Healthy Living For Smart People
I used to believe that anyone who wanted to lose weight and get healthier needed only to “eat less, move more.” In other words, just stop eating as much calories as you are right now and start exercising and you’ll see some great results. My experiments over the past few months have revealed to me a slight (or maybe not so slight) error in my thinking. [Read more...]
This is week five of my project to get back to a healthier lifestyle. If you recall from a couple of weeks ago, my goals at this point were:
And The Goals Were:
How am I doing? [Read more...]
I feel tired but great. We walked so much today and I also got in some physical activity through the gardening and house work. I feel full but not stuffed which tells me the amount of food was perfect. All in all, an amazing day. [Read more...]
I’ve spent the last three days having an absolute blast in Las Vegas with a group of my closest friends. This is my first time here and my first time actually gambling, so I’m having a ton of fun. I’ve been keeping up with my marathon training but I did decide to take three days off from my 4 hour body diet. It’s worth it I think and I’ve been getting good enough results so far that I’m perfectly fine taking a few days off. Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The actual topic is the complete lack of back pain I woke up with this morning.
Wait, why is this special? Afterall, aren’t we supposed to wake up with a lack of back pain every morning? Well yah, but we don’t, at least I don’t. I have had low and mid back pain for many years now. Nothing severe but it’s definitely noticeable. So it’s interesting that I woke up without pain morning. I tried to think about the last few days and figure out if I had done anything specific that might account for this change and the only thing I came up with is the lack of sitting with bad posture. [Read more...]
I love numbers. Numbers are beautiful because they don’t really lie. They simply present the fact although it’s up to you to interpret those facts correctly. I love crunching through them and seeing what useful information I can find. I suppose that’s one reason why I’ve spend much of my life working on optimization related technology, because this field is all about using numbers to make stuff better.
I apply this same love of numbers to my life (much to the annoyance of my loved ones on occasion), and especially to my health. I love tracking stuff and seeing how I’m doing compared to last week, last month or last year. I enjoy looking at the nutrient breakdown of my day and then comparing it to my mood that day. Sometimes you get useful insights and some times you don’t but the numbers are always beautiful.
last weekend I sat down and charted my own weight against various events in my life just to see what had made a difference and what did not. The results were interesting although pretty much expected. Four events stand out.
Last week I talked about eating healthy. Honestly, that’s the best and easiest thing you can do for your health. However, eating healthy on its own will not get you 100% there. It’s more like 40%. Today, we tackle another 30%, being active.
No, being active does not mean exercising; we’ll get to that in the remaining 30% of this health trip. Being active just means leading an active life. It means not spending every evening on the couch and every weekend in bed. It means hiking, dancing, playing sports, riding horses and plenty of walking. Being active means turning your life from a sedentary one into an active one.
Bang For The Buck
But wait, doesn’t exercise mean being active? Is doing a bit of walking really better than an hour of jogging? Well, if all you’re going to do is a bit of walking then yes, I suppose, but if you’re really going to turn your life into an active life then no, exercise doesn’t even come close. Let me demonstrate.
Jogging is one of the most calorie intensive exercises out there. Jogging for an hour will burn somewhere between 600 and 1000 calories depending on your weight and speed. By way of comparison, walking for 15 minutes will only burn 50 calories. Sounds like the jog is way better until you add in the stairs instead of the elevator, the additional 30 minute walk in the evening instead of TV, the bike to work, playing soccer with friends on the weekend, tossing the Frisbee to the dog, walking over to your coworkers cube instead of emailing them, doing a bit of gardening and cleaning your house instead of hiring someone to do it. When you add all those together, they’re actually far better than any job and far more enjoyable too (except maybe the house cleaning part). This is the best part about being active, it’s a way of exercising without feeling like you’re forced to exercise. Even better, it’s good for your wallet and for the environment.
I know it seems intimidating at first, how the heck are you going to turn your life around with all this activity, but you have to trust me on this, I’ve been through it and it’s awesome! Once you add activity into your life, you’ll never look back. So with that, let’s take a look at a few ways we can make your life more active.
Use Your Feet!
The best and easiest activity you can add to life is walking. Amazingly enough, walking does in fact get you places and, considering traffic and parking, it can sometimes get you places quite quickly. For example, I can drive to the book store in 5 minutes and spend 5 minutes parking or I can walk there in 15 minutes. I can walk 5 minutes to the train station and take a 45 minute train to San Francisco or I can drive there in 40 minutes and spend 20 minutes finding parking (argh! I hate SF parking!). I can spend an hour after dinner chatting with my girlfriend while watching TV or we can go for a lovely walk and have a much better conversation. I even had a boss who taught me that the best 1 on 1 meetings can be had while taking a leisurely walk around the office building.
