habits

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3 Weeks In With No S and Shovelglove

August 25, 2008 | No comments

I posted earlier this month about starting the No S diet and shovelglove. This past Friday was the end of week 3 on these two systems for me, which strikes me as a good time to note my experiences thus far. During the three weeks, I only slipped up once, having one “failure” day for No S; in my opinion, it was a fairly minor slip up. I had dinner with my older nephew at a restaurant before going to see The Dark Knight, and my meal wouldn’t have quite fit on one plate at home. Other than that day, I stuck to both systems exactly as I was supposed to. Onto the observations:

No S

Switching from my former eating habits to No S led to their being many changes for me. Previously, I ate snacks (a lot); I ate sweets (far too many); and I often had seconds. Which would, of course, probably have a lot to do with why I’m currently fat (but shrinking, thank the lords of Kobol!) Cutting out all of those all at once was a bit of a ride the first few days, but after that, things smoothed out drastically.

On the first couple of days on the system, I considered chewing on my arm between lunch and dinner; when dinner time came around, I felt rather ravenous, ready to eat the proverbial horse. After those first few days though, the extreme hunger between lunch and dinner started to subside. Now, when dinner arrives, I’m hungry (as I should be), but not ready to leap into the bowl of mashed potatoes or steal the entire pan of baked chicken, retreating to my room like some overgrown (but hopefully still more attractive) gremlin.

Removing snacks from my weekday eating habits entirely has proven to be quite revealing; now that I’m not snacking all the time, I can see just how much I was snacking. As Reinhard (the creator of the system) points out on one of his websites, “No S makes excess seem excessive.” It’s also proven interesting to see what I want to snack on during S days, when I’m allowed to. Most of the crap I nibbled on all the time before – crackers, bits of cheese, rice cakes – just doesn’t seem appealing. It would seem that throwing such things down the hatch all the time was just a habit; now that the habit’s gone, I don’t really care about the foods. This goes for many of the sweets that I “loved” before; when I can eat them on S days now, I generally don’t want to. I prefer my treats on S days to be real treats, not some yucky little white powdered donut.

It’s also interesting how sticking to a rigid but simple plan has altered how I think. When someone offers me something to eat when it’s not a mealtime, my brain immediately throws out: well, duh, of course not – it’s not a mealtime! The same goes for when there’s dessert available after dinner. I don’t have to make any choices about it, because my habit has already done so for me: if it’s a weekday, the answer is no, good sir; move along from that cake. On to…

Shovelglove

Well, I think the fact that I stuck with this every weekday for three weeks says a lot on its own, but to elaborate:

Shovelglove is fast, it’s fun, and, believe it or not, effective. Having struggled with my weight for years now, I’ve messed around with a lot of different exercise programs, and the vast majority of them were boring and unenjoyable. For a lot of them, I’d even go so far as to say that they sucked. They were things that would have made me lose weight, certainly, but they were things that I wouldn’t do consistently. Something can be 100% effective, but if you don’t do it, it’s 0% effective.

I’ve stuck with shovelglove because it’s extremely enjoyable, oddly so; because it’s helping me lose weight (along with No S); and because in comparison to what I’ve tried before – lifting weights for nearly an hour per session – it takes up practically none of my time. That, and as I mentioned before, shovelglove caresses my inner geek. It’s exercise and roleplaying; I get to pretend I’m a farmer, or a chain-gang worker, or a guy on a steamship stoking the oven, or an elf (a very hefty one!), smiting an orc. I know, that sounds absurd. It is absurd. But I challenge you: get a sledgehammer and a sweater, and do shovelglove for a week. If you go the whole week without imagining you’re doing something like the above, well… I can’t help you. Are you human?

Results

Of course, doing these two systems would be pointless if they weren’t helping me in some way, but they are, as I mentioned above. So, how much weight have I lost? It’s hard to say, honestly. The scales at first went down a bit, and then they went up. At that point, I decided that obsessively checking the scales would be pointless. Doing shovelglove, I know for a fact that I’m packing on muscle; my arms are more muscular than they’ve ever been, even compared to when I was doing a lot of heavy weight lifting. Muscle weighing pretty much the same as fat, but being much denser, it’s hard for me to say how much weight I’ve “lost.”

So let’s talk slightly more practical results. Doing a simple “how snug are these” test with my pants, I’ve lost at least an inch, perhaps two, from my waist. One pair of shorts I wore a few days ago kept slipping down, practically falling off of me. I was able to slide them off without unfastening anything. For me, this was a bit like finding a hidden 6th toe on my foot – I don’t recall the last time I had trouble with my pants slipping. My arms are more muscular and much more toned, as are my legs (I’ve been doing Hindu squats as part of my shovelglove routine). All in all, I feel better all around, and I’m less, well, round. I’ve still got lots of roundness to me, trust me, but some of it’s gone. For a mere 3 weeks, these are results I can’t really argue with.

