Weight loss is such a huge topic in the media these days that it almost makes it harder to feel good about your own progress, no matter what you choose. Two pounds per week is the only safe way, but shows like The Biggest Loser set up competitions for who can lose the most weight fastest. Diets are wildly popular and then derided as massively unhealthy only a few months later.
So I say listen with curiosity and then pay attention to yourself and your body for what the right decision is. For example, everyone seems to agree that keeping a food journal is one of the best ways to lose weight. I detest this process. It’s too time consuming, I find it demeaning to write down absolutely everything, and if I’m counting calories the numbers make me feel like I’m starving. A curious thing happened recently – my dad’s girlfriend started Weight Watchers for approximately the 50th time. She explained the point system and for kicks, I went through and figured out my point allowance etc. As it turns out, points are fake enough that I avoid my mental relationship with calorie counting and the numbers are small enough that I can keep track in my head. I’m not planning on going to meetings but the point system is one I can buy into for easily keeping track of how much I’m eating and if it’s an appropriate amount.
So now that I have a way of keeping track of how much I eat, what am I going to eat? I’m stubborn as hell and I hate being told what to do, even by the little voice in my head. There’s no way I’m going to abandon the things I love most in life, like bread and cheese. A while back I realized though that most of my problem was that bread and cheese is incredibly low effort. I need equally low effort options available that are a little lower in the saturated fat department and involve fruits and vegetables, at least occasionally. Now that fall is arriving I think I’m going to try out soups as a “cook once, eat many times” thing.
The best no-planning-required meals though I’m still working on. I need inspiration. I eat out at coffee shops pretty regularly, so I’m going to start paying attention to the things they serve and how hard they could possibly be to make quickly at home. What do you eat when you only want to take 5 minutes to prepare food?
Now the last component is to actually have the food around when I need to eat. I wish I could get Amazon to mail me everything I need, but it might take a while before they can do frozen and perishable foods. The grocery store online ordering requires too large of an amount to be feasible. Although, given my disinterest in shopping at regular intervals, it might be worth forking over the delivery fee for small amounts. For the time being, my plan will be to stop at the grocery store on my way back and forth between Baltimore and DC, which is every 4 days or so. I’ll use only a list of the ingredients for my low-effort meals and a recipe. As long as I actually make the recipe, this should help keep food costs low, too.
Combining financial, dietary and mental health goals is more difficult than I expected. It is especially difficult to be mindful of cost while trying new things. The only reasonable thing to do though is to monitor and try to make educated decisions about how worthwhile an expense will be.
As with all projects, success is determined in large part by planning, anticipation and good knowledge. Now that I’ve settled on my first two hobbies, Ultimate Frisbee and Crafts, it’s time to make some secondary goals and a plan of action. I’ll just tackle Ultimate Frisbee for this post.
The reasons I picked Ultimate are because I really enjoy it, it’s low-cost, social, provides a hell of a lot of exercise and my time commitment can be adjusted easily. To be really engaged in the sport I need a secondary goal. My goal is to be a star player – someone that everyone believes is a major asset to the team. This means superior physical ability, fantastic throwing and catching skills, solid knowledge of offensive and defensive plays and “field sense”.
Right now the physical ability is my weakest area. I have trouble keeping up with all but the slowest girls on the field and I can’t play for more than a couple of points at a time. My focus will be on bringing this area up first. Time to make a plan.
Step 1: Find opportunities to play the game.
Playing is the best way to increase all these skills at once. Fortunately for me, there’s a huge amount of Ultimate in DC. With a quick Google search I find all kinds of resources. I’m thrilled to discover that there’s a pickup game *every weekday* at noon just a mile and a half from my house, as well as a Saturday pickup game. WAFC, the Washington Area Frisbee Club, also operates many different leagues throughout the year. Score! As I play more I’ll discover ways to support my efforts here with other exercise – sprints, sit-ups, who knows.
Step 2: Make sure I have all the supporting equipment.
Frisbee is a low-cost sport but that doesn’t mean you can run around in dress clothes. I have a pretty good pair of cleats and some shorts, but winter is coming and not having warm enough clothes is a quick way to kill my enthusiasm. I’ll need to buy workout pants, long sleeved shirts, and new jogbras. It would also be great to ride my bike to the pickup games – I need a bike pump and a way to keep my bike easily accessible. It takes me a good 10 minutes to get it out of the garage right now. Unfortunately this is going to interfere with my debt-payment plan, so I’ll have to do some planning to make these purchases.
