Sunday, November 2, 2008

Peer Pressure


Let's not quibble about why I want to be a part of this blog. It's peer pressure.

Growing up a competitive swimmer left me with the skills needed to over eat. Michael Phelps eats 15,000 calories a day when he's training. 15,000. That's 13,000 calories about the average recommended diet of an adult. And you know what, swimmer can eat like that because those 13,000 extra calories are burned off swimming 5 hours a day.

Well, I don't need to eat like that any more.

Peer pressure is defined by Wikipedia as:
... to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudesvalues, or behavior in order to conform to the group.
I'm trying to surround myself with peers that I know have the same or similar goals as mine. This blog is just one of the ways I've been doing it. I know, that I have opened to the world a desire to lose weight and get healthy. 6.5 billion people have the opportunity to see this and know. I hear you breathing down my neck and you know what...it really helps!

Another peer pressure system I am using is at work. I work with two of my greatest friends, let's call them Bodie25 and Mumblingsages. We've agreed to go work out 3-4 days per week in the one of the two health clubs at our workplace. We do this together. If one of doesn't go, we have to explain it to the others. Granted, we can use the "work" card, but two of us work together on the same team...we'll know if it's a ruse.

Trust me, forgetting your work out clothes is not met with much less than ridicule and I've done it twice.

For the most part, I really do enjoy going to the gym in the middle of the day. It has surprisingly made me more productive in the afternoon. My head is clear and it does a fair bit of burning off stress.

I haven't been hitting this blog up as often as I'd hoped. This is blog number 4 for me and frankly, the other blogs are being neglected too. The last few weekends have been packed to the rafters with either the last few fun outdoor things left or getting the outside and inside of the house ready for winter.

My weight has been mostly stable as of late and I have started upping the work outs at lunch to try and kick start them again. The last two session were all bike. The knee is doing better but I think I might add some cross trainer machine time in now as well. I can definitely say I'm starting to feel more fit.

The good news is I have been joined by several family members. This has gotten me really excited. Be sure to drop them a line of encouragement!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

One of the main reasons for people abandoning their exercise program is that they get bored. You can easily add some variety to your workout in a number of ways. And cross trainers are the one which can really give great excitement to your exercise programs. Many Cross trainers have the ability to go backwards (reverse), so do use this facility.

Anonymous said...

I could do with some peer pressure. My colleagues at work just complain about being overweight, eat salads but tuck into a big jar of sweets and tin of biscuits they have standing on their desks!
Put it this way, when standing in line with them- I'm slim!

Keep up the good work - I'll be lurking now I know you're all here!

Gail