Health

I've never been a person hugely concerned about living a healthy lifestyle. From a young age, I was always active in sports and my mom would always ensure we had a good diet, but it was never something I worked on personally. I have been blessed myself with the fact that I could eat garbage and not really have any ill effects from it. I'm a guy that can cook really well, loves to cook a lot, but just won't bother to do up anything fantastic when it's just myself. I believe a lot of people share this same mentality and so my diet was one of my initial concerns once I was on my own.

A little history...

Earlier on this year I just decided that I was going to include more fruits and veggies into my diet. Prior to this decision, I would say I was well below my intake of fruits and vegetables. It was never something that I consciously included in my diet, and whenever I reached for a snack, it certainly wasn't going to be an apple or a banana. I had to find ways of substituting these for things that I normally ate. Browsing the men's health website, I began to get interested in the idea of having a shake as a substitute for a small meal. At the same time, I did more and more research on the benefits of more smaller meals spread over the course of the day. I had always eaten 3 meals, sometimes even only 2 because I would skip breakfast in the morning and just drink coffee instead. So, this interested me quite a bit.

All the research I did on more smaller meals seemed to make sense, but just did not make it easy to apply to real life. There were all these schedules, and ideas for snacks and meals, but none seemed to take into account that someone would be working and may not have the resources to just whip up a shake at 10am in the morning. So, these ideas had to be adapted to my life. My job doesn't really allow me to just take a break and go deal with my diet... I'm tied to my desk for the most part. Also, when at work and slightly stressed, i want to go for something unhealthy to snack on... not a piece of fruit.

The other thing that wasn't known to me prior to this was the actual cost of eating healthy. You just cannot do it cheaply. It is cheap to eat junk food, but to have a constant selection of fresh fruits and vegetables in your kitchen is costly. However, if I got rid of all the junk food at the same time, then things aren't that bad, but it pays to keep a smaller stock of fruit and visit the grocery store more often to keep these from going bad regularly.

In order to get thing rolling, I started by setting out a rough plan for meals. I can actually get away with the same, boring things for snacks and lunches if I know I'm going to do something great for supper. It gives me something to look forward to, and I allow a little more freedom on my supper meal because I think I would fail miserably if I didn't give myself a small cheat daily. I know enough about myself to know where my threshold is, and if I reach that point, I'm going to fail. I also do not punish myself for cheating on the diet. It's not worth getting upset about because it will just make things worse in the long run. I just get back on track and keep going.

At the time of writing this, I normally have 2 apples, 1 as a snack, the other with lunch, 1.5 cups of grapes for a snack, 1 cup of strawberries or blueberries and a banana in my morning shake, and a cup of mixed nuts or just almonds as another snack. I do include other things like pomegranates, pineapples and melons when they are in season. For my lunch, I also have a whole wheat sandwhich with a little bit of cheese and fat free chicken or turkey on it. The cheese is a little bit of cheat, but, it does help me because I do love cheese a lot, so I have allowed that to be part of my lunch. So... that's my diet for the most part during the day. Supper is usually either a salad or stirfried veggies with either chicken, prawns or fresh fish. I will occasionally include some rice or pasta with my supper, but that's becoming more and more rare. I could almost got to a vegetarian diet pretty easily I guess, but leading that kind of lifestyle is not that important to me.

The results...

The results speak for themselves with this change in diet. Without increasing my exercise at all, and continueing with my job that ties me to a desk all day long, I still lost weight. In fact, over the course of a few months, without even thinking about anything but my diet, I dropped from 196 pounds down to a stable 174-176 pounds. I also lost 2 inches on my waste, again with no exercise at all. The other interesting side effect is that I have more energy. I do wake up in the mornings easier and feeling better in the mornings. It does appear that this has made it easier for me to start my exercising, which I'll discuss in the next couple days. The other important thing is that I cut out coffee from my normal daily intake as well. This was not a tough thing to do because I wasn't dependant on it like a lot of other people. I will still have a cup socially if someone wants to go out in the evening or on the weekend, but it's not something that I even think about any more during the week. I also do not drink much alcohol any more, which has also added to my weight loss.

Future dietary goals...

I'm not too sure what more I can really do in the diet. I think I'm very comfortable with things as they are. I've added vitamin supplements to my diet now. After a lot of research, I do feel it's important to have a daily multi-vitamin. There are always going to be things that you are just not getting. I also include Vitamin C and D supplements, as well as Coenzyme Q10. I don't want to be one of those people that preaches the need for vitamins, but I think everyone should at least be taking a multi-vitamin each day. Do some research yourself and see what might work for you.

Now that I'm single, the one thing that I don't want to start doing is living that bar/lounge lifestyle again. I don't go out for food often, and certainly will not go to a fast food restaurant any more. It still appears that a lot of the people I know live this lifestyle and (apart from the cost of it) this no longer appeals to me. I think it's part of the reason why I find myself sort of reluctant to constantly go out when invited. If you don't have friends that have similar goals with their diet, then it becomes challenging to stay fixed on your own goals. Keep in mind that I do fail from time to time, or cheat I guess, but because I worked hard initially to stick this diet, it's now more a habit and not so much work. I won't punish myself if I get slightly off track, it's just not worth pressuring myself like that

Thoughts?

