My weight loss roller coaster ride

My mind is fried. My son has tried to teach me too much today. I mentioned in passing, I'm ready to loss weight AGAIN.

I think I have tried almost every diet out there. Needless to say, none of them with any great success.

I lost over 100 lbs once...but it was all on my own. I failed to keep a journal as to how I did it. So, with that in mind, I am going to do it again. Only this time, writing a daily journal. This roller coaster is set down hill.

Thanks Aaron......when I'm done...you can buy me a new outfit. (smiling)

Losing a Baby

A friend shot me an email yesterday, perhaps being a bit interested in this website, but I have a hard time selling sites. Sure the site could be far better than it is, but I know it has a good number of links, and letting go of a website is to me like losing a baby (although I have never had a kid).

Only fitting perhaps that I am giving this website away...to my mother. I have not seen her in a few years until recently heading home, but on the visit today she mentioned she wanted to create a site about weight loss, so I tried teaching her XML / RSS / Blogging.

Not sure how much sunk in, but hopefully she does good with the diet and site.

Best of luck mom (you fatty - hopefully soon enough skinny hehehe)

Overeating Sugar is Like Doing Drugs

Each time we remember something we rewrite the memory with the life we lived since we last remembered that idea. As we develop any sort of patterns those patterns become more important to our minds:

• addiction to drugs and eating sugar or other types of addictions share many similarities
• a repeated action causes more of the response neurotransmitters to be created
• more axioms are devoted toward the brain working on that problem or activity
• if you repeat an activity too much it can cause cross polination of ideas, reinforcing the original frame
• as we do an action too much cells develop more receptors for that type of activity, but we require more of a dose for the same rush

Given enough desire or attention we can change how we think of something, but breaking patterns is hard.

If people view problems as often being associated with patterns then we can look for alternate ways to fulfill our need for balancing energy in and energy out, seeking outlets other than food or whatever our overindulgences may be.

Exercise & Feeling Good, Exercise & Feeling Bad

So it may be due to past conditioning or behavior, but when things start to go good I extend that out...a bit excessivley at times. Yesterday, for example:

• found out that a potential book deal may be still on
• did some cool consulting work & made a good bit of cash...not that it matters much, but it is good to have more than you need so it is not a worry
  
• talked to a professor who wanted me to come visit his class
• and then I worked out for a while

The thing is, as more good things happen, and I feel better, due to my historical behavior and reward circuitry I try to do more and more and more. Not usually a bad thing, but what happens is that inevitably tomorrow ends up being less good than today.

Now that is not to say it is always getting worse, just that when you have a great day the odds are fairly low that the next day will be able to beat it. So the same overreactive reward circuitry which made me feel great yesterday perhaps helped me feel like shit today, due to the step decrease in positive triggers.

Other than sleeping in, nothing bad happened today, and yet for a while I still felt horrible. I kicked the pattern of only rarely exercising by going to work out two days in a row. Good things happened:

• I got to work out
• checking the mailbox I found out that my jury duty was canceled
  
• I started reading a good book
  

I think we are more perceptive of noticing the patterns in the world that fit our current congruent mood. Thus during a everything was just too good to be true dive the key is to keep doing some of the things that make you feel good, and then you will pick up on the patterns of things that make you feel good.

It is not about doing as much as you possibly can (which is my patented screw myself over even when I am supposed to be doing things that are good for me technique), but it is about making sure you are doing something each and every day which helps justify that day as a day not wasted.

If I can combine reading and exercising that would be amazing, although I may enjoy them more separate. I think combining fluffy reading could work, but not deeper stuff. Music almost always makes working out better though.

Drastically Underwhelmed

So recently one of my friends made a video with me in it. And many people were less than impressed with my image:

I think there is a perception of Aaron as a sharp, clued up business type person who knows his stuff and it is worth giving him your $79 for his e-book.

In the video he looks like a normal everyday chap you would like to have a beer with.

and

From seeing the video Aaron is not how I imagined

Some others thought it looked real

It's good. Aaron comes across as very genuine and smart - not putting on airs or trying to be something he is not. I think he did a great job. Aaron, you talk just like you write!

and

aye, but he is well spoken.

and a friend just flowed me some cash for helping him...I don't think he even knows of this blog and his subject line of the email was "lose some weight"

I think a large problem with being heavy is that I make myself extra isolated and give myself few things to do. And then when bored I eat. I am typically happiest when I have more things to do than I could possibly do.

The big problem is self image and the feeling of empathy though. In public I think I sound like shite. I am certain of some of the reasons, but uncertain of why it has been hard for me to reprogram or change those ways.

I just got off the phone with a college professor who wants me to come teach some stuff about search engine marketing to his class. I also just got a message that another college wants to use my book for their course text. Working hard to do the things that raise self image longterm

• working out
• helping others
• finding things that make me happy
• spending more time on fun
  
• getting into speaking, etc.
  

while steering clear of the things that bring short term happiness at the expense of long term self image

• drinking
• overeating
• eating sugary foods
  

should help me do better longterm. Higher self image = less reason to be shy.

The other key is balance. I don't want to get so high on myself that I think I am better than others. I would have a loooooooong way to go to start thinking like that though ;) I doubt I would really let myself get away with that either.

Information Polution

Well, am still pretty fat, and disappointed in myself for that. Have not put any effort into exercising or eating healthy. 237 pounds yesterday...blah

I have had a ton of stuff come about...got sued, got book edited and found out that MicroSoft Word is shit that wasted about a week of my life, potential book deal, flu, almost broke jaw (was good for eating less for a few days...but allas it healed), and a variety of other things.

The biggest problem with this site, is that as long as I am fat, this site is nothing but information pollution, which makes me a profiteering scumbag. There is always going to be a journey from ignorance to knowledge, but at some point it needs to progress. This has not been a journey ;)

I need to actually put some effort in or take the site down. BTW, just excercised and it was good. But that needs to be frequent, not the exception.