Fitness

Sometimes you diet to get down to a certain weight, and THEN you start feeling yourself while looking in the mirror and suddenly have the motivation to exercise lol. That’s how it is for me. It’s like positive feedback loop or something xD

First of all, I want to congratulate you on your sobriety. Honestly, you'll probably lose a ton of weight if you just keep that up, so it's time to celebrate already! You're doing great. Everything from here on is just a bonus.

Your biggest problem is your wife and kids. Taking care of kids takes up a lot of time and can be very stressful, and you don't want to overburden your wife. This is very admirable, but it is also a problem you need to figure out. And the way to figure out is talking to your wife about it. You and your wife are partners in life, so when you have a hard goal you want to achieve, she should be the first person you go to for support. So have a good, ongoing discussion about your goal, how you plan to achieve it, what she could do to help, what she is willing to do to help, and how you can help her in return. This might mean her agreeing to watch your kids for another night so you can have more time playing hockey - but probably the biggest help she can give you is also committing to living a healthy, active lifestyle. And remember, you aren't just doing this for your health, or so you can be there for your kids when you are older. You are also modeling good behaviors for your kids so that they will be healthy, active adults without going through the struggle you are currently going through.

So, how do you motivate yourself to exercise? Well, you already figured it out. You go play hockey on Friday nights. This has all three components of creating a good exercise habit - it is fun, it is social, and it occurs on a regular schedule. Do more of that. As others have said, CrossFit (or other group fitness classes) can be a great place to start. Why? Because they are fun, social, and regularly scheduled. This is also true for things like running clubs, acrobatics classes, or making plans with friends to go on bike rides or meet at the climbing gym. Yoga studios often have classes offered before work, if that's what fits your schedule. So do boot camp style gyms.

I will note that, in my opinion, you should adopt a similar strategy for your diet. Counting calories is the "I will just hate myself hard enough to wake up at 5 am and go running" of diets. Sustainable, healthy weight loss comes from living a healthy lifestyle - not from counting every calorie you eat like a lunatic. Again, do it for your kids - what do you want them to learn a normal diet looks like? Staring at a screen and bemoaning the fact that you went over your calorie budget today? Or happily eating plenty of vegetables? Cooking and eating should be relaxing, enjoyable, social affairs. If you and your wife arent already cooking/making healthy meals for most of the food you eat, you should start. Learn to cook food from minimally processed ingredients, with lots of vegetables, that tastes good. Then eat that food with other people - your family, friends, or coworkers. Focus on the food, the place you are in, and the people you are with, rather than staring at your phone or watching tv. And then, don't snack, don't drink your calories, and do the above for a year and tell me you haven't lost weight.

Your kids, obviously, will play a factor. But again, this is a problem to figure out, not an insurmountable obstacle. If you understandably don't want to give up time with your kids for another night of the week, you should start looking for activities where they can also be present, and ideally participate, in the exercise you are doing. For example, you can bring them with you to the climbing gym (please watch them, and don't let them get crushed in the bouldering cave), take them on hikes and bike rides, sit them in the corner of your home gym while you lift, or find a martial arts dojo that offers classes for kids at the same time that they offer adult classes. Make friends with other parents with healthy, active lifestyles, and trade babysitting duties with them, or else plan group activities where everyone can come - like throwing a frisbee around in the park. Not only are you getting exercise while watchig your kids, you are, again, teaching them by example how to live a happy, healthy, active life.

One thing I want to touch on is your note about how your gym is a 30 minute drive away. This will never work. It is much, much easier to establish a good exercise habit if it integrates into your commute, rather than forcing you to commute more. If you really want to get into the habit of morning gym time, I recommend simply setting your alarm 10 minutes earlier than usual, and then going to a gym that is on the way to work. A 10 minute workout that you actually show up to is far better than an hour and a half workout that you skip. Using this method, you can force yourself in the door with a simple trick - don't shower before you leave home. That way once you've left home, you must go to the gym to shower. And once you are in the gym, it is easy enough to do a few deads. Another idea is to integrate your workout further into your commute by making your commute a workout by walking or cycling to work. You noted that it is too cold outside - nonsense! You don't have to start on the worse weather day of the year, but you can easily buy reasonable clothing for almost any weather, and your mind and body will adapt just as well to different temperatures as they will adapt to weights in the gym or miles pounding pavement.

