Why Fund Your 401k - Especially If Your Employer Matches

(Note: The following is an email I sent out at work to encourage employees to start funding their 401k. I thought you all might fight it either motivational or informative.

I still feel that if you have a choice between a 401k and a Roth IRA, pick the IRA. The only exception is if your employer matches your contribution, and then you should fund it up to the max your employer matches before you start funding your IRA. My employer does match some, so here's what I said.)

In April, they will be having 401k open enrollment. The email with the details will be going out on April 1st.

This a great opportunity to invest all or part of your salary increase in a 401k.

Also, for every dollar you contribute to your 401k, the company will match 50 cents, up to the first 6% of your salary. If you contributed a full 6%, this would be like getting a 3% raise.

I believe anyone who started working before January 1st will be eligible.

For those of you who don't know, I'd like to explain a little about how a 401k works. If you're familiar with a 401k, and know how great they are, feel free to skip the rest of this Email. But if you don't know what they are or believe they're that good, read on . . .

Saving for the Future

The secret to building wealth is simple: Spend a little less than you earn.

In his book The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason explains it something like this:

If every day, you put 10 eggs in a basket and every day, you only take out nine eggs, what will happen after a year?

Your eggs probably wouldn't fit, no matter how big your basket was.

The same principle is true for money. If, for every dollar you make, you spend 11, you will dig into debt. If, for every dollar you make you spend 9, you will pile up money for the future.

The Power of Interest

If you saved 10% of your income for 10 years, how much would you have at the end of 10 years?

You probably said 1 year's salary. 10 years at 10% equals 100 percent of your salary.

But that's forgetting something important--your money can also work for you.

Think of every dollar you make as a seed. If you plant it in the right place, it will grow, and bloom other dollars. Your money can actually work for you, making you more money, instead of you working for it.

For example, when we plant $255 with one of our good customers, it comes back to us as $300 two weeks later. The same can be true of your money. If you plant it in the right place, it will grow.

Then, if you plant those new dollars, too, then all of that money starts working together to make you even more money.

So after 10 years, you'd have one year's salary, plus all the interest you earned.

How much is that?

Well, at 10% interest per year, you'd actually have a bit more than a year and a half's worth of salary. Pretty good, eh?

Well that's not the coolest part. Think about this: If you had a year and a half's worth of salary paying 10% interest, at that point, the savings would be making more in interest than you'd be paying each year. If you were putting in 1,000 dollars a year, the interest would be more than $1,500. The money in your 401k would now be working for you, growing itself more than you're growing it with your monthly payments.

In fact, in just a couple more years, you'd be earning twice in interest what you were paying in cash. And a couple years after that, triple in interest what you were paying in cash.

By the 20th year, you'd be making half your salary just in interest.

And then, if you're smart you're thinking this:

How much would it take be earning my full salary in interest? If I was making as much off interest as I get paid, I could retire and just live off the interest!

And the answer is, just five more years. By the end of the twenty-fifth year, you could live just off the interest, free and clear. You could quit your job and go to work where ever you wanted, because it wouldn't matter how much you got paid.

(In fact, if you were really smart, and only had a fifteen year mortgage on your home, now you would be receiving your full income, and have no house payment, all without working!)

Sound like it's a long way off? Maybe you're thinking "Erik, in 25 years, I'm going to be 55! That's too long!"

To which I answer: How old are you going to be in 25 years if you don't save your money?

Real Wealth

Now all that talks about is how to retire. What if you want to have real money?

The answer to that is: The longer the money is in the account, the more it grows.

Guess how much it would cost a 15 year old to retire a millionaire? To have $1,000,000 at age 62, how much would a 15 year old have put away?

Really. Guess. If he was to make a deposit on his 16th and 17th birthdays, and never put in another dime, how much would those deposits have to be for him to retire a millionaire?

The answer? $4,000.

If he put in $2,000 on his 16th birthday and $2,000 on his 17th birthday, the kid could retire a millionaire at 12% interest.

He doesn't have much money. What he has a lot of is time.

I said that at 10% savings at 10% interest, it will take you 25 years to save 10 times your salary so you can live the same as you live now. After that, though, it will only take another seven years to double that and have 20 times your income. Then, you can live off twice as much as you're making right now. During those seven years, you would only earn your salary seven times at your job. But would it would mean another 10 times your salary in the bank.

To make another 10 times your salary? Only another 4 years. Another 10? Only 3 years.

So working another 14 years meant the difference between living your same lifestyle and living off four times your income, and having 40 times your yearly income in the bank.

Two more years, and you'd have 50 times your income. That means that someone making a mere $20,000 a year could retire a millionaire if they put away 10% of their income for 42 years (From 20 to 62), even if they never got a single raise.

In fact, if you've got fifty years to save, you could save a mere $1,000 a year (that's less than $100 a month) and end the fifty years with $1,000,000.

