For tonight’s musical entertainment, how about something a little jazzy? It’s possible to work out to jazz.
When I started my weight loss in February, I was determined to do so within our family budget. Mind you, we’re struggling to keep our heads above water while Republicans and Democrats are playing a game of political chicken with the looming debt deadline, unemployment is still high, and after bills and food, there’s just a little left over for personal projects. While everyone understood how important it was for me to lose this weight, I understood how important it was to not splurge on the project, to stay within my meager means, and to maximize my success as I minimize the cost. It’s all too easy to run up a healthy tab when it comes to changing to a healthier lifestyle. I told myself from the start that there would be no frills, no surgeries, no fad diets, no workout videos, no pills; just the brains in my head and a whole lot of hard work.
It’s very possible to successfully lose weight without paying an arm and a leg, to eat nutritious food, to get a good workout, and to live a healthier lifestyle. I’ve lost over a hundred pounds, most of that in less than five months, and I still have money in my pocket.
First things first. When you make the commitment to cut fast food, snacks, and soft drinks from your diet, you’re already saving yourself money. I was notorious for having a Pepsi and a Snickers as I waited for the bus, about three bucks every time; if you do that, say, a hundred times, that’s $300 you’ve spent, or in this case, because I’ve stopped doing it, that’s $300 I’ve saved. I used to grab a Sourdough Jack or a Whopper on the way to pick Debby up from work, but that’s gone, so there’s more saved. I no longer have stashes of snack cakes or potato chips all over the house, so the money I would have wasted in keeping them stocked remains in my wallet. This makes for a nice little sum of cash for starting a major personal project, and it’s all due to cutting the crap out of your life.
The flipside of saving that money from eating and drinking garbage is, now that you have the money, you still have to eat, and eating well is expensive, right? While the family budget already takes care of the staple grocery shopping, what I buy for food comes from discretionary spending. You can find alternatives in your local supermarket. For instance, fiber is a basic essential to any solid diet plan, and I’ve learned my weight loss grinds to a halt if I don’t have my fiber; there are plenty of cereals and snack bars that will give you that fiber, but you have to do a lot of comparison shopping and label reading to find the best deals. By all means, don’t buy a product because of name recognition, they’re often more expensive and don’t give you more of what you’re looking for. In this case, while the breakfast bar section is packed with dozens of brands, most of them with names you’d recognize sell five bars for four or five dollars, with fiber ranging between 10% and 25% of the recommended daily allowance; there is always one off-brand product, one store generic bar, that sells five for two dollars and gives you 35% of the RDA. They taste good, and if you have two of them in the morning, you’re already at 70% and have eaten less than a dollar worth of product. Couple that with a small yogurt for 70 cents, and you have a small but decent breakfast with plenty of protein, carbs, and fiber, all for less than two bucks.
When you do your comparison shopping, you’ll find that, in many cases, substituting your usual snacking fare with healthy items can save. A bag of carrots costs less than a large bag of Lay’s Potato Chips. Bottled water costs less than the same amount of Coke or Pepsi. Chicken costs less than beef or pork. My assumption for this is, the more a food requires processing, the more labor and ingredients required to make the thing you’re about to eat, the more it’s going to cost.
If nothing else, if you’re like me and not on a strict diet, but are rather controlling portion size and counting calories, you’re going to save money, simply because you’re eating less. Have what the rest of the family is having for dinner, just don’t have a full plate, or if you do, set aside the starches and have more veggies. By doing just this much, you’ll be consuming less, hence you’ll be spending less. And even if it’s your favorite meal being served tonight, if you just eat half now and half tomorrow for lunch, you’re turning your regular meal into two diet-sized meals, cutting the cost for that meal in half. There is merit in leftovers, so long as you’re not turning yourself into the family garbage disposal and cleaning out the fridge just so you don’t waste food; if your family is in tune with what you’re doing, they’ll act accordingly and cook smaller dinners, thus not stockpiling the extra, and ultimately, saving the whole family money.
