Christmas.  New Years.  Thanksgiving.  Memorial Day.  4th of July.

These are a few bad days out of hundreds.

Bad for the waistline.  Bad for reaching our goals.  Bad for staying on track, motivated;  these are days which can easily derail us from our attempt to lose weight and send us spiraling back to a place where we’ve been all of our lives.

It’s something everybody deals with and I’m no exception.

If you managed to stick to a healthy diet and go to the gym a few times over the last several days, that’s wonderful.  I know I didn’t.  You’re in the minority of Americans.  Even when I managed to go back to the gym last night, July 5th, my entire gym had two people working out in it.  Two.  And I was one of them.  Normally, a dozen or two can be found any given day at closing time.

It happens every holiday.

You probably feel guilty, demoralized, and just flat out lazy right now reading this “the morning after.”  Good, you should.  I do.  It’s only natural to feel disappointed after you “gave” some of your hard effort back, regaining some weight you’ve lost over the past several days/weeks/months/years.

Remember, though:  these are only a few bad days out of hundreds.  Get back on the horse today and ride that pony hard.  Add another 20 minutes to your gym sessions this week.  Start watching what you eat again.  July 4th weekend is gone, we have another 26 days left of July to go.

Failing for a few days isn’t quitting.  Failing is not starting again today.

I’ve never had remorse for a Tuesday. 

I can eat well Monday through Friday, being a good boy and consuming roughly 2,000 calories a day, managing to get to the gym for at least 30 minutes.

The weekends make me a bad boy.

Even after losing nearly 150 pounds, it’s still hard to find any real self-control or restraint over the weekends.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making reservations at the local Chinese buffet before I leave work on Friday, I just don’t have the same habits as I do during the week.  I don’t go to the gym.  I don’t count calories.  I’m not nearly as active.

I’m a completely different person on the weekends.

I attribute this to a few reasons: 

• Lack of routine
• Traveling
• Peer Pressure (family/friend gatherings!)

This Father’s Day weekend I traveled and visited both Charleston (mom) and Aiken (in-laws).  I met with Hank, and old friend, at Starbucks on Friday a couple hours before I metup with my mother.  While hearing tales of his new wood art studio and picking up some of his work, I sipped on my Grande White Chocolate Mocha. 

Let’s just say it has a little bit of calories and sugar to boot.

After leaving Hank, I went to lunch with my mother and had a Gilligan’s Island themed lunch with shrimp, crab cakes, clam chowder, and a variety of other seafood delights.  I topped it all off with a tall glass of sweet tea.

And so began my weekend.

I don’t feel like I give back what I gained throughout the week during these weekend “binges,” but I certainly don’t help the cause of building Tyler The Tank (trademark pending).  I don’t think five days of being a good boy can be canceled out by two being bad, but it’s like spending an hour washing my new Maggie just to throw some mud on it later on in the day.

It’s such a waste of time.  I should either give this thing 100%, or don’t do it all.  Sure, there are always times in a healthy lifestyle here we can relax and eat what we want with friends and family during the week; a few times even.  Right now, though, I’m just throwing so much potential way. 

That will change this weekend.  Equipped with a fancy new phone I’m going to start staying in touch more over the weekends on Facebook and twitter to keep myself accountable.  Likewise, you do the same.  I’m changing my body, but it’s just not fast enough.  I’m moving, but I’m stuck in 2nd gear.

Let’s put this thing into full throttle.

I was being talked about last night in the gym. And not in the, “oh, look at him, he’s a big television star” kind of way that I’ve become accustomed to.

(Kidding, of course).

I was working my shoulders and triceps last night, lifting weights as usual at 8:30 on a Monday night. As I was switching from shoulder presses to dumbbell lateral raises, I felt a stare. A couple, actually, from some of the much larger guys that were lifting nearby. Sure enough, my feelings were correct as I looked over to them and one was laughing, the other talking, both looking directly at me.

I knew it was about me, as I was the only one nearby. I didn’t necessarily think it was bad, I thought they might have actually been talking to me until I took my headphones off and they looked away.

That’s when I knew I was being judged. Ridiculed. Criticized.

Whatever the discussion might have been, my guess is it had to do with the weights I was lifting. While I can lift some decent weight on a lot of exercises, I simply can’t do proper sets of lateral raises over 15 pounds. On the other hand, these guys were built and experienced, able to lift atrocious amounts of weight with relative ease.

I was below them. Beneath them. And most likely were taking pride in it.

With all that being said, it doesn’t bother me. Not one bit. It’s fuel to the fire, something I collect and carry with me to keep that internal fire raging. It’s not negative, but a positive. It’s something that two years ago would’ve depressed me and sent me home in tears, but not anymore. After the encounter I switched to the most defiant song I had (Jay-Z Run This Town), turned my iPod up all the way, and kept lifting.

So, if it doesn’t bother me, why bring it up?

Because I know other people feel the same stares and hear the whispers in the gym. People talk to me about it a lot — they’re afraid of joining a gym because they’re so overweight and are afraid of the criticism. They don’t want to be made fun of. It’s a fear I once had. I surely felt those stares, whether they were actually there or not, in my very first gym some 17 months ago. I did last night, too.

