Week 4 - Doing Without

When economic times are on shaky ground, as they are now, the media tells about the importance of scaling back. For example do without purchasing large ticket items and do without major career changes.

Part of "doing without" may also extend to your food intake, as part of your fitness plan. If you want to make progress in your plan (ie. lose weight, build muscle) in order to feel good, you must be willing to sacrifice. Sacrifice your time that would have been spent doing something else that you would rather do and replace it with time at the gym, or sacrifice a food item that you enjoyed but works against your fitness plan.

For the past few weeks, I kept a journal of all the meals I ate during the day. Upon review of my journal, I discovered that I was eating a lot of bread products - a toasted bagel in the morning, a submarine sandwich at noon, and some more bread with my meal at dinner. I heard someone say on a podcast that I listen to that they wanted to give up some of their bread in order to keep their diet in check.

For the past 10 days I, too, decided to cut down my bread intake.

The results have been surprising. At the beginning of January, I weighed in at 200 lbs. I'm now at 193 lbs. Day to day, my body weight doesn't fluctuate nearly as much and I have increased energy. I don't get so tired at the end of the day.

Not all carbohydrates are created equally. Whole grain bread is better than white bread. If I ate bread in the morning, I would decide not to eat bread at lunch or dinner. In this case, I would have two slices of probiotic bread with fruit jam and have a salad at lunch. If I decided to eat a sandwich at lunch, I would not eat bread at breakfast or dinner.

Of course, an effective nutritional plan will go beyond just the decision of which carbohydrates one should take into their body, but this is a start!

After 7 years of exercise at the local gym, I have finally realized that one's fitness level goes beyond how many pounds one can lift. In March 2001 when I joined a gym for the first time, I weighed around 240 lbs. I eventually brought my weight down to 200 lbs by just lifting weights and not really caring much about nutrition.

After I turned 40, I became frustrated. No matter what I did, the bathroom weight scale didn't budge. The only way to lose weight safely in the long run is to combine proper nutrition with a challenging exercise program. You must be willing to do without and sacrifice something else if you really want to achieve any fitness goal, such as weight loss.