This is a guest post from Greg at Live Fit Blog. Greg writes about fitness, moderation, and being a good dad at his blog. Go check it out.

Have you ever sat down and really examined this subject? Have you always been excited about fitness and health, or is it a grind for you? Why do you bother with fitness?

Six years ago, I found myself lying on the floor of my parent’s house, with my feet propped up on their sofa, having just discovered that my blood pressure was obscenely high. At 242-pounds, I was at least 60-pounds overweight, and didn’t even realize it. As I lie there, staring at the ceiling, I was struck by just how ludicrous my situation was — I was 32 years old.This wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

My Moment

This was — My Moment. It made me realize I was sliding down a slope to a place I didn’t want to be. I was slowly eating myself to death, and something had to give.

I suspect many others have found themselves in a similar position at some point. The demands of busy, hectic schedules insinuate themselves into our lives, and we start accepting small compromises. It’s an insidious process. For me, it began with steadily worsening sleeping and eating habits in grad school and later with job, then married life and kids. All of life’s other pressures slowly crowded out the need to maintain my health.

That’s how I ended up lying there on that floor, wondering how I had become this guy, who in his (still young) 30′s was a physical wreck.

It’s also when I realized that my priorities had become skewed. I needed to change my lifestyle. And it wasn’t because all of those other priorities weren’t important. It was just the opposite — I need my health to be right precisely because those other things are so important. That was the day I decided to change my life.

Repeated Successes (And Failures)

And it hasn’t been easy.

Like many people starting back into running, I picked a 5K run and started training with the famous Couch to 5K program. My goal was to just cross the finish line. It was a far cry from the glory days of high school and college. Those first months, staying motivated was easy. I made rapid progress, but after meeting my (admittedly) modest goal, things got progressively harder as life started throwing challenges in my path again. This process has repeated itself many times now.

It NEVER Ends

It’s now almost 6-years to the day since I found myself staring at my parent’s ceiling, and I’ve finally come to realize that I’ll never cross the finish line in this race. Even though my focus on fitness has waxed and waned at times, I haven’t given my goals up completely. So I would like to share a few tips that have helped see me through some of these challenges.

A Few Tips To Keep You On Track

1. Have a publicly stated goal. It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but a stated goal communicates dedication and accountability. It also allows friends and co-workers to understand where you’re headed, and explains to them why you’ve decided to skip that lunch, dinner, or dessert.
2. Weigh yourself daily. Some people find frustration in this routine, but its another way to stay accountable. Be willing to accept some day to day of fluctuation, because it will happen, but watch the averages.
3. Read about fitness. When I started my journey, it was just with the goal of “losing weight.” I didn’t know how much weight I needed to lose, how many calories I should be eating, or how many calories were in the food I was consuming. Developing this knowledge is a skill that takes time and effort.
4. Understand when to relax. Moderation allows us make the transition from “diet” and “weight loss” to enduring lifestyle habits.
5. Try new foods. When I first started out, I planned to exercise my way out of being overweight. It took almost a year for me to figure out that doesn’t work. Your weight is determined by what’s on the end of your fork.
6. Enjoy your exercise. Some kind of regular exercise is important for good health. It doesn’t really matter what form that exercise takes, but just that it happens. Find something you enjoy and do it regularly.
7. Be vigilant. Research has shown time and again that the majority of people who lose 10% of their body weight fail to sustain that loss for more than a year.

When I set the goal of getting my weight under control, I vowed to be the turtle, hoping for slow, steady progress. By understanding why I made that choice, and following a few basic principles, I’ve achieved that goal. But I’ve also learned that maintaining that goal over a lifetime will require vigilance. But that’s no different than anything else worth doing, is it?

About the author: Greg Hayes is the author of Live Fit Blog, where he writes about balanced living, weight loss, what it means to be a father, friend, husband, and much more.

You know, I’ve been feeling pretty good about myself lately. I can run farther and faster than I’ve ever been able to run. I’m stronger and leaner than I was when I was in high school. Yep, things are pretty good these days. The kitchen is clean and the laundry is done—AND put away! I even spent 3 hours over the last few days building a lego house with my kids.

But just when I think things are going really well, the world conspires against me to knock me off my high horse. A few days ago, JD noticed how his actual waist measurements are greater than the number printed on his pants. Then yesterday, I saw the graphic below in The Style Blog. That was when Silver bucked me off, pissed on my head, and galloped off into the sunset…without me.

Many clothing manufacturers lie to us to make us feel skinny!

I’ve been wearing size 30 pants since May. And yeah, I knew that I didn’t really have a 30″ waist if you measured it with a tape. But, according to that chart, and depending on the manufacturer, I may actually be 5″ further around. That pisses me off! I’m not pissed that I may actually have a 35″ waist, because I know how many inches I’ve lost from around my waist and am totally proud of that. But what frustrates me more than a preacher in a whorehouse is that we’re being lied to.

