I’ve tried just about every diet there is out there, every workout regimen, and here’s the discovery I’ve found: willpower alone is insufficient for success when it comes to health, diet, and exercise. You’ve gotta have a process in place.

It’s not just a mishmash of rules- I have a strong will, but I fall victim to my own complacency often. Rules alone simply suppress desires that will never go away. Without a process, compliance rates are usually pretty low – I can personally attest to that!

So as I’m preparing to return back home after 8 days of nonstop eating like crap, drinking, sleeping, walking, and abuse on my body, I’m ready for a change. It’s a change that I know I can achieve if I have a process in place to change my lifestyle rather than just make a bet to abide by some rules. It’s the long-term change I’m interested in. My fiancee is the inspiration behind this change!

I will document my actual process in a future blog, but here I’ll list out the things I’ll be developing the process around:

• Generally, meat and animal byproducts aren’t good for people, but they TASTE so damn good. It’s an unfortunate fact that people tend to live longer and have less health issues when there’s less meat in their diets. So, as Arnold recommends, I’ll be limiting meat in my diet. Essentially I’ll be eating vegan as a regular mode of nutrition, then allowing 1 day of each month to go bananas with whatever is out there. It’s my hope that my physiology will actually change for the better with this program. I’m actually very excited to get this going in my life!
• Drinking will also align with this 1 day of the month. Kombucha is my best friend on all the other days of the month. I have discovered that while I enjoy drinking (perhaps a bit too much), it’s more a training issue in social settings where you just get people used to the fact that you can hang out without imbibing. This is more of a social challenge in conditioning others to set into their minds that you’re abstaining. If they are truly your friends in the first place instead of drinking buddies, whether you drink or not shouldn’t really matter. I know friends who have given up drinking altogether for an entire year – and it’s done wonders in their life. The only issue I’ve seen is that when a lack of process happens, relapse will oftentimes follow.
• The only other exceptions will be during travel, when I already know all bets are off as far as nutrition is concerned. I’m on vacation, damnit! (I hope this doesn’t make me just start traveling way more than I do already, lol) I give myself this luxury because one of my personal passions is to discover new foods around the world, so being vegan when traveling doesn’t quite help to that end.
• I’ll continue my workout regimen of lifting 3-5X per week combined with short cardio (basically my biking to the gym) – and surprise – because I’ll be watching my diet, I’ll actually see the results of my work at the gym (imagine that) !

That’s pretty much it – and I know that I might have a few false starts or stumble here and there, but the processes I develop around these parameters will serve me well when my willpower fails.

Life’s too short to make it even shorter.