This is my October Challenge.

From the onset of the summer I have been feeling very impulsive and have cultivated a wide array of unhealthy food habits. This month I’m pledging to go from 195 lbs to 175 lbs, and I’m going to do it by NOT thinking.

Although I run a self-improvement blog, I’m just as susceptible to falling into bad habits as everyone else. However, I think I have more exposure and opportunity to become aware of my mistakes and to correct them before they become detrimental and leave me with regret (and if you take on journaling you will have the very same opportunity).

I’m 5′8″ and currently weighed in at 195 lbs, the largest weight I’ve been in my life. With my body structure, it’s impossible to tell that I weigh this much. The weight is evenly distributed throughout my body with some large deposits on my thighs. I think I look like I weigh 170 lbs (my spin class instructor told me I look like I weigh 160 lbs yesterday), so I was a slightly surprised at the scale. While I have been exercising almost every day, I doubt that most of this extra weight is new muscle — it has to be fat.

I gained this weight mindlessly. I removed every single restriction that I have had on eating and indulged in in breads, pastries, cookies, cakes, and ice cream and gorged on food until I couldn’t move. The way I’m going to lose this weight will be mindlessly as well. I’ll do it be setting up fool-proof restrictions and guidelines that will get me to my target weight, if I do nothing more than follow them.

I’m at a higher state of awareness while I am writing this article. I’m thinking clearly and have a definite and measurable goal in mind for this weight loss project. Tomorrow morning I might very well find myself in a low state of consciousness and awareness and be very liable to make a wrong decision. With this system, all the decisions are being made now; now all I have to do is stick to them.

Today is October 1st. My goal is to lose 20 lbs in 31 days and weigh 175 lbs on November 1st. The reason I want to lose this weight is so that I can be healthier, more energetic and more focused on my work.

11 Mindless Eating Habits for Skinny Robots

1. Drink 1 Gallon of Water Daily. This is a lot, but I believe it is the right amount. I haven’t been drinking this much liquid recently, let alone this much water. However, it will quench my thirst and keep my stomach full and unlikely to desire more food. I’m going to be peeing a lot the first week!
2. One Cup of Water Before Snacking. With a gallon of water going into me every day I’ll naturally be drinking water before everything. However, the point is that if I feel hunger, I will first drink a cup of water and wait 10 minutes, so that I can make sure I was hungry and not thirsty — the body has a way of confusing the two sometimes.
3. Sunday Fasting. For the next month I don’t have any work scheduled on Sunday. There are 4 Sundays in the month of October, so this means I will be doing a full water fast 4 times. (Read about all the benefits of fasting ^[1].)
4. No sweets. Let’s define what I mean by sweets. Cookies, candies, cakes, pastries, chocolates, ice creams and anything else with sugar in it that isn’t a fruit. I’ve already mentioned that I’ll be drinking nothing but water, which automatically removes all the high-carb and high-sugar beverages such as sodas and juices.
5. 3 hours before bed, meal cut off. Having a sleeping routine is awesome for getting all our body processes synchronized and optimized. I’d like to say that I’ll be in bed by 10pm each night, but I know I’ll have to be flexible on this one, especially on weekends. Regardless, I’m going to treat 10pm as bed time, and as such I’m going to make 7pm the last moment to get a piece of food into my mouth for the day.
6. Last meal salad only. It would be silly of me to make a last meal cutoff time and gorge on large amounts of food. That stuff would just sit in my stomach overnight and make me fat! I’m going to keep the last meal a light salad, and allow my stomach to go through a nightly fasting and detox period.
7. Fruit snacks. If I get hungry between meals the only choice is a fruit snack. Apples, pears, strawberries, and blueberries often make their way into my house and I’ll either be eating them straight, or blending them together with a few greens.
8. 30 chews per bite. My biggest problem with food is that I eat way too quickly. I’ve had this bad food habit ever since I could remember. I guess I have a large mouth, so I can basically inhale food without chewing if I wanted to. This is bad because I’m not grinding down the food enough to give it maximal surface area for digestion. For the next month I will be chewing each bite of food 30 times or until it’s liquid — whatever comes first.
9. Daily 30. Regardless of my exercise habits, I’m going to take a 30 minute walk with my iPod. I’m not going to create a rule that I’m going to jog during this walk, but it will be a brisk walk to get my heart rate up.
10. Daily cardio. I might not be able to make it to the gym everyday, but that’s not going to stop me from doing a daily cardio session. Twice a week my gym has 6am spin class, which is 45 minutes of intense bike cardio. Otherwise, I’m going to either run 30 minutes, ellyptical 30 minutes, or do a session of urban rebounder ^[2].
11. Eat only when hungry, except breakfast. I’m going to be a stickler for eating breakfast first thing in the morning or right after my morning workout routine, whether I’m hungry or not. It’s important to get the food in me early in order to start up my metabolism and keep my brain full of energy. However, for the remainder of the day I’ll only eat when I’m hungry, and not a bite more.

In addition to my daily cardio exercises, a friend of mine who is a professional personal trainer is going to show me two great morning routines. One for upper body, and one for lower body, so I can alternate them every day. This will be less time consuming, and more effective than whatever I can think up on my own and is geared toward having a lean Christian Bale (in American Psycho) type body.

I’m glad I put on the extra pounds (no regrets)! With all the changes that have been going on in my life lately, this gives me an excellent outlet to concentrate on as I move forward in my mission to take over the… ehh never mind!

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