Now I know, I know. You're saying, "Erik, I don't have 50 years!"

And you're right. But the moral of the story is, interest means that the longer the time you have, the less you have to save to reach your goals. How much is it costing you to wait to start?

The 401k

In order to encourage people to save their money so they can take care of themselves in retirement, the government wrote a plan to make it easier to save money. It's called the 401k, after the section of the code that made it into law.

A 401k works like this: The government agrees that if you put your money into a special account, you don't have pay taxes on it until you take it out.

That means that all the money you put into your account comes out of your check before you pay taxes. That means that all of that wonderful interest that you earn in that account is all tax free. It is free to grow without Uncle Sam taking any.

You only have to pay taxes on what you take out. That means that 25 years from now, when you retire and take out one year's salary to live off of, you'll just pay one year's worth of taxes, the same way you did before. Even though you have a ton of money in the account, all you pay taxes on is the part you take out to live on.

There only catch is this: You're not allowed to touch the money until you're 59 and a half.

If you take out money before you're 59 and a half, you have to pay a tax penalty. You can borrow against it, as long as you pay yourself back (so you don't have to borrow money from credit unions and banks any more for certain amounts), but to start fully accessing it with only regular taxes, you can't start until you're 59 and a half.

This is because the government knows how tempted we'll be, when we start seeing those dollars pile up in there, to take it out and spend it. But that would be like a farmer burning up all his seeds. To save us from ourselves, and make sure we have as much as possible when we retire, the government makes us leave it in there where it can grow.

Something To Pass On

No matter how much you pay into social security, when you and your spouse die, that's gone. If you work real hard all your life and die the day before you become eligible for social security, the government just keeps the money you would have been paid.

A 401k isn't like that. All the money in the 401k is yours. If you die, you get to decide who gets it--whether it's your kids or your church or your favorite charity. All that money is real, and it's a legacy you can leave behind.

You can even make stipulations about it in your will, like it has to be used for college or something else you determine.

But it gives you the chance to leave your kids something more than funeral expenses.

Not Just More Money In The Future, But More Money Now

The other benefit is that many companies (ours included) will match a percentage of whatever you put in. In our case, the company will match 50 cents for every dollar we put in, up to the first 6% of your salary. If you make $20,000 a year, and contribute 6% to your 401k ($1,200), the company will put an extra $600 in to match it. $600 that you wouldn't get if you weren't putting money in your 401k.

$600 that can start earning you interest and working for you.

Plus, you're paying less taxes, because you're not paying taxes on the money that goes to the 401k. So even though your check is smaller, part of that would have been going to taxes anyway! Why not let it go to yourself instead?

Plus, if you got a raise, if you only put in the amount the raise was for, then the amount of your check won't really go down much at all.

Take Advantage!

When you watch TV, all of the commercials are for things that are going to cost you money. Even the commercials that pretend to be about how to make money, are really just ways for their authors to make money.

Nobody's going to teach you about what will make you money. Those are things you have to start learning for yourself. A 401k is a good start along that road. With a good 401k program in place, you will have the peace of mind of knowing that your future is secure. It takes away a lot of worry and stress about the future. It can be very hard to tighten the budget to afford to put the money in, but the peace of mind that comes from knowing you're taking care of yourself is worth it.

I hope many of you take advantage when the email comes out next week.

You'll thank yourself later.

Back To School

Sometime back in 1993, I remember waiting in a huge line in an old building to wait until someone could type my application information into a computer so I could start junior college.

Last Friday, I was back at the exact same college doing the exact same thing.

It wasn't the same building. The old administration building had been torn down. The building I was standing in had been a parking lot when I was there last.

There wasn't a line to stand in. I took a number and waited for it to come up on a digital display. (My number was 84. When I took it, the numbers were just turning back over to 01.)

But it still felt, in some ways, like a huge step backwards. Like a 15 year step backwards.

It's not, of course. It's the step forwards that I haven't taken since I stopped going to school after my wife became pregnant with our first child.

So it's the step I haven't made for six years.

And it's what's got to be done.

There's a great old quote that I always think about whenever I'm tempted to put this off any longer.

This guy is complaining about why he can't go back to school. "I can't do it! It would take me at least five years to finish, since I'm working full time. In five years, I'll be forty!"

The other guy nods. "How old will you be in five years if you don't go back to school?"

Whatever the elephant is you gotta eat, that's what you got to think about. If it's going to take a year, or two years, or ten years, don't you still want to get there?

Chances are you've got about 70 or so trips around the sun before you check out. Don't you want to spend a few of those where the goal you have is done?

That's what I've told myself. So that's why I'm on it.

It's already been three years since I started this blog and started telling the world I was going to do something about the elephants I gotta eat. It's about time I hunkered down with the fork and knife.

