The ideal body weight is hard to achieve in America. With so much wealth and unhealthy foods, it’s so easy to gain weight! Unfortunately, with the pandemic raging on and second child to take care of, I’ve gained more weight.
I originally wrote this post on May 21, 2012 when I was 35 and I’m revisiting it again at the end of November 2020. I’m currently back up to around 172 pounds and I want to get back to the ideal body weight again.
If there’s one thing we should all do, it is to eat right, exercise more, and lose weight! The coronavirus is really hurting people more who are obese.
The Ideal Body Weight Struggle
At the beginning of the year, I discovered that I was not in ideal weight and it pissed me off. At 167-169 pounds, I thought I was doing pretty good for a middle-aged guy standing 5′ 10″ until spending a couple hours of research online for the post. It turns out that based on the majority of reports, I was actually about ~10 pounds overweight, which is a lot since I don’t weight that much to begin with.
With tennis season just three months away at the time, I didn’t want to be out of shape. My teammates were counting on me. In competitive sports there’s the triumvirate mind, body, and skills for winning.
The body is the EASIEST thing to optimize, which means during competition against high caliber opponents, they are all in great shape. Having an ideal body weight is standard (ever see an overweight professional tennis player?), and therefore one is able to focus their energy on mental strength and specific skills.
For well over a decade, I had an enormous mental block that I had to overcome. I told myself it was IMPOSSIBLE to get under 160 pounds. This was even though I was a lean 155 pounds in college. I kept saying there was no way I could break 160 because of work and a slower metabolism. I accepted weight creep and the ideology that people automatically gain 10 pounds every decade.
Since the very beginning of Financial Samurai, I’ve sought to delve into the psychology of wealth by focusing on stories about wealth and moving beyond numbers. My favorite is, “
The older I get, the more I realize how necessary it is for people first starting out to find a mentor. A mentor is there to guide you through all the landmines in a career or start-up venture. In fact, I encourage everyone to get a mentor with every serious endeavor they are about to undertake.