Step 3: Commit to the time
How realistic is it that I go to Ultimate every day? I’m not really sure. There are some constraints I’m already aware of. I only live in DC part-time right now, it’s a balancing act I’m trying to figure out. Currently I’m planning on being in Baltimore Sunday evening through Tuesday afternoon, which means that I would be available for pickup games in DC Wednesday – Saturday. This seems pretty reasonable. I’m assuming the noon games are only an hour, which I can swing during the work day.
There it is, a tentative plan. I still need to figure out how to budget for my equipment expenses but I can play this week by walking to the games and wearing shorts.
In some ways coming up with new hobbies should be a lot easier than finding hobbies from my past. The criteria are clear:
If I can’t commit at the same level as the other people who are involved, I’ll be setting myself up for failure and disappointment. Personally I don’t find failure particularly enjoyable, so it’s important to take into consideration.
I’ve spent some time thinking about these criteria and the potential hobby options. Some of the questions I have asked myself are
I also picked up a copy of You Can Do It!: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls. This book has 60 “badges”, like the girl scouts, for different activities. Each badge has a page to inspire and a page for explaining how to get started, written by an accomplished woman in the field. I found it totally inspirational and provides a concrete list of things to choose from.
My top choices for new hobbies right now, with their pros and cons, are these:
Right now the winner is Crafts. I think I might pick something simple to make, like pot holders, that don’t require a lot of equipment or materials, and see if I can make a bunch and sell them at the local farmer’s market or to friends. This would definitely help with the upcoming holiday season, too.
The only way I’m going to come close to achieving these goals is to make them all work closely in concert with each other. The ideal hobby will be one that I enjoy, is social, provides exercise and costs very little money – or ideally, generates some income. Since I’m aiming for 3-4 new hobbies I think meeting 4 out of 5 criteria for two of them would be a major win.
How do I go about finding great hobbies that will meet these criteria? I’m going to start in the logical place, which is in my past. Over my life a few things have really caught my interest.
Other assorted, briefer interests include cross country, rugby, building computers, scuba diving, hiking and camping.
The problem with many of these past interests is that the way I participated before was all-consuming. I considered a career in theater and in research. Violin was lessons, orchestra, quartet, music summer camps and weekends for the vast majority of my early life – not to mention that I also was taking piano for the first 10 years. I’m not sure that I could do any of these with satisfaction at the “hobby” level.
This leaves Frisbee and reading. I adore Ultimate Frisbee. The people are usually really laid back and accepting. It’s low cost, provides exercise and is social. In July I found pickup games in DC and in September I joined a fall recreational league. I can raise or lower my committment very easily and it doesn’t have to be all consuming. This is a winner, and I’ll continue to do it.
1 hobby down… 2-3 to go. There are some areas of my past that I can look at again to find more possibilities, but next I’ll look at learning something new.
Today I am almost 5/12ths into my 29th year of life. Like most people, I look at those big age milestones and see whether I’m doing as well as I think I should be. In some ways I am doing better than I ever expected – I’ve had interesting and meaningful careers, made some not-stupid financial investments, and had some fun. However, I have also almost completely neglected my personal life. I am 100 pounds overweight. I have a couple of incredibly good friends, but not the kind of social engagement that I really enjoy (and no boyfriend). My life is almost completely devoid of non-work fun. I have an enormous amount of debt.
When I turned 29 on June 7th this year it was like a slap in the face. How could I have let things get so skewed? I began making some changes. Life is better now than it was 5 months ago but I wonder how I am going to meet my goals for June 7th, 2009. This blog is going to be about rapid change, sustainable choices and holding yourself accountable. I get all the same information that you do – from the media, from other blogs, from books. All the advice sounds pretty reasonable until you try to put it into practice or tweak it for your own life and personality.
Here are my goals for my 30th birthday:
Lose 100 pounds. I’ll be pretty up front about this – it’s a big goal. It flies in the face of the 2-lb a week safe weight loss that the media babbles about incessantly. I’ll explain why I think it’s safe and acheivable in a later post.
Build a social life around 3-4 hobbies that I truly enjoy. This means doing the activities and also translating the time I spend with those people into friendships, doing things that aren’t the activity. This might be kind of rough for me since I have never had “hobbies” per se, and making friends takes a degree of conscienciousness that I have a tendency to underprioritize.
Pay off my two credit cards, currently with a balance of $9,492. The balance was actually a lot higher 3 months ago, but I’ve been doing pretty well so far. Still, to reach this goal by June 7th I’ll need to make more changes.
With this brief overview I realize, as you probably do, that these goals constitute a life-overhaul. I can’t afford to neglect my work or other obligations. It’s going to an adventure, one I think will be worth reading about.