I still plan to blog, but haven't quite figured out how to incorporate it into the schedule. But blogging keeps me honest, so I got to keep coming back.

Anyways, best of luck with your elephants and wish me luck with mine.

Short Term Effects Of Eating On Weight

Okay, if you saw the Biggest Loser last night, you may have noticed the way Jillian and Bob were going on about the contestants who gave in to the temptation the night before the weigh in.

Especially regarding the man from the Yellow team, who had enough calories left for the day that he didn't go over.

What was the big deal about it being the night before the weigh in? Wouldn't it have gained the same amount of weight no matter which day they did it?

And didn't the man from the yellow team stay under his calories for the day? Why the freak out?

I'm sure Jillian explained this, but the producers didn't show it because they wanted to have more time to show phone calls home.

But here's the deal:

What you eat affects your short-term weight fluctuation.

Here's an example:

Did you ever see that episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse where the little bully puppet jumped up and down on Pee-Wee's hand, and made him put too much chocolate syrup into the Ice Cream soup? And Pee-Wee thought it was a crisis, until he realized he could just add more ice cream?

It's the same way with your blood.

If you eat too much sodium, that all goes into your blood stream. If your body just left it that way, it would make your blood too high in sodium. Even dangerously high in sodium.

But your body wouldn't allow that. It wants the blood to always have about the same degree of selinity. So it dilutes the blood, with water.

So the more sodium you eat, the more water your body retains. The more water your body retains, the more you weigh.

Same thing with carbs. Excessive carbohydrate intake causes the body to retain extra water to process the carbs. The cheesecake, the M & M's, the peanut butter cups--the contestant's bodies all had to retain extra water to process the simple carbs in the sugar in those foods than it would have if the contestants had eaten their normal meals, more balanced between complex carbs and protein.

This is part of why people lose so much the first week on the show. They're not losing all those pounds of fat. They're losing the fluids the body maintains in order to deal with their unhealthy lifestyles.

Keep this in mind if you're doing any kind of weight loss contest for work or something--as it starts getting close to the final weigh-in, stay away from simple carbs and cut back on the sodium.

Please, please, please, don't abandon the carbs altogether or starve yourself--that stuff is bad for you, and just makes long-term weight loss harder.

But know that the eating decisions you make today can affect your weight in more ways than just the fat it might put on you.

No Good News, And Some Thoughts On That

If I haven't been blogging a lot here, well, it's because things haven't gone well.

I've never really shaken the infamous New Year's Cold, and I've had a hard time putting myself in the right mindset to do this.

It's an interesting position to be in. I think I blogged before about the whole mind-over-matter thing.

It's a lie, of course. Mind-over-matter is really just you-against-yourself. Or in this case, me against myself. There's no mystical "matter" out there that my inner self is struggling to overcome. It's all just me. The part of me that wants to do something, the part of me that wants something else, the part of me that's afraid of something, the part of me that doesn't want to give something up.

I used to write fiction. Can you imagine a fictional character who circles problems as much as we do in real life? Nobody would respect him. A fictional story about a guy who starts out with goals like the ones I outline in this blog and, years later, is even heavier than he was when he started?

Not exactly Jack Bauer.

I love the jokes about the hyper-competent Jack Bauer. Here's one of my favorites:

Somebody once tried to tell Jack Bauer a knock-knock joke. Jack found out who was there, who he was working for, and where the bomb was.

We laugh, because on some level we understand that even though Jack's competence makes us love him, it also makes him a wee bit unbelievable. None of us are that are that capable. All of us screw up, second guess ourselves, second guess each other, and often spend way more time justifying why whatever we have decided to do is okay than we do trying to convince ourselves to do what would be great.

And it's crazy. The principles for happiness are simple. Eat fewer calories than you burn. Spend fewer dollars than you make. Do more for others than you ask them to do for you.

And even though we all know that, intellectually, there's still this part of us on some level that fights that, that doesn't really believe it, or that, if it believes it, believes that it will take long enough to manifest itself in reality that it wants to get in a few last kicks for before settling in for that long draught that will come before the harvest.

Farmers call this "Eating the seed corn."

And I've been doing it, on and off, for years.

I mean, if we want to extend the metaphor, there are times where I'm digging the seed corn up out of the dirt, just to get another handful.

But I think the "No Good News," in the title may be a little misleading.

Because today I did sit down with a counselor at a college and start going over the plans to get me finished with my degree.

This is not an easy thing for me to do.

I remember college. I remember working two jobs, one in the middle of the night, while I had classes at all hours of the day, including morning and evening classes, as well as volunteer hours at the campus TV station. I remember sleeping in snatched moments here and there, always having to set my alarm for a different time before I'd go to sleep.

The prospect of going back to school as a man in his 30s with a full time job and a family is downright terrifying to me.

But I'm going for it. Because ultimately, I can't just sit here, planting and digging up, planting and digging up, planting and digging up.

