So the last day of No Chips March is here. So far so good, I did it.
Not sure what these posts are about? Click HERE to find out.
So I will let the video do the rest of the talking for this post.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjHIsZ98WGk
It’s been 7 days since my last Give Up To Gain update on Monsters vs Me. This week was really tough. I think I’ve realized what I like most about chips…. the convenience. I’ve made a healthy switch from late night chips, to late night cucumber. Both taste amazing in my books, but I don’t have to prepare and cut up the chips. We grab that bag of delicious chips because all we have to do is open them and they are instantly amazing. Preparing a healthy snack takes 5 minutes. Yes… 5 minutes… This is what our lazy society avoids. It’s really crazy to think and that I’ve never noticed it as much as I have now.
I use to avoid the 5 minute prep time, yet I would feel terrible for an hour after eating a bag of chips. Coming from someone who did well in Math, I’m surprised it took me this long to figure out how much time I was losing with chips.
This weeks struggles:
1. Monday Curling
On Monday, my Dad brought me out to try curling. It was fun but wayyyy harder than they make it look on TV. Growing up with a hockey background, I have thought I had amazing balance but watching these guys, ranging in age anywhere from 30 – 85, slide on one foot like it was nothing was quite impressive. I only fell once, but the point of this struggle was afterwards. I guess curling etiquette is to join the other team for a drink after the game and hang out. The winning team buys the losing team their first drink and you sit and have a great time. I was stoked. A sport where your competition is your friend, there’s no winners or losers and you drink at the end. All sounded amazing until we got to the table…. Every table at the club had a giant bowl of chips on it. Ok, so I just don’t eat them right? Well this was like going to some of my Italian friends houses and not eating a 10-course snack that their mother was cooking. You know she will force it on you and you think it’s rude to say no. As nervous as I was to turn down these gentlemen, I politely explained how I have gave up chips for the month and they respected it. Although I’m sure I’ll be known as the guy who didn’t eat those delicious and mouth watering dill pickle chips. Oh well.
I found it was more tough to refuse a gesture by the club and other members but sometimes when you want to reach a goal so badly, just remember….. you can’t please everyone.
2. 7/11
I was heading out to a shoot this week and needed to stop for gas. While getting gas I got encountered a massive hunger pain and needed food instantly. I would just buy something inside the gas station while paying for my gas. Have you ever really stopped and looked inside a gas station? Its junk food everywhere and mainly chips. My choices pretty much were chips or the 3-month old hot dogs that were slowly spinning on a bright stainless steel warming tray. Again, this goes back to the idea of convenience and living in such a lazy society. So how did I attack this hunger pain? I took an extra 5 minutes out of my day and stopped over at Subway and got a delicious sandwich. (Sidenote: Apparently Subway took over McDonalds as the largest restaurant chain in the world last week. Kudos to them!) I tend to always get to shoots early. My biggest pet peeve is being late. Being punctual rides huge with me and allows me to take that extra 5-minutes to stop for a sub. Remember, its the small things that add up. 5 minutes here and there can equal a life time.
“If you have a goal in life that takes a lot of energy, that requires a lot of work, that incurs a great deal of interest and that is a challenge to you, you will always look forward to waking up to see what the new day brings.” – Susan Polis Schultz
So many of my friends have joined me with Give Up To Gain and I have met so many new people through Monsters vs Me who have also joined in. All of you rule so hard and I’m super excited to be doing this along side you.
If you are unsure what this is all about, click here to read the first post: Giving Up To Gain: March 2011 Video Post – What I give up.
Also, you can follow my weekly progress on Twitter at twitter.com/jayperryMvM and if you are also doing Give Up To Gain, I would love to follow along with you as well. Put the hashtag #gutg in your twitter updates and I”ll be sure to follow and ReTweet it.
I hope you all have an amazing weekend.
Never give up, unless it’s for gain
So today marks 11 days without chips for me. Has it been easy? Hell no! Try giving up something that’s been a part of your daily life for the past 15 years. Easy? No. Rewarding? Very!
