weight loss - Weight Loss and Leadership

5 Weapons to Win the War on Weight

2018-08-03Don GrierLeave a comment

Ready for weight loss — Ready for battle with my weapons in weight loss!

For many, losing weight and keeping it off is akin to warfare. It was for me. Many days during my year and a half journey to lose a 178 lbs. I felt like I was in the Battle of the Bulge. I was pummeled on all sides by my enemies – junk food, worry, and inactivity. I needed the right weapons to beat back the break in my defenses and drive to victory. And I found them in these five key weapons in Weight Loss warfare:

Bananas – The banana is the ultimate weapon in defeating junk food cravings for several reasons. First, they are very discreet and compact. You can hide them in your backpack or briefcase and pull them out whenever a junk food frenzy hits! Indeed, they were my weapon of choice in defeating my arch nemesis – Peanut M&M’s. Second, they come with their own protection a removable skin that keeps them clean and ready to eat in all sorts of terrain – Nature’s MRE. Lastly, they sustain for the long haul with their fiber and potassium. Eat one and you can drive past a full candy bowl without slowing down.
Sneakers are the ultimate weapon against our next enemy of health – inactivity. Sitting and remaining dormant are two of the most powerful armaments in our foe’s arsenal. There are more expensive tools to defeat them – gyms, the latest exercise equipment, etc. – but I have found the trusty sneaker to be the most effective. Sneakers are like the famous Kalashnikov rifle that the Soviet’s used in WW II. You could drop the Kalashnikov in the mud or march in the rain and it would always fire when you pulled the trigger. Likewise, sneakers are a lost cost, effective way to beat inactivity. For example, when I am out of town for work and know I will be away from the gym, I find a hotel about a mile or two from the workplace, lace up my sneakers and take a twenty-minute walk. I then switch into my shoes and put them in my backpack; along with my trusty banana that replenishes my potassium! There they remain until ready for access with my next bout with inactivity – lunch!
Audiobooks – Two other enemies in the struggle against weight gain is lack of knowledge and boredom. Audiobooks are the perfect antidote to both. Take them on a trek while walking on a trail and you will forget the foes trying to drive you away from your objective. I have whiled away the hours listening to James Patterson as I worked off the weight. Next, audiobooks provide you inspiration and knowledge to counter the enemy’s every move. For example, The Power of Habit taught me how to counter the triggers to eating. Walking with audiobooks strikes fear in our nemesis to health!
Weight Watchers – An effective game plan and strategy is the greatest force multiplier on the battlefield. Weight Watchers provides that game plan with its program Freestyle. The program provides you the structure, support and tools to defeat cravings and the disinformation campaign that our modern lifestyle deploys.
Your Mind – The most powerful weapon in the weight loss struggle is your mind. The harbingers of weight gain use worry, negativity and self-loathing to distract you and bring you down. To counter them, practice mindfulness and positive thoughts. This will counter the senseless eating that often accompanies worry and restlessness.

The winning combination of the five weight loss weapons will bring you success. Use them and drive to victory and a new you!

Vanquish Weight Gain During Vacation!

2018-07-22Don GrierLeave a comment

I have just come back from a week of vacation and was able to maintain my Lifetime Goal weight at Weight Watchers when I weighed in the week following. How was I able to vanquish weight gain during vacation? I was able to maintain the hard fought 175 lbs. (actually lost a pound) using 6 simple tricks!

