There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.
4 years ago today I quit smoking. That’s over 29,000 cigarettes I have not smoked, saving around $6k and gaining about 15lbs. (12 of which I’ve lost in the past 2 months)
If I had known when I lit my first cigarette how hard it would be for me to quit 8 years later I hope I wouldn’t have lit it. The first cigarette was easy to not smoke. Heck. The first pack wasn’t easy to smoke. I only smoked if I had been drinking. After enough of those it became easier to smoke even when I hadn’t had a drink.
I quit several times using the patch and I have to tell you… that was my favorite way to quit but not the most effective way. As I said… I quit several times that way. The patches dose of nicotine gave me almost hallucinatory quality dreams. I don’t take hallucinogens so I’m only guessing but the dreams that were a side effect of the patch were interesting and fun. Surprisingly if I could go back to smoking I wouldn’t, but if I could go back to a patch that would give me the dreams I would in a minute. Sadly, I’m so unused to nicotine at this point that I am sure I would feel nicotine poisoned and sick with even the lowest dosage. So, I don’t use the patch and I don’t smoke… and haven’t for four years today.
I see kids start smoking today and know that nothing anybody says could have talked me out of smoking and I know that nothing I will say will stop them from smoking, but I say it anyway. I won’t buy their smokes and I don’t let them smoke in my car (I’m 40, when I say kids smoking that age goes way higher than it did when I was a kid of 20 so don’t think I’m talking about 10 year olds!).
It’s been a strange four years. I moved from Des Moines, IA to Memphis, TN and then from there to Ft. Dodge, IA. I got a promotion, then a demotion, and changed office locations 4 times. My Dad had brain surgery to remove a tumor, and the company I worked for changed ownership 4 times. In all that time and with all that stress I didn’t smoke.
So, if you’re out there now thinking about quitting smoking. Do it. Don’t wait for things to get better or for their to be less stress. Life’s not like that. Just quit now. This might not be the quit that sticks, but it certainly won’t be if you don’t try it. It’s OK to quit more than once as long as you keep quitting. There will come a point when you’re tired of it and when the switch inside your head is thrown and at that point you’ll be quit and later you’ll be able to sit and have a morning cup of coffee without reaching for the pack. You’ll hear the crinkle of cellophane without thinking it’s a new pack. You’ll be able to get in your car and start it without cracking the window to let the smoke out. You CAN quit, all you have to do is start quitting.
(1) Billy Collins’ poem, “The Best Cigarette.” Read the rest of his poem here or you can listen to it here.
I’ve been on a diet for about a month now and lost 10 lbs. I think my general fitness level has increased as well. My priorities have certainly changed. I’ve unsubscribed from my online games. I hardly game at all now, and my reading has been cut way back.
I used to believe I’d exercise more if there were enough time to do that and everything else. The first week or so the exercising was of the make myself do it sort of thing. I didn’t enjoy it so much as endure it. Somewhere in there though it changed to the point that I walk and jog in place while watching Survivor now to make sure I get some cardio in. I won’t lie. I’m not doing crap for strength training and I need to. That’s my weakness right now. I haven’t any room to do it and I don’t want to buy equipment. I did the 30 day shred for a week and then stopped and never picked it up again. I should start again, but the walking & cardio is going strong for me right now so I’m going to stick with it for now.
I’ve found a good walking tracking site. I’m a fan of the pedometer, using a good pedometer, the Omron HJ-112 instead of a cheapo model cut my steps way down… partly because the cheap ones were measuring a thousand steps on the drive to work when I didn’t walk at all. So, using WalkerTracker I’m keeping up with my steps. Using SparkPeople I’m keeping up with my vegetables, water, and other goals, including minutes of cardio per day/week/month. I’ve been using Weight Watchers Online for Men to track my points, that is mostly a low fat, high fiber diet and portion control. I’m better disciplined with that than I was/am with SparkPeople.
There you go. That’s what I spent my money on. Now, I had the Nintendo Wii. I got it back around Thanksgiving when they were rare and kept it back in case I needed a great Christmas present at the last minute. The Wii Fit though I just got today and have set it up, input my height and let it weigh me and figure my BMI (too high but I think it’s doing it wrong) and then set a weight loss goal.
I also got Pokemon Platinum which has nothing to do with fitness, but everything to do with a really fun game. Now, if you’ve played Diamond or Pearl Platinum’s going to look really familiar and maybe I wouldn’t buy it new unless you were addicted, but if you played neither Diamond or Pearl then Platinum‘s a great way to get back into Pokemon.
The Wii and Wii Fit can both be hard to get out in the world. We went to two Best Buy’s and three Game Stops before finally finding it in a little Mom & Pop game store in Ames today so if you want either the Wii or the Wii Fit make your life easier and order it from Amazon. Show me some love and buy it through those links and help get me some affiliate lovin’ too if you want.
This isn’t a paid ad, both are GREAT fun. (Boom Blox is my favorite Wii game so far, but a close second is Rayman Raving Rabbids).
The hard part is I work on the road a lot so some weeks I won’t have access to the wii for exercise etc. While gone I’ll do the exercises that are in Sparkpeople (free remember?) and walk but I’ll miss the wii!
