Kids Take In Everything

Since I have started the 12WBT I have seen many people post on the forums and on Facebook how they want to be seen as good role models for their kids and making this change will hopefully help achieve this by demonstrating to them a fit and healthy lifestyle and the flow on benefits from this.  Being a parent myself I think there is no greater legacy I can pass onto my 4 lovely children than knowing that they are fit and healthy and have been given the correct tools that they can carry through life in order to maintain their own fit and healthy outlook.

If I rewind 12 months, I would have thought I was doing that already along with my wife, as we ate fairly healthy and ensured the kids new about the right foods to eat and also about eating those not so good foods in moderation.  What we did not take into account was the fact that being morbidly obese also sent the wrong messages to our kids.  We forget that kids absorb everything and even if it is not something we think they take on, it is sadly absorbed into their way of thinking and can become accepted as normal.  With the state of obesity levels in our country rising, why would my children not just accept that being fat was how they were going to be especially if mum and dad were.  Don’t kids grown up wanting to be like their parents?

Since starting the 12WBT both myself and Julie have learnt a considerable amount about our previous lifestyle, what we were doing wrong, how we needed to change and have gone about doing exactly that.  As I sit here typing this I have lost over 37kgs and Julie has lost over 25kgs (may be close to 30kgs now), but this is not the biggest factor for me.  We have not only changed our mindset into including exercise into our daily routine, but we have children that are aware of this and accommodating as well.  NO easy feat when my little ones range from 11-4 years in age.  The kids are also aware now that mum and dad can have chocolate and chips if they want to, we just choose not to eat them.  They understand that this is not a diet, it is a lifestyle change.  I feel that this is an important thing for kids to understand as we have all seen the repercussions of people yo-yo dieting (many of us have been there for a number of years), so of the kids to know that this is not a temporary thing but something we are doing for ever for the benefit of us and them is a huge thing.

 

We have also been fortunate that we have a group of people that come every Saturday morning to our house to smash out a garage session for an hour of cardio and boxing.  Whilst this group varies in size from 4 to 15 people on any given weekend, we are surrounding the kids with like-minded people and showing them that being active and fit is a fun and exciting way of life.

So, where am I heading with this you might ask?  A couple of weeks ago I did my first fun run, which I blogged about.  One of my happiest moments was seeing the boys and my wife there to support me.  On Wednesday night we attended another fun run (final run in the Brooks Sunset series) at Princes Park.  I was doing the 8km event and Julie decided she was going to enter the 4km walk pushing my little 2 in the pram and my eldest (11 ½ year old Callum) was going to walk with her.  Sadly I did not get to see any of their event as I was running, but I did pass them once.  When I finally finished a little behind them, having Callum come and join me to run the last couple of hundred metres (which was brilliant) Julie told me that Callum had jogged off to run the last km by himself after she had jogged a kilometre with him, which in itself is a huge achievement considering we thought Julie would never run again after her car accident.  Not only had Julie and Callum run part of their walk, but my two little munchkins decided they wanted to as well and jumped out of the pram and sprinted the last hundred metres or so the cheers and applause of the crowd around the finish chute. 

Not feeling good but looking OK

When I heard this I was so proud of them for wanting to be involved and being part of the moment, but it wasn’t until later that I was also proud of my wife for involving them.  I was more concerned about running my 8km’s and how I was going to make it to the end and didn’t really think that they might have enjoyed taking part.  What she did was not only share her experience with them, but open a new world up to my children that shows them that not everything you do physically is about winning or competition but sometimes you just have to get out, get active and have FUN!!!!



Callum seems to be having FUN!!!



What we have been doing the last 10 months is changing not only our mindset, but also that of our children and this will continue to happen with more events coming up that Julie and I will take part in.  The flow on from the other night (see below picture) is having Julie send me photos of my 4 year old doing push ups and crunches.  Last night when I got home both the 5 year old and the 4 year old were doing push ups, crunches and mishy makers, with the 5 year old also showing dad his version of Mountain Climbers.



Aidan doing his push ups.



I must admit that I was aware of the fact that kids look to their parents and grandparents as examples and follow suit but to see the positive impact our weight loss and lifestyle change has had on them makes me proud of the changes we have made and will continue to make for our benefit and the little ones.

Recipe for Success - Planning & Consistency

What is the recipe for success? 

1 Cup of hard work (6 days a week)

1 Cup of clean food ALL THE TIME

Pinch of tough love from the GURU

1 tbs - planning

Large tub of Consistency.......