Every time you sit down, every time you get in the car, every time you relax on the couch, stop and think to yourself, could I be doing this walking? Could I use my feet instead? And if it’s a bit far, consider biking.
Stop Paying People To Exercise For You
Ahh, if only we could pay people to exercise for us and still reap all the benefits. Wouldn’t that be an awesome world? I would rent out my jogging to every overweight coworker and help them work off the lbs while making a bit of pocket cash. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work this way. When you pay someone else to do a physical activity for you, they benefit from the exercise AND they take your money. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? And yet, people do it all the time. We pay people to wash our car, mow our lawn, trim our hedges, walk our dog and clean our houses. Now granted, some of these activities are not so fun and others may require skills or tools you don’t have, but most of them don’t.
Walking your dog is a pleasure, not a chore. Mowing your lawn and working on the yard is an incredibly rewarding hobby, not a hassle to be pawned off on some poorly paid laborer. Even washing the car can be fun, especially if it occasionally devolves into a water fight with your significant other. (Not saying this ever happened to me…) Stop looking at these activities as a chore and start looking at them as an opportunity to be more active while also saving a bit of money.
Get Active Hobbies
For most Americans, their number 1 hobby is watching TV. Their number 2 hobby is surfing the web and their number 3 hobby is watching TV again. This is pretty sad, especially when we’re talking about kids. There is a wonderful world out there to be explored and enjoyed. There are hills to be hiked, soccer games to play, baseballs to swing at, forests to explore, lakes to swim in and plenty of off-the-beaten-path spots to make out in and bring a bit of romance back into your life. Most of these hobbies require zero money and almost no special knowledge or skills. On the contrary, many of these hobbies will actually give you an education you can’t get anywhere else.
For example, 7 years ago, when I first started focusing on my health, I became an avid hiker. Since then I try to hike at least once a week. I’ve become an expert on weather patterns, wildlife, edible plants and reading terrain. I now know the layout of the San Francisco Bay Area far better than I ever did before and I’ve also learned quite a bit about the history of this area. All this while spending zero money, burning through a lot of calories and having a ton of fun.
Last week we hiked Portola Redwoods park and it was terrific time. Towards the end of the hike we spotted a little creek and just sat there, right next to the water. I held my girlfriend, we chatted as we enjoyed the running water and laughed as my dog tried, and failed, to catch the bugs hovering over the pool. It was a moment I will never forget and one that I doubt you can replicate at home, while watching the latest episode of House.
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So yes, being active won’t just make you healthier, it will also enrich your life with experiences, knowledge and lessons that will last a lifetime. Now would you still rather go jogging?
Last week I came back to fitness blogging with a note about goals. I asked you all to write down your fitness goals, regardless of if they’re “fit back into my bikini” or “lower my cholesterol”. These goals needed to be:
I emphasize these things because these goals are not just things to dream about. These goals are actually tools for us to use. We will fine tune these goals, create plans based on them and use them as our motivation. As such, they are the first tool in our fitness tool kit.
Common Goals
Now, most health related goals usually fall into the following categories:
The goals for improving health are usually the best since they’re all encompassing but the other ones aren’t bad either. Actually, the best way to go about getting fit is to have multiple goals, preferably some from each category. So if you have time, go back and try to come up with a goal or two from each of these categories.
Now let’s look at the tools we’ll be using.
This is 90% of our basic tool kit. From each one of these categories we will draw specific items that will help us achieve our goals.
The Last 10%
One last thing, I am not in the business of selling magic solutions that will make you thin and healthy in 3 weeks and allow you to go back to your old ways afterwards. If you want to get fit with me then you will need to commit to making lifelong changes. You must be willing to commit to exercising, being active and eating healthier FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Think about that one for a second because it’s a big one. I will suggest a variety of ideas to you in the next few weeks and you need to decide if you want to adopt them as a part of your life. I urge you to try them out before ruling them out, but I also urge you to take this seriously. If you want a healthier life you need a healthier way of living life. No temporary diets, short term exercise plans and month long eating programs. If you’re not willing to commit to a life long change, you may as well stop reading now because you’ll be wasting your time. That’s the last 10% of our tool kit, a resolve to change our lives in permanent ways. Sounds so simple but without this 10% you’re pretty much doomed to fail in the long run.
Now, if you’re ready to make some changes, tune in next week when we start talking about some ways of adding activity to your life.
By the way, here’s my own list of goals:
