Maintaining Motivation

I've stuck to the schedule, thus far without incident. I am so sore from yesterday’s workout and I couldn't have done it without you guys; or at least knowing that I’d look like a fool to you guys if I didn’t. Thanks either way. I started off the new, lifelong health change by doing a body shock. I worked out muscles I haven’t felt in years. I plan to do a body shock for another 6 straight days to really get my muscles aware that this is really going to happen. Then, taking Creatine monohydrate, and whey protein (always), I’ll move on to the longer phase of isolating muscle groups, by day of the week when I've rested for two days after my last body shock workout. 

20 minutes after quitting smoking, your heart rate and blood pressure drop.

I want to put on about thirty pounds of lean muscle because I was so embarrassed that I have withered away to nothing. I said that I’d always be honest on this blog, so I weighed myself and am ashamed to report that I am only 158 lbs. I know some of you are like, “What’s the #@%*ing problem, I wish I could lose weight.” Trust me. It’s a problem. I worked out a lot when I was younger, but I've never weighed more than 205 lbs., which made me look like a monster because I’m normally so scrawny. 

12 hours after quitting smoking, the carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.

My goal for the summer is to be at a solid 185 and in athletic shape. I am going to start taking a photo in the mirror every day, so at the end of the first 30 days, and also the six months, I can show a before and after. I do not want to show the before until the after is ready, though. It’s horrible. 

In 2010, 52.8 percent of cigarette smokers in Florida made a quit attempt.

My plan for dealing with growth plateaus and proactivity, is leaning on supplements and changing my workouts up, before the monotony sets in. I’ll start taking creatine next week for 10 days, because, even though most of the mass one gains (sorry ladies, 1 sec) is going to be lost, seeing the results fast is important to me. I know myself and to maintain motivation, I have to go look in the mirror after I’m pumped up from a workout and be able to tell a difference. 

Two weeks to three months after quitting, your circulation improves and your lung function increases.

If you have any tips of how you will create or maintain your motivation, please post it in the comments. Your mind is yours. Your thoughts are conjured by you. You are accountable for your actions. So, you also get to reap rewards from positive behaviors. The concepts that I am going to share are from a number of sources and I will try to find out where they all originated and give the discoverer credit. 

One to nine months after quitting smoking, coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) start to regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.

If you lack motivation, I know of one quick exercise that will eliminate that lack today. If you can’t decide what you want to do, but have some ideas, I have a super simple way to make up your mind. If you are suffering from depression or any mental health issues, then please don’t mistake this for the prognosis of an expert. Seek medical treatment, but use this as well. 

About one year after quitting smoking, the excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a continuing smoker's risk.

Speaking of smoker's risk:

This is what happens when you drop your lighter
under your seat. Or, when you drink and get behind
the wheel. One of those two, I can't remember, this
used to happen so often,

I am not sure if I am ready to commit to quit something destructive in my life, or begin something great. This is how Benjamin Franklin made decisions, or that’s how the story goes. He would draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper and one side would represent the pros, the other would represent the cons. This practice is widely used in sales, with uncertain prospects. If you know that the pros of buying your product or service outweigh the cons, this is an easy way to get a visual on all of the information that has to be taken into account to make a decision. 

15 years after quitting smoking, the risk of coronary heart disease is that of a non-smoker's risk.

10 years after quitting smoking, the risk of dying from lung cancer is about half that of a person who is still smoking.

If you know that your resolution is important to do, but you can’t seem to get your butt in gear, try this: Close your eyes. Think of a time, down the road from now, and focus on that time in your future. Spend 3-10 minutes visualizing your life, one, five, ten years from now, if you do the thing you want to. However, before you visualize that, take the same amount of time, with your eyes closed visualizing the effects that this thing will have on your life if you don't stick to your resolution. If you have a strong resolution with solid benefits, it will hard to sit there and imagine your life. You will want to get up and do something about it. 

Evidence-based cessation counseling and FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) provided by the program can double to triple your chances of successfully quitting.

