Expressions of Jay Drake

I’ve had a bad habit for awhile now. I’ve been a regular in the crowd that goes out to lunch at local restaurants. In recent past I’ve curbed it a bit on occassion, mostly because I wanted to push my diet a little harder, but this week I have been really thinking about just how much those lunches (and breakfasts) are costing me. It doesn’t seem like much when I hit up a restaurant at lunch time and spend somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen dollars, and even seems less serious at breakfast which tends to be under five, but when I start to really consider it that’s a lot of money when I start doing this four or even five days a week on a regular basis!

Let’s do the math, shall we? To start with, let’s be really conservative and say that eating breakfast and lunch out is costing me $15 a day, five days a week. Staying to the conservative side, let’s call a month 4 weeks even. This means that any given month that I eat out this often (which has really been all too common) I am spending $15 x 5 x 4 every month, or $300! Even if I’m being good at least a little bit that’s $3000 a year. It’s plausibly as expensive as a smoking habit.

Any reasonable person can take note of this and simply decide to not go out to eat and put that money into savings, or paying down debt or even just leave it in that checking account and leave it alone, but I have to admit that my ability to be reasonable when it comes to finances is just not what I’d like it to be.

My co-worker, who also has decided to stamp out his lunch habit has gone the route of having the money he would have been spending automatically pushed to a savings account that isn’t immediately accessible, making it impossible for him to just go on out to lunch without a great deal of hassle. While this seems entirely logical, I find the method a little drastic and honestly somewhat scary to me, having hit the wall with my finances in the past and had those little hassles bite me in the overdraft. Beyond that, it’s still really a matter of willpower for me as I can quite happily go spend the money and move it anyway.

So I decided to make a bit of a game out of this. Instead of saving my money on the front end, expecting to not go out and eat, I save my money when I manage to muster up the willpower not to go out and eat. The workings of my system are simple. If I go out to eat, I lose. I failed. Bad dog. If I skip going out for breakfast, I earn $5, and if I skip going out for lunch I earh $10. Sometime in the afternoon, when I’ve a short break, I figure out how much I earned for the day and transfer it straight on over to my savings account. What really makes this system better for me is that I have potential reward for the challenge every day. The reward that I get for a given day overshadows my desire to go out to eat, and that has helped immensely in keeping on track.

Another part of this that is important for me is that I can still go out for the social interaction. Just because I went ahead and packed a sandwich to munch down at my desk doesn’t mean I can’t hop in the car with my buddies who are going to whatever restaurant and chat with them about whatever topics come up just like usual. The only difference is that I don’t have a plate of food in front of me, and in general I’m drinking water instead of some overpriced soda, tea or juice, which is better for me anyway.

Following this plan I hope to win in so many ways. I get to keep my at-work social life, I get to bolster my savings account and I get to better control what I eat to help push me closer toward my fitness goals. This also opens me up for some options to go ahead and skip out on going with my friends on some days and spend that time doing a little exercise.

In so many things in life I have learned that it is very easy to make excuses, and that once you start it is easy to keep on going. A number of projects I have meant to tackle have been put off once, twice, three times and then left to never be finished. This sort of situation happens a good bit with me, and I’m sure with others. It is something I struggle with and try to eliminate in my life, but I still slip sometimes and some household chore goes undone, or a business idea ends up being nothing more than some writing on paper that inevitably finds it’s way to the trash.

My fitness and health has suffered from this too. Yes, I bought a bike, but it’s terribly easy to find reasons not to ride. It’s raining. It rained yesterday and the roads are wet. It’s too late. I just don’t feel like it. I tried joining a gym. I though the monthly cost would motivate me, but all too soon I started finding reasons not to go, and the truth of the matter was that I really didn’t want to go. Even the double incentive of getting more healthy and saving money by eating out less and cooking more takes a big hit when I just don’t feel like eating what I brought for lunch, or I’m on the way home from work with my family and my little guy is hungry and pleading for ‘foo’ or ‘fry’ or ‘mlk’ or any other word he can pull from his limited, two-year-old vocabulary, often with ‘pwee’ (That’s ‘please’, if you didn’t figure that out) mixed in. As the slogan goes, “Yeah. I’m thinking Arby’s”.

