The beginning of my journey:

As I have mentioned in other areas of this blog, I am 28 years old and out of shape.  I am hoping to use this blog as a tool to learn for myself and from others the value of being fit.  To learn the skills necessary to live a health lifestyle that can be constantly maintained for the rest of my life.

I feel like there are three major factors that I have to implement to be successful:

The first and in my opinion the hardest and most important is mental control.  Most people probably would refer this to mental health, self control, self mastery, or a number of other things.  In the end it comes down to having the power to make one decision over another while suppressing or controlling outside forces.  Let me give you a few examples of what I mean; I look at a piece of cake or chocolate chip cookie (pick your poison) and my body tells me that it will taste so good.  Now there is a small place in my mind that tells me that the cake or cookie is not good for me, but that is quickly squashed out by the desire to eat the sugar and fat contained in the desert.  Another example; I go out for a run because I need to do something to burn the calories from the handful of cookies I just ate.  I begin the run and I feel great, but inevitably it only takes a few minutes and my body tells my mind that this is really hard work.  My body starts to make justifications as to why I should stop, and when I do I realize that I could have gone longer and actually had a good workout.  This concept of mind over matter brings me to my next two points.

The second factor is that of "we are what we eat."  I can't count how many times I have heard that term, but it is so true.  Our bodies are very complex machines.  If we were to treat our cars like we do our bodies they would be dead on the road within days.  Ever heard of what happens when you dump sugar in a gas tank?  It's not pretty and would really put a cramp in your day.  So why then do we put things into our bodies that we know are not good for us? (see paragraph above)  So part of us staying/getting health is putting things into our bodies that we know are good for it, and abstaining from putting harmful things in.  Now you and I know that is very much easier said than done.  As I said in the title of the blog, it does no good to do crash diets and lose the wight and then gain it all back again (in my opinion).  So let's talk about how we can find a balance of eating healthy (and maybe not loving it) and having the food that we have grown to love.  I believe we can find a balance diet that we can sustain and still have some of the things we love.  So in future post we will talk about what we should eat, and giving ourselves a break every now and then to enjoy the things we love.

Third; we have to keep our bodies physically active.  I don't want to be the father that can't play ball with his kids because I don't enjoy exercising or can't physically do it.  So even if you disagree with everything that I have said about mental strength or eating smart, I hope that you will agree that we should stay active. Again I am no doctor or health expert but I don't think I am steering anyone wrong telling them to stay active.  So like eating we need to find something that we can do that we can maintain into the future.  Many people I know including myself have had a gym membership that are purchased with good intentions and then quickly forgotten.  So not only are you not getting exercise but your burning a hole in your pocket.

So please if you have any ideas for healthy eating, a good exercise program that works for you, or how we can overcome our own self doubts/destructive natures let me know.  Post comments on what information is provided by me, or if you have content you think will help please let me know and you can e-mail it to me.  I will make sure that the person that provides the information get's credit for it.  So lets learn and grow together, and hopefully we can find things to help us be successful at getting our lives back physically.