Busy Being Bored

Today was a calm, relaxing day. Humidity was in full force today, and we all know fat guys like me don't do well on hot days, so I spent a lot of time indoors, usually parked in front of a fan or A/C unit. Outdoorsy activities were out of the question, so I did not suck it up and deal with the heat as I previously stated I would. I think I need to lose some more weight before I feel more comfortable in hot weather...right now, I'm still sweating just by waiving my hand.

There's only so much you can do inside before you get bored...and that quickly happened to me today. Naturally, the hunger pains arrived with vigor, so I tried distracting myself, but I didn't do a very good job doing that, since the hunger wasn't going away. I didn't try very hard either...did a lot of TV and movie watching. I think the heat fogged up my brain or something. Regardless, I made it through the day without overeating, and I'm feeling good about tomorrow's weigh-in.

Speaking of boredom, today was the first time that I felt bored with my exercise routine. Since late June, I've been doing the same Wii workout routine: 30-45 minutes a day on either EA Sports Active or Wii Fit. I started using our elliptical machine a couple days ago, but that's only because I am finally below the weight limit for the machine. There's nothing else I do besides the Wii and the elliptical. I wasn't bored with these routines until today. I'm worried that this is gonna be worse as I continue to do the same routines. If I'm not comfortable with doing exercise outdoors, what options do I have? Join a gym? Try workout routines without the Wii? Suck it up and do outdoor exercises? Do nothing and see how it goes?

I'm gonna see how the next week goes before changing up my routine. Maybe it was a one-time twinge of boredom...

I Need to Find My Inner Busy Bee

When I get ravenously hungry, it's usually because I've been doing nothing except watching TV or doing some other mindless task. Therefore, I usually try to keep myself preoccupied at all moments of the day. Seems like a relatively easy thing to do...but it's not for a lifetime lazy, procrastinating person like myself.

For example, I would try to keep busy by doing some homework for school, but then after an hour or two, I would tell myself that I deserve a break. That's normal...we all need breaks after intense studying. But my break would usually involve watching TV or surfing the Internet. I would dread going back to homework so badly that I would try to prolong the break as much as I could. Naturally, a classic stalling technique would be to make some sort of fatty meal that would taste super yummy. This cycle would occur on a regular basis and work for any kind of activity that I found boring: washing the dishes, cleaning the house, yard work, etc. Besides prolonging my breaks, I generally spent a lot of time doing the TV and Internet thing, which kept me sitting on my butt longer, which constantly kept my hunger levels elevated.

Now, I'm trying to be conscious of my activity levels. In addition to finding 30 minutes a day to do some sort of workout, I'm trying to find ways to keep myself busy each day. I'm still taking breaks, but I'm trying to limit them. If I feel myself getting hungry, I head back to the task I was doing or I find something else to do. I'm limiting my TV and Internet intake, and if I am doing something relatively boring, then I try to eat some sort of healthy snack. I'm trying not to suck all of the fun out of my life by being more conscious of these things, so relaxing activities like TV and the Internet are not completely eliminated from my life...there's no way I'm giving up Lost, Entourage, True Blood, How I Met Your Mother, Red Sox games, Celtics games, etc. But the buzz words are "lifestyle changes," so if I'm gonna succeed on this long journey, those types of changes need to happen.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I've been on the Internet for too long. Time for me to mosey on...