Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Once you burn out on Contemplation, your thoughts may naturally turn to Preparation. In my case, the Contemplation and Preparation stages lasted a little longer, because they coincided with the holiday season.

I give handmade holidays each year, so I knew there would be no way I could devote 2-2.5 hours of exercise a day until after Christmas. Handmade gifts are a personal priority of mine, and so I used the month of December to prepare myself as much as possible, with a commitment that I would begin 2-a-day exercises on December 26th.

photo credit: Dunechaser

So, December 2009 was my Preparation Stage. During this stage, I:

1. Prepared my mind
   1. Read, re-read, and re-re-read Dr. Huizenga’s book
   2. Took myself through the mental health questionnaire at the back of the book
   3. Had my body fat percentage measured so I could calculate personalized calorie counts and goal weight
   4. Did a lot of self talk and visualization
   5. Set my focus
   6. Figured out a daily schedule that would allow me to follow the program after the holidays were over
   7. Started journaling
2. Prepared my body
   1. Had a health screening and physical exam, discussed the plan with my doctor and got approval
   2. Started taking glucosamine and chondroitin (which need a few weeks to build up in your body to reach full effect) due to history of knee problems and anticipation of pain onset
   3. Revisited my old physical therapy routine to strengthen my knees before starting vigorous exercise
   4. Experimented with sleep schedules
3. Prepared my environment
   1. Altered my eating down to my personalized “moderately restricted” calorie count so that I could work out the kinks of the diet without the distraction of the exercise
   2. Dug out some equipment from storage and dusted everything off, tuned it up, got it ready
   3. Purchased some new equipment
   4. Asked for other equipment to be given to me as Christmas gifts
   5. Made a list (and a budget) for purchasing additional equipment
   6. Put together a binder to keep track of everything
   7. Rid my house of temptations
   8. Set up an exercise station in my living room
   9. Did a deep clean and organization/purge in my house, knowing that once I started exercising, I would have precious little time for cleaning
4. Prepared my social supports
   1. Selected a few supportive people to confide in
   2. Made a plan for informing other friends as time went on, once I proved myself capable
   3. Informed my parents, when they called to say they were going to visit in January, that I was beginning a new exercise program and it would have to take precedence during their stay
   4. Temporarily canceled my profiles for online dating sites
5. Took a week off of work

I’ll be elaborating on many of these steps over the next few weeks. It’s my hope that anyone who is considering embarking on this plan will find useful info in how I’ve made it work for me.

This entry was posted Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 4:12 am and is filed under The 2010 Experiment. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.