My evening snack which usually consisted of a large bag of chips and a bottle of water has now turned into either celery or cucumber and a bottle of water. Do you want to hear something crazy? You don’t feel terrible after eating celery. Weird huh?
If you are just tuning into these posts now, watch the video below to understand what they are about.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeFlgA6egVU&tracker=False
The previous post mentioned in the video can be viewed here: Giving Up to Gain: When giving up isn’t a bad idea.
Could it be that I might just give up chips forever? I’m not too sure. Again, just like alcohol, I don’t think it’s bad in moderation. I believe that the best thing that giving up chips is doing for me, is making me realize that I don’t need them in my life all the time. Last week I was at my nephews birthday party and with a party comes chips. There were chips everywhere in the house. Doritios, Salt & Vinegar, Tostitos, Party Mix and even my Mom’s famous Nacho Dip. It was a chip heaven. This was my first real test. Everyone at the party knew of my Give Up To Gain quest and were tempting me as much as they were watching me to see if I would crack. I can proudly say that you could find me near the veggie platter.
Some of you might say that you have the greatest friends in the world….. but I’m sorry to say that you’re wrong. I am the one who carries that title. My friends rule and the support I’ve received during this is unbelievable. My friend Jason Mante posted a video response to my Give Up To Gain post. Watch below.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gL9yZ2QWJg&tracker=False
You might say that giving up chips isn’t a big deal. You’re right, maybe it’s not to you, but the whole point of the Give Up To Gain series is to hopefully motivate others to realize that maybe they do have some negativity in their life and that if given up, will create a positive. Some of my friends have decided to join in on this mission and they need to be recognized for their hard word.
Adam Burchill – No pop/energy drinks – click here to view his post
Chris Walker – No alcohol
Matt Skidmore – No smoking
Stacey Funke – No alcohol
I’ll update every Friday how the previous week went. In the mean time, you can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jayperryMvM as I post frequently throughout the week on how tough reaching this goal actually is.
It’s never too late to give something up for gain. Every successful situation always started with a Day 1.
“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.†– Earl Nightingale
If you read my post last Friday, then you’ll understand what this post is about. If not, you can read it here: Giving Up to Gain: When giving up isn’t a bad idea.
As a photographer, I would much rather use different forms of multimedia to post so I decided to do a video blog today.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeFlgA6egVU
Over the last couple weeks I have bugging a friend of mine to give me permission to share their story in one of my posts as I believe it has the possibility to open your eyes and even change your life if needed. Be warned that this post is an extremely sad story but it’s my hope that you take a positive message from it and don’t let it happen to you.
The article isn’t about my friend, but it’s about their mother. I have met her numerous times and she is an amazing lady and one of the nicest people I have ever met. A hard worker, caring and would do anything for her three kids when they were in need. Three years ago her oldest child gave birth to a set of twins and she was blessed and absolutely loved being a grandmother. Her life was amazing……….. kinda…
Two ice cubes, a shot of vodka, top it off with pineapple juice and a quick stir. The “Train Station” as she called it. A drink she had stumbled upon one day while experimenting with different alcohols. Sounds like fun, but not if you stumbled upon it 30 years ago and have been consuming at least 20+ a week since then. She was a heavy drinker. Having at least four to five drinks, six nights a week. She never thought it was a problem nor did anyone see it as a HUGE problem because her drinking never presented any issues on the surface. She never drove drunk, she never went into work drunk and wasn’t an abusive drunk in any way. So what was the problem?
Depending on what your definition of ‘binge drinking’ is, some say that she would fall into this category.
Taken from Wikipedia:
Binge drinking is associated with a profound social harm, economic costs as well as increased disease burden. Binge drinking is more common in males, during adolescence and young adulthood. Most binge drinkers are not familiar with the risks associated with binge drinking. Heavy regular binge drinking is associated with adverse effects on neurologic, cardiac, gastrointestinal, hematologic, immune, musculoskeletal organ systems as well as increasing the risk of alcohol induced psychiatric disorders.
