The Sustainable Brick

Big boy

     There is a word that has gained a lot of traction in the green world of conservation these days, sustainability.  It's a good word and one that I have used to motivate myself over the past several months.  However, for me it is not about renewable energy sources or environmental impact studies.  I have used the word to try and remember a commitment that I made to myself around Christmas last year to get fit (not just the cop out "fitter") by my Birthday (10/25/62 in case you're wondering and I will happily provide gift suggestions upon request).  The reason that I made this commitment to myself is that right now I can't do things I want to do physically because I'm too fat.  I can be harshly realistic about that fact because I don't have to be fat.  I'm not suffering from an addiction, my physiology does not prevent me from losing weight, and my environment is not filled with enablers and discouragers.  I'm fat because I eat too much and exercise too little.  I have lost and gained hundreds of pounds in my lifetime and at Christmas of this year I was the fattest I've ever been.  Frankly I scared myself when I stepped on the scale.  So after we returned from a vacation in Key West I revisited all of the diets and exercise programs that I have tried over the years and gleaned from them the most successful aspects and started to apply them to a program of lifestyle modifications that I was committing to for the rest of my life.  
      

Still a big boy but 35 pounds less of one.

      I don't know about you but saying that I'm committing to something for the rest of my life is a pretty daunting statement for me.  It reminds me of marriage vows.  And I started to doubt myself in terms of sustainability (not with my marriage vows, with the diet thing).  Can I really break the bad habits of a life time?  Well, for four months I did pretty well.  I committed to going to the health club and actually working out.  I held my calories under 2000 a day.  I drank 5 glasses of water throughout the day.  And I lost weight. Then last month I got sick and I stopped going to the health club (at one time I had gone 65 days without missing) and I stopped counting my calories and drinking water because I told myself it was okay to take a break while I wasn't feeling well.  And I stopped losing weight for a couple of days and then for a couple of days I started to gain back some weight and then I stopped getting on the scale.  And this is the pattern that I have gone through so many times in my life that I can't even count them.  

     But I think here is where the pattern can be broken.  I'm not discouraged or disgusted with myself the way that I have been in the past when I hit a critical stage of motivation or de-motivation.  In fact I just got back from the gym and I'm drinking water as I write this.  Falling off the wagon doesn't mean that you have to go back to the barn.  (I have know idea what that is supposed to mean).  And so I'm still committed because this isn't a diet based on time parameters.  I'm going to try and sustain this permanently and that means that these lapses of commitment are the exception and not the rule.  If I can convince myself of this then I think a healthy lifestyle is sustainable.  I promise to post a picture on my Birthday for comparison.  (yeah right, like I'm not going to post pictures of myself).  


(did you notice all of the parenthetical thoughts in this post?)