What is the history of YOUR every day?

“The history of every day– What is the history of every day in your case? Look at your habits that constitute it: are they the product of innumerable little cowardices and laziness or of your courage and inventive reason?”
Nietzsche – The Gay Science

Humans are creatures of habit. We do the same things, eat the same foods, hang out with the same people, go to the same places. Sometimes, those habits lead to unwelcome results.

For several years, I drank massive quantities of regular (as opposed to diet) soda every day and night. I worked at a convenience store on the midnight shift and soda was just the thing to keep me WIDE awake – and get me fat as a cow!

I LOVED soda. Still do, in fact.

However, a few years ago I was tipping the scales at nearly 400 pounds and the doctor said I needed to make some changes or I would die. When a doctor delivers such a message, you have two choices – ignore it as hyperbole or change!

I chose the latter.

Replacing bad habits with better ones

I started eating healthier foods, trying to do everything I could to avoid giving up the one thing I most wanted to cling to – soda. I hated the taste of diet soda and couldn’t imagine not drinking the regular stuff.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I had to make a change. And I did.

I made the switch and dropped nearly 50 pounds almost immediately!

Since then, I’ve been hovering at around the same weight, give or take a few pounds.

For the first time in years, I’m starting to lose weight again. 16 pounds since November!

Now I need to implement some more changes in my life.

This is a short list of things I am going to do starting today. Some of them I have been doing with various levels of success since November. However, I have yet to put it down in writing. Doing so will help me follow through on all of them, all the time.

• Limit fast food to once a week (at most)
• Take a multivitamin daily
• Drink less diet soda (I can’t give up just yet)
• Drink more water
• Exercise EVERY day
• Eat veggies and fruit EVERY day.
• Ger MORE sleep.

That last one will be the most difficult as I tend to be constantly working on several projects at once. However, without sleep, everything else is all for naught.

The quote which begins this post is one of my favorites. I don’t use quotes often because all too many of them, many on sites just like this, are full of platitudes. This quote has always struck a chord in me, though. It causes me to think when I’m more inclined to just act.

The history of every day is made up of each of our actions. It’s time to make those actions mean something, to add up to more, so our history is one which we write – not one that is written by our inaction.

So, what is the history of your every day? What new habits would you like to create?

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What kind of storefront do you keep?

I found myself having to go to that store this weekend.

You know the kind of store I’m talking about – the rundown shop in the decrepit plaza which last saw its glory days when Duran Duran was gracing the covers of teen magazines.

I usually avoid places like this, but I was hoping to find discontinued diaper doublers for my son. (For those unfamiliar with the product, it is an absorbent pad which you place in diapers at night to keep the diaper from soaking through – one of the best products ever, and it has been discontinued! No nearby stores have any similar product.)

So, I found myself forced to go to that store.

The shop has an air of despair which greets you at the door and presses on your shoulders during your entire visit. Bad music from an outdated sound system plays in the background, music which is both royalty and quality free. Music made by and for mindless drones.

The floor consists of dirty, stained, cracked and mismatched tiles. Merchandise is on the floor, but nobody seems to notice or care.

The shelves, of which there are too many, are chaotically crammed with as much junk as can possibly fit. Crap you can’t imagine ANYBODY buying.

Lining several shelves are toys which no child wants. Among those toys, robots that look like Transformers but have some other name and likely contain enough lead paint to kill you on contact. On other shelves, outdated food and all the plastic crap you can fit into a tiny shopping cart.

Sad, unhealthy-looking people shuffle their way through the narrow aisles, filling their carts with plastic and filling their empty lives with more crap. Or so it would seem to the casual, jaded observer.

How many NASCAR doodads can one person collect?

The only thing that can help a store like this, I thought, is a well placed wrecking ball.

And I wondered, what kind of person shops here?

The prices aren’t much cheaper than other places, yet the quality is vastly inferior. You’d have to really not care about yourself or what you’re buying to regularly shop in a place like this. It’s almost like… junk food.

And then in a moment of clarity, something clicked.

The way I see this place, and the people who frequent it, represents everything I loathe not only in society, but in myself. It’s the same way I’ve treated my body for years.

I don’t have the body of someone who has chosen quality over crap. I have been filling my gut with the food equivalent of plastic for years, no decades!

And while I might not look like it yet, it’s only a matter of time before I look just like this store – rundown and slovenly. Without any self respect.

Waiting for the wrecking ball.

Which is just the kick in the ass I needed to start 2009 off with a bang!

In that we sell ourselves every day, we have storefronts to keep up.

My storefront should be as fresh, beautiful, unique and orderly as the inner me is – or at least as the ideal inner me is.

So, what kind of storefront do you keep? Is it time to grab the wrecking ball and create the kind of store you can be proud of?

Want a bit of humor and motivation delivered via email every weekday? Subscribe to get each BlogToFit post delivered for free! Email not your thing? That’s okay, you can also subscribe via RSS – like all the cool kids do. It’s also free. Unless you really WANT to pay us.

Copyright 2009 BlogToFit.com. If you are reading this on any site other than BlogToFit.com or your personal feedreader or email, you may be viewing it on a site which steals content. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust any site which steals content.

There is no tomorrow

I’m killing myself.

Before you call the authorities, this isn’t a letter which will be found next to my cookie surrounded body in a few days. Instead, this is a confession of a murder I’ve been committing for the better part of two decades.

That’s how long I’ve been overeating, how long I’ve been fat, how long I’ve been saying I’ll do something to change it. It’s also how long I’ve been lying to myself.

I’m eating myself to death one unhealthy meal at a time. Fast food, cookies, ice cream and sugar-laden cereal are all staples of my regular diet. Standing at almost 6’4’’ and weighing in just shy of 350, I’m morbidly obese. What a fitting word, morbid. And if I don’t do something soon, I will die younger than I should. Worse, I’ll become debilitated by any number of obesity-related maladies. Diabetes, blindness, heart disease, amputation of body parts, kidney problems – a whole host of preventable health conditions which await me if I don’t change.

So, why haven’t I changed yet?

When it comes to eating, I’ve almost always chosen the path of least resistance. If it tastes yummy, eat it. Why delay satisfaction when you can have what you want when you want it?

There’s always tomorrow, right?

I’ll eat better tomorrow.

I’ll work out tomorrow.

I have a whole host of things that I will do… tomorrow.

But for today, I’m enjoying myself! And why not, I deserve it. I work hard, I’m a good husband and a good father. I should be able to enjoy a donut every now and then. I’ll eat better tomorrow.

But wouldn’t a good husband and father put the needs of his family before his own temporary satisfaction? A good husband and father would want to ensure that he will be around for a long time to not only provide for his family, but to be in their lives, also.

It will be rough to change my way of putting things off until tomorrow. But I must. Eventually, we run out of tomorrows.

So we must seize today. It’s all that we really have.

So I am going to bust my ass to lose 100 pounds within one year. I’ll do it by eating right and working out regularly. I know, novel concept, eh? It really is as simple as that, I believe. And as hard as that.

I’d like to invite you to join me on my journey. Every Monday I’m going to post my thoughts on weight loss right here at Blog To Fit. On Wednesdays, I’m going to weigh in along with my fellow bloggers, Tara and David, and hopefully you.

Let’s stop putting things off until tomorrow. We have today. Let’s use it and live it to its fullest.

(Note: There are two posts today, the other one is located here.)

Want a bit of humor and motivation delivered via email every weekday? Subscribe to get each BlogToFit post delivered for free! Email not your thing? That’s okay, you can also subscribe via RSS – like all the cool kids do. It’s also free. Unless you really WANT to pay us.