It's time to leave some stuff in the ground for a while.

Friends With Goals

Her Frogginess, who often graces this blog with her wisdom in the comments section, has started a year-long turnaround blog of her own.

And vlog.

There is also, to quote her categories, "Jibber-Jabber."

And all kinds of other cool stuff, because she's just cool.

Check out The Year Of The Frog.

How Was Your New Year?

Well, I didn't intend to wait until the new year to start exercising and eating right. I really, really intended to start it all those weeks ago when I started blogging on here again.

But you know how the holidays go.

And then, I did intend to start back up again, both on the fitness as well as the debt, on the first of the year.

And then I got sick.

On December 31st, I started coming down with something. And by the time the New Year was rolling in, even though I had covers over me and the heater on, I still was shivering like Sam McGee. I just couldn't keep warm. Or sleep.

But I still did it! I got up (around one in the afternoon) and popped in one of the two new Biggest Loser DVDs. And guess what?

They're hard.

Especially when you're sick.

So it came back out. And I ended up doing a workout that owed a bit more to Leslie Sansone than it did to Jillian Michaels.

But I'm still on track! And not only that, but I went ahead and did what has worked for me the last couple of times I've tried it--I made it a competition.

I went to the person I knew who, quite frankly, is the stupidest person I know to get into a weight loss contest with. My brother who used to work at Vitamin World and who has a workout bench and recumbent bike in his garage.

What am I, nuts?

Maybe. But it will work. You'll see.

Now excuse me. I need to go find a blanket.

How To Make The Holidays Last. In A Bad Way.

I work in the financial services industry. I give credit.

That might surprise you if you're a long time reader of this blog--you know how staunchly opposed to debt I am.

I sometimes dream of getting out of my current job and finding one more in line with my personal beliefs. A job where I don't make anyone more unhealhty, and I don't add to anybody's debt.

Well, I was standing in the customer service area of a major retail chain today. Five days before Christmas, and the customer service station was bustling. The crowds didn't surprise me. I normally avoid stores around the holidays precisely so I can avoid that kind of scene.

What did surprise me was this: The masses of people weren't exchanging gifts or returning broken merchandise. They were all, almost to a person, there to apply for credit.

I listened as all around me their new credit limits were announced. The kid who couldn't have been more than 20, but who had a two year old in his cart got $2,000. The middle aged Hispanic couple got $2,300.

All of the normal tricks of the credit card companies were being employed. The young man was careful to make sure he'd been approved for the 0% APR--it was only afterwards they told him it would only apply to some of his purchases. The middle-aged man wanted to cancel the free trials of magazines that would automatically renew onto his card after a few weeks, but the salesgirl mostly ignored his broken English, and his wife really wanted to get home.

And in my mind's eye I could almost see all of them being lured into a pit by the salespeople, clutching the products their credit would purchase, telling themselves they needed them, that they were necessary, that the things would make life easier or happier or calmer or somehow just better, and with a better life it would be so much easier to climb out of the pit.

Well, it's not true. Climbing out of the pit is never easy. Every farmer and fruit grower knows there's not a thing in this world that is created from nothing--you've got to put labor in for whatever you get. Blood, sweat, and tears.

And the price of having it now is even more blood sweat and tears than if you'd just worked for it first.

Many retail chains are now at a point where they operate their store fronts at a minimum of profit, or even at a loss, because the value they get from all the financing is so great. Who needs to make a profit now when there's 10, 15, or even 20% to be made off that purchase for possibly years to come?

Other chains realize they no longer have to charge what people can afford. They can charge what people are willing to charge. So they're not having to keep prices down to what people can pay for something, since they can always swipe their cards.

So while I might wish to become not just debt-free, but to separate even my livelihood from being connected with that gnawing monster, I know I'm cutting myself off from huge swaths of occupations at one swipe.

In fact, what I really want to do most is teach and train--not a very lucrative proposition in a society that's been taught to value having more than knowing.

So here's to you having a holiday where the memories last longer than the bills, retail stores getting back into the business of selling stuff, and me finding a job that doesn't leech off people.

Ho ho ho.

Biggest Loser Season Finale

So, the twins won it.

That was pretty exciting.

You could tell Julie really, really wanted it, and she did pretty well. But the fact is, it's just hard for women to lose more weight than men. Men are inherently more capable of losing weight simply because their bodies carry more muscle and aren't as naturally inclined to store fat. When a woman does win the Biggest Loser, it will be a huge deal. And she will probably be coached by Jillian.

Jillian did great this season, with all four finalists being from her team, and both winners being from her team. According to the stats on NBC.com, her team also lost the most weight total, by over 100 pounds. Her team lost 822 pounds, while Bob's blue team lost 711 pounds and Kim's red team lost 666 pounds (No, I won't make a "mark of the beast" joke about Kim, though I'm tempted).

