The use of heart rate monitor became a very useful tool. It kept me from working too hard or too easy. The monitor I was using, Polar 610, also came with software. I was able to download all of my exercise sessions into a computer. Then I was able to objectively document my exercise sessions. The software was able to track my calories burned during exercise, my average heart rate, hours spent exercising per week, and much more. After every exercise session actually looked forward to downloading my session to see how I did.

It also allowed me to exercise at different heart rates. One day I would run at 70% of my maximum heart rate for 10 minutes, then bike at 80% of my maximum heart rate for 10 minutes, then go back to running at 70% for another 10 minutes. The next day I would just bike for 40 min. But I would again exercise at different heart rates, 10 min at 70%, and 5 minutes at 80%, and 10 minutes at 75 %, and 5 minutes at 80%, and then 10 minutes at 70%. This was a fun way to exercise and I actually began to look forward to exercising, whole process was less boring.

I kept up with this type of training for five months. On day of my first triathlon, I was forty pounds lighter.

Some how, some way, I did it. I finished my first triathlon, and as crazy as it sounds I really enjoyed myself. I was feeling good about my accomplishment, but I still had some serious weight to lose. So I found another triathlon race six months later, signed up for it and continued training. The weight just kept coming off and coming off.

At time of my second race, eleven months after learning about triathlons, I had lost sixty pounds.

It seemed like every week one of my patients, whom I had not seen for months, would come in for a treatment. The reactions were always same, doc what heck happened to you, you look like a totally different person!

I felt like a different person too, I was running without knee pain, I was happier at work, my relationship with my family was better, I was no longer embarrassed to go to a pool party or water park, in fact I looked forward to them.

My patients and members of health club where my office was located were constantly asking me about my weight loss. I remember one of gym members walking up to my desk and looking at my before and after pictures. He pointed to my fat picture and said, “That is me” then he pointed to my fit picture and said, “That is way I want to look”. Wow, what a great feeling, I could not believe it.

As I am sitting here writing this article, it has been a year since my first triathlon. Just a few weeks ago, I raced in my third race and I actually managed to finish second in my age group.

As a result of getting into triathlons, not only do I have a new body, I have a new life.

Dr. Jeffrey Banas is a Chiropractic Sports Physician practicing in Mesa, AZ. He continues to compete in triathlons and has kept his weight off for over a year now. If you would like to contact Dr. Banas, he can be reached at his office at 480-633-6837, or by visiting his web site at www.personal-weight-loss-help.com

Optimism is also a powerful antidote to anger. Many participants in our anger management classes report their anger lessening as they learn to replace negative thinking with positive thinking.

Here’s some good news for negative thinkers: You can learn how to replace pessimism with optimism.

The starting point is to access your vulnerability to pessimistic thinking by taking self-evaluation test you can find at www.authentichappiness.org

Your responses will be compared to thousands of other people in various categories, down to your Zip Code.

If you scored lower than you’d like, you can become more optimistic. As Dr. Seligman writes in Authentic Happiness, his latest book: ‘the trait of optimism is changeable and learnable.’

There is now a well-documented method for building optimism. It’s based on first, recognizing, and then disputing, pessimistic thoughts.

People often do not pay attention to their thoughts and thus do not recognize how destructive they can be in leading to negative emotions. The key is to recognize your pessimistic thoughts and then treat them as if they were uttered by someone else – an external person, a rival, whose mission in life is to make you miserable!

Basically, you can become an optimist by learning to disagree with yourself – challenging your pessimistic thinking patterns and replacing them with more positive patterns.

Note: This view of optimistic thinking is not process of ‘positive thinking’ in sense of repeating silly affirmations that you don’t really believe.

Rather, it is process of correcting distorted or faulty thinking patterns that create health, career and relationship problems for you.

By teaching yourself to think about things differently (but just as realistically), you can morph yourself from a pessimist to an optimist – and tame Anger Bee in process.