I AM FIT Episode 2
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Manage episode 171597519 series 1358263
I AM FIT – Just Not Yet
Episode 2
Change Comes from Believing you can
This is my second Blog since I’ve started. I’m just learning to the process and getting things down, and trying to figuring out exactly what’s the best way for me to break the information down, because I’m also transcribing this and making it into a blog. So I want it to be blog friendly as well as podcast friendly, so I want to be able to have headers and break it down into subcategories. So let me know if you like this process, I think it’s going to work out pretty good. I have it broken down into three categories, the first part will be the P for Physical stuff like my weight, my workout, my food intake, that kind of stuff. The second part will be O for my Outlook, which is my emotional state, and the last part will be D for Dollars, which is my financial situation. I like it because it’ POD as in podcast. So let’s just get right into it.
PHYSICAL
About a month and a half ago, let’s say 2 months ago, two months ago I weighed 330 lbs. Now that’s down from what I used to be a while back, but I’ve slowly been changing the way I think about stuff, so I’m getting there. Anyway, so as of this podcast I am 305lbs, so I’ve lost 25lbs. I was looking for ways to keep myself motivated to continue to loose weight, to continue to doing my process, to continue changing my mindsets and stuff, so I figured hey, let’s do a podcast and a blog and maybe I will have people listening and they will keep me accountable, and I will be able to just put it out there. Cool?
Ok so, at this point I am 5’11”…that’s not going to change ..haha..and 305lbs, and most of my weight is probably around my belly, I actually have pretty wide shoulders, I’m a pretty big guy. Maybe the next episode I will actually put what my measurements are, I don’t think it matters, but I will just do it anyways just so there’s a better idea of my physical body. I am right now committed to working out at least 15 minutes a day 5 days a week, and I also on top of that walk 6000 steps a day. So I have a fitbit, and so that tracks a lot of stuff for me, and I also input my food intake and all that kind of stuff, and maybe every once in a while if you go on my blog, I will show photos of my daily walking is and stuff like that. If I do really well, if I’m not doing so well, I probably won’t show anything! HAHA Because you know I don’t want to know too much! But at the same time I’m trying to be as real as possible.
So some of the other physical things I’m doing at this point is that I stopped drinking coffee. I was the kind of guy who drank a pot of coffee every day. And then some. And I had to stop. I had to stop coffee, not because it kept me up at night or anything else, I just figured it’s probably something that I don’t need in my life, although I want it in my life, it’s probably not the best thing for me to have. So I just decided to stop. So I stopped cold turkey. Now since I did that, about a month ago I have had coffees every once in a while, so I’m re-establishing maybe the possibility that every once in a while for a treat I can have a coffee. It doesn’t seem to be giving me any bad effects, I’m not having headaches or anything like that, so every once in a while, I will have a coffee. It’s not the end of the world.
I also gave up dairy. I am having a little bit of cheese every once in a while, on an omelette that I would have in the morning. But that’s pretty much all the dairy that I’m having. I’m not having any milk, I’m not having anything like that. And I also gave up sugar. Now I believe without a doubt that I was addicted to sugar. My body craved it. Just so you know a year and a half ago, I got diagnosed with diabetes, it threw me for a loop, I thought ok this is serious stuff, I don’t want to lose my eyesight, I don’t want to loose my feet, this is crazy! I don’t want to die from this so it’s time to change! So I changed. At that point I gave up sugar, but I substituted with splenda. So I would have all my coffee that I would normally have, all the sweets that I would normally have I would just throw splenda in it, and it made it sweet. But I came to a realization, that by continuously using something sweet in order to placate myself, becomes an addiction on it’s own. And it doesn’t stop you from walking away from the taste of sweetness in everything, so you crave sweetness in everything. Even things that are not supposed to be sweet, now to me wanted to be sweet. So I had to walk away from that. I do have a little bit of splenda every once in a while if I do have a coffee, or if I do have a tea, that kind of thing. But I am trying really hard to stay away from that kind of stuff.