Now, this exercise only works if you do it. Try one minute on each if you're too busy. Anyone can spare 2 minutes to manufacture the motivation you’ll need to stick to your resolution. I also want to quickly point out the power of doing a little research on your issue. I found some really great information in seconds about the benefits of quitting tobacco, and I will list them below. If your resolution is anything else, I’d suggest that you look up the benefits, or even get them from your Benjamin Franklin list. But, to keep your motivation up, you have to know why you are doing the things that you are. I imagine they won’t be pleasant for the most part, so it is easy to just give up. Don’t ignore the impact your resolution will have on your life. Find out all you can about the changes that are going to take place, as you start a new habit or quit an old one.

About five years after quitting smoking, stroke risk can fall to that of a non-smoker's risk and, risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and bladder are cut in half. Cervical cancer risk falls to that of a non-smoker.

The first time I heard of this, Tony Robbins, a self-help guru whom I highly recommend, implored his audio audience to pull over and take the couple of minutes to see the results in their lives. I did this exercise and realized immediately some of the things that I must do in my life. This little powerful practice is called meditating. I know that it is somewhat taboo, and that’s a shame, because everyone should experience the life changing effects of different kinds of meditation. 

Most former smokers made several attempts before finally quitting permanently. The average smoker attempts to quit between eight and 11 times before succeeding.

In my opinion, an individual must become brutally honest with herself to make this thing work. I often see people that make excuses for their own status quo, when they obviously want to break away from it. Tomorrow, we will explore how to do this with psychological sciences. Keep up the good work and take control of your life today. You can change anything and you can change it in an instant. Once you realize your power to change the things under your direct control (you), you’ll love making changes and it won’t be so overwhelming. Old habits don’t die easy.

""Lift off" takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull, our freedom takes on a whole new dimension.”  

--Stephen R. Covey

See ya, tomorrow!

The number of American adults, aged 18 and older, who smoked cigarettes declined from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 19.3 percent in 2010. This translates to 3 million fewer smokers.

Not only are there fewer smokers, but smokers are also smoking less. The number of adult smokers who smoke 30 or more cigarettes a day decreased to 8.3 percent in 2010, compared to 12.7 percent in 2005.

While fewer American adults are smoking, the rate of decline between 2005 and 2010 is slower than in the previous five-year period (2000-2005).

Since the Bureau of Tobacco Prevention Program (BTPP) was re-instated in 2007, adult smoking prevalence has declined, resulting in about 500,000 fewer adult smokers in Florida.

63.5 percent of adults who have ever smoked have quit and there are more former smokers in Florida than current smokers.

There are more former cigarette smokers than current cigarette smokers in Florida. 29.8 percent of adults in Florida are former cigarette smokers. Go Florida!

Find more information like this at http://www.tobaccofreeflorida.com

New Year's Resolution: How to keep it...a documented experiment

On New Year’s Eve you can see everyone celebrating in all different ways. My friends and I went to Bella’s in Tampa, and watched the fireworks from the roof of a building to get a good view.  There was a mix of us up there. Most people aren’t in recovery and don’t necessarily need it, one friend in this group is a hard-core alcoholic, in the precontemplation stage of the transtheoretical model’s Stages of Change¹.

One girl was in recovery for alcoholism and the rest were “normal”.  Guess what normal people want to do on New Year’s Eve. Drink? That’s half of it, but it seems that my “normal friends” want to drink until they get sick. That’s the difference in alcoholics and normal people. Normal people get sick and experience adverse effects from alcohol after the euphoric feelings fade, or one drinks past them.

I felt bad for the girl in recovery, because she was an alcoholic and last night could have been a major trigger for her to relapse. I only met her earlier in the night and asked if she was okay with being around such a powerful trigger. If I had been more familiar with her I would have put it a different way. Thankfully, she eventually rudely left the rest of us before midnight. People who don’t drink are such a bore. Yaaawn! I’m kidding, but last night’s situation, for her, was no joke. She has built six months of abstinence from alcohol and I would have been embarrassed and a hypocrite if she had given in. “Make no provision for sin”, the Bible states somewhere. This being my first blog post please forgive me for my rusty bibliography etiquette….or just laziness. I’m sure someone can help us out with the verse and book in the comment section below.

So, now that we know what “normal people” do during the celebration of the new, upcoming year; what do they do on the first day of that year? I now know, because I was up fairly early in spite of my late night babysitting gig, and I didn’t see many people out and about, but I found them soon enough. There were lines at the treadmills at my gym. Anytime Fitness has a unique quality. I’d bet you couldn’t guess it, but this is Focused Life’s blog, ultimately and not mine. I’d be responsible if I started a gambling addiction in someone, before I could really even get a chance to help anyone else out.