I was really expecting that either Brian or Neil to win it for the folks who went home--they both looked great.

But no, the twins sailed through.

Now we've got the new season coming up, with the couples in lots of different colors. Not sure how that season is going to play out. I originally thought they were doing "couples" as a way of evening out that guy/girl divide that's always been a big deal in the finale, but looking at the teams for this season, they've got guy/guy teams and girl/girl teams, so that gives those guy/guy teams a huge advantage.

We'll see how it comes out.

Eating At Restaurants

There's an interesting article over at MSN about secrets the restaurants don't want you to know.

With it being the holiday season, I've been eating out for work. A lot. The highlights were Duane's Steakhouse at the Mission Inn in Riverside, and Ten Asian Bistro in Newport Beach.

The damages, weight-wise, haven't been horrible--I weigh exactly what I weighed when I started doing the tale of the tape thing again.

Of course, I try to avoid some of the biggest restaurant calorie bombs:

Soda I never drink anything but water. I've gone on before about the bad effects of soda. To sum up, basically it's pure sugar, meaning pure fast-absorbed calories. Even diet soda has problems, my favorite being that the carbonation acts like an anti-fiber, making your body absorb calories and things faster than it would without it.

Fried Stuff Yeah, throwing stuff in the deep fryer is easy for restaurants, and there's a reason they call it golden brown and delicious. But it's oil on top of whatever simple carb they use in the breading--it's calories on top of calories. Plus, recent studies have shown that the Maillard reaction--the chemical process that browns fried foods--may interfere with your body's ability to absorb protein. So you may not be getting all the nutrients from the shrimp or calamari under there, either.

The Free Stuff They Put On The Table Whether it's bread or chips, that complimentary stuff they put out there does have calories. If you choose to much, be mindful and consider it part of the meal--if you do go in for the bread, than maybe opt for vegetables instead of the potato with your entree.

Of course, since I was actually trying to lose weight, still being at the weight I was isn't really all that much of accomplishment. However, it does give me hope that once I do get my weight back down, there will be plenty of delicious options that can help me stay that way.

(At least, that's how I'm trying to spin it . . .)

The Second To Last Biggest Loser

Well, feelings were mixed at our house after the second-to-last Biggest Loser last night.

My wife and I are both fans of Bob and Jillian, but like them in opposite order. She likes Bob more than Jillian, and I like Jillian more than Bob.

So you can guess how our feelings went after the finale last night (Spoilers ahead, o ye Tivo users!).

I was thrilled to see Jillian win the whole thing. I think the girl came back this season with something to prove, and I was excited to see her prove it.

I think only half of that was how much I liked Jillian. The other half was how much I disliked Kim.

Kim's problem is obvious: Kim never stops thinking about Kim. During every training session, during every interview, during every moment on the show, all Kim can talk about is Kim. How Kim feels. How things are affecting Kim. How people going home make her feel.

In this way, she's sort of the anti-Bob. Bob is all about trying to get inside the mind of the person he's working with, seeing the world from their point of view, and then channeling whatever energy they have inside of them.

Kim's the opposite. She thinks about the effort she's putting in, and when things get tough, she tries to make sure everybody else understands how she feels.

So it was nothing against the red team when I delighted in seeing them picked off one by one. Kim was practicing a coaching style I don't believe in, and I was glad to see it fail.

Bob didn't deserve to lose--I think that if it were work we were talking about, I'd rather have Bob as my boss than Jillian.

But this is exercise, and I think Jillian has the style of coaching that I would thrive under. And coming back after being gone, picking up the unchosen, underdog players--all of that just stacked up to have me rooting for her above anybody else.

I've also been a fan of her radio show--yes, I even called it once, if you can find me in the show archives--and agree with nearly every philosophy I've heard her express in the show, aside from her love for Caffeine.

So having an all-black team finale--that's just great news. And it looks like her new DVDs on Amazon are going to be called the "Black Pack," in honor of her victory on the show. Apparently, doing some research, they don't have anything to do with the show, but are a 3 pack of her two "For Beginners" DVDs and the Cardio Kickbox DVD that wasn't in either of the "Frontside" or "Backside" packs from her Biggest Winner! series.

So congrats to the Black Team, and I look forward to the finale next week. I'll post my thoughts on it then.

Get Off Your Duff And Lose Weight

Get off your duff and do what, you may ask?

Whatever. If you got up, you already did the part that a recent University of Missouri study says matters.

The study, which was reported by ABC news said that standing up may be more important to fat loss than exercise.

I'm always skeptical about studies like this--when my brother first told me about this article, I was thinking that what they were actually observing wasn't the results of standing, but the results of people getting up and moving. In other words, they were seeing the results of getting additional exercise.

Instead, this study was way more complicated.

They weren't just tracking results. They actually injected fat laced with radioactive tracers into people and animals, and then watched what happened to it. And what happened to it is that when people sat down, this fat didn't make it to the muscles. It just found places to gather.

