Jun
9
Back To School
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Motivation, Time Management | 4 Comments
As some of you know, I recently started graduate school. It’s a part time program, which means I spend 1 weekend out of every three at school. Each one of these school weekends consists of a Thursday, Friday and Saturday during which I’m in class for 12 to 14 hours. I’m finding the schoolwork challenging but enjoyable and in general, I love being back in school, but my health is suffering.
The Problem With School
Actually, there’s more than one problem with school. First is the constant food. Starting from breakfast and lasting all the way to the end of the day, we are constantly surrounded by food. Apparently, the program administrators have decided that food makes people happy, which is true. They have therefore made it their mission to make sure that a student cannot turn around without hitting finding some kind of snack. Some snacks are healthy (fruit bowls are great!) and some are not (brownie bowls not so great) but even if all the food options were healthy there would still be too much of them. To make things even worse, the food is always high quality and very tasty. Yes, that does in fact make things worse since it’s harder to resist.
The second problem with school is the schedule. I am in class from 7am to 8am on average. Sometimes a bit more and sometimes a bit less. After class there is socializing to do, homework to catch up on, school books to read and of course, work to catch up on (all the students maintain a full time job while going to school). With all these time requirements, I’m finding it nearly impossible to work out.
The First Weekend
The first school weekend was two weeks ago and it didn’t go very well healthwise. I think I gained about three lbs and I felt really bad when I got home. I knew I had overeaten for four days and spend those same four days completely inactive. My body felt it and I was stressed out by it.
The Second Weekend
This past weekend I started finding solutions. First of all, I decided to get out of the classroom more often. We get a 10 minute break in the middle of each three hour class. Rather than spending those breaks in class snacking, I decided to take a walk around the campus (The UC Berkeley campus is amazingly beautiful by the way). On some of these walks I invited fellow students along, since socializing and making friends is part of the school experience. I also did mini workouts during some of the walks. Nothing special, just a few stretches, lunges and sqauts.
Second, I made time for real workouts. Yes, I had to sacrifice a bit of my socialization time, but I felt much better. Also, next school weekend I intend to find a workout partner so that I can workout and get to know my fellow students at the same time.
Finally, what really helped with the food being more aware of it. Rather than mindless eating, I paid attention to what I ate and how much I was piling on my plate. I usually don’t have to do that as much since my eating habits are relatively healthy these days. However, surrounded by so much food, I had to be more aware of when, why and how much I was eating. I constantly used my rules for eating to make sure I was eating healthy and not too much.
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I’m looking forward to school, it’s an incredible opportunity. However, I don’t want to spend my school weekends stressed out about my health. Spending just a little bit of time on being healthy should make this whole school experience far more enjoyable.
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Jun
6
The Blowout Workout
Filed Under Exercise, Motivation, Work Out | Leave a Comment
Every once in a while I like trying out a new way of working out. It keeps my workouts interesting plus it lets me try new things. As with eating, I believe that variety in exercise has many benefits. However, variety is not what today’s post is about. Instead, I’d like to tell you about the workout I tried out on Wednesday and how much I liked it.
The Need For Continuous Improvement
If you’re a long time reader of 60 in 3 and have read some of my past series like the 4 day workout, you’ll know that I prefer to do sets of about 10 reps (repetitions). That means I do an exercise like squats ten times. I usually use weights that I know I can lift for those ten reps, but I try to pick something heavy enough to be challenging. That means picking weights that I don’t think I can do for many reps than those ten.
In the past, I’ve been increasing the weights I use at a slow but steady pace. This reflected the improvement in my overall fitness level. For example, when I started working out I could barely bench press the bar on its own, about 45lbs. These days, I usually bench press around 150lbs for my reps. Unfortunately, I just haven’t been able to improve any of the weights I do for the past few months. In fact, I was feeling as though I had reached a sort of plateau and that further improvement was impossible. In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing. Everyone has a point past which they cannot go. Our bodies have limits and it’s good to know that limit. However, I felt like I should be able to lift more but I simply couldn’t take that next step forward.