Be well...

K

Life after the seperation

So... I start this again...

This is actually a therapy thing. Blogging makes me think... it makes me analyze my thoughts and my actions more closely than if I just try and reflect without the written word to look at.

I have lofty plans of taking this blog to my own website, which I'm starting to plan as we speak. The idea is that I do believe that I have a lot of offer once I get into a routine or habit of posting regularly. My goal will be eventually to make a name for myself on the interweb and possibly make some money from it as well. I won't go into plans about this just yet, but I am sure I can do something with all my knowledge, experience and thoughts. I'm tired of the way this life of mine is going and I need to step out of all of my comfort zones and do something a little more daring with my life.

So... here I am.

I guess we need to look at exactly who I have become in the last little while. I'm on the verge of being 32 and still have no direction in life. I'm intelligent, good looking, can be very funny when I have comfort with people and have my health. What's interesting among all of these things is that I am bad with my finances, make poor decisions in general and for some reason am prone to bouts of anti-social behaviour. The point of this blog is to document the changes that I'm making to better myself and my life.

The relationship...

About 2 weeks I walked out of a very damaging relationship. Love can make you do some incredible things, and it made me put myself through a huge amount of hell. Now that I look back on things, I honestly cannot believe that I went through what I have, and still question my logic to stay in the relationship for as long as I did.

The relationship lasted almost 3 years, and in that time I relocated to Vancouver Island for this girl and her daughter. I guess I was due for some sort of new environment, so the blame cannot be placed on her. I decided to make that move and we had full intentions of this relationship creating the family that we both always saw in our lives. Her daughter was just about 1 year old when I actually moved out. I took on the role as her father with every ounce of energy that I had... and it was tough. It will probably be one of the toughest things that I've ever done in my life up to this point.

After about a year, the first act if infidelity happened. Natasha developed quite the interest in a co-worker and hid that from me for a few months. Our relationship turned pretty awful as she withdrew more and more from me and became more and more involve with Patrick. Due to my extremely trusting nature, I just assumed (and took her word) that she was just struggling at work and that was causing the problems. Eventually, I had to gain unauthorized access to her email in order to discover the truth.

Why didn't I leave at that time? I'll be honest... I tried. I did walk out and stay with a friend for a few days, but ultimately the family drew me back in. I love her daughter with everything that I have, and I really wanted her to have this wonderful family to grow up in. I felt that I was strong enough, with assistance from Natasha, to move beyond the issues. The problem was that she wasn't ready to fully give up the other guy. She mislead me again and again and I really have no one to blame but myself for constantly putting the family idea in my head and trying harder. I wouldn't even listen to my best friend when the topic came up.

Fast forward (a LONG time) to a couple weeks ago when I finally walked out. I found a place that I could afford and I took the remaining few items of my life and I moved out. I took what little self respect and self esteem I had left and I am powering through life trying to regain some idea of who I am and what I want to do.

What did I leave with?

Finally, I had the confidence to leave. I know it sounds strange to say, but having a person in your life for an significant amount of time makes it really tough to cut the strings and drop them completely. In a move that probably surprised everyone that knows me, I cut all ties with Natasha and her daughter. I will not communicate with either of them again. That is final.

I left determined to make the perfect life for myself regardless of any one else every coming along. I also have my health and a job that covers my expenses for the most part. I moved into my suite with an air mattress, a fold up camping chair for my living room and my computer. I had my clothes and my car, but apart from that I didn't have anything else. At this time, I still don't have anything in my living room but that chair and the computer. I did locate a bed, which I feel pretty good about the score I made.

Also, due to poor decision making on the financial front, I really don't have a ton of money to just buy everything that I need. So... I'm coming to terms with having a bare living room, and am actually enjoying the challenge of living without a lot of material items. I've always been materialistic, so this is actually something that I have never done before. I am in no hurry to change things though... which is strange. I think it forces me to adapt and if I want to do be social, it will force me to get out of the house because I won't be able to entertain here. It also forces me to be relatively humble and honest about my living situation to friends, and for some reason I'm not ashamed to tell people about it. I think this is good thing... it shows a level of confidence that I know still exists.

I will continue to maintain a nice wardrobe because it is important for a number of reasons. Dressing well helps me to feel more confident. I need to dress well at work, and I feel better in general when I'm done up. So, I will not cut out my clothing expenses, but it will be cut back slightly.

I think tomorrow I will start listing goals that I want to achieve in the short term (before Christmas) and longer down the road. I've already taken steps that I am surprised about... positive steps. I will also start to detail why I believe I taking this blog to it's own website will be intelligent, generate traffic and hopefuly make me a tiny bit of money.

That's all for now... be well.

K