Why you should stop making excuses

After a long day at work, and walking probably about 5 miles, I crashed at 8 pm. Now, I have a serious 3 AM insomnia problem. I have a lot on my mind, so I'm going to get on my soapbox for a minute (or two) here.

I have a lot of pet peeves. I'm just an easily irritable person. This is one of my faults. However, I have made a conscience effort to work on my irritability the last couple years, but one thing that will continue to grind my nerves is when people make excuses for not doing something or making a change in their life. On everything from an unsatisfying job, to low self-confidence to weight loss/building a healthy lifestyle, if you have a problem, no one is going to fix it for you, so fix it yourself.

I guess I was lucky that my mother and father raised me if I wanted something (tangible or intangible) then I should go out and earn it - with hard work. So, I don't take excuses from people well. I'm a problem solver by nature and I'll always have an answer to your excuse.

One thing that goes hand-in-hand with excuse making is only giving 50% of yourself to a goal. To me, it's all about being honest with yourself. Your sub conscience is the easiest person to lie to. Sure, it's really tempting to fudge a little when you enter your portions of what you ate in your food journal/calorie count, but who is that benefiting? You? It's not, because if you fudge, you know deep down how much you ate and a few extra bites at each meal that you aren't recording adds up and could hinder the scale. No one else probably even looks at your food journal, so you aren't protecting yourself from anything in the long run.

In turn, if you're honest and, even if you slip up, write down every bite at the correct portion size you will begin to learn the REAL nutritional information in what you are eating. So chances are, before you have that second helping of rice you'll think about having to enter it into your food journal and may choose to not go back for seconds if you aren't really hungry.

The same idea works in exercise and workouts. You know how hard you are pushing yourself. You know if you are walking as fast as you can to get your heart rate up or if you are just going through the motions. If you aren't going to give 100% to your work outs then whats the point? That's wasted time in my eyes. I am not saying every workout is going to be at the same intensity each and every time. Of course, you are going to have good days and bad days, but if you can honestly tell yourself that you are pushing as hard as you can and cannot push anymore, then you are working to your full potential.

If you haven't heard, I've committed to walking another half-marathon in February. This will be my second half-marathon. More thoughts on this to come.