People make resolutions, and I’ll bet (gentlemen’s wager) that one of the first three days of January is the busiest day of your local gym’s year. And, in the first 30 days of this blog we are going to explore what makes January busy, but then people’s level of commitment has the tendency to slowly lose steam. To remind myself of the realities of the human tendency to skip I am going to make my resolution public, which is even higher stakes than the prospect of attempting this without posting it for everyone to see. However, if anyone is a smoker and is tired of that nasty habit, as I am; I invite you to quit smelling like a stale chemical explosion, with me. In fact, if there is a commitment that you would like to make and really be successful, we are going to be using the latest available tools of psychological/social sciences, medicine and group accountability to ensure the greatest odds of success (I swear I'm not making references to gambling on purpose.)
                                                               

If you smoke, seriously, do you realize how stupid we are for not trying to quit, at least after every pack. I get it, though. I know the reasons that we smoke, but they are silly sitting next to the consequences of being a smoker. We’ll get more into that later. I want to talk about some of the tools that we do have available to make or efforts more effective. I know some people may think of some of these tools as a crutch; which as actually an accurate assessment. When you have a broken leg, guess what the doctors might suggest you use? 

Some of the available tools are simply processes of change, some are social and psychological insights and theories. Some are medical and replacement tools. We will visit introductions to psychological sciences as a means of change like Neuro Linguistic Programming, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, Processes implemented by self-help geniuses, like the late, great Stephen R. Covey, author of, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". I will try to anticipate the timing to coincide with tools that will help us all stick with it, especially during the first 30 days of this blog. I am in desperate need of feedback and suggestions to accomplish this. Please, if you have a resolution and don't make it on your first try or you haven't started yet, prepare to get back up or prepare to get started. Make your plan. Decide what you will do to draw motivation and fight urges or procrastination. 

If you are going to quit smoking, like me, realize what you are up against and treat it accordingly. I've been an off and on (only off when I was in jail or rehab) smoker for over 15 years. Why does it always creep back into my life? I think I have a reverence for the processes and tools and the willingness to attack this addiction with all I've got now. I expect to never smoke again, once I stop. I am confident for a reason, though. I have been studying self-help expert's processes of change for over ten years now, and very seriously over the last three. I don't envision myself as a smoker and I am going to make reality snap to congruence with my vision. The momentum from this victory will give me the confidence and experience to make new victories in my life afterwards. I've got a big year ahead and I will need that momentum, so I have every reason (motivation) to quit and not relapse. If I do, it's not the end of the world, I'll post it and keep trying and I hope you'll do the same. I've prepared for this and though a relapse is possible early on this thing is not going to beat me.

I’m going to be using a prescription called Chantix. Perhaps some of you have heard of it. I hear that it can make you suicidal and depressed as a common side effect. So what, I say. If it gives me the advantage that I need to no longer pay for Phillip Morris’ gas bill,(Phillip Morris is a huge corporation that makes money of off cigarette smokers. He is also the personification, for the purpose of this blog, of the evil that continuing such a devastating, addictive product to the public is.) then I’d take my chances without a way to lose technically, because either way I’m not giving him another dime, past my stop date. 
(Two things: I know. I just had be different, and make my resolution day the 7^th of this month, at 11:59 pm and whatever your resolution is, you can take some time to prepare. You don’t have to wait until next January.)

Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very
important part of your life. 
--Brooke Shields

I hope that you will join me, holding me accountable to my resolution of a healthier lifestyle this year. It’s nothing crazy, just go to the gym at least three times a week, do cardio three times a week, being more aware of what I eat. I can start eating right, this instant. I plan to go to the gym and do cardio, tomorrow, as well as make a routine out on the 5^th. Of course, that just leaves kicking smoking’s ass. I vow to always be truthful to anyone who might read this and please join in and make your life better somehow. Just do that thing you want to, or stop that thing that you don’t. Use this blog as a means to ensure you win. Thanks.

Happy 2015,

Ryan

Rob in back, Obee to your left, Tristan to your right, Chelsea right front, Ryan holding the camera

1.    http://www.uri.edu/research/cprc Cancer Prevention Research Center