Now I have never smoked cigarettes, I have never been a really big drinking, I drank when I was younger, but I wasn’t a big drinker. So I never had to give up and get away and go to AA, but I could easily see myself going to eaters anonymous. I can easily see that. I eat emotionally. I have been eating emotionally most of my life. If I was happy, I celebrated with a meal. If I was sad, I got myself happier by eating a meal. I’m an eater. I love to eat food and I’m not stopping that. I’m just changing what food I’m eating. So I eat very little red meat. Mostly chicken and eggs, and some fish. I’m trying to be careful of the fish even because mercury levels are high in some fish and I just don’t want to go there. That’s not a good thing to have too much mercury. I like fish, I don’t like salmon, but most other fishes, so I’m going to try and go that way a little bit, and have a bit more fish in my diet. Lots of vegetables. I have gotten to the point where I am making yoghurt from Keffir. Mostly that’s for my wife, that’s not for me. I am also using water keffir to create a carbonated beverage with no sugar in it for myself to drink. That also has lots of probiotics in it that can help my digestive system. Which is important.
A lot of my journey up to this point has been me looking into why I eat food the way I eat it and where did I get it from and all that kind of stuff. I’ve learned that I’ve just been using food as an emotional trigger for anything else. Part of my story, sorry I’m getting off track a little bit here, I have a tendency to jump around a little. You might learn that about me…haha..anyways, follow along! My wife and I have recently been certified as life coaches and also as NLP practitioners, I always have a difficult time saying that- practitioners! So I’m learning about NLP which is Neuro Linguistic Programming, which is really the programming language that we use to program ourselves, either in the negative or the positive. Most of the time we do it very, very efficiently without even knowing that we are doing it. I believe without a doubt, that I have “hypnotized” myself since I was a child. I believe what you do is you take the experiences of your life, the advice of the people around you and you make them solid in your mind. And if somebody says that you cannot do something, that becomes somewhat of a reality for you. And that becomes your reality. So then you have that as your belief systems inside, and that is your automatic success mechanism. I read a book called “Psycho Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz, it took me a long time to be able to say that title properly. “Psycho Cybernetics” talk about the automatic success mechanism that we have in our system that allows us to be successful if we have access to it, and realize that it’s there, and use it effectively. So I’m trying to use it effectively. I’m envisioning in my mind about who I want to be, where I want to be, and changing the way I perceive myself and then being very conscious of my emotions, and my actions. So talking all about that let’s get to OUTLOOK, which is my emotional state.
OUTLOOK
One of the revelations that I had about myself, which is really funny to say but, I don’t believe the majority know enough about ourselves as we need to. I know I don’t. My wife is a lovely person, she’s very supportive, she’s right there with me we’re doing anything, exercising, fitness, changing our diets. She doesn’t need it as much as I do, as far as I’m concerned but she will tell you the opposite. Anyway, every time I would do something and I would get that thing accomplished, being my wife the way she is, she would then be very supportive and you’re doing fantastic, that’s awesome, but then she will say, but “what about this? You’ve got this to keep in mind too”. And she’s right, but right away, emotionally I would just get upset. I would get frustrated inside. I would think, “I’m not good enough, I’m never good enough” and so that happened so often, that I didn’t even recognize that it was happening, because it was just the way I felt, and I thought I had no control over that. WRONG!
You have all the control over how you feel, all the time!
