Weight and Debt

This process is teaching me an important lesson, as well as forcing me to face one of my biggest demons: frustration with long-term commitments. I’m learning that consistent behavior over a long period of time will get me to where I want to be – both in terms of weight management and financial goals. I’m slowly accepting the fact that getting out of debt is a long-term commitment; it won’t happen overnight, and is going to take a commitment on my part. I’m terrible when it comes to long-term. I hate long-term. I want to achieve my goals immediately. But this one isn’t going to happen that way. Neither will losing weight.

I’ve started working out pretty much every day – nothing really big, just about 30-45 minutes a day starting with an elliptical machine, and ending with some weights. I’m beginning to see results, although I’ve actually gained a little since I started. I think the gain is from muscle. The point is that this, like the debt snowball, is about making consistently good choices over a long period of time.

Dave Ramsey is right – this is about behavior. When I can change my behavior and begin to make good decisions consistently, things start working. Whether money or weight, it’s pretty much the same.

The changes I’m beginning to see in my life are most pronounced not in the size of my wallet, or the length of my belt – it’s other, probably less noticeable, but more important things. I have more free-time to spend on what is important to me. I’ve started to put consistent effort into making sure my living area is clean – so another case of consistent good choices being good for me: it’s better to spend 5 minutes a day to maintain a healthy living area than to put up with a mess for weeks, until I finally get sick of it and spend 4-6 hours cleaning it up, only to start the cycle again. I have a better outlook on life – both because I think I am beginning to realize that big problems don’t have immediate solutions – and also because there are simply fewer things to worry about on a day-to-day basis.

It’s about behavior. When I first listened to Dave Ramsey talk about the debt snowball – paying down the smallest debt first instead of the highest interest debt – I thought he must be horrible at elementary math! But, his argument for the debt snowball has everything to do with behavior – change behavior and the rest just kind of falls into place. I agree. This process is forcing me to address what has been a problem in so many other areas of my life – behavior.

So Americans kind of have a reputation for being impatient – for wanting everything right now, and not wanting to wait for anything. So is it any surprise we have both national debt and weight problems? Something happened between the signing of the Declaration of Independence and today, that caused us to become too comfortable – to want to have everything, and not wait for, or work for anything. Okay I’m being a little pessimistic – but I’m not far off. We’ve become a country – a society where we have everything, but own nothing.