This spring, I encountered a protracted period of time when I didn't look forward to sitting down and creating this column.

It wasn't because I no longer liked reading about eating right. It wasn't because I no longer relished writing about exercise. And it certainly wasn't because I no longer believed in the inherent righteousness of the health-and-fitness lifestyle.The reason I wasn't enjoying doing something I normally enjoy doing was a matter of time. Creating a column was taking too long, more than twice the time it usually does. To make matters worse, feeling that way made me feel like a fraud.For the record, however, let me state that I really do love reading about eating right, writing about exercise, and just about everything else that goes into creating this column. So why should it matter then if I spend eight hours or 18 hours to create something that gives me great pleasure?It shouldn't. But it did. And that bothered me.That also meant there had to be other factors creating the feeling.After a great deal of reading and thinking, I recognized them. What was taking a usually enjoyable experience and spoiling it for me was not really a matter of time, but a matter of me.Or more precisely, my expectations and opinions.Now I know I'm getting a little philosophical here, but bear with me for good reason. I bet you also have some expectations and opinions that do what mine do: mess with your mind, your motivation, and maybe even your health.For years during the school year, I created one "Fitness Master" column a week by following this pattern: read studies and articles about them during weekday nights, write most of a rough draft on Saturday, finish the rough draft and proofread it on Sunday.This spring, that stopped happening. I'd sit down on Saturday without a clear idea. I'd sit down on Sunday without much of a rough draft. Sometimes I still wouldn't be done by the following Sunday.But it wasn't really the delay dragging me down.It was the expectation that I should be able to create one column every weekend."Should," my friends, is a potentially dangerous word because it asserts our opinion. And as one of the truly profound Stoic philosophers, Epictetus, once said of opinion, "Nothing else is the cause of our anxiety or loss of tranquillity."I was living proof of that this spring. I saw my opinion not as opinion, but as the way things should be. As a result, when I didn't live up to self-imposed expectations, it messed with my mind and my motivation.Let's now create a common health-and-fitness situation where failing to recognize your opinion as opinion does the same and even adversely affects your health.Let's say you and your best friend share a number of things in common: same type of job, secretary; same number of kids, three; same sort of body type, heavy and hippy; and same medical problem on the horizon, type 2 diabetes.She says she'll go on a diet if you will, but that you should pick it. You go to the community library and pick out the perfect one for both of you, The Peanut Butter Diet (Rodale, 2001), because you also share a love of peanut butter.You show her the book and she gets giddy because the cover claims, "Eat peanut butter every day and lose all the weight you want!" And she does!She religiously follows the 28-day menu plan, does the suggested amount of exercise, and drops 18 pounds in the process. You religiously follow the 28-day menu plan, do the suggested amount of exercise, and don't. You lose six pounds and no one notices.But your best friend keeps getting compliment after compliment. Moreover, her newfound enthusiasm for healthy living is beginning to get to you. She's now talking about jogging a few more times a week than she had been, maybe entering a local 10K or two, and definitely staying on the diet.You can't handle it. You tell her you're done with the diet, too busy to keep working out (though you're really not), and that she's on her own from this point.Three months after that, she wins her age group at the local 10K, which causes a newspaper to showcase her weight-loss success in a feature article. Without the diet and your workout partner, you've regained the lost six pounds and added 16 more.You're told by your doctor that you now have the onset of type 2 diabetes and need to lose weight in a hurry or be placed on medication.It's only now that you realize that the Peanut Butter Diet had really been a success, that dropping six pounds in four weeks was an especially significant accomplishment because the diet didn't limit your food choices or reduce your energy level. Why did you give up, you wonder?I hope this article fully answered that question.Contact Kevin Kolodziejski at

kolo@ptd.net