You just allow your emotions to run themselves instead of you running your emotions. I had to go into a place of quietness and just going inside. I had been trying to figure out ok why do I feel that way? It doesn’t make any sense! I know that’s not her motivation, she is not trying to knock me down and make me feel like what I just accomplished is not a success. She just enjoyed that success with me! She just encouraged me. But then when she would say something else, something would pop in and I would feel like I wasn’t accomplishing enough in my life. What’s that all about? So after digging into it, I had some memories that came to the surface. Specifically on my wedding day. On my wedding day, we had lots of family and friends around. There were 4 men that came up to me at some point during the celebration and sat me down and said almost the identical thing. I don’t think they planned it..haha but they all said “watch yourself with your wife because once you start doing anything and getting things done, you will never ever have enough done for your wife. She will always expect from you more, it doesn’t matter if you just built her a house and everything is fantastic, the whole inside and out, and then she will say ‘what about the front lawn?’ It doesn’t make a difference. You will never ever satisfy your wife.” Which is NOT true! It’s just what they feel, because they are in that situation because they don’t have control over their emotions, because they like to feel whatever they are feeling and not even realizing maybe that they have a pattern. Because somebody told them that before. I didn’t want to believe is so I didn’t listen. But, obviously it went in! Because it happened four times in one day! So ever since then, without even realizing it, whenever she would then ask me to do something else, it doesn’t matter what it was…. Just recently, the power went out, and we have a wood fire stove, so I was going to put some wood in the stove and warm it up and maybe my breakfast on the stove, which I can do that if I need to. I thought about doing that. But I was working out at the time. So, I finished my workout. After I finished my workout, I come over and I sit down and I’m still breathing heavy, and she recommends to me that maybe what I should do is put some wood in the stove so I can cook the breakfast! I had just thought that same thing! But instead of me saying “I was just thinking the same thing!” Instead of that, what happened in my emotions was I’m just not good enough. I just finished working out, which you know is hard for me, and I haven’t even stopped breathing heavy and already you’re asking me to do something else! It was just something I was planning on doing anyway! But that was the emotional trigger that happened in that situation. That’s when I realized..ok..I had already tried to figure out why I feel this way so I already knew why I felt that way. So I was already aware of the emotional trigger so at that point, for the first time, spoke about it with her. I let her know what I was feeling and why I was feeling that and what happened.
Once you see the pattern you can stop the cycle.
But if you don’t take the time to look at the pattern, you will never stop the cycle! It’s crazy! How many things in my life am I on autopilot? How many things in my life am I hypnotized to? That are reactions to things that are triggers that may have nothing to do with my experience at all! But somebody else’s experience who then packed that in my bag! One of the analogies that I use in the first episode that I had was if you go to an airport and you didn’t pack your own bag, you’re in trouble! That’s somebody else’s luggage, baggage. You better make sure you pack your own bags! This life is a journey and if you’re not walking around with your own bags packed, but somebody else packed them for you, you are in trouble! So let’s unpack all this garbage that somebody else packed in our bag, and re-pack it with our own beliefs, our own understanding of who we are. Our own perceptions of our wives, not somebody else’s wife!
This is probably the most, as far as I’m concerned, interesting part of my podcast is going to be this emotional digging. This finding out my outlooks, finding out my baggage and then removing it from my luggage. And trying to walk through my life without having emotional triggers knocking me off balance all the time. It’s unbelievable! There’s so many things! Food was an emotional trigger for me. The only reason it was, was because I was using food as an entertainment source. Food is NOT entertainment! Food is something to survive on! Something to make you get through your day, to give you the energy you need in order to accomplish whatever task you have in front of you. It’s not, whatsoever an entertainment source. Yes, you can use it as an entertainment source, but when you use it as an entertainment source, it becomes your go to for an entertainment source, well then you have an emotional trigger to something that is not supposed to have an emotional attachment to it. Yes, you can enjoy the food you are eating, that doesn’t mean it’s controlling your emotions. It means you’re enjoying the flavour of something. And even if you are enjoying the flavour of something, maybe you need to look at WHY you enjoy it. Like, why did I enjoy sweets? Why? Now, this isn’t anything against my mom, or anybody else, but people in your life may have used sweets, a cookie, a piece of cake, and we use these all the time to celebrate. That’s how we celebrate our birthdays, with a piece of cake, That’s how we celebrate! If you have a piece of cake, then you’re celebrating. Well then if you have a piece of cake every day is a celebration! NO! That’s not true! It’s just you’re having too much cake! Haha It’s not good for you! It’s not good for me! So I had to learn that! I had to have that revelation about who I am and why I eat what I eat, and why I am 300 + lbs most of my life.