The above strategies are how you build a wholistic, integrated approach to health and fitness that become a functioning lifestyle. If the only reason you exercise is to lose weight, then it will be a long and arduous process. But if you eat healthy and exercise to have fun, explore the world, meet new people, deepen relationships, and spend time with your kids, then you will soon find that it is harder not to exercise and eat healthy.

Finally, probably one of the best things you can do to create a lifestyle that will keep you healthy into old age is this: move. A lot of people scoff at the idea, or come up with all sorts of reasons why they can't. But they shouldn't - if your environment is opposed to your goals, you will always be fighting an uphill battle. I'm not saying you need to move tomorrow - but start thinking about it tomorrow. One of the biggest factors in weight gain is living in an auto-dependent area, because it means you never walk anywhere, and therefore never see the health benefits of walking, meanwhile seeing all the detriments of stress from constantly sitting in traffic. Move somewhere where you can walk or bike to most or all of your daily or weekly errands. Move somewhere where your kids can walk or bike to school, friends homes, and various activities they want to participate in - don't get suckered into being their chauffeur for 15 years! If your job won't let you move to such a place, start making moves to get a different job! If you don't get paid enough to afford to live in such a place, start making moves to get paid more!

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Hope you find some of this useful

I had a path similar to yours. I was in the army and 6 foot 185 lb. After I got out i gained about 100 lbs and couldn't motivate myself to lose it. Now I'm back to 200 or so but I don't really track it since i care more about how I feel than how I look.

My secret was: don't "workout". Find a sport that you can do that is fun for you. Preferably one that is a full body workout. For me it was downhill mountain biking. It's fun and you don't notice the calories burned. If you get a fat tire bike you can even bike in snow or sand. Basically you need to trick your mind into getting those dopamine hits until your body associates exercise with feel good chemicals.

Just a thought but have you tried adding a bit of entertainment when you workout? A tv in your exercise room or listening to audiobooks? It helps for me a bit.

Find something that releases dopamine and that has a cost to missing (it could be social, like hockey, or financial, like a class). A free membership 30 min away isn’t that. Home, with some bands and a bike, requires a mindset that’s often difficult to get into.

For me, CrossFit has an intensity and “I can do better” aspect along with getting to know the people in the class that helped me adopt a fitness regimen. Hockey players are irritatingly good at many aspects of that form of fitness so it might be fun for you. Lots of posterior chain work and short bursts of intensity, and a social aspect. None of that “sit on a fucking bike and stare at the wall/tv for an hour” (I now do this but that’s a longer story). Unfortunately, Crossfit(tm) is a steaming pile of shit, is full of born again Christians and thin X line people; I was fortunate we had none of that when I started and I was able to just get moving; since 2020 I’ve been doing it at home. My partner does it with me and that helps with accountability.

It doesn’t get better with the kids. When they’re older, the sleep schedule gets later and the activity schedule fills up. You’ll also get more prone to aches and injury. Now is the time to get after it.

The most expensive fitness decision you can make is saying “I’ll start later.” Your body doesn’t stay the same when you stop training. It adapts downward. Start small now.

Get a VR headset and play something every day. Doesn't even matter which game as long as you're moving your arms around. It burns way more calories than you think!

The key is to intentionally get addicted. So you want to play it every day. The headset battery will only last like an hour so it's not like this kind of addiction can destroy your life.

To really amp it up, don't just pick up a game to obsess over... Join a community that also obsesses over that game. Before long, you'll be speaking the game's lingo and losing weight. But more importantly, "you'll be having fun!*

Personally, I like Beat Saber (make sure to mod it to get a vastly superior experience!) but there's communities around all sorts of VR games.

Anonymously42 lost something like 100 pounds playing Beat Saber (nothing else!) and she streams all the time too: https://m.twitch.tv/anonymously42x/home

(She's awesome... Such an interesting person! I've chatted with her on Discord more than once 👍)

Install boostcamp or a similar app, onboard yourself onto a program that interests you and see if tracking your workouts can help keep you stuck to your plan? Hitting new maxes and seeing the calendar filled out with completed workouts is very motivating

I found the best full body cardio for me was the elliptical machine. And if you want to go outside, toss on a backpack and take hiking poles, it is pretty much the same workout. Works out great with camping trips too

You don't need a book, you already know how to do it. Lack of knowledge isn't your problem.

Clean up your diet, and ride the damn Peloton. Just start, and keep starting again every day. MAKE time.