We’re told we’re skinnier than we are. Do you think the researchers behind this study lied about waist measurements when presenting their data? I doubt it.

I’ve been doing Crossfit for five months now. I love it. The Crossfit methodology keeps me motivated exercise every day, and has helped me lose weight and build muscle. Crossfit is helping me to get fit slowly.

Sill, I’ve tried not to dwell on Crossfit too much around here. I know that Crossfit can seem like a cult to the uninitiated (or at least that’s how I used to view it), and there are already plenty of other blogs that cover it. Today, however, I’m going to break my silence. Today I’m writing about Crossfit.

Crossfit jargon
One of the first things people notice about Crossfit is that it has its own special vocabulary. Crosfitters seem to speak in code. In fact, here’s a hilarious video that makes fun of Crossfit jargon:

I’ll try to keep the jargon to a minimum today, because really, this is a very simple post. Though I’m sure it’ll run to 1000 words — hey! I’m a verbose! — it could be written in a single 140-character tweet:

See, it was a big morning for me at the gym. It was the first day I’ve been able to (and been allowed to) do a strength-based workout “as prescribed”.

What does that mean?

As prescribed
Every day, each Crossfit gym features a specific Workout of the Day, or WOD (pronounced “wad”). I think some Crossfit gyms (also called “affiliates”) use the WOD posted at the main Crossfit site, but others schedule their own. Cody, who owns the gym I go to, is an experienced personal trainer, and schedules his own WODs.

Every day, each Crossfit member performs their gym’s WOD. Everyone does the same thing. Or almost the same thing.

In reality, each member has different skill levels. In our gym, we have 23-year-old female athletes exercising next to overweight 41-year-old desk jockeys (that’s me!) working out next to 28-year-old ex-football players. Each of us has different strengths and weaknesses, and each of us is at a different fitness level.

A typical Workout of the Day might be:

Five rounds for time:
20 kettlebell swings (1.5 pood, 1.0 pood)
20 pull-ups
20 wall-balls (20#, 12#)

This means that the prescribed workout for men is to use a 1.5-pood kettlebell (a pood is a Russian unit of mass equal to roughly 16.5 kilos) and a 20-pound medicine ball. (And women would use 1.0 pood and 12 pounds.)

But each person doing the workout works with the trainer to make her own modifications based on her fitness levels. Some might do more than prescribed, but many will do less. For example, faced with the above workout, I’d probably use the 1.0-pood kettlebell and the 12-pound ball, and I’d probably just do body rows or weight-assisted pull-ups. In other words, I’d do the prescribed women’s workout, but with easier pull-ups.

The goal, of course, is to eventually be able to do all of the workouts “as prescribed”. When you do this, you’re said to have done the WOD “Rx’d” (pronounced “are-exed”). This is a big goal, especially for Crossfit novices like me.

Even more jargon
Two other quick points about Crossfit jargon before I finally get to the point of this post:

• Certain standard Crossfit workouts are named. (I assume they’re named for the person who popularized each workout, but I don’t know.) For example, the Karen WOD is simply 150 wallballs. (A wallball involves tossing a medicine ball at a target ten feet in the air and then catching the ball in a squat.) And, as you’ll see, the Nicole WOD involves repeating this cycle for twenty minutes: run 400 meters, then do as many pull-ups as possible.
• Crossfitters do different kinds of pull-ups. The basic pull-up is a dead-hang pull-up. You start from a hanging position and pull yourself up before dropping straight down. A popular Crossfit variation is the “kipping” pull-up. When you kip, you push yourself away from the bar as you drop, creating a sort of swinging/rocking motion. This lateral momentum helps you do more pull-ups.

There’s plenty of other Crossfit jargon, but that’s all we need for today. With that background, I can tell my story.

Nicole
I’ve never had much upper-body strength. Even as a small boy, I found pull-ups (which we used to call “chin-ups” in the Olden Days) almost impossible. Push-ups were almost as bad.

When I started Crossfit in April, I had to use the heavy black elastic band to do weight-assisted pull-ups. Soon I graduated to the medium green band. By July, I was doing pull-ups with the light-weight blue band.

Then, on July 30th, I managed the first unassisted pull-up of my adult life. Rock on! Over the past few weeks, I’ve begun to string pull-ups together two, three, even four at a time.

Still, when I saw today’s WOD was Nicole, I was sad. (Nicole, as I mentioned earlier, involves repeating this cycle for 20 minutes: run 400 meters, then do as many pull-ups as possible.) “More body rows,” I thought. Body rows are like pull-ups, except they’re done while hanging from a barbell with your feet on the ground.

But then I thought, “Maybe Cody will let me do regular pull-ups. Maybe I can do the workout Rx’d!” I’ve never done a strength-based workout as prescribed before.

Well.

As Dan and I were warming up this morning (we were the only two there at 6:30), Cody said, “J.D., how’d you like to try today’s workout Rx’d?”

“Hell yes!” I thought. What I said was, “Okay.”

