A Journey of Self Discovery and Weight Loss
I woke up this morning with a pain in my chest and a sore back, Thank You God for reminding me I’m Alive.
Don’t ignore life’s built in alarm clocks, if you hit the snooze button one to many times, then snooze you will find yourself permanently.
Don’t stress about tomorrow and forget about today, live a good life.
It’s not unreasonable to think that marriage for men is 70% physical and 30% emotional and for woman the opposite. What woman sometimes fail to understand is that most men whether they want to admit it or not, are selfish creatures, we like to have our cake and eat it and then still look at the desert menu after we’ve eaten our cake.
The idea of being able to rewind certain moments in our lives, like the honeymoon, the day my children were born, Disney World vacation, steam train ride through St Petersburg and College. Wouldn’t it be amazing just to press a button so we could keep going back to the highs and fast forward past the lows.
Life is often referred to as a journey and as we travel along the unpaved roads we grow in experience and wisdom. I would like to rather think of life as a tape recorder, where we should rewind moments by going back to the times that captured our hearts and made us feel alive. Just like parts of the tape we listened to in school, that love mix our high school sweetheart created for us in 8th grade rewound so many times the tape became stretched.
I couldn’t remember the first restaurant that my wife and I had our first date at, but I did remember the song played in the background, I made dinner for two this evening and Depeche Mode “Somebody” played on the Ipod.
I must explain my absents without leave over the past week, I decided that I needed a week to start and plan my new diet. I’m following the Optifast diet plan and today will be the start of week two. The first couple of days I had flashbacks to the time I gave up smoking ( I quit cold turkey in 2005 and have not picked up another one since), this time the images are burgers and pizza where’s my chewing gum for that “MAC-o-rett”.
Diets are a unknown beast, just when you start to feel good about your progress, your body starts to feel hungry and the beast seems to overtake the male brain that thinks about woman and eventually becomes the major topic of your dreams and daydreams, old biscuits that you would not have given a second look at before become mouth watering treats and irresistible.
On more than one occasion I have found myself for no reason at all just walking to the kitchen and opening the fridge, I swear my wife could hear the light click on because I would hear a shriek from the other side of the house “it’s not time for your apple snack yet”.
I feel like a POW looking through the fence at the tree in the garden of Eden and the only apple on the tree is just in reach but if I take it I would have failed myself.
The only cure I have found is at night drink lots of water and then go to sleep and during the day keep a coleslaw salad and water bottle close by for those snack times.
Week 2 going to be tough but I will keep you all posted.
I had been whining to my wife that I feel exhausted and lethargic, she sent me off to the doctor and his words were simple “Bloody Change your Lifestyle!” or sit in a hospital bed at 50 .
You can keep telling yourself that you will start the diet on monday, or go back to gym on wednesday, but the fact of the matter is that if you don’t partner up with a mate or a trainer to push you and make you feel obliged to go, you just not going to go. Why wait until you sick and bed ridden to make a change.
We always want to write that book or change our lifestyle, but reality is nobody (normal) feels like coming back home from work and getting changed to hurt your body or opening the laptop to start chapter one, but when is going to be the right time?
If you are anything like me the abs have turned into the flabs and the youthful feeling of aches has turned into is that a heart attack coming on.
I am going to take control today, and just by the way I wrote two chapters last night.
As I walked the long avenues of my local hardware store this morning I noticed I was the only guy in the store for one and the only person buying a hammer because it looked cool most customers were woman and buying practical items like locks and taps and it dawned on me.
What happened to when Men just used to be men, no matter what colour, religion or economic strata of society you’d come from in the past men had a place we knew our worth.
My movie Title – Life
Movie Idea : Plans don’t work out the way you thought they would, you don’t lose your job only to bounce back and become a overnight success, you just take any job that will pay the bills. If your car breaks down you’re on your own, and it’s going to cost you. Most people (supporting actors) look pretty average looking on the movie set and your partner loves you because she saw something in you that nobody was bothered to look for.
In the end you’re poor from tax, kids and bills, the kids have returned to the nest after you paid for a college degree and you’re going to end up baby sitting their kids.
The credits rolls with you sitting on a porch of a house you still dont own and not on the luxury cruise you were promised by your investment broker.
“It’s not too late to change your life and rewrite the ending” – Nicholas E
In every relationship there are special moments, moments that only two people who love each other would understand, a glance, footsie on the couch, a soft word blown in the ear while shaving. A connection that can only be explained as special, but we sometimes share too much with other people outside of our relationships which leads to influences who where not there when you met nor the first night you kissed, who don’t understand the feeling you felt the first time your eyes locked. Our friends should never be allowed to navigate our ship they should be there to support and listen.
Don’t erode that special connection between you and your partner, if your relationships trust has been eroded and other people are over staying their welcome, then stop and change, take a time out. I have found that on a few occasions my wife and I have just needed a weekend away to regenerate, to get away from all the static noise and sometimes to remember what we first saw in each other.
“Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside”
― Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
The three most important words you will ever need in a relationship, in your religion, and in yourself is “I Trust You”
If you love her trust that she will always put you first and by doing this you will be caught when you fall, you will be cared for when you are sick, and when you and your partner are old fogeys sitting on the porch 50 years from now the foundational seeds of your love would have had their roots from seeds called TRUST.
Relationships start with two pods that float together and find a small sidewalk crack to call a home. Mathematically and through impossible odds they should never meet by chance, but they do, you do and when you do don’t let go hold on tight, it’s an amazing ride if you LOVE, TRUST and CATCH each other when you fall.
I really can’t tell you, the number of times my wife has told me a story or explained a shopping list, only to have me bring home the wrong groceries or embarrass her at diner parties when I retell a story that I was not suppose to or worse incorrectly.
Men generally need simple facts, a simple shopping list without the recipe and don’t send us shopping on an empty stomach (we tend to buy anything that looks appetising ), we also tend not to notice the subtle innuendoes or markers that you say you had incorporate into a story that we should have picked up on.
If you need a hug tell us, if you need to talk about a friend or work issue, don’t wait for us to read into your sighs and deep breaths. If you need space or don’t want to cuddle tell us, men have two settings when it comes to love on and off, we are only too happy to accomodate all your needs if you communicate them directly.
“Man may have discovered fire, but women discovered how to play with it.”
― Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City
A Man's Brain 