It’s been a few weeks now since I started on this new path with the 4 Hour Body diet by Tim Ferris and I’m having some issues. The trouble started a few weeks ago when work went from busy to insanely busy! We have a big board meeting coming up and a big new strategy to work out. As a result, my workload essentially tripled. To give you a rough feel for what it’s been like, for the last few days, my days have been meetings from 8am to 6pm and then 3 to 4 hours of doing actual work which I never get to because I’m in meetings all day. Add to that my wedding preparations (yay!) and a full social plate and my calendar has never been busier.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, my ability to follow Tim’s strict rules went way downhill. It’s impossible to get a good lunch when you’re having catered lunch meetings every day. It’s impossible to get a good dinner when your VP of something or other wants to go out and have a working dinner. It’s impossible to eat well when you’re COO wants to take a visiting customer out to dinner and drinks. Actually, I suppose I shouldn’t say impossible because it’s not, but it’s much more difficult than it was before this.
Result: I’m finding myself falling off the 4 hour body wagon time and time again.
So…
- First question: Does the 4 hour body lifestyle suck or is it me?
- Answer: hard to tell. It’s a bit worrisome to see a lifestyle that falls apart as soon as it hits a certain stress level. It tells me that this lifestyle might not really be sustainable over the long term. However, this is one occurence and it’s possible that it may be me that needs to make some adjustments. For example, when I got my first job I needed to make some adjustments to my life and those adjustments took some time. I certainly didn’t know how to combine life with work and I failed a couple of times along the way, but eventually I learned and these days merging a very busy job into my life is easy.
- Question: So, assuming it’s me that needs to make adjustments, what are those adjustments?
- Answer: Insist on appropriate food during working meals. Seems easy now that I write it down but it seemed very difficult over the past few weeks simply because I didn’t think of it ahead of time. One sec, I’m going to go write a note to our office manager. There, done! That should hopefully improve things.
- Question: What do I do if it still seems like I can’t keep this lifestyle up?
- Answer: I will probably make a couple of more adjustments to try to “live within the rules” but at some point I will admit defeat and move on to try something else. That’s fine, not every lifestyle is appropriate for all people. I’ll give it my best, not quit after one setback but I’m also not going to smash my head against the wall over and over.
Anybody else having issues? What are you doing to compensate for them?