Same thing when they'd monitor fat-burning enzymes. When people sat down, these went down to a mere 10% of normal. Can you imagine if your car engine suddenly became 90% less efficient?

So what does this mean for you?

It means that all that stuff you used to think wasn't really helping you lose weight, because it wasn't burning that many calories--things like grocery shopping or wandering around the mall or taking leisurely walks at the park--all those things really were helping, since they were keeping the levels of those fat-burning enzymes up, and helping fat circulate into the muscles to be burned as energy.

Personally, think that's great news. Here's to a future of a slow move away from sedentary lifestyles, and into leisurely-paced strolling lifestyles.

Monday - Tale Of The Tape

As long time readers of this blog know (and, yes, there are some of those!), Monday used to be "Tale of the Tape" day. Basically, it was weigh-in day. The day when I would measure myself and weigh myself and then humiliate myself by posting it all on the blog.

There's a number (Ha!) of reasons for this, the main ones being accountability and responsibility. If everyone's going to see the number, I've got to bring it down to establish credibility (because otherwise, I'm left trying to dazzle people with my ability to use words that end in -ility).

The other thing to notice is that I didn't wait until the first of the year. This blog started on the first of a year, and it would fit the spirit and name of the blog to have waited another month and started it then.

But I can't do that. As you can see, I let myself go, dangerously. Just a few months ago, I was in the 230s for weight, and now I'm back above 250. In just a couple of months. You think you're doing well, and then wham. The weight can just pounce back on you. It's ridiculous.

But it's also the way life works.

Actions have consequences. It's always harder to build something than it is to tear it down. And getting results always requires effort.

So here I go. December 3, 2007, starting another 365 days.

My Kryptonite

We've all got it, right? That thing you think leads to your downfall?

For some it's chocolate, for others it's donuts. For some it's chocolate donuts.

I don't have a lot of those. I don't drink soda. I don't really go for sweet stuff. Most foods I really crave are fried or some form of meat, and those aren't just things you grab in a bag and plop down on the couch with. They actually require a little preparation, so my laziness usually overcomes my craving and I do okay (Let's hear it for weight loss through laziness!).

But for some reason, I can't keep my hands out of the cereal boxes.

When I'm frustrated, bored, deep in thought, or aggravated, I tend to wander. And let me tell you, in a two bedroom apartment, wandering doesn't get you far.

For some reason, if I'm not thinking about it, I can't seem to wander through the kitchen without grabbing a handful of breakfast cereal.

We're not talking Kashi here. No, way. I've got kids. This is real breakfast cereal. I think the last handful I grabbed was Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp. Yeah, I guess I was the Cookie Crook.

And yeah, you read that right. By the handful. I just stick my big fat hand in the box and yank out a handful of starch and sugar the same way I'm sure my caveman ancestors pulled the Frosted Sugarcane Yak Back cereal they fed their kids out of the box.

(This was before they started putting milk on breakfast cereal. You ever try to milk a wild Yak? I'd rather kill one any day.)

So yeah. That's a big part of my downfall. Handfuls of kid's breakfast cereal I don't even really remember eating, but was just looking for something to do while I thought about something else.

Maybe I should take up knitting.

Then I could make myself a cool black Cookie Crook sweater.

How To Make Exercize More Fun

So I'm reading this book, and I'll just be upfront with you and say that it's not a fitness book. It is a work book. As in, the place you go work 9-5 and make money.

It's called The Game of Work, and the premise of it is basically this:

People will pay money for the privilege of working harder than they'll work if you're paying them.

You know what he's talking about--it's the way the same guy who grumbles about getting up at 7am for his 9 to 5 job, and about his 45 minute commute will get up at 4 am to drive 2 hours to go skiing in the freezing cold or flyfish in frigid waters.

So if we can make work more like a game, then it should make work both more motivating and more enjoyable.

One of the main things he talks about is how in these types of recreation, there's usually some kind of goal. Whether it's to win the game, catch a fish, improve your score over last time, or something else, there's usually something you're going for that's pushing you to give that extra effort.

I posted a list of all the qualities he feels that goals should have at work in order to make it feel more like play on my new blog, How To Manage People.

But it got me thinking--I think that, recreationally speaking, exercise is probably the one thing we do that feels the most like work. That's probably why we're often as reluctant to do it as we are to go to jobs we hate.

So I thought, why not incorporate some of the ideas Coonradt had about making work more enjoyable through goals, and adapt them into daily exercise?

So here is Erik's list of ways to make exercise more like a game, very loosely adapted from Chuck Coonradt.

1. Really make it a game. What sport did you used to like to play? Or what game have you been interested in, but never tried? Why not do that for exercise?

