve a healthier state of being. Stick around the blog for this Friday’s entry where I’ll write about some very specific approaches that I’m considering to help me improve my health. I’ll see you all back here on Friday!

The full repayment of my student loan debt should be coming up in the next few weeks. And if it’s not in the next few weeks, then it will certainly occur at some point this summer – and hopefully sooner rather than later. Those of you who have been along for the ride via this blog, my twitter feed, and through our personal discussions know that I’ve spent the last few years hyperfocused on repaying my student loan debt. There is a lot of discipline and new skills that come along with successfully hyperfocusing on one aspect of your life. With my student loans, for example, I’ve crafted some exceptionally useful spreadsheets using Microsoft Excel to track my income and expenses. These aren’t your run of the mill spreadsheets that one can find for download off of any financial website. Instead, these are highly customized spreadsheets that I built from the ground up and that I’ve been using day in and day out for years to track my income and expenses, short and long-term financial goals, and debt repayment.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I would have been able to quickly and successfully decimate my student loan debt without the organizational help and long-term planning provided by using these spreadsheets on a daily basis.

The big decision – which direction do I go in next?

When you set your mind to completing a long-term goal, your mind will use your innate abilities to adapt your environment to help you achieve that goal. For me that innate readjustment was spending more time doing long-term financial planning through the use of highly customized spreadsheets and highly customized budgeting. And I couldn’t be happier with the end result (no student loan debt!) of this hyperfocusing.

Now, when it comes to hyperfocusing I have a decision that I need to make. When I sit and think about what my next big hyperfocus might be there are two items that come zooming to the front of my mind. The first is improving my health and the second is completing a doctorate. I don’t list these as first and second because that is how I rank them; either of these two items could be the next big thing that I hyperfocus on. Below are some of my ideas on each of these items and since I listed health first and a doctorate second above, I’ll give my thoughts on the doctorate first and my health second.

First, completing a doctorate would allow me to accomplish my long-term academic goal. As a high school student, I thought that I would eventually go on to become a lawyer. During that process, I would have obviously needed to earn a juris doctorate and thus would have obtained a doctoral degree in that manner. As we already know, though, I ultimately didn’t go in the direction of being a lawyer. Instead, I earned a master’s degree and I’m in the process of completing a post-master’s certificate. Frankly, you can’t get many more education credentials than what I have right now… except for a doctorate.

And even with these various certificates and commendations, obtaining a doctorate is still a very real goal of mine and one that I think about somewhat frequently. Not only does a doctorate open up the possibility of becoming a full-time professor, but there is a unique air of certainty that comes from someone speaking as a doctor versus speaking as an “expert” in a field. And since most “experts” have doctorates anyway, enrolling in a program to obtain one wouldn’t be out of bounds for what I do in my work.

Second, I could hyperfocus on improving my health. Whether we like it or not, our health is that one thing that we can’t get away from in our lives. Of course when we do get away from it our lives typically aren’t as robust as they could be or they just downright don’t last as long as they should. For each of us, our health is that thing we see in the mirror each morning and that thing we are somewhat consumed with when engaging in and interacting with the outside world. Let’s be honest, folks. We live in a very superficial society where a person’s appearance matters. You can be a brilliant scientist on the verge of curing cancer, but if you’re fat or generally out of shape, the superficial American public doesn’t give a damn about you. That is, they don’t give a damn about you until you can do them some good by providing a cure for their sicknesses!

I am confident that once I am no longer hyperfocused on repaying my student loans, I’m absolutely going to focus on one of the two items above. It’s either going to be the full completion of a doctoral program or a sincere focus on improving my health. Stick around the blog for this Wednesday’s entry where I’ll let you know which of the two I’ve selected. See you then!