My kids said something to me yesterday that I should have known before. After having some struggles in the past year or so (physical, illnesses and some mental) I finally got myself back on track health and fitness wise. I hit one of my goals before Thanksgiving and was looking better than I have in a while. My kids did not seem impressed at all. Friends, family and even coworkers commented on how good I looked. My kids were not impressed at all. 

My daughter said, ‘You did this before, why should we be impressed?’ I never thought about it that way. She was right, every time I somehow got off track, I was able to get myself back on track fitness wise. That magically I had something that would appear when I needed it.  

To do it, I found my spreadsheet that tracks my weight, my workouts, and my food. I whipped it out, put a start date on it and began my journey. I know what I need to do diet wise, exercise wise and sleep wise. I know what works for me, and I went back to the same plan.  

The results started slowly and continued slowly. I tracked every day, weighed myself every day etc. There were days that the scale went the wrong way, but the general direction over a longer period was downwards. I did not worry about the bad days, and I did not worry about cheating as I went back to my plan. I have written before about planning your dive then dive your plan. And I also have written about the fact that having goals is one thing, but you need a system to achieve them. 

Once I realized I had a system in place that was successful all I needed was to follow it. The thought that hit me in the short conversation with my kids was that in many of the successes I obtained over the years I have often looked for patterns and then replicated them. In fact, I had built up a series of systems that I would reach into my bag and pull out without thinking about it. While I wrote about building a system to reach your goal, I may want to revise some of that. 

If you succeeded previously you need to figure out what you did that led to success and create some system out of it to reuse. Once you create the system, the next thing is to practice it, and refine it as necessary. The key is to make them second nature like muscle memory like any athlete. The key is to be able to make them available at any time.  

The second key if figuring out how to reuse them in other situations. For getting fit, it was knowing what metrics are key, tracking them daily and making the adjustments as needed. I was holding myself accountable on a daily basis. Not everyone can mirror that but find the strategy that works for you. That is the magic, what works for you. Everyone watching from the outside will think your magical, but you will know it is. 

Of course maybe this post was just an excuse to show off my results…

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them. 

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them.