Often people say, "I know I need to exercise more, but I just hate to go on the treadmill." I think that's because you're sane. The treadmill is like that scene in the bad dream where you're running and running and not getting anywhere. If an exercise is literally something out of your nightmares, you're not going to get excited about it.

So think about what activities, if any, you do get excited about, whether you've done it before or not.

2. State your goals in positive terms. This one is straight out of Coonradt, and I like it.

Goals should be something you think about all the time, that you focus on. What happens if you state your goals in negative terms?

When we state the goal in terms of something we're trying to get rid of, it means when we think about our goals, we're focusing on the things we don't like all the time.

No basketball coach worth his title tells his team, "Go out there and don't miss baskets." The coach doesn't even want to put the picture of missing baskets into their minds. Instead, he'll talk about making baskets. He'll even have his players visualize themselves making baskets.

Similarly, if we make a goal like, "I'm not going to eat fast food," then as we think about the goal, we find ourselves thinking about fast food all the time.

Or if we say, "I don't want to be so heavy any more," we're still thinking about how much we weigh.

Instead, we can find a way to say the same things in positive terms. "I eat perfect portions of healthy, delicious foods." "I am achieving a healthier body."

Those are much nicer things to think about all they, aren't they?

3. Track stuff. The more stuff you track, the more things you have to me motivated by.

Didn't lose as many pounds as you wanted this week? You can look at the inches on your waistline.

Didn't lose as many inches as you'd have liked on your waistline? You can look at how you managed to go a full minute at level 6 on the treadmill today instead of just for 30 seconds.

Didn't go the full minute? Well, maybe you hit 1.4 miles in 15 minutes instead of 1.2.

You don't have to look like the football coach with a big huge clipboard--just a small, pocket sized spiral bound notepad is perfect.

4. Challenge yourself. It's 6am, and you're under your nice, warm covers, trying to decide whether to hit the snooze button again. If all you're doing is getting up to exercise, those covers might just hold you in.

But if you know that the last time you exercised, you came up just 15 seconds shy of getting around the block in less than 20 minutes, and you think today just might be the day you hit that mark--well, that just might make the difference.

And if it isn't enough--well, what goal would matter enough to you that it would get you out of bed? Work on that goal instead.

5. Always keep at least one goal close. Yeah, you've got that goal weight, but that's probably a good three to six months off, right? What is it you're going to see this week?

The closer the goal can be to your heart and to reality, the more it will motivate you today.

It's the thing you think you might be able to do by Friday that will get you out of bed on Monday. It might be figuring out that little quick step on your Dance Away The Pounds video that you've been stumbling over, or it might be cutting 30 seconds off the time it takes you to walk a mile.

Whatever it is, try to make it matter, and try to make it achievable.

*

Even if all of these don't work for you, I hope at least a couple of them help. And even if you're not sure about a couple, find a way to incorporate them, and see if they don't make a difference.

Which TV Show Motivates You?

Which TV show motivates you the most?

Here are the choices:

The Biggest Loser on NBC

I Lost It! on Discovery Health

Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic on TLC

The Biggest Loser is the show that does the most for me. And not just any episode--I get bogged down in the weekly show, and the vote-offs aren't that interesting to me.

My favorite episodes are the specials, the ones where there are just two couples or two teams or two families against each other. Nobody voted off and nobody forming alliances or stabbing people in the back. It's just people working hard and losing weight. And on the specials, it's nice because it all happens in one episode. People start the episode heavy and end it healthy.

But it still shows the part that I need to see the most--the part where they're working hard. Seeing people start out the show dying every time they exercise and then pushing through the pain and making themselves stronger by the end of the show. I need to see that.

That's the biggest thing that's missing on I Lost It! That show basically shows two people in each episode. Each person is shown in two segments--one is the "fat" segment, where they show pictures of how heavy the person used to be, and they talk about how miserable their life used to be when they were heavy, and what the big moment was when they decided to lose the weight. It's generally something embarrassing or health related.

Then, after a commercial break, they do the "skinny" segment, showing video of how they look now, holding up clothes that used to fit them, and showing how far they've come. They generally mention how the person lost all the weight, but it's generally just a mention.

For me, it's not the hardship of being heavy or the joy of being healthy that's the most motivating, but watching people hang in there during the day-to-day struggles of the time it takes to lose weight. That's what's missing from this show.

As for Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, my wife has said that's the show that motivates her. Not because she has anywhere near the amount of weight those people have to lose (The show features morbidly obese people at up to almost 1,000 pounds, and my wife has far less to lose than even I do), but because of the things coming out of the people's mouths.

For example, one episode featured a man who was so large, he had to have holes cut into the walls of his house and be hoisted out by awkward cranes. Rather than come to a realization of how far gone he was, the man spent his on-camera time complaining about how no one had developed better technology for moving extremely heavy people.

My wife said seeing people so brazenly dismissing their own role in creating their problems motivated her to do get up and do something more than any of the other shows we've watched lately.

