is that piece of cake worth it?

Welcome to today's issue of The Daily Dose of Motivational Medicine. The e-zine of Motivateme: Breaking the Procrastination Habit. http://www.motivateme.info. Have you signed up for your daily dose yet?
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I am sure that most of you reading this will know that I have struggled with my weight over the years. For those of you who are not carrying excess baggage may not appreciate what it is like to do so. Do you carry excess weight around with you? If you don't congratulations - keep on doing what you are doing. However, it is interesting to note that as we get older, our daily calorie intake requirements get less, yet we tend to eat the same amount of food. Not only that, but the minor aches and pains, and the major aches and pains of ageing take their toll on our desire and our ability to exercise. As muscles are the body's furnace, allowing us to eat more, if we don't exercise in a way that maintains that muscle mass - we lose our ability to eat what we like and keep the weight off. There are some great books on the market that explain that better than I...of the two that I would recommend (and no they don't know that I am telling you this)....are Donna Aston's "Fat not Fiction"  and Stephen Smith's "Look Good, Feel Great" The latter is Stephen's first foray out of the gym and into the writing world and it does show in the writing style he uses, but that aside - both books explain the science of weight training, body building and fat loss explains it better than I.
 
As we have discussed in previous editions of the daily dose, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie and weight loss or gain, is a simple maths equation. Eat more than you use, and you will gain weight, eat less than your body needs and you will lose weight.
 
But what has that got to do with motivation, goal setting and everything else that you want to do?
 
There are some interesting facts - a lot of people eat or drink to excess when they are "down". Comfort eating. What happens then is you feel guilty for having eaten the "wrong" thing and you spiral - usually downwards. There is a double edged sword at work here. Your mind is responsible for the messages it sends - telling you to eat more, go on it won't hurt....and then the other side of your mind, starts to beat you up as soon as you've finished - see I told you, you shouldn't eat that.....This dual personality is your EGO. Yep, your ego, the nasty little blighter that keeps us off balance, and easy prey to every whim. And when that happens everything else you say you want to do, be or achieve is lost in the downward spiral.
 
So how do you stop this thing called ego. Well sometimes you just have to recognise that it needs to prod you occassionally. But what I have found happens is that if it spots you watching it, he does what every kid does and - says "what? I didn't do anything!!"
 
Smack it metaphorically on the rump and pick up a piece of fruit....by which time the other parts of our brain have cottoned on to the teenager and they're back to keeping it in line.
 
But what happens if you don't spot it in time and you start to eat? Well there is an exercise I would like you to do. It's OK you don't have to go to the gym, but you do need to participate, so that when your egotistical teenager starts again you can remember the exercise and you can ask yourself if you really want to carry that excess weight around all day.
 
So what is the exercise?
 
I would like you to go into your pantry and pick up a bag of potatoes, or a bag of sugar...a typical bag of sugar is 1kilogram or 2.2lbs. A bag of spuds can weigh anything from a couple of pounds to 3 or 4 kilos. Now imagine carrying that around with you all day. Make the trial realistic - stick the item into a back pack and carry it with you all day.
 
Now I am classed as "overweight" with a Body Mass Index of 25.5 - OK it is only slightly over the height/weight ratio for my height, but even so. Every day I carry around a couple of bags of "potatoes" - it puts pressure on my heart, my lungs, my joints. Remember that it only takes an excess of 7,700 calories to add a kilo of fat to your body - how many bits of cake do you think that equates to? Actually not that many, or if you are not into cake, then consider - 15 bottles of wine, 7.5 Big Mac's and Large Fries, 15 6" Chicken sub sandwiches, 30 mars bars.... over and above your normal calorie intake and hey you've got yourself an extra kilo of weight to carry around with you. So add another half bag of sugar to your load.
 
Now take off the back pack - how much better do you feel now that you're not carrying the excess weight around with you? Here's to keeping our egotistical teenagers in check.
 
Speak to you again soon
Elle
 
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