The Blowout Workout
I happened to mention this to a friend over the weekend, and he suggested I try out a new kind of workout. He called it the Blowout Workout but it’s also known by other names. Essentially, the blowout workout means you do half the repetitions with about 25% to 50% more weight. So if I normally did ten bench presses with 150lbs, on Wednesday I tried to do 5 bench presses with 180lbs.
At first, this was a bit intimidating. I was having enough difficulties with 150lbs, did I really want to try out this much more weight? Yes, it was just five repetitions instead of the my usual 10 but that’s a lot of weight! But I tried it anyway and I’m really glad I did.
The Results
I was able to do the five reps with the extra weight on each and every exercise I normally do. In fact, in many cases I kept going and did 8 to 10 reps. It was like my body had always been capable of this kind of performance but I was holding back for some reason. All it took was a willingness to try. I had convinced myself to try out the higher weight by telling myself that I was just going to do five reps instead of 10 and once I tried it, it just wasn’t that bad.
Breaking Through Self Imposed Limits
All this time, I was perfectly capable of exercising at a much higher level than I was. So why didn’t I? I’m not sure of the answer but I think it’s because I had convinced myself that I just couldn’t take a little more extra weight before the current weight became easy. Well guess what, the current weight was never going to become easy until I tried something harder. It was only when I challenged myself with something more difficult that I noticed how easy my current workout had become.
This is applicable in more than just weight lifting by the way. If you’re trying to do something that’s a bit challenging, don’t just raise the bar a little, raise it a lot! Challenge yourself way beyond your comfort level. Maybe you won’t achieve 100% success, but that big jump in difficulty will make that little jump you were trying to make seem a lot easier.
Try It Out For Yourself
If you’re interested, the Blowout Workout is a very easy idea to implement. Take every weight you’re using right now and increase it by at least 25%. Now try to do five reps. If you can do more, that’s great, but tell yourself that your goal is just the first five reps. That will keep your focused and make everything seem more doable. My only warning is that you need to be careful. You may not be used to this much weight and having another person around you to make sure you don’t do something silly is probably a good idea.
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Trying out new things is great. Trying out things you think are impossible is even better. It will make the things you think are possible but difficult seem very easy.
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Jun
4
The Best Blog Post I Never Wrote!
Filed Under Healthy Habits, Motivation | 1 Comment
I try to link to interesting articles and posts on my weekend roundups because there quite a bit of good information out there that’s not on 60 in 3. Sometimes though, I run into a post that’s so good it just deserves a special mention. Today I found such a post.
Mark’s Daily Apple
I like Mark’s Daily Apple for various reasons. It’s smart, funny and includes a lot of good information. It doesn’t quite get into the details I like to write about, which is probably good or else I wouldn’t have a reason to write articles on 60 in 3 
Now Mark has this concept called the Primal Blueprint. Basically, it means that if you live your life the way our primitive ancestors did you’re going to have a much healthier and happier life and I couldn’t agree more. Mark’s Daily Apple has been talking about this concept for a while now, exploring various parts of it in detail, but they never really explained the whole thing at once. They never told the readers “THIS is what the Primal Blueprint is all about”. Well, they’ve gone ahead and fixed that.
The Primal Blueprint post
Take a look at this folks, it’s the primal blueprint post from Mark’s Daily Apple. It’s a brilliant breakdown of what a healthy life can look like. There’s a lot to learn here and all of it is valuable.
Slight Disagreement
Now I will say that I have a slight disagreement with Mark in that I’m mostly a vegetarian and he recommends meat. However, please note that Mark recommends lean, healthy meats and not the processed crap you find in most restaurants. That I have no problem with as long as it’s in moderation. Personally, I chose my lifestyle because I believe it’s healthier for the environment around me, but I have no problem admitting that healthy meat options can be great parts of a healthy lifestyle. In fact, If I could find a reliable source of meat that was healthy and environmentally friendly, I’d be happily munching away at it. As is, I do sometimes add in healthy and sustainable options like venison to my diet. So Mark and I really aren’t that far off on this part of the Primal Blueprint.
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Yes, I’m urging my readers to go read someone else’s blog. So go already!
