Category Archives: Habits

the winter slowdowns

December 5, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been going through a slow period lately and I don’t like it at all.  It started back in November.

First I missed a day of running, then another, and another.  I would only average four or five days of exercise a week and then this week I’ve barely done 2 days.  I have to confess it has me a little worried.  But it’s not just the exercise portion of my life, though that is the most apparent, I’ve felt myself slowing down all over.

My conscience has been going over it every day and my mind has been trying to find a reason for it.  At first I reasoned it was the change in the weather.  We had a somewhat strong cold surge early in the month and that definitely didn’t help things.  Hard to motivate oneself to go out into the freezing cold at 4 in the morning.  But the weather’s moderated.

On top of everything the fitness app I had on my smartphone updated and erased 15 months of fitness records.  I was just flabbergasted.  I sent off a quite angry email to the support team for the app.  All I got back was an automated email reply.  All those records gone.  Still can’t believe it.

Then I looked at my goals page and realized I had achieved most of them.  So maybe that’s part of the problem.  I did my “epic” 16 mile run, I ran a timed race (I did fairly well if I do say so myself), I hit most of my fitness goals for the year.  Now that I have most of that taken care of maybe I’ve got nothing to shoot for.

Of course maybe it’s the opposite and I have too much on my plate.  I’ve got a trip coming up and I’m running around trying to get everything prepared for the trip, and at home, and at work while I’m away.  Maybe I’m spread too thin.

It could also just be that with the end of the year at hand and with things coming to an end that my mind is slowing down as well.  Maybe come January things will go back to normal. I don’t have any studies or proof for this but I do see it a lot in the attitudes of people who I’ve known that they seem to start coasting and doing the minimal amount towards the end of the year.

I don’t know.  I just want to get back to feeling normal.

Posted in: activities, attitude, habits, life in general

the price

October 30, 2014 6:27 AM , 2 Comments ,

How can my arms feel like both limp spaghetti strands and like lead weights at the same time?

The plan sort of took shape about four years ago.  The general idea was to get back into some sort of shape after decades of neglect.  The first phase which I must say that I’ve thoroughly mastered, was the walking and then running phase.

This was where the heavy work of weight loss was to be done.  For the most part that has been accomplished.  From an all time high of 292 pounds I have reduced down to 184 pounds and still counting.  Right now I am probably at the tail end of what I can accomplish through running.  I will probably continue to lose weight but I won’t be able to garner as much benefit through running anymore.

The second phase, and what has turned out to be the harder phase, the upper body and torso phase began this year.  Exercises to increase muscle mass, exercises to burn fat, exercises to increase flexibility.  So far it hasn’t gone very well.

Let me be clear.  I am not expecting to look like some sort of body builder at the end of this process.  My philosophy behind this fitness plan is somewhat similar to the train of thought that I took when purchasing my Dodge Charger.  I was not looking for a car to go out racing every weekend but at the same time I did want a car that would have the muscle to get around other traffic when and if necessary.  In the same way I don’t expect to be overly muscled at the end of this process but to definitely have the strength and flexibility necessary for whatever eventuality arises.

Unfortunately (or maybe I should say fortunately) you can’t just go out and buy a body like that from a showroom.  You have to be willing to put in the price in both time and sweat.

First I had several abortive attempts to self start the process and those sputtered to a halt after a week or two.  Then after I realized that I needed someone to keep me on course I went looking for a trainer.  Apparently a much harder chore than at first blush.

I found several ads for trainers in the local papers and websites but the offers ranged from fairly clueless people who seemed to know less than I did to die-hard workout fanatics that would have me exercising 24 hours a day.  The local health store manager offered to connect me to a trainer he knew but the trainer never called back.  Finally I got a trainer through a local gym but things didn’t work out after a month.

So I’m almost back to square one.  I know a little more about the process than when I first started and I have made some inroads into forcing myself to work out 4 times a week without excuses but I know that I am all over the place.  I need to be more focused.

The plan right now is to first of all continue working out.  Some sort of exercise is better than nothing after all.  Next to re-double my efforts and find that right guide to get me on track.  Lastly to carry on.

The plan is working.  It’s not going to be one of those overnight success stories but it will succeed.

Posted in: exercise, habits, health, life in general, plans

shedding habits

August 21, 2014 6:29 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Shedding habits is a habit I’ve picked up in the last decade.  Things that I thought I could never do without have so far been fairly easy to give up.  It all started about 7 years ago with soft drinks.

Whenever we have some big holiday the local supermarkets and retail stores put out their food specials.  They lower prices on things that they know that everyone will buy and will stock extra supplies to avoid running out.

