In six days, I’ll turn 48 years old. This morning, I stepped on the scale and discovered I’ve given myself a pretty wonderful birthday present. I weigh 235 pounds.
That number probably doesn’t mean much to anyone else, but it means an enormous amount to me. When I began my Year of Health in late February, I weighed 298 pounds. Seven months later, I’ve lost 63 pounds, more than 20 percent of my starting weight, and reached the first goal I set for myself. For a little perspective, I’ve only weighed this much or less for about two years total since I turned 20. That’s two out of the last 27 years. Apparently, I’ve spent most of my adult life carrying around an additional small human. One who never offered to help with the groceries.
The strangest part isn’t the weight loss. It’s how relatively ordinary the whole process has become.
Last year, I decided to dedicate an entire year to creativity. I began writing every morning, eventually started painting, and discovered that making things was something I wanted to do every day. When that year ended, I didn’t stop. The Year of Creativity simply became a life of creativity. Somewhere in my conversations about what might come next, the idea of a Year of Health emerged. Having seen what could happen when I devoted a year to doing something consistently, I figured it might be interesting to try the same experiment with my body.
After all, I’d already managed to change my life by sitting around writing and painting. Perhaps it was time to see what would happen if I occasionally stood up.
I began making changes to how I ate, eventually settling into a rhythm of one meal a day, with one full fasting day each week. Exercise evolved too, and these days I spend an hour most mornings riding my stationary bike. Somewhere along the way, I started covering more than 100 miles a week without ever leaving the house. It’s a remarkable amount of travel for someone who remains exactly where he started.
What surprises me most is that I actually look forward to the exercise. I enjoy getting up, climbing onto the bike, and spending that hour moving. That’s not something I would have predicted seven months ago. I used to think of exercise as a necessary inconvenience, something I ought to be doing rather than something I wanted to do. Now it’s simply part of my morning, and I find myself missing it when I take a day off. I’m not entirely sure who this person is, but I like him.
The changes surrounding food have been even more curious. For much of my life, food occupied an enormous amount of mental real estate. What was I going to eat? When was I going to eat? What sounded good? What should I have after that? There was always another meal or snack lurking somewhere in the back of my mind, demanding attention. My stomach apparently believed it had been elected chairman of the planning committee.
When I first started eating once a day, I was hungry throughout much of the day. It took some adjustment, and it certainly wasn’t effortless. But as the weeks passed, something unexpected happened. The hunger quieted, and much of the constant thinking about food went with it. I’d estimate that about 95 percent of what people call food noise simply disappeared. I still love food, still enjoy a wonderful dinner, and still occasionally think about what sounds delicious. I just don’t spend my entire day negotiating with my stomach about what happens next.
I don’t know whether that particular approach would work for anyone else, and I’m not especially interested in prescribing it. I found a rhythm that works for me, and the longer I followed it, the less effort it seemed to require.
Which brings me to the question I’ve been asking myself this morning. Why on earth did I wait until I was 47 to do this?
I genuinely have no idea.
It’s not as though I discovered some secret information about food or exercise. I knew that moving more and eating differently could improve my health. I’m reasonably certain I had access to that information at 25. And 30. And 40. Yet for whatever reason, knowing what I could do and actually doing it remained two entirely different things.
I think beginning might be one of the strangest obstacles we face. Before we start something, we imagine all the effort it will require. We anticipate the inconvenience, the discomfort, the disruption to our routines, and the possibility that we’ll fail. The entire undertaking exists in our minds as one enormous thing we have to accomplish, and it can become so intimidating that doing nothing starts to feel like the more reasonable option.
But once we begin, we don’t actually have to accomplish the whole thing. We only have to do whatever comes next.
One morning on the bike. One day of making a different choice. One more attempt when yesterday didn’t go quite as planned. Eventually, enough of those ordinary days accumulate that the beginning disappears into the distance. What once seemed like an enormous undertaking becomes something we just do. The effort doesn’t necessarily disappear, but the constant argument with ourselves about whether to make the effort begins to fade.
I experienced this with writing. At first, publishing something every morning felt like an ambitious commitment. Now, more than 600 days later, it’s simply how I begin my day. Painting followed a similar path. And somehow, without any grand revelation or dramatic moment of enlightenment, exercise and healthier eating have joined them.
Apparently, I can become a remarkably consistent person, provided I first convince myself to do something once.
I don’t want to pretend that losing 63 pounds required nothing more than making a decision. There were uncomfortable days, adjustments, and plenty of opportunities to abandon the whole thing. But the decision to begin made every subsequent decision possible, and repetition slowly took over much of the work that motivation had been doing. I didn’t wake up one morning with an entirely new personality or an unlimited supply of willpower. I just kept making small decisions until they stopped feeling like decisions at all.
I’m not finished, either. I’d like to lose another 30 pounds, and the next stage will involve changing my approach again, adding resistance training and paying closer attention to nutrition as I work toward that goal. But I’m no longer standing at the beginning, wondering whether I can do it. I’m already doing it. That feels like an entirely different place to be.
The Year of Creativity taught me that a year of deliberately making things could transform my relationship with creativity. The Year of Health is teaching me that the same principle can transform my relationship with my own body. Neither required me to become a different person overnight. Both required me to begin, then keep going long enough to discover what might happen. And in both cases, the thing I was trying to accomplish gradually became part of the life I was living.
I still wish I knew why I waited so long. Perhaps understanding that mystery would help me begin all the other things I’ve been putting off. Or perhaps there isn’t some profound explanation waiting to be uncovered. Maybe, for reasons I’ll never fully understand, this was simply the year I started.
Six days before my birthday, 63 pounds lighter, I’m feeling better than I have in years. And the most encouraging part is that I haven’t reached the end of anything. I’ve simply arrived at a place where continuing feels easier than beginning ever did.
I still don’t know why starting took me so long. But I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.