Ever wish that you could just have three months off from your life to get your life organized?

Yep, I thought that might resonate.  🙂  Loosing weight is complicated because life is complicated.  Life throws curve balls.  And when you are trying to do something as fundamental as “get healthy”  it means that every part of your life is either affected by the effort or affects the effort.  In other words your whole life changes, not just a tiny bit of it.

Using myself as a case study of one in time management…

Stay with me here, you’re about to follow a chain of thought and interconnections and since this basically is inviting you inside “Tony’s Head” the experience could be frightening.  😉

Step one..the starting point.  THE GOAL <drumroll please> is to be fit and healthy.  For me, that means loosing weight, becoming more flexible, increasing my cardiovascular capacity, increasing muscle mass.

However, this immediately connects with and to some degree conflicts with other top level goals.    I dance.  I love to dance.  I enjoy competing in dance.  To dance requires that I have some disposable income for lessons, practice fees, travel expenses to attend competitions, more cash to pay for my pro’s travel expenses to attend the competitions to dance with me, costumes, and dance shoes.

Which means I need a job.  Or a sugar daddy.  (The sugar daddy position currently is vacant…applications now being accepted.  I think I could easily get used to being a kept man.

Ok, so I need a job not only to pay for my dance habit but to pay other things like food, gas, clothing, utilities, etc.

Lost yet?  Stay with me.

So… Full time job means 40 hours of the week.  Gone.  Add in 30 minutes travel time each way and that means 7 more hours gone.  Add in the hour for lunch each day and that’s another 7 hours.  Gone.  Add in those you’ve got to do them even though you hate them chores and there goes another 8 or so hours per week for laundry, grocery shopping, paying bills etc.

So… 7 days x 24 hours per day – all that I’ve already listed and we’ve got 106 hours.  Ya gotta sleep.

My body needs 8 hours a night.  No way that’s gonna happen so I figure an average of 7 hours per night.  106-49=57.

Add in food prep time and meals of 1 hour per day drops us down to 50 hours per week.

Dancing…  Lessons 2 hours per week.  Sometimes 3.  Let’s figure an average of 2.25 for the sake of argument.  Practices are 6 hours per week, sometimes 8 so let’s average that to 7.  That takes us down to 40.75.  Subtract travel time to/from lessons and practices, changing into dance shoes/out of dance shoes, chatting with friends at studio and that takes another 6 hours.  We’re now down to 34.75 hours.

34 hours.   Oh!  Wait, forgot something.  45 minutes every day to shower, shave, get dressed, gather stuff for the day, etc.  , Hmmm…  lets round up to 1 per day… We’re down to 24 or so hours and change.   Sounds like a lot.  Until you realize that no one is able to go 100% all the time.  There are going to be times where you’re just pooped or not motivated or not feeling well or need some down time.  But assuming that we can go 100% full blast and utilize every minute of the day….

So… into that 24 or so hours I now have to fit, riding my bike, stretching, lifting, watching the occasional movie, reading a book, *all* of any entertainment or leisure activity that I may pursue, weighing myself, going by Jenny Craig to get my food and do the weigh in.  Calling my Mom, staying in contact with my friends, doing professional reading, cleaning my room, taking the trash out, etc. Getting my hair cut once a month, And all the other business of living.

No wonder I’m tired.

Nope.  Loosing weight isn’t easy because it means that you’ve got to re-organize your entire life and schedule in order to do it.  In other words you have to make “loosing weight and/or being healthy” part of your normal routine which, of course means that what was your normal routine gets all thrown into  chaos at first until the “new” routine becomes the “new” normal.

Nope.  Loosing weight isn’t easy.  If it was, then everyone would be skinny.  So today when I go to weigh in at Jenny Craig and I’m either flat or I’ve gained, I’ll remind myself that I’ve set myself a very difficult challenge here.  It isn’t just “loosing weight”  The GOAL is “changing your life so that being fit and healthy” is just something that happens, because that’s the way you live.

And *that* goal is a lot harder one to achieve.  I’ll get there, but it will be one step at a time.  One pound at a time.  One habit at a time.

See ya on the dance floor!