Soft drinks are the first thing that they stock up on and advertise.  Seeing the low, low prices reminded me of when I was in high school and working at the local grocery.  It was 4th of July weekend and the local grocery had put out 6 packs of soft drinks for 50 cents.  For reasons I can’t really fathom my family and I decided to build “a tower of soft drinks”.  we bought day and night till we created an 8 foot tall tower of soft drinks.  Who knows how many sodas that was.  I think we had sodas on hand till September.

How could I give up a habit so deeply ingrained?  Soda drinks, particularly cola drinks were an integral part of my life for years. Upwards of 5 or 6 sodas per day.  With meals, by themselves, morning, noon, and night.  Warm or cold, bubbly or flat, didn’t matter.

Yet I did it.  One lent season about 7 years ago I decided to give up sodas for lent and never looked back.  I feared I would get withdrawals or that my willpower would falter but the days went by surprisingly fast and after lent I just kept going and never looked back.  So it was with many other habits I had picked up over time.

I count myself lucky and don’t for a moment imagine that it’s this easy for other folks.  I suspect that for many people these habits have a deeper psychological root that can’t so easily be removed.

On the one hand I’m not really sorry that I developed these habits.  I think it has helped to broaden my perspective and that kicking these habits has helped me understand people who have to kick addictions and bad habits, if even just a little.  On the other hand I do think I could have spent my time, money, and health in better ways.

Maybe those were the price I had to pay to gain perspective.

 

Posted in: habits, health

forced discipline

August 19, 2014 6:50 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Way back when I started on my long winding path towards fitness I knew that I had no clue as to how I should proceed.  I knew I felt bad all the time.  That was a start but as far as anything else I hadn’t a clue.  I did some online research and concluded that my feet would be the primary instruments of weight loss.  But how far should I walk or run or jog?  Again not a clue.

So I determined that I needed a pedometer.  A simple little device that counts your steps.  A very basic tool.  I found a very cheaply made pedometer at a dollar store and clipped it on.  I wasn’t expecting much.  Just to get an idea of how much distance I covered in a day.  The results were startling.

I had no idea that I was that sedentary.  In the course of a day I didn’t even cover a mile!  The health guidelines I looked up online said I should cover at least 5 if not 6 miles per day.  The cheap little pedometer inspired radical changes in my behavior and diet.

When I got more into fitness I bought a pedometer watch to track my heart rate, distance, and steps taken.  I found it somewhat useful though limiting.

Years later I got a new smartphone with a fitness app.  Since most smartphones now have accelerometers and access to location devices, they can be used for fitness applications.  As it’s also a phone and a web device I found it pretty much irresistible not to carry it on my runs.  In the last year I have been using it to keep up with my general health trends.

You see, that’s what I need more than anything.  It has been suggested to me that I get devices like the Fitbit bracelet to more accurately track my workouts but I see that as overkill and potentially harmful.

I don’t really need or want to track every calorie I burn or eat.  I think that causes people to obsess on the tiny details and not focus on the overall health program.  What helps me more is to know that my health trends are generally going in the “right” direction and I find that it motivates you just enough without becoming a smothering presence in the back of my mind.

I really believe that with this that I can achieve my goals in time.  I may not do it in the smallest amount of time but I will get there.

Posted in: exercise, goals, habits, life in general

indulgences

August 1, 2014 7:11 AM , Leave a Comment ,

An acquaintance of mine is starting to take his health seriously.  This takes me about 4 years ago and to my decision to get fit.  Oh how clueless I was about it all.

So many things to learn, so many things to decide and to actually start doing.  I don’t envy him the learning curve that he’s going to have to go through.  Learning the ropes was a nightmare to me.  But I have to admit that I’m glad I took the plunge and committed myself to a healthier lifestyle.  Without that radical change in my habits I think I would be in serious jeopardy right now as far as my health goes.

The food portion of my plan was and still is the hardest part.  I can get a handle on the exercise portion.  Even though I may complain from time to time I keep to my fitness regimen.  The food though…

Finding something that my system would be satisfied with was a huge hurdle but I was finally able to find something that I could eat on a regular basis and keep my palette from getting bored or feeling empty.  Still, all it takes is one over indulgence to ruin an entire day’s work.

But from time to time you do have to give yourself that indulgence.  Your body is a bit of a child and will rebel if you don’t give in every once in a while.  A couple of cookies here, a slice of pizza there, something from the naughty side of the menu.

The trick is to keep a check on those indulgences.  My acquaintance related how he plans to cut his alcohol intake and only drink a few nights a week.  Hopefully he will learn how quickly calories from alcohol can add up and how slowly they burn off and how long it takes to burn them off on the jogging trails.  Time and effort will teach him.  It taught me.

