Changing to Quality

I have mentioned in previous posts that I let myself get out of shape.  After college I went out and got a real job and worked real hours and got a real marriage and real kids and got real busy...so I didn't work out any more.  I also started to enjoy cooking so I made some yummy food.  (In fact in a recent post I mentioned being 50 pounds overweight and not having higher moral ground...well I was talking about myself only it was more than 50 pounds.)

I don't know if my approach to this problem was unique or not but if the whole diet food, magazine, pill businesses have a big market then I think I might be.  I'm certainly unique in almost every other way.  I wanted a change in my life but to be truthful I didn't really care that much if I lost weight.  I didn't want to change my weight I wanted to change my LIFE. 

Simple right?  Well not really.  I didn't want to change my life for a week or 6 months or get in shape for my High School Reunion, I wanted to change some things in my life forever.  I knew that if I was going to do that I would have to start slow but steady.  I have watched a lot of guys approaching my age decide that they need to get back in the gym.  They wake up early and hit the weights as hard as they did in High School.  They figure, "hey I used to work out 2.5 hours in the weight room so I better do that now."  Who has the time for that unless you somehow make money with your appearance?

It all started when my wife ordered a mountain of dirt about 7 years ago.  The dirt was dumped in our driveway and it sat there for a while.  I dreaded moving the dirt but I started moving about 10 wheelbarrows full every night.  It took probably 30 minutes and took me weeks to move the whole thing.  By the time I was done I felt like I had started a workout program and it turned out I had.  I thought I should keep this going so what next?  My wife had purchased a treadmill that we never used, so I started walking on that for 30 minutes a day, and I started taking some vitamins.  This actually started making me feel pretty good so we cleared a space in the garage for the weights that were ancient and I began doing some workouts. 

This went on for a while and I started to look around for a system that I could use efficiently.  I found the Body for Life Program by Bill Phillips.  I never signed up for the competition he had but I read the books and adapted my workout to function like the one he suggests.  Again big progress.  My tummy started to flatten and I probably lost 15 pounds but there wasn't much physical change in basic appearance.  So I kept this up for probably a couple years and decided that I probably should change something about the way I eat.  I began to work more on how I fixed food changing slowly to more of a program like Body for Life.  I like so many other Americans had too many carbs in my diet.  After a while of this I probably changed another 10 pounds for the lighter.

So probably 6 years went by and I have made slow steady progress and have kept it up.  The next step was to take the whole family to a nutritionist and get some ideas for how to eat better.  She put us on an elimination diet (The "diet" we did).  This diet isn't a weight loss diet specifically it is a diet to find out what foods your body doesn't work well with.  Once you limit the foods you don't process well things begin to change rapidly.  We learned a lot about our bodies during this time.  The thing I like the most about this is that our nutritionist doesn't say we have to give up anything.  I don't know about you but if I only get to eat one piece of chocolate a week or one attempt at any yummy food, I'm going to make it count.  I'm not going to eat a cheap candy bar and blow the whole thing I'm going to get a piece of high quality chocolate and savor every bite.  I love lasagna but we used to buy a lasagna at Costco (still love Costco so don't get me wrong) and when I had that it wasn't worth the once in a blue moon test.  If I'm going to eat lasagna I'm going to Pizza Bank in the Kingsgate area and get their yummy pan of Lasagna.  It doesn't have as much of the Ricotta Cheese but has a ton of meat sauce and Mozzarella Cheese, love it.  Love Pizza as well but we have found a few that just aren't worth it when our pizza splurge isn't as often as it used to be.  If I'm going to eat these things that are bad for me they are going to count big time.  That's changing for Quality, that's changing for life and that brought off another 25 pounds. 

So I've started applying the same principle to other areas of my life as well.  I don't want to stay busy and run out of time I want to accomplish big things with my time.  I have big dreams for business but I also have bigger dreams for my wife, my family, my health and my faith.  In every area I'm changing to Quality.  Some people use quality as a justification for not spending time with their kids.  They say they have quality time not the quantity of time.  I just want you to know that's not what I'm talking about but at the same time that doesn't excuse me from trying to make everything in my life of high quality.  It's really just making sure that I am in fact staying true to my major goals and not getting caught in the quicksand of life.  (More to come...)