The First Day Back At… Well… Everything Really

Yesterday (Sunday), I spent the entire day from about 8am until about 10pm playing catch up with all the outstanding work from my ecommerce business. This was while everyone else was at the beach cooling off from the nearly 50 degree (yes 50 degree C!) scorcher of a day that we were having.

Shit it’s hard when it’s blue skies and a gorgeous day outside but you don’t get anywhere without sacrifices so it has to be done. Sooo happy at the end of the day though at all that I managed to get done and it set me up in the right mindset to get going again after the break.

Today was really my first day back at ‘life’ though, after living the Aussie dream with family for the last 2 weeks and of course struggling to get to sleep last night.

The day started with what I knew was going to be the hardest part of all… exercise! I was right.

The 60 minute walk to the gym was fine as you might expect, but when I jumped on the treadmill and started trying to run, oh my God. Horrendous. Felt like I’d lost all my fitness and of course I’m lugging all the extra weight I put on over the last few weeks too.

I’d gone from easily running 10 minutes at 5 degree incline at 9-10kph to barely being able to complete 3 minutes at a time before my lungs refused to continue until they’ve had a little rest.

The first one back is always the worst and you lose fitness after as little as 10 days so I was kind of expecting this but it doesn’t make it any easier. It should improve quickly though, especially as I lose weight at the same time.

Back to the drawing board with my calorie tracking. I keep a running total of the calorie deficit that I’ve accumulated and this is the single biggest technique that I’ve used to guarantee weight loss success and always know exactly where you are up to.

I say ‘weight loss’ but I don’t really want to lose weight, only fat.

Anyway I usually aim for about -500 calories per day but to kick things off quicker I’m going for -800-1000 initially. At least on a few days per week and obviously keeping protein high to help preserve muscle mass and metabolism.

Might not be often you get a bloke say this, especially if they have been training years like I have, but I do get self conscious when I’ve put weight on and going in the gym. Today I felt really fat and horrible when I went in and I’ll wear a dark t-shirt instead of my usual vest until I feel I’m lean enough and look good enough in a vest to wear one again.

If I’ve been regularly in gyms since age 14 and if I feel like this when I’m a bit out of shape then I can only imagine what new people or those heavily overweight and out of shape must feel and you have my deepest respect and support for being there taking action to improve your health and your life.

The rest of the day was filled with emails and meetings followed by working on my business again until about 9.30pm when I stopped to write my daily post which I’m aiming to do.

Currently doing a bit of a brand communications exercise and reading a book called StoryBrand. So far so good. Getting some good insights from it. Tonight I actually did the first part of their storybrand process which is all about defining the inner and outer layer of your brand and also the target market and matching things up. Looking forward to improving our brand communications and positioning this year in conjunction with the launch of a full range of products.

Okkkk, first day… completed! Tomorrow will feel much more like a regular day I’m sure 🙂