Posted in: attitude, goals, habits, health

confusion

June 2, 2014 6:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

When I used to work at an office I would arrive quite early in the morning.  As I would arrive first in the morning I would unlock the office with my copy of the office key.  Sometimes I would try to open the office door with my house key.  Then sometimes when I was getting home I would try to unlock my door with the office key.

They look nothing alike but I caught myself doing that more than once.  I asked a friend in the mental health field what that meant.  She said it may mean that my unconscious was confusing my home life with work and that when I came into work in the mornings that I was equating work with an escape from my home life.

This worried me somewhat as it made me think of why I would be thinking of my home life as some sort of work.  I sat down and considered what I was going through at home and realized that I was challenged in some ways that I didn’t like and that I might consider my home life to be work.

I’m not one of those “live to work” types that bosses dream about.  For me work is something that I do to make a living.  I don’t really consider it a passion of mine.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t hate work and If I commit to do something I will do it as best as I can but honestly I can’t see how some people get overly excited by office work.  It’s not what I consider exciting or fun.

I find that when I don’t enjoy something I tend to equate it with work.  The really surprising thing to me is that I considered work to be an escape.  Was my home life really that bad?  In some ways it was.

I knew it was really bad when I tried to use my house key for my car.

I had to put the office back into its proper category and to return my home life to the category of being my sanctuary away from the problems of life.  That’s when I sat down and began trying to sort out my life and really see what and who was making my life miserable.  My solution was to begin cutting the problem aspects of my life from my home life and devoting my home space as an inviolable place where the troubles of everyday life would not be allowed.

I haven’t had the problem with the keys since that time.

I think that in some sense we all sometimes have confusion with regards to some parts of our lives becoming blurred and meshed together with other parts of our lives.  Sometimes our subconscious will come up with odd and unique ways to let us know that something is wrong.

Posted in: career, habits, home, thought

backsliding

May 9, 2014 6:17 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s amazing how easy it is to slip back into old habits and how seductive it is to consider returning to the old patterns of life.

Last week I ran into some “friends” I knew from way back in the 90’s.  These were some people who I knew from the clubs in the glory days of the Richmond strip area when it competed with Washington Avenue as the place to party in Houston.

Very friendly folk, they immediately began telling me about their lives since those days and about other people they we all knew.  They said I should really check back in with the clubs and bars and see what was going on.  I was half tempted to as I hadn’t been back to those haunts in ages.  That’s when it happened.

They began with all the gossip, all the petty rivalries, all the “dirt” about people we mutually knew.  Suddenly I remembered why I had left the club scene back then.

Bad habits are so easy to get back into.  The temptation to let it go and fall back into them is so overwhelming at times.  But it’s not just with people.  Set a pack of cookies or donuts near me for a day and see what happens to them.

A little voice in the back of my head quietly and quite reasonably asks “What’s the harm?  Why not just go back to what you know best?  Why go through the regimented diet, the exercise, all the hassle?”

I think back to three years ago (no, nearly 4 now) and how I felt back then.  The listless days of trying to fill in the hours between meals, the lack of useful purpose and the lack of direction that I had allowed myself to fall into.  I was living exclusively for the moment.  Don’t get me wrong, I got plenty of things done but it was all done without any plan or done on the spur of the moment.

But it’s more than just getting myself fit and getting my life in order.  There’s an old Aggie poem (yes, they do exist) that in part goes:

Fond memories bring a sigh — but nothing more;
Now we are men and life’s a greater thrill,

Reliving those old moments is pleasurable, for a moment at least.  But it’s not the type of life that I want for myself these days.  Thinking about it, I would not feel that it would satisfy me and I would feel forever miserable now that I’ve experienced more.

The way back no longer exists.  The path forward is the only way to go.

Posted in: attitude, food and drink, friends, habits, life in general

Decision trees in our lives

March 2, 2014 6:29 AM , 2 Comments ,

I was going through my newsfeed the other day and a link came up for Huffpost live.  It was a discussion with Crispin Glover on the message that media puts out in some movies.

Interview

First of all I never realized that Crispin Glover was that deep a thinker honestly.  He’s apparently quite perceptive and insightful.  This discussion got me thinking on a different tack about how decisions affect our lives.

(by the way, this is one of the reasons that I love cinema.  You can derive so many themes, ideas, and visions from a movie that it’s astonishing)

In the above movie that Glover references (“Back to the future”) his character, George, makes a bad decision at a young age that affects the rest of his life.  He has been making bad decisions based on fear all of his life but this one really affect him and his future wife.