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Jun
2
Rule #1 of Healthy Eating, the Variety Counts Rule
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Healthy Habits, Motivation | 5 Comments
Two weeks ago, I started talking about the five rules I use for eating healthy food. I use these relatively simple rules because It’s just too difficult to keep up with all the guidelines, recommendations and plans for eating the perfectly balanced diet. You can drive yourself crazy and still not be 100% perfect. Today we look at rule #1, which I like to call the “variety counts” rule. This particular rule is partially influenced by Michael Pollan but is also from my own history.
By the way, you may have noted that I’m not exactly following a sequential order in discussing these rules; I started with rule #2, followed by #4, then 3, then 5 and now #1. That’s for two reasons, one because I want to emphasize that none of these rules is more important than the other. Also, I picked each rule because it was appropriate to the day I was writing it. Today is Monday and we’re expecting a catered lunch here at work. This specific caterer delivers food that is exactly like the food I grew up with. So I thought today is a good day to talk about variety and expanding your cuisine choices.
What Is “Variety Counts” Rule?
I grew up in Israel with a mother who came from Eastern Europe. That means my diet consisted of two different cuisines. The first was the Mediterranean cuisine I would eat around town. Things like falafel, shawarma and hummus. The Med diet is relatively healthy if eaten in moderation. The second cuisine was my mother’s eastern European style cooking. Lots of heavy beef and potatoes type dishes with incredibly tasty sauces and of course, chicken soup! The eastern European diet was slightly less healthy since it had more fat and calories and less vegetables. However, the two diets, combined with an active childhood, kept me healthy.
Then we moved to the US. My mother kept cooking her eastern European dishes, but my neighborhood diet had changed from healthy Mediterranean healthy to American fast food. I was still active, which kept my weight in check, but my diet became far less healthy. The final nail in the coffin of my healthy eating came when I moved out. Since I didn’t cook, I either ate out at restaurants or bought frozen dinners and all of these meals were traditional American foods. I ate burgers by the dozens, pizza, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, cheese pockets and microwaved chicken nuggets. I’m guessing you can figure out what happened. This new diet, combined with a lack of exercise, drove me to that health meltdown a few years ago from which I am still recovering.
Since then, one of the things I’ve discovered is the wonderful variety of food we have available to us. I discovered sushi and sashimi, I found Chinese and Thai restaurants, I tried out Indian food and found that I loved it, I experimented with vegetarian dishes and saw that they were really good. I even rediscovered Mediterranean food and reconnected with some of the healthy food I grew up with. I used to be afraid of strange foods but now I seek them out. I enjoy new flavors and new selections.
All of this has left me with a far larger selection of healthy choices to eat. Want a good way to eat vegetables? How about that incredible veggie stir fry from the Thai place. Looking for a good protein choice? Why not try the Salmon sashimi? How about the pumpkin dish at the Afghan place for dinner or the burrito from the Mexican place down the road? These are all healthy options that I would never have discovered had I not been looking for more variety. So these days I welcome variety in my food. I’m always happy to try out new dishes and I’m always looking to experiment with new cuisines. Who knows, you may just find a new favorite dish.
Given two options, I will always pick out the dish I’ve never tried before. That’s the “variety counts” rule.
Advanced Applications
Every week, try out at least one new cuisine or dish. Ask about the ingredients, research the preparation and learn more about how your food was made. It’s a wonderful education and you’ll discover many things you never realized about food.
Don’t limit yourself. Why is an omelet only for breakfast? Why can you only BBQ in the evenings? Why do you have to have mashed potatoes with meat loaf? Mix and match and see what works.
Clarifications to the Variety Counts Rule
No, this rule is not an excuse to gorge. Yes, if you’ve never tried deep fried twinkies before, maybe you should just once. However, did you remember to ask about how your food is prepared? If you did, I’m guessing you’ll figure out that deep fried twinkies are a one time thing. Not all food is healthy and that’s something you’ll figure out as you go.
Why Use the Variety Counts Rule?
Because a boring diet is one that won’t last. Yes, there are healthy dishes in the classic American diet, but they are few and far between. If you limited yourself to just those, you’ll soon get bored and fall back to unhealthy eating habits. That’s why you need to branch out and try new things. Doing so will help you discover new healthy dishes to add to your repartee.