How about you? Which shows keep you motivated?

What's Up With Goals?

Why are goals so hard?

I mean, they shouldn't be hard. It doesn't make sense, rationally.

I mean, think about it. A goal is where you write down something you want, then write down the steps you need to take to get that thing, and then you go through and do the stuff.

There's no downside in there. It's about you figuring out something you want and then doing the stuff it takes to get it.

And yet goals are, generally, absolutely, unbelievably, excruciatingly hard.

It's not like that in other things. When Jack Bauer is on the phone with the guy back at CTU who's telling him which wires to cut to defuse the bomb, it's not a major issue. It's not like Jack feels any need to stop and question the guy or think about if he really wants it or put off a certain step until he feels more like doing it. He just goes through the step the guy gives him over the phone, and he diffuses the bomb.

Isn't that how all goals should be? After all, generally goals are about things we want almost as bad as Jack wants to diffuse that bomb. Shouldn't we just whip through the steps, happy as clams, and then enjoy our post-goal touchdown victory dance?

But maybe it's just because it's TV. Maybe in real life, bomb squad guys do lose focus. Maybe they do want to take a break in the middle of diffusing bombs to go read Ann Landers and have a couple of Little Debbie's cakes. Maybe they do give up halfway through because they made a little mistake and just don't know if they can ever recover from it.

I know that's what they'd do if they ever called diffusing that bomb a goal. At that point, it would become, somehow, psychologically impossible to do.

But of course, I exaggerate.

I actually read a really good book about the answer to this question once, and maybe sometime I'll tell you about it.

But for right now, as I start back down this path again, I just toss that question out into the ether of the interweb, and ponder the unjustness of it . . .

Why are goals so hard?

Back To Blogging

Well, I'm coming back.

Those of you who used to be delighted by this blog's mix of information and personal history, and have missed it since it's been gone will be delighted to know that it is coming back.

It will be back to what it used to be--a chronicle of my own efforts to get out of debt and lose weight, spiced up with (hopefully) fun explanations of principles of finance and fitness.

The goals have actually gotten a little more ambitious. Stay tuned for more details.

Also to be returning is the "Tale of the Tape," the counter that chronicles the decline in my debt, my waistline, and my poundage. All values will be reset and start over effective the 1st of December.

I look forward to rejoining you all and sharing with you some of the fun stuff I'm going to be working on for the next 365 days.

Wish me luck, and stay tuned!

Oh, You're Wondering About That Other Thing?

Things are moving forward. Keep watching.

FitTV's The Craze

In sort of a sequel to yesterday's post, I want to talk about a TV show on FitTV called The Craze. This show features The Artist Generally Known As Joan River's Daughter buying different fitness products for people, then letting them "test" them for 30 days. At the end, they bring someone from the company who makes the product to meet the person who used it, and get a "grade" on the product in a bunch of categories, ranging from ease of assembly to quality of any accompanying videos.

The buzz around the internet is that the show is crap. That it's basically an hour long infomercial paid for by the makers of the products being demonstrated. This is backed up by the fact that the "grades" at the end of the show have been almost invariably enthusiastic.

I don't know if that's true or not. Here's what I do know:

This show teaches, well, what I was preaching yesterday. That in the end, it's not the tool that matters. In the end, it's not going to matter whether you were using a thighmaster or a bowflex or a total fitness home gym or if you were going to bally's or 24 hour fitness or were just jogging outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

What's going to matter is that you made the decision that, no matter what, you're going to get healthy and get to a healthier weight. That you were fed up--either with not having energy, or with your knees hurting (a big one for me), or with something.

In other words, what's going to lose the weight isn't something you can buy at a store or get in a box or a bottle.

All of those things are just tools. And like all tools, it's fun to find which ones are right for you. Which ones you enjoy, which ones you don't, which ones don't suit you, and which ones fit your personality.

When you really mean it, anything you try will work. Until then, nothing will.

SparkPeople: Go. Sign Up. Or Not.

When last you were really hearing from me, I was praising SparkPeople.

Sparkpeople.com is a great site. I still encourage you to go there. I still encourage you to tell them docmagik sent you. I encourage you to have lots of clicky fun getting points.

Part of what I dig about tools like SparkPeople.com is the way it makes me feel in control. There's something nice about not "guessing" what I'm eating, or how many calories I'm eating, or how many calories I'm burning, that makes me feel in control and relaxes me.

But it's not that way for everybody. I was talking to a dear friend this week who says that something like SparkPeople would just add to their stress and guilt. Now, not only would they not be exercising, but they would not be logging the exercise they weren't doing on the website.

I understand that completely. See, I firmly believe that what works for one person doesn't work for others.

I also believe that just about anything can work when you want it so bad you have to it. So at that point you can just pick the thing that's fun for you and go for it with everything you've got . . .