This week is the start of week 4 and this means mini milestone and Fitness Test/Measurements.  Whilst considering what I was going to do this week, mini milestone wise I thought I would look back and see what I had put down as my 1 month goals at the start of the program.  These I will touch on below, but before I looked at them I was wondering what my goals were and why I had set them. 

What was I hoping to achieve and how did that impact on what I have decided to do over the next 3-6 months and impacted on my training.  I have never been that proactive with my goals in the past and set mini goals.  I am not sure why this is the case, but I have always (since starting this program) had a huge goal I was striving for at the end.  For me last year this was my Ride to Conquer Cancer.  That consumed most of my training and focus.  Now that I have that challenge conquered for now and the base fitness there, what was my next challenge.

To be honest I had not really come up with anything different for this year other than the fact that I was going to take on more cycling and do it bigger and better than last year.  This is still the case but I have now decided to add a few extras and as my last couple of posts have mentioned included a lot more running.  Looking at my goals that I entered into the program 4 weeks ago, I did not have anything specific for any of the mini milestone weeks.  I am not sure why I don’t do this to be honest.  Perhaps it is because our schedule is all over the place and hard to plan, but that can also be a poor excuse as Michelle has always said that planning and organisation are the key to this journey.  I might also say that Julie and I have both never really talked about doing anything special for mini milestones or to reward ourselves, that is not what this is for us, well for me anyway, she may disagree. 

But it got me thinking.  Why does it have to be anything earth shattering?  I have mini goals now with my running, so why not just set myself a challenge to see if I can achieve something within the next 4 weeks.  My first month goals had me wanting to achieve these:

1 Month Goals

Lose 10 kilos. (almost there & still 5 days to go)

Run 10km non- stop (done)

Complete 50 push ups in one go (done)

I have achieved the run portion and the push up portion already and I am close to the weight lost portion.  If I don’t get there that is fine as 10kgs in 4 weeks is a huge ask, but I have worked hard and know that I am close.  So this got me thinking.  I know other people set themselves mini milestones, like running 8km’s or round the lake etc in that week and build up to it, but I haven’t done that and tend to just go and try it if I want to achieve it rather than wait for a specific week. So what can I look at setting myself, or do I even need to?  This I am still unsure of actually but what it did highlight to me is a lack of planning in what I have been aiming to achieve and how I am going to get there.  I have goals in place for the rest of this round which are as follows:

3 Month Goals:

Lose 20kgs

Run 15km non- stop (hopefully under 90 minutes.)

Complete 100 push ups in one go.

But in looking at them I have no plan on how I am going to get to each one.   Looking at my run progress over the last month I have no doubt I will smash the 15kms out of the park within the next 4 weeks let alone the next 2 months and I will be working on the push ups.  I have done over 200 in one training session so far on a couple of occasions so this I am confident in getting out.  The weight goal is something that will be a little tougher as I get closer to goal but as long as it continues to go down I will be happy if I just miss it. But none of it is planned or has been planned it has happened through a bit of luck and hard work.

So what is my plan moving forward?  I need to take a page out of my wife and a few other ladies in the program’s books and organise my training more methodically.  I have no idea from one day to the next what I am doing.  Everything is haphazard and spur of the moment.  The only time I know what is going on is Saturday morning and that is because there is a group of people relying on me to be organised but that only happens Friday night.  The thought of preparing for a half marathon is something that scares the hell out of me, but in a good way and also excites me.  I am looking forward to sitting down with my mate, who will do this with me and see what he suggests training plan wise. This will give me structure and force me to be organised if I aim to succeed, failure is not an option really.  If I aim to be an athlete (no matter what degree of one that is) I need to prepare a bit more like one and planning is involved.  I suppose this means a few very early mornings for longer runs and maybe some swimming in there as well. 

But up to this point I have been lucky that it has worked for me.  Yes I have put in the work, but not being organised is a recipe for disaster and I want to ensure that this is not the path I am travelling. So to all you other spur of the moment people or those wondering why you might not be doing as well as you hoped, have a look at how you have been mapping out your path to success.  If you have been as haphazard as me and not been planning then we all need to get this sorted now to ensure we smash out the last 8 weeks and drop the numbers we hope we can.

Oh yeah and with the words of Michelle Bridges ringing in my ears, “It is all about consistency. Be consistent, go into robot mode and JFDI.”