But there’s only one thing you can do: shut them up. Keep working out. Lose that 20/60/120 pounds and prove them wrong. Don’t take criticism personally, because they don’t know you. The fact is that there will always be people in this world that think they’re better than you when they don’t even really know you. Not just in the gym either as I’m sure you know, but in all walks of life.

You can sit and pout about it. You can take your ball and go home. You can call a meeting and talk about your problems. You can quit.

Or, you can shut them up. I choose to shut them up.

1. Make a list.
2. Do it.

Many folks who meet me and are looking to lose weight ask me about “motivation.”  “Motivation” is the word they use, not mine.  They tell me that they’re trying to lose 10/50/100 pounds, but they just can’t seem to stay motivated and go to the gym every night and eat what they should.

Tyler, can you help me?  I want to lose weight, but I just can’t seem to get motivated enough to workout every night.

People don’t need more motivation — there’s plenty of motivation all around us.  Between trying to look good at the beach, weddings, reunions, wanting to live a healthy life, escape from high blood pressure, see our kids grow old, etc., we all have the fuel, desire, and motivation to lose weight.

We just can’t stop being  lazy.

I’ll go ahead and say that I’m not above anybody.  I have my days where I feel like doing nothing, those days when I’ve worked for 16 hours at home and at the office and just feel like collapsing in front of American Idol.  Some days I do.  But most days, I don’t.  I can’t, it’s not an option for me.

Want to know how to stop being lazy?  Make a list.  You only have 24 hours in a day.  Make a list of priorities and make sure you do them, and do them well.

Here’s my list.

1. Work
2. Family
3. Blog
4. Healthy Lifestyle

These are my priorities, in no particular order.   I believe if you do something, you should do it well.  I give 100% at the office every day, I spend time with my wife and daughter and provide for them as best as I can, and I constantly reply to e-mail/PMs/forum posts on 344 Pounds as well as add new posts.

Lastly, and maybe most relevant to most of you, I make sure I eat right and get some physical activity, which usually involves the gym.  It’s a requirement, not a choice I can choose to make.

American Idol is not on my list of priorities.  If I have time to watch, or play video games, or go out for a beer with the guys, or mess around on the computer, then that’s great.  If not, maybe I’ll have time tomorrow.  There’s nothing wrong with watching American Idol.  But, you wouldn’t wake up and watch it first thing in the morning before you take your shower, and you shouldn’t do it before you get your daily 30 minutes of physical activity in.

Get fired up.  Make a list.  Do it.  Decide what you want to do with your life and what you’d like from life and work toward those goals every single day.

Be relentless.

Just as I lost focus and concentration over the weekend, I’m sure many other folks did as well.  People once committed to changing their lifestyles stopped briefly over the holiday weekend, and unfortunately, some or even many won’t regain that commitment for days, months, or even years to come.

It’s all apart of the typical stages of a failed diet.

1. Excitement and anticipation.
You see a magazine article about a celebrity who lost 100 pounds.  You read a variety of impressive weight loss journeys and want to mimic their success — “that can be me!” you think.  Or, you find out from a doctor that you have pre-hypertension and you need to change your life or suffer the consequences.

Regardless why you decide to make the lifestyle change, you’re excited about it.  You can picture yourself 10, 50, 100 pounds lighter and you’re ready to begin.

2. Planning.
You want to follow the new low-carb craze your co-workers are trying.  You read about some guy online who lost weight on a liquid diet and want to try that.  You make a plan to lose the weight, join a gym, and get ready to start burning those pounds and earn that six pack.

3. Hit the ground running!
You’ve thrown away all the bread in the house and haven’t had a carb in days!  You went to the gym 5 times the last 3 days, once during your lunch break.  That’s some serious dedication.  You’re so motivated and energized to keep going, nothing can stop you.

4. Friday night happens.
Your friends are going out for drinks and guy food.  Wait, are cheese sticks not on your diet?  You try to change the venue, but alas, your friends want to keep living their lives.  They love you, and appreciate what you’re trying to do, but they’re happy the way they are.  So, you join them.  You eat a few hot wings, then you eat a dozen.  You just can’t help yourself — you’ve starved your body and it’s craving things it know it can’t have.

You binge.  You feel terrible, but binging makes you feel better.  All the foods that you’ve neglected over the last week come out to play in one night.

5.  Utter failure.
You ate “bad” food, so you failed.  You tell yourself it’s over and that’s it.  You stop going to the gym (but they keep getting your monthly draft!) and you start eating most of your meals from a bag again.  You’ll keep following this pattern again until another random moment of inspiration hits you — when it’s convenient for you, of course, then you’ll do it all over again.

I would repeat these stages numerous times over the last several years.  As soon as I did one thing I considered bad, like skip the gym a day or eat a french fry, I completely went off the deepend.  I know I’m not alone, especially this past Memorial Day weekend.  Cookouts, friends, no work, and no routine, it’s a perfect storm for laziness and junk food.

It’s over, though.  It’s time to get back on track.  I don’t care if you were in the deepend Friday through Monday, get out of the pool and grab a towel.

It’s time to dry off.