Let’s See How Much We Can Change In 8 Weeks
8/14/2022
Today was a tough day. I said goodbye to my wife as she started an 8-week travel nursing assignment in a different state. No, she will not be gone for 8 weeks straight but this will be the most we’ve been away from each other in a long time, in fact, years. Believe it or not, I love my wife a lot and want to spend as much time with her as possible. That’s just a small part of this post and as you’ve read from the title I’m going to try and change my life in 8 weeks.
2022 hasn’t been my favorite year if we’re being honest. I’ve had the most success professionally for sure but with that grind in my career, I’ve lost a lot of myself. I stopped taking things I enjoy doing seriously. Working out, making content online, and building things have all been put on hold. I have for sure got caught in the rut of going to work for 10 hours, coming home and eating, then watching TV until we go to bed. It’s boring, lazy, and not fulfilling.
I need to change something.
Well, what better chance to make a change than when my wife goes away for 8 weeks? No, she has never stopped me from making these changes before I’ve just been a lazy POS if we’re being honest. In fact, I know she would support all the things I’m wanting to do and probably make them easier with her support. But again, I’m my own human who can make my own choices and keep myself accountable.
So what am I trying to change? Well, a lot! I want this blog post to serve as a bit of a diary over the next 8 weeks. I want to look back on it when I inevitably go through this again and need a bit of a kick in the ass. The biggest thing I keep thinking about as I write this is my weight. I’ve been eating a little too good and it shows. Pair that with working primarily in an office setting and not with my tools every day and you have a recipe for a little excessive weight gain.
Yeah, it happens but it’s time to get it a little more managed. Currently, I’m sitting at 215lbs and in 8 weeks I want that number to be under 205lbs. As someone who powerlifted and managed my weight in a responsible fashion for years, I know this is attainable.
There’s a lot more I want to do as well but I’ll talk more about those as the weeks go on. Here are the things I’m going to do this week:
| TASK | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
| Deactivate my Facebook account (not delete, just turn it off for 8 weeks) | DONE! | ||||||
| Get my average weight for the week to be 212lbs | 215 | 214.2 | 213.6 | 213.8 | 213.4 | 213 | 213.8 |
| Get to work every morning by 6:30 and do highly focused work until 8 am | X | X | X | ||||
| Get lunch/drinks with 2 friends a week | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Go on one 30-minute walk a day either with the dog or on the treadmill | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Lift 4x a week | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Make 1 YouTube Video per week | X |
End Of Week 1!
Week 1 is up and I honestly feel great! Starting off strong by getting rid of Facebook was the refresher I needed. The rest of the week consisted of great workouts and slowly losing weight with a 7-day average of 213.8lbs. I’m trying to make sure I keep some balance in my life and we even went to a concert this weekend where it was a bad day to be a beer… because I had more than my fair share.
During week 1 I successfully met up with 2 friends and did something different. The conversations I have during these times are always so engaging and force me to think. It’s great to get away from the grind of work.
Lastly, I put out my first YouTube video in 6 months. I’m not saying it was great but it did feel nice to publish again. I don’t know if I want to put out one per week or switch to bi-weekly. Either way it’s something I want to keep doing.
Okay, let’s do it all again next week and see where we end up:
| TASK | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
| Get my average weight for the week to be 211lbs | 213 | 212 | 212.8 | 212.6 | 212.6 | 212.4 | 212.8 |
| Get to work every morning by 6:30 and do highly focused work until 8 am | X | X | X | ||||
| Get lunch/drinks with 2 friends a week | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Go on one 30-minute walk a day either with the dog or on the treadmill | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Lift 4x a week | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Make 1 YouTube Video per week |
End of Week 2 🤨
I’ll be honest this week felt weird. I just couldn’t find a good balance between doing the things I wanted to do and actually doing them. That sounds weird but I know some people can relate. Also, I didn’t have a single good night of sleep, which plays more of a factor than I probably think. Regardless still a pretty successful week overall.
As I look over the tasks I realize that most of them are health-related and while I know that is a huge thing I need to work on there are also other things I want to get better at. Saying that I have found that if I do the things that make me feel good in regards to my weight and working out then other positive things do-follow. More on those other things in a bit.
The average weight for the week was 212.6lbs down over an lb from last week. If I’ve figured out anything it’s that I can’t lose weight like I used to! I guess that’s the beauty of getting older. The point is I’m aimed in the right direction and doing it without giving up the more enjoyable things in life like going out on Friday and having some amazing Mexican food last night.
I did well with working out and walking (I think walking is so underrated) but did terribly about waking up this week. I was just so restless and couldn’t fall asleep. I have something I’m going to do this week to try and combat that. Other than that I did meet up with 2 groups of people this week and had a great conversation. I already have plans for lunch with someone else tomorrow.
What I didn’t do was put out a YouTube video and that’s okay. I think I want to stick to every other week or maybe even less. It’s something that I enjoy doing but when I tell myself I HAVE to do it every week it get’s discouraging and not enjoyable. That defeats the purpose. I’ve already recorded a video for this week and will edit it tomorrow.
To combat my terrible sleeping I’m going to do the most obvious things possible and put down the phone and pick up a book. I recently bought two books, Factfulness, and Ten Global Trends Ever Smart Person Should Know. I found both recommendations on Twitter and have already started the latter. I’m going to read for 15-20 minutes or so in bed instead of doom scrolling on my phone. I bet this will result in better sleep. But we’ll see.
| TASK | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
| Get my average weight for the week to be 211lbs | 212 | 211.8 | 210.6 | 210.8 | 211 | 212 | 211.8 |
| Get to work every morning by 6:30 and do highly focused work until 8 am | X | X | |||||
| Get lunch/drinks with 2 friends a week | X | ||||||
| Go on one 30-minute walk a day either with the dog or on the treadmill | X | X | X | ||||
| Lift 4x a week | X | X | X | ||||
| Make 1 YouTube Video | X | ||||||
| Read 15 minutes before bed | X |
| TASK | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
| Get my average weight for the week to be 211lbs | 211.2 | 211 | 210.6 | 210.2 | 211 | 210.6 | 210.6 |
| Get to work every morning by 6:30 and do highly focused work until 8 am | X | X | |||||
| Get lunch/drinks with 2 friends a week | X | ||||||
| Go on one 30-minute walk a day either with the dog or on the treadmill | X | X | X | ||||
| Lift 4x a week | X | X | |||||
| Make 1 YouTube Video | |||||||
| Read 15 minutes before bed |
| TASK | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
| Get my average weight for the week to be 211lbs | 211 | 209 | 208.6 | 209.2 | 209.8 | 209.6 | 209.4 |
| Get to work every morning by 6:30 and do highly focused work until 8 am | X | X | |||||
| Get lunch/drinks with 2 friends a week | |||||||
| Go on one 30-minute walk a day either with the dog or on the treadmill | X | X | X | ||||
| Lift 4x a week | X | X | X | ||||
| Make 1 YouTube Video | |||||||
| Read 15 minutes before bed | X | X |
| TASK | M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
| Get my average weight for the week to be 211lbs | 208.8 | 209.4 | 208.2 | 207.2 | 208 | 208 | |
| Get to work every morning by 6:30 and do highly focused work until 8 am | X | ||||||
| Get lunch/drinks with 2 friends a week | |||||||
| Go on one 30-minute walk a day either with the dog or on the treadmill | X | ||||||
| Lift 4x a week | X | X | |||||
| Make 1 YouTube Video | |||||||
| Read 15 minutes before bed |