But I Like What I’m Eating Now!
Sure, and if it’s healthy, there’s no reason for you to stop. I’m not saying you should eat something new every day, just make sure to try out new things once in a while.
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I can’t imagine life without a variety of foods. It would be boring and I would quickly revert back to unhealthy habits if I had to eat the same one or two healthy dishes day after day after day. Do yourself a favor and try something new today.
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May
30
Rule #5 of Healthy Eating, The Am I Hungry Rule
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Healthy Habits, Motivation | Leave a Comment
Last Monday, I started talking about the five rules I use for eating healthy food. I use these relatively simple rules because It’s just too difficult to keep up with all the guidelines, recommendations and plans for eating the perfectly balanced diet. You can drive yourself crazy and still not be 100% perfect. Today we look at rule #5, which I like to call the “Am I hungry rule?”. This particular rule is all mine although it’s based on a whole wide range of information that I picked up while I was researching good health and eating habits.
By the way, you may have noted that I’m not exactly following a sequential order in discussing these rules; I started with rule #2, followed by #4, then 3 and now I’m jumping to rule #5. That’s for two reasons, one because I want to emphasize that none of these rules is more important than the other. Also, I picked each rule because it was appropriate to the day I was writing it. Today is Friday, the perfect day to talk about eating when you’re not hungry.
What Is The Am I Hungry Rule?
One of my biggest problems in controlling my eating was eating for reasons other than hunger. I would eat when I was stressed as a way of calming down. If I had a bad day at work I would think of that whole tub of ice cream as a justified way of rewarding myself and cheering myself up. Of course, the realization of how much I ate would just make me more depressed but that’s a whole other story. I would also eat as an excuse to avoid doing other things. For example, if there was something I really needed to do but didn’t want to start, I would go to the kitchen and look for things to eat. The act of eating took time as did the eating itself and by the time I was done it was too late to start the thing I needed doing. So yay for me, I avoided something unpleasant. Finally, I would find myself eating for social reasons. For example, friends wanted to go out and eat so I would go with them and order food even if I wasn’t hungry.
These days, I have the “am I hungry” rule. Basically, if I’m thinking about eating or if I find myself about to grab something to eat I pause and ask myself if I’m really hungry. I take a minute or two to think about what I’m doing and why. Quite frequently I find that I’m not really hungry and that I’m about to eat for the wrong reasons. In that case I put the food down and go on with my daily business. If I really am hungry then I eat and I don’t feel guilty about it.
One other aspect of the “am I hungry” rule is stopping eating when you’re no longer hungry. Again, I used to eat way past the point at which I was full. I would feel stuffed and bloated but I still kept eating. These days I eat slower and I stop eating when I’m no longer hungry.
Advanced Applications
Are you at a restaurant? Is it the kind of place that serves huge portions? Why not ask for a to go box before you even start eating. Put half the food away and then start eating. It will stop you from cleaning your plate and eating too much.
Is your restaurant the kind with a bottomless dish of chips? Just say no and have them take it away. No one can refuse chips or those bowls of bread for long. No matter how strong your will power is you’ll eventually find yourself munching away without really thinking about it.
Make food a little less convenient. We all have those open bags of chips or bowls of cookies sitting around the house. Why not prevent the temptation to mindlessly eat and put them out of sight. Trust me, you’ll find them when you’re hungry.
Why not write down what you feel when you eat? Keeping a food journal doesn’t have to be just about calories, it can also be about feelings and mindsets. That will help you identify the reasons why you eat when you’re not hungry and possibly avoid them in the future.
Clarifications to the Am I Hungry Rule
There are really no clarifications to this one. It’s pretty simple to understand.
Why Use the Am I Hungry Rule?
Because mindless eating adds a lot of pointless calories to our diets. The typical mindless snack like chips, cookies and bread is full of calories and very unhealthy. I suppose if your mindless snacks is carrot sticks it wouldn’t be so bad.
But I Like Eating!
Well, so do I. In fact, I love eating, but I love other things more. I love my wife and I want to spend many happy and healthy years with her. I love hiking and I want to climb to the top of Half Dome next year. I love scuba diving and I want to see the great barrier reef in Australia. There are many things I love and I’m willing to sacrifice a little mindless eating if it means I get to do those things.
