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Troubles On The Way To A Smaller Waist Size: 4 Hour Body Update

May 13, 2011 By 3 Comments
This entry is part 14 of 15 in the series 4 Hour Body Diet

It’s been a few weeks now since I started on this new path with the 4 Hour Body diet by Tim Ferris and I’m having some issues.  The trouble started a few weeks ago when work went from busy to insanely busy!  We have a big board meeting coming up and a big new strategy to work out.  As a result, my workload essentially tripled.  To give you a rough feel for what it’s been like, for the last few days, my days have been meetings from 8am to 6pm and then 3 to 4 hours of doing actual work which I never get to because I’m in meetings all day.  Add to that my wedding preparations (yay!) and a full social plate and my calendar has never been busier.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, my ability to follow Tim’s strict rules went way downhill.  It’s impossible to get a good lunch when you’re having catered lunch meetings every day.  It’s impossible to get a good dinner when your VP of something or other wants to go out and have a working dinner.  It’s impossible to eat well when you’re COO wants to take a visiting customer out to dinner and drinks.  Actually, I suppose I shouldn’t say impossible because it’s not, but it’s much more difficult than it was before this. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Diets, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , ,

Laying The Foundation To A Healthy Life

October 11, 2010 By 1 Comment

IMG_8787In the past month or so I’ve been taking you all through a bit of a reboot here at 60 in 3.  We’ve talked about making plans, health toolkits, healthy eating, living active, pushing some weights and getting the heart moving.  These are the essentials of a healthy life.  However, there is also one more aspect and that’s the foundation we’re going to build this whole thing on.

What Does That Even Mean?

Well, before you become healthy physically, you must also become healthy mentally.  Yes, the two go hand in hand.  You may in fact find that one is improving at the same time as the other but you have to commit to both.  You cannot expect yourself to become healthy through diet and exercise when you’re also placing an incredible amount of strain on yourself through issues related to work, money, family and life in general.

Now I have a whole blog devoted to changing your life so I’ll try to keep this brief, but I would like to emphasize this:

If you want to be healthy, you need to reduce your stress level.

Believe me, I know this lesson first hand.  I went through a period of my life that was incredibly stressful.  It involved a series of bad personal events and had nothing to do with my health.  In fact, I kept exercising through it and tried to watch what I eat.  However, no amount of exercise or healthy eating could compensate for the stress I was going through.  My blood pressure shot up, my weight fluctuated by more than 20lbs up and down, my energy level went from manic to depressive and my doctor was considering putting me on some medications to deal with various chronic conditions.  When I finally came out of that dark time, I found a new  strength, both mental and physical.

Now you may not be going through a crisis of the same level, but I bet a lot of you are under a tremendous amount of stress anyway.  Like me, you probably have a day job which keeps you busy, friends and family that keep you busier, finances to deal with, projects to complete and dogs to walk.  Well, all of this means stress and if you don’t deal with it this stress is going to undo any amount of healthy living you can think of.  Stress will cause you to eat too much, drink too much and not exercise.  It will cause your blood pressure to rise and your energy to drop.  It will slowly wear your down and leave you a broken wreck.  Before it gets to that point, try out some of the following pieces of advice:

Sleep - Most of us don’t get enough sleep.  7 to 9 hours a day is recommended and is wonderful for reducing stress.

Meditation - No, it’s not just for new age hippies.  Meditation is a wonderful way to center yourself and reduce your stress.  There are numerous resources on this great tool online.  Why not give them a shot?

Take a walk – Not just good for your body, it’s good for your soul.  A quiet walk on a quiet evening is extremely relaxing.  Take a friend with you for some quality conversation and you have a good stress reliever.

Read a book – A good fiction book will engage your imagination and remove you from day to day stress.  Heck, pick up the latest chapter in the Twilight series if you must. :)

Hug someone – Yes, I’m a hippie at heart.  Hugging has been proven to reduce stress levels and lower blood pressure.  How about finding your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, child, parent or dog and giving them a good hug?

Yoga - Another exercise that’s good for both the body and the soul.  Yoga is essentially a series of stretches that will make you more limber and loosen your mind (in a good way).

I know you came here for fitness advice but I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t talk at least a little bit about your mental health.  I want you to succeed.  I want you to live a long and healthy AND HAPPY life.  You matter to me, all of you, and for your own sakes I urge you to lay a solid mental foundation for that healthy life you are about to start.

As for me, I’m off to walk my dog.  That’s her in the picture at the top of this post.  She may no longer be a puppy, but she’s still my little baby and walking her is an incredibly effective way to reduce stress :)

Filed Under: Self Improvement, Stress Tagged With: , , ,

The Value of Sleep

May 15, 2009 By 4 Comments

One of the things I’ve been struggling with for the past four months is getting enough sleep.  For a variety of reasons, most of them my own fault, I’ve been getting 5 to 6 hours per sleep a night, and that’s just not enough.  I’ve noticed a number of effects from this:

  • Tiredness during the day (duh!) leading to nodding off in meetings and social events.
  • Poor focus at work
  • Occasional irritability
  • Poor decision making at times
  • Greater tendency for binge eating
  • Greater need for artificial stimulants like caffeine and chocolate

Needless to say, this has made my goals a lot harder to accomplish.  So I’m taking a few steps to remedy the situation.

Step 1 – Bed by 10!

I wake up every day at 6:30am.  So if I want to get a good 8 hours of sleep, I need to be in bed by 10pm at the latest.  Sure, some days I won’t be able to do that, but I want those days to be the exception where I’m doing something fun and important and not the rule, where I stay up late surfing the internet.

Step 2 – New Bed

So long old mattress.  Hello new bed!  My current sleeping arrangement is very poorly setup.  It’s too soft in some areas, the pillow setup is bad and the whole mattress is damaged thanks to the lovely Daisy, also known as super puppy!  Time to get something new and this time do a bit more research on it.

Step 3 – No Eating Late

This is an obvious one but I’ve been a bit lax with it lately.  No more really late dinners.

Step 4 – No Drinking Late

I’m cutting out the caffeine anyway, but I’m also going to try to cut down on the water consumption after 8 or 9pm.  This is to avoid the inevitable trip to the bathroom at about 4am.

Step 5 – Bedroom Rearrangement

My bedroom is both my place of sleep and my place of work.  I think this is a bad idea.  It should be one and not the other.  I’m going to rearrange a few things, get rid of my desk and turn the bedroom into a place of relaxation, not stress.

Step 6 – A Sound Experiment

I’m going to experiment with white noise makers as well as music.  I want to see if either one will make a difference in my sleep patterns.

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I’m hoping that all of these things added together will make for a much better night’s sleep.

Filed Under: Sleep, Stress Tagged With: ,
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