Washington Monument — Washington at Night

Wherever I Went I was Walking! One of my favorite movies is Forest Gump and the line I love the most is when he starts the jogging craze in the 70’s – “From that day on, if I was going somewhere, I was running!”. Being on the backside of fifty and with somewhat creaky knees, I modified Forest’s plea to walking. It is low impact and allows you to take in your vacation at a more leisurely pace. Almost all the tours I took in Washington and Virginia historical areas were walking tours – averaging over 15 k steps a day with the peak day over 30 k. Walking the streets of Williamsburg and the hills of Monticello and Montpelier allows you to take in the sights and sounds of our Founding Fathers and Mothers the way they did. It also allows you to eat some more food and counter it with exercise.
Indulge but count. Which brings me to point to. You should indulge a bit on vacation. The new Weight Watcher’s program allows you to do just that. While on Vacation, I shared a few deserts with my wife for the first time in a long time. But I was also careful to track everything I ate to know that I was in striking distance for the week. By tracking and not attacking the buffet line, I was able to enjoy some of the colonial recipes and comfort foods in Virginia in a controlled manner. I was able to indulge and avoid the bulge!
Drink water to counter the beer. One thing that I indulged in during the trip was beer. I love microbrews and the beer recipes from earlier times (Williamsburg has beer based on 300-year-old recipes that are off the charts!). Besides counting the points for each beer, I was careful to drink water to remain hydrated and trigger my metabolism. Beer dehydrates you, so it is important to balance your beer with water that is clear! (A little Dad joke for you all!)
Destress, rest and learn something new. This fourth point is a critical one. You are on vacation and the purpose is to destress and rest. It is therefore important to put work on hiatus or at the very least plan the times people can reach you if critical tasks are at hand. Here is a case in point. I really needed to take a work call but there was a show about Martha Washington that I wanted to see which overlapped the call. I got to the show early to get a seat that would allow me to listen to the first hour of the show and then sneak up to a hill that had a great view of Williamsburg but was isolated enough to take the call. It is better to turn off on Vacation but in my case, I get more stressed if I do not balance critical work with fun. By planning, I was able to destress by learning about Martha Washington for the first hour and still was able to take a critical call. A little planning on vacation goes a long way!
Vacation with someone that has your back. It is also important to vacation with someone who understands how far you have gone on your weight loss journey and wants to help you. My wife Colette is great in this respect. She has always been able to maintain her weight (I envy her metabolism). When we go out to eat, she is very accommodating in the places we select and does not push me to eat something that would push up the points. On the flip side, she does not nag me not to eat something if I make a choice to indulge. Lastly, she knows how important it is to me to track my Smart Points, so she allows me to use my phone while at dinner.
Wait to weigh in. This last point is the most important one. The best way to maintain your weight on vacation is to not obsess about the scale. I did not weigh myself until the Sunday evening after I returned. In addition, I was mentally prepared to be higher than I normally am on a Sunday evening prior to my next Saturday weigh in. In this case, I was 3 lbs. higher than my normal Sunday weight but had confidence when I hit Weight Watchers the next Saturday, I would be at the goal weight I needed to maintain.

So, there you have it. Vacations are for fun! You can control and ultimately vanquish the vacation pounds by applying these and other simple rules from Weight Watcher’s Freestyle and other lessons learned.

Don’t Sweat the Summer: 5 Ways to Stay Healthy and Beat the Heat

2018-06-032018-06-04Don GrierLeave a comment

The summer officially starts in a few weeks but here in Austin, Texas, the heat index yesterday topped 105 and is edging upward. So, in our Saturday Weight Watchers class the topic naturally came up about how the summer heat is a convenient excuse for ditching your exercise routine. Our Weight Watchers leader made us all answer in our whiniest voice that common rebuttal when one faces the oppressive Texas Summer when trying to exercise – Waa, it’s too hot.

Indeed, it is! How hot is it? So hot that when Annika, a German exchange student visited us during the 2015 – 2016 school year that the whole family adopted saying the temperature in Celsius. She could brag to her family about the heat in Texas (and other things like rattlesnakes and bats) and we Americans all felt cooler. 100 degrees Fahrenheit is a cool 37.77778 in Celsius! This little trick however dissolves in the baking Texas Sun. There are 5 more practical ways to beat the Texas heat and keep up your exercise routine this summer:

Exercise early or late – The best advice to enjoy the summer sun without being consumed by it is exercise in the early morning or late in the evening. The good thing about summer days are that they are long! The sun rises at about 6 or earlier and sets at 8 or even later. There are several reasons that commend an early morning trot. First, the temperature even on those days that later will turn into a scorcher is 78 or 79 at the tops in the morning. Enough to break a sweat but not too much to be dripping in it. Second, you get your workout out of the way and have the whole day in front of you to sit in an air-conditioned office or a movie theater if on the weekend. Last, but not least, it is a great time to see wildlife. On two subsequent days while walking in the morning, I got to see a snake and a bunny up close. See the pictures below. While we are on the topic of wildlife, don’t forget the domesticated kind. Our dog Boots is a furry Bernese Mountain/Chow mix. His coat is very beautiful but not conducive to the summer heat. So, it is important to take him on his daily walk in the morning or he get down-right grumpy! On other side, he gets ecstatic if we take him on a 6 AM trot around the neighborhood.
Stay Hydrated – It is common sense to drink water when partaking in summer fun. But sometimes common sense is not so common, especially when it comes to yours truly. Thankfully I have a wife and fitness partner who is imbued with good old Minnesota common sense. She always remembers to bring water when we are walking together or remind me when I am walking out the door. I have even taken up the practice of drinking water on my famous beer walks. Referring to recommendation 1, I sometimes exercise later in the day after work around 7 PM by taking a beer walk in Austin. I walk along town lake until I get to Rainey street and head to Bangers to get the best IPA in the world “Electric Jellyfish”. I do however change my routine during the summertime. I switch out my whiskey (or second beer) chaser with water! First it keeps me hydrated and second it keeps my legs from turning into Jelly(fish). Had to weave that in! Enough of the jokes. Staying hydrated is serious business. According to OSHA, outside workers should during 3 to 4 cups of water when the heat index soars to 103 to 115. See the link OSHA Guidance . I thank OSHA for the advice and thank the city of Austin for having restrooms every 1 mile on Town Lake to keep up with all the water (and other) drinking!
Play in the Pool – I can’t say I love the water except for the summer. I never really was a great swimmer as being assigned to Rock Squad during my freshman swimming class at West Point attests. But you do not need to swim to stay cool while exercising in the pool! Water aerobics is a fun, low impact exercise for getting your heart rate up and temperature down in the summer heat. It is especially good for people just starting out on their weight loss journey. That is exactly what I did when my bathing suit was a hefty XXXL. Read about how I gave up my fear of the water to begin exercise when I could do little else. Pam and the Pool. For those more advanced, besides swimming (a great exercise regimen that I have yet to conquer), Life Time Fitness has just started a boot camp routine in the water. I am going to brave the water and do this class next week! Finally – if you can’t go to the pool, revel in the rain! One thing I like to do when it is drizzling and not a downpour, is do my best Gene Kelley and sing, dance and run in the rain!
Spin to win with indoor activities. But there is no need for a pool to cool off. You can exercise indoors in either your air-conditioned house, mall or gym. For instance, I started out my day today walking around Kohl’s and other mall stores and closed my exercise routine with a Spin class. But you do not even need to leave the confines of your home. Get a good exercise video and do it in your home. Or if you do not have a video, turn on music videos on YouTube or MTV and just dance. You will look cool (if you dance like me) and feel cool (with your air conditioner at full blast).
Nurture your mind and soul while helping others. My last bit of advice is a double whammy. You can lose weight, engage in exercise, and feel good about yourself while helping others. Serve in a soup kitchen or engage in activities in an elder care home. Relieve stress, talk with friends, and learn good values by seeing a family friendly play. I and my wife did so this week when we went to see “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” performed by high schoolers at a church. 80% of weight loss is in the mind. If you engage with others, you nurture your soul and in so doing feel better about yourself and less prone to stress eating.

So, there are the 5 ways to escape the summer heat. And if all this does not work, take a trip to a cooler location for vacation like Colorado or Canada!

Go Big to Get Small – The Art of Improbable Goals

2018-05-262018-05-26Don Grier3 Comments

For the followers of my blog, this is the short form of this blog. The longer form is here. Long Form

My son Kyle turned me on to Tim Ferriss, the podcast king, a few years back. What I love about Tim and the stories he tells is he always strives to do something new, something impossible. Just to name two of the incredible things he has done is teach himself to swim a mile in one week and to become Jujitsu World Champ in a few months! You can listen to more of Tim here! Tim Blog

Another one of my favorite podcasters is Father Mike Schmitz. Recently he did a series on the definition and examples of courage. According to Father Mike, “Fear is not taken away, courage is given!” To paraphrase, you cannot be truly courageous without fear. Courage is striking out even when you have that dry pit in your stomach. Indeed, being fearless is a bit of a misnomer. You must drive through your fears to become a better person, a better you.