PS: Weekends will tend toward more personal posts than others. I won’t say there will be no management type posts on the weekend and I won’t say there won’t be any personal types in the week, but I’m going to try and focus them that way. Work in work week, and personal on weekends. If I bore you as a person, feel free to Mark all as Read on Mondays. My feelings won’t be hurt in the least.
PPS: Very excited about the Wii Fit. About to exercise on it now. I’ll be gone for much of this next week and the following one, but I’ll get back to you all on how I keep up with it. I know you’re glued to your collective seats!
I’ve talked about SparkPeople.com before, but for some reason I stopped using it. I’ve got a focus problem sometimes. I wander off and then never come back to things. It’s why I’m addicted to the Moleskine Cahiers to keep my brain on task at work. See, I just did it again! Sparkpeople.com is not a diet site. OK. It is a diet site, but it’s a diet site in the same way google is a company that does search. Sparkpeople.com is much more than diet.
One of the things that helps me with focus was recently mentioned by Walletpop.com here where they talk about sparkpeople.com believe it or not. It’s the Seinfeld calendar. The idea is you get a big honking calendar and every day you work to your goal you put a big X through the day. Soon you’ll have a small chain and you won’t to break the chain. It’s a constant visual cue to get going on the goal, and anything can be done if you do a little every day. At least that’s what the folks said who built the pyramids, dug the Panama Canal, and got men on the moon.
But back to fitness! When you’re done with this article go check out walletpop’s five mostly free fitness tips to jumpstart your fitness mission.
I’m forty at the time that I write this and being fit isn’t as easy as it used to be. It takes some effort on my part. Not a supreme amount of work honestly, but it isn’t something that just happens. I’m not the most disciplined person you’re likely to meet and I need reminders. I need something that keeps my focus on task. It’s like the Moleskine cahiers I was talking about earlier that I use for work. They’re low-tech, but they’re fast, easy, and cheap. All things I need in a system for me to stick with it. Sparkpeople is a good system for tracking fitness and things that impact fitness.
I’m not that hung up on weight. I’m technically overweight for my height (10 lbs), but I see me in a mirror and I’m far from a house. I could stand to lose a few pounds. There’s no way I’m in need of a diet site. I’m in need of a reminder that vegetables are edible, exercise won’t kill me, water is free and I don’t drink enough, and all sorts of things I’m willing to do ARE exercise. I don’t have to own elaborate weight machines, and walking, which I love, counts. Not as much as jogging or running, but it counts!
If you’re of a mind to try and get some fitness focus give Sparkpeople.com a look. It’s got a heck of a lot of information on there which is both nice, and supremely distracting at times. Use it for a week or two and see if you don’t like it too. If you don’t, and have a better site you use that’s free please, let me know in the comments! I’d love to try it.
It’s not entirely true I’ve reached mid-life. I’m not even sure when midlife is. I am sure I’m older than I’ve ever been before, and while I prefer that to the alternative I’m not crazy about the up-coming trailing zero my age will soon have.
I’m just now coming off a week long vacation that was perfectly timed. In the days before the vacation my boss said to me that he could tell I just wasn’t feeling it any more. I was going through the motions of the job, but I wasn’t fully vested in it. He was absolutely right. I was burned out and not sure if the job had changed or I had changed or if it was just my impending trailing zero causing me to seek change for the sake of change. I’m still not sure what was going on when I left. I’m not entirely back yet, tomorrow is day 1. But I know now that I don’t want to go back. I talked to him today about demoting myself two or three levels just to improve the quality of my life and decrease stress. It’d add a financial stress, but I’ve got money socked away and I lived on that money before. I’m sure I could again. He thought I was kidding. I’m not sure how serious I was.
All that being said, work ennui happens at times. Work isn’t who I am though. It’s something I do. As I approach the zero-trailing birthday I’m paying more attention to myself, my food intake, and my exercise. The tool I’m using to do this is Sparkpeople.com. I hate all the buttons because they all mention it’s an online diet. I’m not using that part of it. I’m using the tracking tools. Tracking my exercise and tracking my food intake. If it goes in my mouth it goes on this site. Just the awareness of what I’m eating helps me make better choices.
Sparkpeople.com has a great community feature with message boards, built in e-mail for within the system, and a wealth of articles you can read about all sorts of topics from health issues to diet to exercise. I really like the site. I like it enough to recommend it. I used to like fitday.com and suggest it to people. I set up an account there years ago. Sadly, in the intervening years it has not changed one bit. Everything else on the Internet has grown more feature rich and easy to use, but not fitday. It feels old and clunky now.
So, if you’re of a mind to go all fitness minded with me join Sparkpeople.com and add me as a buddy in there. I’d be happy to share what I know of it with you and I remember when I quit smoking, 3 years, 1 week, and 3 days ago as of today the support of a buddy was very important. I’m all about friendly helpful support. I like to give it, and I am the type who needs their positive strokes so give me a shout out if you’re interested. My name’s simplerich there too.
instead of a cheapo model cut my steps way down… partly because the cheap ones were measuring a thousand steps on the drive to work when I didn’t walk at all. So, using 
is my favorite Wii game so far, but a close second is 
).
to keep my brain on task at work. See, I just did it again!