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I'm not health crazed.
You'll never find me in the forest eating wild hickory nuts. I hate to work out. I like beer. I love red meat. And you'll still find Captain Crunch from time to time in my kitchen cabinet.
Still, I do work out-I have for the last four years pretty faithfully. And I curbed my appetites just enough to lose 15 pounds (my target) in four months over the winter.
Why workout? Because I know I need to, especially as I grow older.
I hate working out so much that I hired a trainer who works with me once a week (only 50 bucks) to hold me accountable. The other two times a week I work out on my own, but Andrea checks up on me to make sure I show up. She's mean that way. Kidding aside, without her I would have quit a long time ago. I know, I've seen me do it.
Why lose the weight? I've never been what you would call fat-lucky genes there. Even still, my weight was slowly inching up over time and I saw a protrusion around my midsection that was growing uglier by the day. I finally said enough.
Of course, there's no real trick to losing weight. It's like my dad says, "Calories in, calories out." That's it. With all due respect to all the myriad of weight loss plans out there, burn more calories than you take in, and you'll lose weight.
There are cool apps for your phone that can help you track calories. With my activity level I needed to keep my calorie intake to about 1700 per day to lose the weight I wanted to.
I was on the road in Tupelo, Mississippi a couple of months ago and went to an Outback Steakhouse. I was in the mood for a steak (shocking) and was eying their New York Strip. I apped it and found it had over 700 calories. Whoops! There was another steak on the menu, smaller and only 250 calories. I got the smaller steak.
Still got me some steak, but made a better choice. I still had sour cream too, just less of it. Still had Thousand Island dressing on my salad, just not as much.
Over the months I shunned most desserts...although I was not going to pass over the chocolate chip cookies at the family Christmas party. I had a couple of them and stopped.
Calories in, calories out...choices.
I skipped between meal snacks, avoided food before bed and exercised my three times a week. At home I substituted graham crackers for chips. No one had to tell me what to eat, I simply found an alternative with lower calories that was acceptable to my taste buds.
I found that losing weight takes a certain amount of discipline, but doesn't have to be misery.
The one dramatic thing I did was I got off the pop-no more Mountain Dew. The moratorium on pop had the residual effect of keeping me away from most fast food. (Though I did enjoy the grilled chicken from KFC from time to time.)
I lost an average of about one pound a week over four months. That's a healthy pace from what I understand.
I feel really good. My confidence has increased. My frame of mind is better. I feel better about myself. I feel younger and more energetic.
Don't ask me why I started working out four years ago and not the many years before that. And don't ask me why I suddenly decided to lose the weight last fall. We do it when we're ready, I guess.
But I will say this if it encourages you at all: I think whatever gives us a better frame of mind helps us be better leaders. And I think there's a lot to be said for greater confidence in managing people arising from our ability to better manage ourselves.
Physical health impacts mental health. Better mental outlooks reduce stress. Less stress means better interactions with our subordinates and colleagues. Certainly whatever improves our disposition is nice for everyone around us.
Yeah, I think leaders would do well to take care of their bodies.
Now if I could just do something about this balding head of mine...
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