This is where it usually starts.
This is where the wheels start to come off of the bus.
It’s been more than two months since I’ve stated this diet and workout routine – well, diet and lifestyle routine mostly – and this is about the point where all of a sudden it just seems like a great time to buy a bag of chips and stock up on bagel bites and just forget that I’m supposed to be working towards a goal.
It’s not laziness or indifference. I’ve got a very specific goal in mind – size 38 waist,  2XL T-shirts that actually fit – and I’m actually a lot closer to attaining that then I have been in quite some time.
But there are only so many roasted chicken and power green salads you can eat before you just crave something that used to be such a big part of your daily diet.
I recently got an email from a reader who gave me some feedback about this column – giving me a few tips on how I might be able to get more people to relate to what it is that I’m trying to convey with this endeavor.
So I figured that this would be a good place for me to actually communicate what I’m hoping to achieve, and the people that I’m trying to target by putting my own experiences out there.
This isn’t about weight on a scale for me.
It is – it very much is – but I know that if I shelled out enough money to enough personal trainers I’d be able to get into fighting shape within a few months and then end up out on my own trying to maintain the physique and the lifestyle that was basically drilled into without the actual living experience.
I’d be okay with that if it weren’t for the fact that this isn’t just a weight loss thing for me – it’s a lifestyle change thing for me. It’s about having broccoli and squash instead of fries with my steak and Brussels sprouts and greens instead of mashed potatoes with my chicken.
It’s about getting the energy that the right food actually gives you instead of saps out of you like the empty calories that comprised such a bulk of my diet before doing this.
And it’s about being around for a long, long time so that the people who depend on me – my wife and my children and those who I have made promises to – can expect to have me there for all of the major life milestones that one hopes to achieve in a given period of time.
So here’s what I’m trying to do – make sustainable, long-term changes that will benefit me long after I get to my desired weight. I know a lot of people that have done some pretty dire things in the name of fitting into an old pair of jeans, and in almost all of those cases, they didn’t fit in them long enough for it to make a difference. They went back to eating things that weren’t good for them and living lifestyles that weren’t beneficial towards their stated goals at all.
I don’t want that to be me. So while it might seem like this is a slow or arduous process, I’d rather take my time now than have to revisit this every since two years because I wasn’t receptive enough to the ideas the first time around.
I walked into the convenience store I used to buy most of my crap food and drinks from before this journey on Monday, and the guy behind the counter said to me, “you look like you’ve been losing weight.”
That’s it right there. That’s the payoff.
When I pull out the old Levi’s and slide into those and actually button them, that’ll be the payoff too.
But for now, somebody who sees me every once in a while that notices that I’m not exactly carrying around as much as I once did is all of the payoff that this guy needs.