Weight: 231.2 (+0.0)
Fat: 39.3%
Meals: Not available
Exercise: Light Cardio (Treadmill WL2 - 218 calories, 1.52 miles)
Pictures: Front/Side/Back

One of my many bad habits is a tendency to overthink things. I'm such a perfectionist that the fear of doing it the wrong way often prevents me from doing it at all. It touches pretty much all parts of my life and my weight is one of those areas.

Ideally I want to plan out the perfect program. I want to have a whole list of exercises to do, planned out in advance to maximize strength, endurance, and most importantly, weight loss. I want to have my entire menu planned out, with just the right mix of macronutrients, a calorie count that's neither too low nor too high, and yet easy to prepare and delicious to boot.

The temptation to put off losing weight while I do all this planning and preparation is enormous. Before I can even begin planning though, I need education. I need to spend time studying, figuring out why I failed in the past and what's going to help me succeed this time around. I need to know what foods I can and can't eat. I need to learn the proper mix of cardio exercise vs strength training and how often and long I should do each.

I came across a great term for this behavior recently: analysis paralysis. Getting so caught up in thinking things through prevents you from doing things. Now I'm not suggesting full steam ahead but I think it's important to start doing something today and not after months of study and preparation.

My goals are as follows:

  • Establish habit of exercise - Easing into exercise instead of starting out at full throttle should help me sustain the effort
  • Prioritize my health - In the past I've always put diet and/or exercise at the bottom of my priority list - I need to change that
  • Get ready for real workouts - I'm pretty out of shape and if I'm going to work out at anything approaching 90-100% intensity, I need to prepare my body

To meet those goals I've decided to start out with 30 minutes of light cardio. I've always been a runner and one of my past weight loss purchases was a decent treadmill, so I will use that. The weight loss program on the machine varies the speed and incline during the workout, which makes the workout a bit more interesting. It also gives me a 2 minute warm up and cooldown.

I'm so anxious to see results, I'm tempted to start in on intense workouts and extreme diet. But I know this process is going to take long months, if not a year or two, and if I really want to change my body I need to pace myself and develop a new lifestyle. If I sprint for the finish line, I'm going to fail like I have in the past.