you got this Chad… you can do this.

My feet are hurting.

God I am out of shape

Maybe I should stop for a second.

NO! This is part of it. It is hard….. I just need to keep pressing through.

I can go for 30 minutes.

It’s not going to kill me to keep going for 30 minutes straight… i am sitting down for crying out loud.

Perseverance. A word neglected by us fatty’s. I was talking to a friend of mine and he asked me how the gym was going. My response… “I hate cardio…….but I am trying to get over it.”

He responded, “Yeah, well anyone who say they like it is full of it.”

“Well that makes me feel better. So it’s not just a fatty thing.”

“Dude, It’s a human thing.”

It is part of the human condition to persevere…. I think we forget that our challenges have a breaking point and so we just quit too easily. We justify our quitting.

I was at my gym (Dekalb Medical Wellness Center) on the stair stepper and I was feeling the burn after 5 minutes much less 30. So I talk to myself. I tell myself, “No, you are not going to quit… you are going to keep going.” I want to quit. I want to make excuses. It is like I am in rehab going through the withdrawals of fattydom. But I have to press through the withdrawals. The only way to get healthy is to persevere through, not go back to the drug of apathy and uncontrolled appetite.

The bottom line is… we quit to soon. That is what keeps us where we are… miserable, fat and dying because we don’t fight for anything anymore. People don’t fight for their marriages daily. They don’t fight for their kids when it counts. They fall asleep and sign their life away in debt agreements and they cease to live. They breathe, breed, consume, make excuses, and live far lower than they are capable of and designed for. Wake up, you who sleep. Fight the mediocrity of the day that wants to enslave you. Fight for your marriage. Your family. Your identity. Your goals. Your health. Your convictions. Yourself.

Do whatever you got to do. What do you have to do? Do you have to write it out? Do you need to expose yourself and push yourself out there a bit to get back on track? Then get a blog. They are free. What do you have to do to motivate yourself. Not Motivated? Well check out my blog daily. Check Anthony Robbins blog, Check out fatladySingN’s blog. Check out Steve Pavlina’s  Blog. Don’t know what to eat? Sit with a Nutritionist. Can’t afford a nutritionist? Dekalb Medical Wellness Center has a service where a Nutritionist will go shopping with you called a Grocery Store Tour. It cost $40. Can’t afford that? Then go back and check where you are actually spending your money….. because your poor eating habits always found a way to get paid for. Resources abound. Make no mistake there will be an outcome… your choices lead to your outcome. So look around…. what choices got you there?

“But you don’t understand my story… you don’t understand my circumstances, you don’t understand I don’t have time. You don’t understand my limitations…they prevent me from…….  You don’t understand!”

Ok, get it all out. Write out all those arguments that hinder you from attaining the self progress you actually want deep inside of you. Write them out. Read them over a couple of times and make sure you get them all down on paper. Now hold them up and look at them. This is your legacy. This is how you are choosing to be remembered. Is it starting to bother you at all? Write a new legacy of things you can do versus what you can’t. Figure it out. You can do it. I believe in you. You are far more capable than anyone realizes. George Bernard Shaw says in the Maxims of Revolutionist, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Quit finding reasons to stop. Be the unreasonable man.

Fatty Pumping Iron.

Find success stories in your local gym. Be the success story in your local gym. Quit making excuses and do whatever you have to do. Quit waiting for the right circumstance. The right circumstance is right now.

What ever the challenge is get some grit and push through. You have grit inside of you. There is no way you got where you are without some grit. It takes grit to earn money and pay bills. It takes grit to have kids. It takes grit to make your own way in the world. You know this. You have done this. Start applying you grit to all areas of your life that are important to you. Not just the ones with a bill.

Perseverance. It has a breaking point.

Breathe Chad. Breathe. Push. Breathe.

Keep Going.

You can do this.

I don’t care if you hack up a lung you keep going.

Don’t Stop. I make the decision to keep moving forward.

Press Harder Chad. Pedal harder. Harder. HARDER.

Turn up my music if I have to. Avoid looking at the clock. Focus on the pushing not the countdown Chad. Focus. Push. Press. Harder. Keep Going.

And you just keep going. You make your decisions. You set the bar of what you can and can’t do.