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It wasn’t my meals that killed my diet, it was the silly stuff I ate when I wasn’t hungry. It was the chocolate bar I had when I wanted to avoid work. Learn from my mistake and stop mindless eating. Eat when you’re hungry and stop eating when you’re full.
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May
12
Vacation Zen
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Motivation | 2 Comments
After a long and incredibly fun honeymoon in the Caribbean, my wife and I returned home last night, exhausted but very satisfied. Today, I climbed on the scale for my Monday morning weigh in and was pleasantly surprised to see that I had gained no weight over this trip. This surprised me since I had no time for workouts and my diet was not as controlled as it usually is. However, in retrospect, I realized that being healthy on vacation turned out to be pretty easy.
Physical Activity
In terms of workout, a vacation may not have scheduled trips to the gym, but it’s actually very active. Sure, I wasn’t in the gym every day for an hour, but I was constantly moving. I was swimming in the ocean, wading in the pool, diving on a reef or walking through interesting neighborhoods. Rather than hardcore exercise once a day and then remain relatively sedentary the rest of the day, I was moderately active the entire day. There’s an important lesson there about how healthy an active lifestyle can be. It’s also comforting to know that an active day can replace a daily workout, at least in the short term. This will allow me to enjoy my vacations a lot more.
Food
This is the pitfall of vacations. You are constantly surrounded by food and most of it is unhealthy. Get to the airport and your breakfast choices are Starbucks or some greasy bacon omelet. Get on the plane and they toss salty peanuts and cookies at you to keep you pacified. Get to the hotel and there’s Pina Coladas to drink plus overprice room service. Go out to eat and the tourist restaurants will provide you with an incredibly large portion size in an attempt to make you forget about the incredibly large bill. In other words, you are constantly surrounded by food, most of it bad.
This is really the essence of unhealthy vacations. It’s not the lack of physical activity, it’s the tendency to binge. To say “hey, I’m on vacation so why not have that extra steak plus the cheesecake and the milk shake!” Well, the immediate answer is because you want o enjoy your vacation and not spend it feeling bloated. The long term answer is because you want to be healthy and not spend your post vacation time regretting those extra milk shakes. And the real answer is because vacation is not about food, it’s about enjoying yourself, and you could do that a lot better if you weren’t overweight and out of shape.
A Whole New Life
During this honeymoon, my wife and I got our scuba certification. We had the most incredible time diving on the coral reefs of the Grand Cayman and playing with the stingrays. Having spoken with the dive instructor, he relayed quite a few stories about overweight and out of shape people who simply couldn’t dive. That really made me realize how much more I’ve been enjoying my life in the past few years.
I’ve been able to climb peaks that I could never imagine climbing a few years ago, and the views have been spectacular. I’ve been able to bike down roads I might never have seen if I had not lost weight. I have hiked trails that I could never attempt if I was still out of shape. I’ve danced with my wife, and while the exercise didn’t cure me of my two left feet it has certainly allowed me to stay on that dance floor for more than one song before I’m out of breath. I’ve now dived on reefs and swam with sting rays, two experiences I will never in my life forget. These are all things i could not have done if I was still out of shape and to me, these are what vacations are all about.
Culinary Experiences
By the way, I’m not saying you should stick to lettuce and tofu on your vacations, my wife and I certainly didn’t. We sampled the local cuisine and we enjoyed a few desserts we wouldn’t normally order. All I’m saying is that making a vacation healthy means not eating that extra food you really didn’t need in the first place. I mean, are those airplane peanuts part of your unforgettable vacation experience? Get rid of the useless junk and save room for the really important things.
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Next time you’re on vacation, ask yourself “do I want to spend my time binging on food or do I want to spend it having an experience I will never forget?” Believe me, you can get that extra milk shake anywhere, but you can’t really say the same about diving with the stingrays.
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Apr
7
I usually link to interesting articles on my weekend roundups. However, I happened to find one article that I thought deserved a bit more discussion. It’s from the New York Times and discusses the limitations of human willpower.