My membership at 24 Hour Fitness is $29.99 a month. It gives me access to all their facilities, without any frills. When I signed up, the salesgirl naturally tried to upsell, presenting me with options for personal trainers, three sessions for $125. I politely told her no thank you, not just because I thought the cost was extraneous and outrageous, but because I had been a jock in high school, I survived basic training in the Navy, I had exercised from time to time in my 20’s and 30’s, I generally knew my way around a gym, even if my body didn’t show it. If I didn’t have this knowledge, the Internet did, and finding a workout regimen that could suit my needs can be accomplished in a couple hours of surfing the Web. Hence, I not only got a decent price on membership, but I use all the facilities—the cardio bikes, the aerobics classes, the free weights and weight machines, the sauna and steam baths, the showers, everything—as often as I possibly can, which is five days a week these days. If I work out twenty times a month (I go to the gym more often than that, this is just a nice round number for easier math), that comes out to $1.50 a day to use everything the place. Pretty sweet.
Whatever they’re trying to sell you on TV in terms of footwear, don’t buy any of it. You’re not a professional athlete, you don’t need a $150 pair of shoes some athlete is pimping. Go to Walmart or Payless and get yourself a solid pair of simple walking shoes for twenty bucks. They’ll last you almost as long as the expensive pair Peyton Manning or Derrick Rose is trying to sell you, and if they don’t, buy another, you’re still saving a ton of money. Unless you’re trying out for the NBA, you’re not going to need the ReeZig shoe thingee Reebok is selling these days.
Money, it ain't the shoes.
Working out should not be made into a fashion statement, if for no other reason, because if you’re exercising hard, you’re going to drench your shirt with sweat. There’s no point in running out and starting a wardrobe for your gym. Odds are you already have a few t-shirts and shorts, and if you don’t, go to Goodwill or Savers instead of Foot Locker. Don’t spend more than a few bucks for each article of clothing. If you’re sweating up a storm, you’re going to be putting them through the laundry a lot, fading them out, maybe shrinking them a little, and wearing them out rather fast. Other than covering your nakedness, your clothing should be seen as nothing more than a sponge to soak up everything that comes out of your skin.
So, you’ve saved money on your diet, on your gym, on your shoes and workout apparel. What are you going to do with all the money you’ve saved?
Well, in my case, the money’s being plowed back into the family so we can stay caught up on the bills, but I am trying to sock just a little away. I don’t plan on buying any new clothes until I reach 185, and at that point, I might go to somewhere like Men’s Warehouse and, for the first time ever, buy me a suit that actually fits, that was tailored to my specifications, that is not a hand-me-down or put together in a tacky fashion. IT’s going to cost a few hundred bucks, and I’m not going to do it the second I hit 185, but after I stabilize at that weight for a few pay periods, perhaps I’ll break down and get it done. Even better, maybe it’ll be about Christmas time by that time, and I can nag my girls for it, just like my girls have nagged me every Christmas.
It’s important to reward yourself when you meet your goals, just don’t reward yourself with the same crap that made you fat in the first place. I learned that lesson well, I thought I’d done rather well for several weeks straight, and I rewarded myself by taking the weekend off from working out and going on my infamous Pepsi-and-Snickers binges. Gained back six pounds almost overnight. Buying yourself a nice dress you’ve been dying to wear, or a new MP3 player, those are more practical rewards to give yourself. At this point for me, junk food not a reward at all. I can’t even eat a Snickers anymore, all I taste is the high fructose corn syrup, it’s like drinking the stuff right out of a bottle.
Then again, for every Snickers I say no to, I save a buck-fifty. 
Tip #5: Weigh yourself every chance you get. Every time you see a scale, jump on it. This has nothing to do with vanity, it’s not like stopping to look at yourself whenever you pass by a mirror. It has to do with micromanaging your weight. If you only weigh in once a week, you’re not going to be able to tweak your regimen to accommodate the rises and falls. Daily weigh-ins let you monitor your progress closely, and you can solve problems quickly, before they get out of hand. Weight fluctuates over the course of a week, there’s no such thing as a smooth loss curve, but by constantly weighing yourself, you can halt small gains before they become major spurts that turn a temporary two-pound gain into an obnoxious six-pound gain; you can make the corrections as you see the troubles arise, which means, if you catch them quickly, that two-pound gain can be worked off in a day or two, but that six-pound gain means wiping out a week or two of progress and very hard work. The professional scales at the doctor’s office and the gym are ideal, but you can set your bathroom scale to match them, so you can get a reliable reading every time you set foot on it. Have one day a week with an “official” weigh-in, that’s the weight you tell everyone, the weight you record, and use all the rest for micromanagement.
Alive Once Again!
Alive Once Again! 