Basically he allows his future wife to be raped by the neighborhood bully.  This event victimizes both of them and they live in a spiral of hopelessness and shame leading them downwards on a dark path of despair. George takes a menial job and allows his tormentor to continue to harass him.  George and his wife end up trapped living a life that is neither satisfactory nor fulfilling.

George’s son goes back in time and intervenes causing George to make the right decision and this in turn affects the rest of his life.

When the son returns to the altered future he finds that his parents have been emboldened by the correct choice that George made and their life is a success in every way.  The same two people, the same town, but totally altered by one seemingly tiny change in the past.

Plugging all this back into the real world, how have the decisions in our past affected our current life situation?  You make that initial bad decision back in kindergarten and twenty years later you’re working in McDonald’s rather than going to Harvard.

A gross overstatement to be sure but I don’t think that the average young person gives enough weight to these seemingly innocuous life choices.  Go out and party on a Friday night or study, burn through your weekly paycheck or save it, stand up for yourself or let someone else walk over you.

One or two decisions you can probably bounce back from.  But it’s when you make bad decision after bad decision and they pile up on you and suddenly you find that your options aren’t that open anymore.  Suddenly you no longer have a good or bad option, suddenly it’s bad option or even worse option.  What’s more, the more you make these bad decisions the more you become accustomed to the penalties attached to them and even grow to expect them as a part of your daily life.

How do we break this downward trend?  Is it even breakable?

Well yes of course it is.  We can hope for an outside agency to intervene (like someone with a time machine or a crazy millionaire philanthropist willing to invest in you) but that rarely happens.

Most of the time it’s going to happen by making a hard “right” choice some time and following it up with even more hard “right” choices until you climb back to where you want to be in your life.

That’s what makes these early choices on your decision tree so vitally important.  Once you bend that stalk in the wrong direction it takes a mighty effort to turn it back the way it should be going.

Posted in: attitude, decisions, goals, habits, movies

The doldrums

February 18, 2014 6:45 AM , 2 Comments ,

Despite trying to keep myself going at full speed all the time (or perhaps because of it) sometimes I get into periods of time where my energy is at a low ebb.

Work doesn’t appeal to me, neither does exercise, writing, not even brainless activities like web surfing.  I feel just drained of energy.  In Spanish I would say that I have no “animo” related to animation.  To be clear, it’s not a depression but a lack of will to do anything.

These type of days can play havoc with the rest of my week.  Specially on days when I have more than enough to do already.  I do what I can but without any real enthusiasm.  I feel overwhelmed as things get done hardheartedly or don’t get done at all.

I recognized these patterns years ago but never knew what to do about them.  I shrugged my shoulders and figured that this was the way that things were.  Falling behind schedule was acceptable to me.

But no longer.

I can’t allow errant fluctuations in my energy dictate my life for me.  So what to do?

Well firstly I recognize these periods of listlessness when they occur.  I don’t just hope that they will go away but address them.

Next, get onto my scheduled activities and force myself to go through them.  We all have things that need doing and need to be done well.  Focus, focus, focus.  Make an extra special effort to get things done right.

Lastly, economize my energy.  I have things that need doing and things that would be nice to do.  I focus on the essentials on these days.  Leave the other stuff for another day.  But note them down so I don’t totally forget about them.

The doldrums will still come and go over time but there is no reason why I need to let them rule my life.

 

 

Posted in: attitude, energy, habits, schedules

micro goals

January 15, 2014 6:23 AM , 2 Comments ,

I saw one of my Facebook friends remark that all the new year’s resolution people had cleared out of the gym that he goes to.

Natural I suppose as most of those resolutions are half-hearted at best and only made to fulfill peer expectations.  The new year’s resolution is now looked upon by most as a joke.  Most people see it not as something that they will do but rather as something that they will definitely NOT do.

Part of the problem is that people who make these resolutions have no one to keep them honest.  A person to lean on when you feel like backsliding and who will without goading come by and check on your progress.

The other part of why these resolutions fail is that the expectations are set too high.  Rather than breaking this up into manageable chunks, people choose to tackle it all at once.  Anyone can see that approach is doomed to failure.

Setting smaller micro goals can be an aide to this.  Limiting the problem to something that you can reasonably manage can help your state of mind and get you mentally prepared to tackle everything.

Instead of saying “I will lose 60 pounds by the end of the year” you can say “5 pounds this month, that’s not too bad is it?”  Suddenly the whole task isn’t so daunting.

Further to this, when you do reach a micro goal it can really boost morale and self-esteem making you believe that you can indeed manage the rest.

Posted in: goals, habits, plans