Specifically, the article makes the point that our will power is limited. If we try to use it on something like fitness, we might have less of it for things like finances. Here’s the exact quote from the article:
The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others.
Multitasking Often Leads To Failures
It’s an interesting assertion and one that has a lot of applicability to fitness and health. I know that I can’t focus on more than project at a time. When I try to do too many things at once, I end up overextended and usually fail at all of them. For example, I recently decided to try and expand my interests. So I picked up some language tapes and tried to learn conversational Chinese. I also started music lessons, something I’ve always wanted to do.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t devote enough attention to either of these pursuits and so I ended up doing badly on both. I never had enough time to practice the new words or notes that I learned and my progress was slow from lesson to lesson. Then I decided to focus on just one thing, the Chinese lessons, and delayed the music lessons until next year. All of a sudden, I was making much better progress.
The Big Bang Theory of Fitness Rarely Works
A similar thing happened when I first started working on my fitness. I wanted to accomplish everything the first week. I had an exercise plan, an eating plan, a plan to cut down on sodas, a plan to jog more and a plan to come up with more plans. It was crazy. I split my will power and focus among so many things that there was no chance of me being successful at any of them.
It Takes a Month To Form a Habit
A few miserable weeks later, I started with a new approach. I made gradual changes, one or two at a time. No big bang theories for me. No more trying to do everything at once. Instead I picked one or two things and worked on them until they no longer seemed like work. Remember, it takes at least a month for something to become a habit and you need something to become a habit before you move on to the next thing. I waited until a change had become ingrained into my life before moving on to the next change I wanted to make.
Prioritize Your Goals
There are probably a few things you want to do. Some of them may be health related and some may not. They all require focus and attention, which means you can’t do all of them at once. What you need to do is be selective. Make a list of the goals you want to accomplish and the things you want to do. For example, here is my list:
- Save money by eating at home more
- Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
- Get my graduate degree
- Eat more vegetables
- Learn another language
- Learn a musical instrument
- Start a hiking blog
- Start a movie blog
- Get a promotion at work
- Weigh 200lbs
- Run marathon
These aren’t in order of priority and I don’t think I could easily prioritize them since they’re all so different in terms of time requirements. However, I can already see a few that I simply don’t have time for. For example, #3, 7 and 8 are all long term goals that require quite a bit of work. I just don’t have the time right now to work on an extra two blogs since a lot of my time for the next two years is going to be devoted to school. #5 and #6 are similar in that they’re learning a new skill. I doubt I can do both at the same time so one of them will have to go.
So after looking at all of these things, I can cut down my goal list to the following:
- Save money by eating at home more
- Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
- Get my graduate degree
- Eat more vegetables
- Learn another language
- Get a promotion at work
- Weigh 200lbs
- Run marathon
Now if I do #4 and #8, that probably means my weight will go down. So let’s remove #7 since I’ll be working on it through other goals. #1 and #4 are related, so why don’t I just combine them into one goal that will be easier to follow.
- Prepare at least two vegetable base meals at home per week
- Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
- Get my graduate degree
- Learn another language
- Get a promotion at work
- Run marathon
So now I have 6 goals. It’s still a lot but, since each of these is different, I can probably manage these as is. When school starts, I might want to cut back my language lessons but we’ll see.
Try It Yourself
This isn’t a hard exercise. Just write down a list of very specific goals. They can’t be too general like “I want to be healthy.” Instead, they need to be as specific as possible. Then take a look at your list. Is there a lot of overlap? Are there goals that can be combined? If you have too many similar goals, you’ll never accomplish them all. Make sure you pick a few that you can work on at the same time. That means you shouldn’t pick two goals that have the same time requirements. For example, if you pick two goals, both of which require you to go to some kind of weekend lesson, you probably should eliminate one of them.
What you end up with should be a short list of goals or things to do. Each of them should be unique and there shouldn’t be much overlap in terms of requirements from you. Now you can start detailing each of these goals with specific steps you need to take.
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It’s easy to write down a bunch of things you want to do. Unfortunately, trying to do them all at the same time is a sure way to set yourself up for failure. Pick your battles and your goals. Do a few things, do them well and make them into a habit before you move on to something new.
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