This morning I got on the step machine for my 30 minutes of cardio. I was tired and feeling the burn and wanting to stop within 30 seconds. Then I made it to 5 minutes. I pushed myself. I coached myself. I told myself…..I kept going and then I made it to 15 minutes. I felt a breakthrough and plowed through to 20 minutes. At 22 minutes the breakthrough was gone but my resolve was stronger. 25 minutes another break through after some tough few minutes. At the 27 minute mark I decided that I was going to not settle for 30 minutes today. I was going to apply my own extra grit. I was going to do 45 minutes. I committed. Pushed myself to 32 minutes. Tired. Sweating. Aching. 35 minutes. Turn up the techno music louder. Pumping as hard as I can. Pushing through the pain 40 minutes. And then the breakthrough at 41 minutes. I was flying for the last 4 minutes pushing myself as hard as I could. I got off the machine at a little over 45 minutes feeling good. Feeling pumped. Feeling fire in my body with adrenaline. I am alert. Clear minded. Breathing. Ready not for the locker room but my upper body workout followed by crunches until I can’t do crunches any more.

I earned these numbers.

You know what I realized? That 45 minutes I never had before during my day. 45 minutes I slept away. 45 minutes I didn’t make time for. Over 5700 steps under my belt that I start my day off with. What did you start you day off with?

You can do it.

Perseverance is like a seed. Add it to your vocabulary. Water it with your life. And watch you grow. Today is the day. Today is your day. What are your going to do?

We find excuses to not exercise.

Too cold.
Too early.
Too busy.
Too much money for a membership.
I can’t afford it.
I’m not comfortable.

And then this apathy toward not staying active spills into our everyday life habits. Steve Candler spoke of a study in his book 17 Lies That Hold You Back & The Truth That Will Set You Free, a book I highly recommend,”

… there was a study done of people’s differences in energy when making a bed. The heavier the person, the more economy of movement he or she would exhibit in the making of the bed. They captured it on videotape. The heavy person would make the fewest and shortest movements around the bed, as if subconsciously trying not to exercise.

“The lighter person would move around and around the bed in a whirlwind of motion and movement. Therefore, the lighter person would expend more calories and burn more fat doing the same task. The point of the study, and of the hidden video in the bedroom, was to find out if we subconsciously conspire to keep our weight from going down. It seemed to suggest we do.

“We secretly try to keep our body fat the same as it is and to keep our metabolic set point constant. Therefore, the trick to losing weight is to raise that set point by consciously overriding the subconscious system so that we burn more and more fat until our body assigns itself a new set point and a new weight.”

Fatty goes to the gym.

So I joined a gym. I am refocusing my life because the small habits in my life support my poor health. I realized, however, that I not only have to change my diet and my exercise, but I also have to change my day and how I use my time. I have done a lot of “wanting” in my life. I want to be healthy. I want to run. I want to be there for my life. I want to have financial success. Oh how I want hard…. I disguise it and call them longings of my heart.

I have been “doing” a lot as well. I have been parking close. I have been the lazy bed maker. I have been the guy that sneaks a bite. I have been avoiding the gym. I have been pacifying myself by not pushing myself.

What I have been “doing” does not support what I want. We don’t stop and evaluate our day to day life enough. Sometimes we just need to stop and say “Is the way that I am living my life going to get me what I want?” and if there answer is “no” then we need to reevaluate how we are doing things.

So who is the gym of choice you ask for a fatty? Well I knew it needed to be close by. I don’t feel like being with a bunch of Ken and Barbie dolls so I looked around and found the best gym possible for me and my goals.  I found The Wellness Center at DeKalb Medical. The Wellness Center is an 18,000-square-foot fully-equipped fitness facility complete with an indoor pool and indoor track.

They are connected with Dekalb Medical Hospital and have a variety of programs and services in the area of fitness, lifestyle education, and integrative medicine. Everything I need. I like Dekalb Medical Wellness Center because it is more than just a gym for it’s membership fee. They focus on having resources to help you reach your goal versus just having equipment, some jocks and a cleaning crew.

I noticed as soon as I walked in that it was a place for “the rest of us”. I walked in and felt normal…which is challenging to anyone walking through the door at 530 pounds.

I started my Membership on Monday, and by Tuesday evening I have already completed three workout sessions, worn “fatty boy shorts” and called them swimming trunks, had an aerobics bike tell me to “Pedal Faster”, worked out in my “Official Before Picture” outfit, and learned how water aerobics can be a fun, complete, and challenging workout.  Water Aerobics isn’t just for little old ladies.  It’s great for fatties, too.

Yes, I did wear my Timb's to the Gym

Right now I am doing what “I think” I should do. But within the week, I’ll be meeting a personal trainer and a nutritionist to help me along the way. In fact, I will be sitting down with Alice the Nutritionist on Thursday and I will tell you all about it.

I am changing my life, by changing my day-to-day.  You have goals. You have dreams. What can you change in your daily habits than can get you back on the path to the life you want?

PEDAL FASTER FATTY!!! Hey... I am trying here!

This is what FatManChronicles is going to be about. Taking you along for the journey back to health, back to life.  Let’s see what we can learn together.