There were some times in my life where I wasn’t 300+ lbs. I remember when I was in my early 20s, I was actually lean and mean. I was a dancer and a fighter, I was working hard, and I was in good shape. I wore size 32 pants back then, and I was in good physical condition. But do you know my perception of my self was? It was that I was fat. I never ever saw myself as thin. Even if I was, I didn’t see myself that way. I always assumed that who I was, was a fat, lazy and never going to amount to anything, person. Because that’s what I was told over and over again as a child. Not even realizing that I was being programmed. But I found the programmer! That’s me! I know I can change the programming. I can make it different, I can give different associations, have different emotions. I can now put a positive spin on working out. Now, I always liked working out, I liked the physical feeling of working out, and the situation afterwards, I felt fantastic! I really enjoyed it. And then you feel great about yourself! But at the same time, you sabotage it because you have a perception of who you are in your mind. You are a fat person. And you cannot be fit. And if you are fit, well then you’re going against everything you believe about yourself, so you sabotage yourself, so you can contain that fatness, so you are always the person you believe you are. So you don’t change it. But if you don’t realize that’s that is your actual perception of who you are, and then say ok “I’m no longer going to be that fat person, I want to be fit, I’m just not there yet.” Hence the podcast name haha. So I AM FIT, I’m working on it. I’m getting there.
FINANCIAL
So the last part of this process would be the Financial stuff. I’m not ready to talk about that yet, because it’s really up in the air, I’m not really sure what’s going on, I work part-time at another job, and a have a few other things going on at the same time. There’s not lots to say about my financial situation right now. We struggle. We have been struggling since the beginning of our marriage, and it’s no different right now then it’s been our whole marriage. Financially we are struggling. It’s not like we are suffering, we have a nice place that we live in. A nice piece of land, we have our own chickens, and get fresh eggs every day. I’m not doing this on a piece of garbage computer, I’m doing it on a nice computer. Listen, I’m not suffering. But, we are not thriving. We love to help people. We started a backpack program to help the homeless. We love to do that kind of thing. We don’t have the money to do that kind of thing. We like to have people come stay with us, and we help them get back up on their feet, and get off drugs, and stuff like that. We can’t do that as much, because we don’t have the finances to back that situation up. My background and situation is that I’ve had non-stop problems with employment my whole life. I have mindsets that I’m still working through. I have recently changed one. Paying bills was always like a struggle for me. Saying “oh I hate paying bills”. But I’ve changed recently, to start thinking that I don’t hate paying bills, I GET to pay bills! I am privileged to be able to have a job in order to pay my bills, in order to get myself down the road, and to get myself something better. To put tires on my car! To do whatever I need to do!
I’m changing that part of myself. It’s a process! I’m learning. My wife and I have recently started doing business coaching because we’ve owned a lot of little businesses in our life and we have a lot of techniques and ideas on how to differentiate people in their business and even their personal life. So we are in process! So this is what I had to say today. I hope you have a fantastic day! I hope that this in some way can help you with your mindsets. The next podcast/blog, I’m going to put down a little more information about my physical fitness goals and probably going to do some more stuff about my emotional outlook. Because to me that’s the most important thing. Because if I don’t change my emotional outlook, if I don’t change the way I perceive the world, if I don’t change the way I perceive myself, if I don’t change the way I think about physical fitness, and diet, then I’m going to go back to the same old patterns that I did my whole life. I’ve had gym memberships for 30+ years, and I’m still 305lbs. So having a gym membership doesn’t make you fit, using the gym membership makes you fit! So be blessed, see you next time!
You can find my Podcast here goo.gl/2YNVdA
4 episodes