To be like Mike and to take on Tim, I started the practice a few years back to declare improbable goals and then set out a plan to accomplish them. I used these goals and the efforts to reach them to overcome fear, gain confidence, and lose weight. The best example of this is finishing a Kennedy Walk – 50 miles in 20 hours or less.

When I started my weight loss journey in 2015, walking 50 yards was hard enough. I was 358 lbs. with a distinct fear of throwing out my back even walking around the block. I tell you all this to understand just how impossible this goal seemed at the time. To me, it was just short of climbing Mt. Everest.

I needed something big to compel me forward, something with my back history was just a bit scary. I wanted to walk a long distance. I started to research on the internet what was equivalent to a marathon but for walkers. And I found it – the Kennedy Walk. The Kennedy walk was established by John F. Kennedy to demonstrate the fitness of the Armed Forces. It must be completed in 20 hours. Bobby Kennedy famously completed the walk one winter’s day in his loafers walking along the Potomac.

One key element for establishing a large goal was done, I now had the target. But I needed a second element – a reason. The reason in this case was more important than the goal. I wanted to honor a former colleague in the Army who was lost while serving this country in Afghanistan – Richard McEvoy and to raise money for returning vets. Dick was KIA in Afghanistan on August 22nd, 2015 while training the Afghani police. He was a contractor after serving 28 years in the service. Col McEvoy (then Captain) and I served together in the 3-60 Infantry Battalion. He was the epitome of the USMA motto: Duty, Honor, and Country. In honor of Dick, the walk served as a fund raiser for the Merivis Foundation, a non-profit that trains returning veterans in Austin for the IT industry and the Young Marines, a service group in Austin.

With a worthy cause and a goal firmly established, I set out to complete a 50 mile walk in 20 hours or less. But I could not do it all at once. So, I broke it out in sizeable chunks. I also picked a venue – the Lady Bird Lake trail in Austin – that could be walked 5 times to equal 50 miles. So, in the spring of 2016, I started to train for the first Annual McEvoy Memorial Kennedy Walk.

Every Saturday, I took an increasingly longer walk. Lady Bird Lake trail was the perfect venue. It is shaded much of the way, had adequate rest rooms and water and the city was immediately reachable. I started breaking up some of my longer walks by stopping at a restaurant or store to eat some healthy food/snacks (and ok a beer). Slowly, I went from 3 to 5 to 10 to 30 miles! I was ready.

I finished the 50 miles, McEvoy Memorial, Kennedy Walk on Nov. 5, 1986. Here is a video of me introducing it. Kennedy Walk

Here is me at the finish.

I made it in approximately 16 and a half hours. The drive to finish the walk gave me the impetus to reach the Lifetime distinction at Weight Watchers. As I walked along the path, I thought about how striving for big goals helped me to serve a great cause and to become smaller in weight and more confident in my health. I came up with these three major elements that commend the art of setting improbable goals.

Compelling Purpose to Move Forward – Setting a major goal that seems improbable gives you added motivation to stick with the day to day difficulty of staying on track. Once I set the goal, I could not let myself, the Veterans, and the memory of my colleague down. Life is indeed 90% perspiration, but you need the 10% of inspiration to compel you forward to a better you.
Decomposable into Smaller Chunks – You cannot achieve monumental goals in a day or a week (unless you are Tim Ferris who makes a living out of it). For ordinary people such as myself, the only way to achieve something big is to plan to break it down into smaller chunks. In this case, the selection of the Lady Bird Lake loop was the perfect venue.
A Cause Worthy of the Effort – When you are selecting an improbable goal, it is important to back it with a worthy cause. In this case, the cause was worthier that the effort. Our Veterans, both the fallen and the living, protect us and sacrifice for a greater purpose themselves – the freedom and liberty of the United States. 50 miles is not nearly enough to walk for sacrifices they have given.

On Memorial Day, I will do a five-part sequel to this blog with the words that I spoke at each 10-mile mark in 2016. Never forget our soldiers and service people this Memorial Day.