So, I spent twenty minutes running and doing pull-ups. Real pull-ups. My last pull-up in each set often missed the mark, and Cody didn’t count it, but I was okay with that. I had to kip several pull-ups, but I was okay with that. Dan did 44 pull-ups in his first set, and 12-15 in each subsequent set, but I was okay with that.

After 20 minutes, Cody wrote our results on the board. Dan, as always, did the workout Rx’d. His results: five rounds and 96 pull-ups. But today, I also did the WOD Rx’d. I did a more running than Dan because I did fewer pull-ups. But I did the pull-ups. My results: seven rounds and 24 pull-ups, Rx’d.

And that, my friends, is a long, long story to tell you something I could have said in a 140-character tweet:

I’m a long way from doing barbell workouts Rx’d, but this is a start. And I’m happy with it!

It’s been fairly obvious that I’ve been lacking a little pizazz and motivation for the last few months. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been exercising a lot, mostly running. I’ve broken my weekly mileage records twice in the last month—so that shows I haven’t been totally slacking. But I’ve been eating poorly and I’ve gained a few pounds from my low and that’s got me worried. So I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve joined a great cause to help me get back on track.

A while back, I heard about a bunch of my blogging buddies who were all getting together to run The Rock ‘N Roll Las Vegas 1/2 Marathon. They call themselves the Mizboorunners and they all subscribe to #mizboorun on twitter. Since I’ve never met any of my fellow bloggers, I thought it would be fun to join in.

Then, a few weeks later, I randomly stumbled across a website called Operation Jack. This is the website of Sam Felsenfeld, an amazing man with an amazing goal. Sam’s son Jack has autism. In order to help generate attention and raise money to fight the disease, Sam is attempting to run 61 marathons in 1 year. Yeah, you read that right…61 marathons, more than 1 per week, in a year.

I don’t really know anyone with autism but I do have several friends with autistic children. And back when I was teaching I had a few students with the disease. So while I have no idea what a family who has been affected by the disease is going through, I still would like to help out.

So here’s my plan:
I’ve created a donation page here. If you’d like to support the cause, please click on the link and make a donation of any size—Every dollar helps. I would love to collect $1000 from readers, friends, and family that would then be donated to Train4Autism.

But this race is bigger than just me. So I’d really like to get all of the #mizboorun runners involved as well. I’ve also created a team page at Operation Jack. If you’re already running the Las Vegas 1/2 marathon, or the full marathon like me, please join the team and commit to raising at least $300 to help support autism research. If you do raise $300, then operation jack will reimburse you (up to $150) for the race, and hook you up with a t-shirt, tech shirt, and sweatshirt. My goal for the team is to find at least 10 runners, each willing to raise $300. So raise a little bit of money, and run the race for free, plus get some gear and help to support a great cause…Everyone wins if you ask me!

So what do you think? Can I count on you to help me and the team reach our goals. I think so. You’ve never let me down before.

This post is from J.D., the other half of Get Fit Slowly.

I had a rough day at Crossfit yesterday. After taking a week off because of my sore back, my body wasn’t quite ready for intense effort. (I spent my week off doing nothing; I intentionally rested my body.) Though the workout wasn’t too intense (cleans and dips), I felt nauseated after just a couple of minutes. I took a dreaded DNF, and was fine with that.

Despite having a lousy workout to end the month, I’m not discouraged. And though it’s also true that my body fat and muscle mass remained the same in August, that doesn’t discourage me either. I still lost 4-1/2 pounds and an inch around the waist!

Here are my ongoing fitness statistics since the start of the year:

Look! I lost 10 pounds in the first four months of 2010, and I’ve lost 21 pounds in the second four months. Rock on. I’m also impressed that I’ve lost 7-1/2 inches from my waist, and that my waist is now narrower than my hips. I’m not sure how much smaller my waist can get. (Well, that’s not true. I’m sure I can drop at least three more inches. I’d love to get to a 32-inch waist.)

All of my numbers continued to improve last month except for body fat and muscle mass, which remained level. I’m fairly certain this is because although I was maintaining a calorie deficit, my diet in August contained a lot of junk food. That’s something I’m looking to fix in September.

I’m pleased with everything else, though. My current weight is about 179 (for daily, 3-day average, and 7-day average), and seems to be moving downward at an even pace. My goal is to be at 175 by the end of September. I also want to focus on reducing my body fat and boosting my muscle mass this month. My wife and I will then spend a month in France and Italy, and I won’t spend much time worrying about anything fitness related. When we return, I’ll spend November and December working to shed the last 10-12 pounds for me to reach my target weight of 163.

And then? And then? Well, and then I’ll keep doing Crossfit, working to boost my strength. Plus, I may work my way back into running. When I tried running in 2008 and 2009, I did so at 190-200 pounds. I want to try it at 160-170 pounds. My guess is that shedding 30 pounds and boosting my core strength will make me a better runner, and less prone to injuries. (That’s my hope, anyhow.)