Motivation

Hey friends.  I've been missing from here for a couple of reasons.  For one, I have been advised by a consultant to combine my website and blog into one place.  But, being a techno-dunce to some degree, that is easier said than done.  Thus, until I can get it rolling, I'm going to continue posting here, then try to move content over "there", whenever and wherever that may be!

The second reason is that I allowed myself to get extremely bummed out about my surgery, which took me almost completely out of physical activity for eight weeks.  During that time I gained back about 17 lbs, seemingly all in my gut, which had so nicely shrunk down over the past 18 months!!  Oh woe is me!  Poor poor meeeeeeeee!!!  Wwaahhhhh!!  That's a pretty good illustration of how I was feeling during that time - it turned out to be harder than I thought it would be, or maybe I made it harder - I don't know.

There is an oldie-but-goodie psychological term called the "pleasure pain principle" that basically says that everything we do is done in an effort to avoid pain or to gain pleasure.  To a large degree, and probably for most people, that is true.  So for a lot of us, in order to get motivated to work out, the pain of NOT working out has to become greater than the "pleasure" of taking it easy, sitting on the couch, eating salty snacks, etc.  Or the perceived "pain" of the activity has to become less than the pain of how our fat gut looks.  In other words, when NOT taking action becomes painful enough, we will act - simple as that!

I reached that point last week.  The pain of watching my gut grow and losing my fitness that I had worked so hard for, that pain finally became so great that I could not ignore it any more.  And, the "easy road" of giving in to self-pity and comfort eating suddenly became the road to ruin for me.  These factors triggered the decision that I was sick of this and not going to take it anymore.  I DECIDED to jump into another round of P90X and get back in the game.  No, I can't do the program exactly right yet, because I still can't walk right, much less jump around doing Plyometrics.  But I can do a LOT of it, and I can swim to get my cardio work.  I just started Week 2 today and I'm beginning to feel better.  The "pain" of working out is becoming pleasureable again, and crappy eating is becoming painful again.  Such is the power of a decision.

So today, think of the word "motivation" as "motive for action".  What is your motive for action?  Are you sick of being unhealthy?  Are you tired of having no energy?  Do you like the way you look or kind of hate it?  I urge you to find your motive for action and get moving today, then more tomorrow, and more the next day.  And, I will help you any way I can, not because I am "better", but because I can totally relate to the struggles of "everyday people", and I have some ways to help!

Coming soon, a little food experiment I did during my last week of self-pity and my first week of X.

Peace all!  Jimbo