There is a time and place for everything and when done in moderation, alcohol isn’t necessarily a bad thing. She would drink pretty much every night alone. And we all know what happens when we drink……. we get hungry. Consuming four to five ‘Train Stations’ a night and ingesting large quantities of bad food almost every night for years. I’m not a doctor so I can’t really start spitting out the scientific health effects of alcohol, but from the little that I do know, I can tell you that drinking alone every night isn’t good for anyone.
Some of her kids didn’t like it but never knew what to say because it wasn’t really effecting them negatively…….
A couple months ago……. it caught up with her.
While on her way home from grocery shopping she started having massive headaches. She got home, put away all the groceries, and the headaches put her to the floor. She was rushed to the hospital and it turned out she had a massive stroke. Her brain was bleeding and wouldn’t stop. The doctors rushed her into surgery but nothing could help her. The stoke had taken her life. There was never a distinct answer but the three doctors who were trying to save her life, all said that years of constant drinking was most likely the cause of her stroke.
Taken from strokesignsandsymptoms.com
In a study done in 2005, it was discovered that people who drink at least 3 alcoholic beverages daily stand a greater risk of suffering from a stroke, by almost 45%.
It’s weird that she had called her favorite drink, ‘The Train Station”, which basically was the cause of her death. She took the train straight to her grave. So why write about this and share her story? Well this is the part of ‘Giving Up for Gain’. Although her years of solo drinking had little to no negative effects on her current situation, it had no positive effects and would lead to sadness. Some might say its a selfish act. Yes, she passed away, but she left a world of hurt. She left a husband to live alone, she left children to live without a mother and she left grandchildren that didn’t even get a chance to really know who their grandmother was. I had a Grandfather pass away when I was really young and although we lost him to cancer and it wasn’t something preventable, I still know what its like to have never really got to know him well and I wish I would have. As sad as I feel for my friend losing her mother, I can’t help but have a bit of built up frustration and anger towards her mother. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that drinking daily isn’t a good idea and a big risk to your health. She could have stopped. You think the birth of her children would have made her think twice, or even more so, her grandchildren. We all have problems and sometimes it takes a positive situation to help us notice that we need to change so we can experience that positive situation for years to come. She was given all the reason and more to realize that she needed to control her drinking but never did. Very selfish in my eyes.
It’s never too late to start over and giving up alcohol was a way she could of gained years of life. Time spent with her family, time getting to know her grandchildren and a happier life was all the reward and incentive she should have needed.
Again, I’m not a doctor nor do I play one on TV. I don’t understand the disease of addiction and some cases can be more severe than I know. My hope with this article is to hopefully open your eyes to the idea that giving something up can gain so much in the end. I challenge you to do this. Even if its not health related. There is nothing wrong with setting a reward for yourself. Incentive is good. It’s the sign of a goal reached. In January of this year, I decided to take part in this because of my friends situation. I gave up alcohol for the entire month. I titled it “No Juice January”. For 31 days I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol. I told myself that if I accomplished it, I would buy myself a new lens for my camera. I can say that I’m the proud owner of that new lens and it was well worth it. I did it for personal reasons too. It made me more focused and it’s amazing the amount of work you can do when you aren’t spending it hung over on a couch. My body felt better, my sleep patterns were better and when you work for yourself, the success of your business is solely on your will and productivity.
On Monday, I am going to post a video talking about this idea. I will give up something different every month and reward myself for it. The video will be posted on the last day before the next month.
So I hope you took some positivity out of this post. If you are someone who might be in the same situation as my friends mother, then I hope this opens your eyes and you take the necessary steps to fix your problem. Don’t let your friends lose a friend, your kids lose a parent and most importantly don’t let your grandkids not have enough memories to even remember you.
Never give up unless its for gain.