Daily Positive Thought - Friday, May 23

"Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity...."

 My daily positive thought today is about my brothers.  Not my brothers of blood, but my brothers of spirit.  Fourteen years ago, I became part of a worldwide brotherhood of men dedicated to the ideals of brotherly love, relief and truth.  As Freemasons, we understand that we are imperfect men, but that it is our quest for an unobtainable moral perfection which makes us good.

I can walk into an country or city on earth and find a brother who will greet me as family and in whom I can trust.  From these men, I gain incalculable strength and to these men, I dedicate my energies.  I am truly blessed to have joined in this fellowship.

Daily Positive Thought - Thursday, May 22

My daily positive thought today is about my great family.  I've been blessed with a wonderful and supportive family.  They are always there when I need them for support.

Within the next two months, my family is going to grow by one.  I'm looking forward to welcoming this new person into our family!

Daily Positive Thought - Wednesday, May 21

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. – Nelson Mandela"

My daily positive thought is to remind myself of the many times that I have had setbacks in life, but was able to pick myself up, dust myself off, and kept going.  I didn't let these failures stop me and I learned from them.

My character isn't measured by my successes, it's measured by how I faced my failures.

This week's goal - Recording Daily Positive Thoughts

I am not a positive person.  At best, I could be considered a realist, at worst, a pessimist.  I focus on the negative elements in life.  I've never been one to look on the sunny-side and just simply enjoy myself.

Thankfully, I have been blessed with a focused personality and I work hard to change the negativity around me.  My pessimism is masked by dedication, which leads a lot of people to think that I'm actually a positive person.  I do believe that with hard work, a person has a chance to change their situation, but overall I agree with Thomas Hobbes when he said, "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Unfortunately, I've learned that this isn't the best outlook on life and doesn't help with my weight loss struggle.  Focusing on the negative can wear down your resolve and make your challenges difficult to overcome.

This week, I'd like to try to focus on the bright side of life by setting the following goal.  Each day, I'll write a short blog post that relates some positive element of my life that I am thankful for.

Like last week, I plan on keeping up with my past weekly goals in addition to this new goal:

• Track my Weight Watchers PointsPlus each day.
• Schedule a specific time to get activity every other day and keep to this schedule.
• No cigar smoking during the workday.
• 7000 steps per day

Weekly Weigh-In - Saturday, May 17th

I had another good week at the scale this week on Saturday!  I weighed-in at 3.6 lbs down for a total of 45.4 lbs.  It looks like my focus is continuing to pay off :)

"7000 Steps a Day" - Weekly Goal Wrapup

Last week, I set the goal of walking 7000 steps per day and recording it via my Pedometer.  I was not strictly successful in meeting this goal.  The main problem I had was that mid-week I became ill due to side effects with my new diabetes medication, Victoza (I'll write about that soon), which left me resting for a few days.

Although I did not meet my per day goal of walking 7000 steps, I did manage to average 8828 steps per day, which was over my daily goal.  This was mainly due to having a very active day on Sunday, when Illa, some friends and I went down to New York City and did a lot of walking.

Here's a breakdown of my daily progress:

Day	Steps	PointsPlus
Monday	10041	6
Tuesday	12195	7
Wednesday	222	0
Thursday	4994	2
Friday	3682	1
Saturday	6433	3
Sunday	24231	17
Total	61798	36
Average	8828	5

I also set the goal of sticking with my previous weekly goals.  Here's a recap on how they went.

• Track my Weight Watchers PointsPlus each day. - I tracked every day except for Wednesday when I was feeling very ill.  (Partial Pass)
• Schedule a specific time to get activity every other day and keep to this schedule.  - I set and kept activity on Monday, Tuesday and Sunday.  Unfortunately, being sick also made this difficult.  (Partial Pass)
• No cigar smoking during the workday. - I didn't have a single cigar during the workday all week (Pass)

Although I had a few bumps in the road this week, I tried to stick to my goals as well as I could.  I'm not going to let these hurdles stop my continued progress.  I found this quote today that should help me keep focused:

"The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your individual goals and you can't let yourself be beat because of lack of effort."  -  Michael Jordan

This week's goal - 7000 Steps a Day!

I've been wearing a pedometer for the past two months and it's been really interesting to see my daily number of steps, distance walked and Weight Watchers PointsPlus earned.  However, I haven't really used it to push my daily activity.  Until now.

I'm setting my weekly goal to help me increase my exercise using my pedometer.  I'm committing myself to hit 7000 steps per day and to report on each day at the end of the week.  At the moment, I usually average about 5000 steps, so this increase won't be very much, but it will structure my activity.

In addition to this goal, I'm keeping up with my past three weekly goals:

• Track my Weight Watchers PointsPlus each day.
• Schedule a specific time to get activity every other day and keep to this schedule.
• No cigar smoking during the workday.

See you next week with my progress!