Excuses. They’re easy to come up with. Sifu talked about excuses the other day in class. Asked us all if we could think of reasons why we might not have shown up that very day, and of course we all had them, but we were there. I started to think about that, some. Just why was I there? I had plenty of excuses not to be. I had just moved, and we’re still only half unpacked. I had been sick the week before, and actually missed class all that week. Missing class, and still being somewhat weak from being sick, it was absolute agony trying to get through, let alone keep up. Of course the ultimate excuse that is always there for me at any time is simply that I’d really like to be home (or out) with my family. Despite it all, I was there, at the Kwoon, learning Kung Fu.

The reason is really quite simple. It is easy for me to not make excuses to be at Kung Fu because I enjoy it. Even though I may cringe a bit thinking about the sore muscles and getting out of breath and all that other stuff that goes with any exercise, I actually look forward to going to the Kwoon and practicing. Truthfully, I go to every class I can and generally wish I could go to more.

As it stands, so far in this session I have missed three classes, with two of those being this past week, and I fully intend to make every one of these up. It isn’t a matter of needing to make up those classes in order to qualify to test for my next belt, and while more practice before the test will surely help me be ready for it, I probably could just as well do so at home - and certainly will. Truly, the reason I intend to get to these make up classes is because I want to. Where in other things I might find excuses to not do them, this gives me an excuse to go to class again.

In my books, passion is worth so much more than will power. I have nothing but respect for those who can force themselves to eat food they don’t like and grind away at exercising for fitness, without really enjoying the exercise itself. I would love to be able to one day to be among those people, but today I am not. To those others, like me, who are just too adept at making excuses, I recommend you find exercise that you can be passionate about, as I am with Kung Fu, and use your skills to find excuses to do what it is you enjoy!

I received an email today from Lone Star Steakhouse. In the past I have really appreciated when they let me know about specials they are having and so on and so forth. They even offer me free appetizers for my birthday and the likes, and that’s really nice of them. With my new diet and budget, however, it seems they generally don’t fit into my plans. Sorry Lone Star.

Today’s email seemed almost to be like they were trying to see just how far away from my diet plan they could veer. I am a little concerned that I gained a pound just reading the email. Their present offer was, (I’m not kidding! Click the link!) “All Ya’ll Can Eat Steak Bites“, which comes with dip and all you can eat steakhouse fries too. Now, what this basically turns out to be is a steak equivalent to boneless wings. Wow. Way off my diet!

While my day-to-day weigh-in isn’t a measure I use to directly determine that I am cutting fat, it is still exciting when the number on the scale is lower than before. This morning’s weigh-in showed me to be sitting at 232.4 pounds, which is a good half-to-full pound lighter than I have been showing as of late.

Here’s hoping that sticking with the new diet plans will help me shed some more of this extra padding.

A big concern for me, particularly on days when I know I have Kung Fu class, is getting enough fuel. It’s not that I think I am special in any way and need huge amounts of food to make it. Rather, I’ve had a handful of experiences where I have engaged in an activity only to not make it through due to a lack of energy.

Due to these past experiences, it is a little worrisome for me to start in on a rather different way of approaching my meals, and I was somewhat concerned as the afternoon went on, yesterday, that I would not make it through my usual hour and fourty-five minutes of kung fu. I am pleased to note that my concern was unnecessary, and other than the pains I felt during the class, I was feeling very good as I worked through the class.

Where I was worried about not having the energy for class before, I am now excited that as I adapt to my new diet I might actually have more energy and be able to step up to my kung fu, and really the rest of my life, at a higher level.