You used interacting with your kids as an excuse. Imagine how much you'll miss if you die at 50 from a heart attack. Really imagine it happening, try to feel it. Try to feel the regret of missing them now. Imagine your kid wishing you were there to walk them down the aisle at their wedding. Imagine missing your grandchildren.

Also, how many years do you have before you're 50? Twelve years. You'll be 50 in twelve years. I'm 60, let me tell you it doesn't get easier if you wait.

If you have fat stores and want to get rid of them faster, consider researching ketosis. You can also increase fiber intake and add raw foods to lower the percentage of consumed calories that actually get absorbed.

If you like HIIT, do HIIT when you wake up before you eat. Do less than 30m. If you do Tabata, do a Tabata session. Then have breakfast.

If your workouts in the morning before breakfast are less than 30m, would you be more willing to do it? If you made the commitment not to eat anything until after your first work out, would you at least do pushups besides the bed so you can eat something?

There's some really good advice here, so I just wanted to add a few things that help me. To wake up early to work out I lay my clothes out the night before. If my alarm starts yelling at me at 5:30 AM and I have to get up, find my shorts, find a shirt, find two matching socks, there's just no way it's happening. But if I did that the night before and put it in clear view of my bed there's no excuse in the morning (well, less of one, anyway). Maybe mix up your electrolyte drink the night before and have it waiting on your bike.

I also find that I have better results if I take a couple minutes to tell myself what I'm going to do in the morning the night before. Tell your wife verbally, "I'm going to wake up at 5:30, ride for 30 minutes, lift for 30 minutes, then have coffee waiting for you when you get up." Tell yourself aloud or in your head, "I'm going to wake up, change into my workout clothes, then get on the bike." When I can visualize how I'm going to go about it I find it a lot easier.

You mentioned Ring Fit Adventure and I also enjoy that game. I've found it gets a little repetitive but it helped me stay sane through the earlier parts of COVID. And just when I think "these workouts are kind of dumb," well wouldn't you know it, I'm sore afterwards - so maybe they aren't so dumb. Depending on the age of your kids, maybe they would want to watch or play as well. They have mini-games that only take a few minutes and you can piece a few together. If you jump into adventure mode you can do a level in about 15 minutes. You've got 15 minutes. Maybe you could work out while your wife is finishing prepping dinner, then you can clean up and do dishes.

As the weather warms up look for a running club or a partner or few for hiking. You may be able to make excuses for not going for that run but you don't want to let your partners down. Where you are in the world or the country may impact how easy it is to find people, but they're out there. And yes, team sports are perfect for this as well.

Lastly, congratulations on looking at yourself, seeing something that you would like to change, and deciding that you're going to do it. Be gentle with yourself. If you skip a workout for whatever reason you can either beat yourself up or you can say "oh well, that didn't work out, I'll make a plan to improve the outcome next time." Create a community with similar goals and work to motivate each other. Stay positive. You've got this!

If spending time with your wife and kids is more important to you, find things you can do together. I don't know how old your kids are, but here are some ideas. You run and the kids bike along or you push a stroller. Play a game with your kids where when you lose you have to do ten pushups or squats. The kids maybe run a circle through the room or jump three times. Ask your wife if she wants to do any sport together when the kids are asleep.

Don't look for books - they are a form of procrastination for people like you. Not that books are bad, but they can't solve your real problem which is there is always something else that seems better to do. You already know "You just have to do it and it if you want it so bad, you'll find a way" - which is all that books can tell you (200-300 pages to basically say that!).

Cold and snowy is NOT AN EXCUSE! Get the gear your climate needs. You need this in case your car goes in a ditch or something so there is no excuse to not have it! Lightening is the only thing that should stop you from going outside. Even if you never walk for exercise you need this.

I bike to work when it weather allows for it - and I have the clothing so most weather allows for it (the gear to bike in cold is not the same as going for a walk!). An ebike increases the distance I can reasonably ride to work. Be careful with this though - it is easy to turn "I need one more piece of gear" into procrastination. Ride to the office this saturday - check out your route and the time - if it is reasonable start riding every day and get the gear needed when you need it - but if it isn't reasonable just give up.

There is no easy answer. You can set alarms, but if you don't follow the plan exactly every day they are worthless - as you already know. You need to figure out what will get you to exercise - there is no shortcut. Reading about what works for others can be inspiring - but often it is just a source of procrastination.