Get ready!

Welcome to Fitness Isn't Easy. On this page, I aim to share my personal thoughts, insights and rants concerning a topic that has become very important to me over the past couple of years -- diet and exercise.

If you're like me, you probably find it very confusing these days to know just how you're supposed to take care of yourself. It seems we are being fed a consistent diet of inconsistent information about how to take care of ourselves. In the end, we're usually left with more questions than answers. Low-fat or low-carb? Weights or aerobics? Pills, surgery or diets?

And even when we bother to find out the answers, they're not always very clear. Sometimes, it seems like it would be better to know less. There was a time, for example, when we could rest assured that fat and cholesterol were bad things. Nowadays, though, we know that there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, good fats and bad fats, and they're generally differentiated by confusing acronyms like LDL and HDL, or polysyllabic nightmares such as saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.

It's no wonder that many people simply throw up their hands and forget it. And, in turn, it's no wonder that the human race is growing fatter and fatter.

In 2007, I found myself with a dilemma. I had just turned 38 and stepped on a scale to find my weight had reached an all-time high of 280. Suddenly, I could see two numbers very clearly on the horizon -- 40 and 300. There wasn't much I could do about the 40, but I was hell-bent to do something to prevent that 300 from becoming reality.

Since that time, I've experienced a fitness conversion of almost religious proportions, and today I'm proud to say that, while I will still be turning 40 this year, my weight is now closer to 200 than 300. To get to that point, I had to educate myself and make wholesale lifestyle changes. And I encountered many false hopes and blind alleys along the way.

It hasn't been easy, and that's sort of the whole point of this website. The formula is simple and only requires two steps: (1) Get off your butt, and (2) stop shoving so much junk down your piehole. It's the execution that is hard, but just because it's difficult, that doesn't mean it has to be unpleasant.

I'm excited about this site. In my posts, I hope to share some of the tips I've found that have helped me, as well as some of the pitfalls and chimeras you need to avoid. We will get started on all of that soon.

For now, however, if you find yourself in similar shape to where I was back on that day in 2007, the best thing you can do right now is start preparing yourself mentally. Making the choice to live healthier is easy, and after some time, living a healthier life is pretty easy too. The hard part is getting started.

So for now, don't worry about making any changes to your diet or your physical activities. Just start telling yourself that a change is coming and it will be difficult. If you spend a few days telling yourself that over and over, you will find the burden much easier to bear.

See you soon!