As a final note, I’ve chuckled a bit at the responses I’ve gotten from family members when I tell them what I’m doing for exercise. “You’re doing.. what? With a sledgehammer?” They smile and nod, as if saying: well, isn’t that nice, you’ve gone completely insane, and such an exercise routine will never work.

Except it is working. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, or in my arms, I suppose. The proof, not the pudding; it’s a Monday, and so I obviously can’t have pudding today!

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Exercise: Making it Accessible

May 31, 2008 | 3 comments

I mentioned before that I’ve become interested in using kickboxing for exercise, and that I bought a punching bag to make it more effective. When I bought it, I had planned on hanging it in our attic from a beam, which was in place for some sort of room construction (which was never completed). I followed through with this plan. Problems quickly popped up with this, though; problems which, admittedly, could have been avoided, if I’d done a little more research and put my grey matter to use.

But I didn’t. I got it home, lugged it up two flights of stairs to the attic, and hung it up as quickly as possible. Just like the overgrown kid I am – “A new toy!” Then I tried to use it and noticed the problems.

The first problem that appeared after mounting the bag in the attic and hitting it around a bit is connected to this simple fact: I’m not a carpenter. Not only am I not a carpenter, I never even took shop class in school; my knowledge of woodworking is woefully inadequate, more or less nonexistent, actually. Which, of course, would explain why I mounted an 80 pound punching bag to a beam that isn’t nearly sturdy enough to hold it, at least not for a long period of time with me knocking it around.

To make it clear, I did test the beam, or rather my wife did. She weighs a good deal more than 80 pounds, and she hung from the beam, and it didn’t give at all. We figured, okay, if it’ll hold her, it’ll hold the bag – simple math, right? Well, yes. But see, I didn’t proceed to push my wife around while she was hanging from the beam, throwing hooks at her and front kicks and all of that other stuff. She just hung there. Apparently, when you hang an 80 pound object from a chain, and then punch and kick it around, when the bag jerks down on the chain, there’s a little bit more stress than 80 pounds being applied. Who woulda’ thought it, right?

More specifically, when I hit the punching bag or, gods forbid, kicked it, bad things started to happen. The beam warped an awful lot, to the point where it went beyond “normal warping” to “hey, that might just snap in two!” It warped in both directions, both side to side and up and down. Furthermore, if I just shoved the bag and let it swing back and forth, I could hear the beam creaking at one point where it was attached to the ceiling. I could imagine the nails slowly but surely squeaking out of their holes.

I also discovered something else that could be seen as “not good.” Shortly after mounting the bag, I noticed a thick, white wire running along the top of the beam. It crossed over to another beam, and went to a light bulb. Oops. Okay, so I mounted an 80 pound bag on a weak-as-jelly beam that has a live electrical wire on it. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done…

The final blow (pun woefully intended) to the plan of having the punching bag in the attic was heat. Summer hasn’t even officially arrived yet, and our attic is already hot. Once summer arrives, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if temperatures up there hit 120 Fahrenheit. While I know that you’re supposed to get warmed up during exercise, I’m not sure a heat stroke is on the agenda for health and weight loss.

Of course, all of this led to me not using the bag much. I was afraid of it falling on me, I was afraid of getting electrocuted when it fell on me, and I was afraid that if I spent more than half an hour up there, I’d either collapse or melt, perhaps both. None of that sounded appealing. I also didn’t use it simply because it was out of the way; it being in the attic proves that the saying “out of sight, out of mind” holds at least some truth.

So, having had enough of not using it, I went on a scouting mission in our house to find a better spot. All of the ceilings were more or less out of the question: we have an old house, in which the ceilings are 1) about 9 and a half feet high and 2) covered with plaster. I didn’t really want to buy another chain setup, and I really didn’t want the bag slowly making the hole in the ceiling bigger and bigger. Success in my search came quickly, however. I’m not really sure what it’s called, but there’s a sort of portal between the large part of our bedroom, and a smaller area; that portal has some quite thick woodwork, and being part of the wall, I figured it’d be sturdy enough to hold the bag. The bag was remounted there, and my guess proved correct: solid as a rock. I’ve used it three or four times now, and haven’t seen any problems.

Hopefully, having the bag in my our bedroom will help me stick with it, as it’s obviously far more accessible now. Certainly, I’ve already used it more in the last couple of days than I had in the past few weeks, when it was in the attic. Let’s hope the expert at Duke University knows what he’s talking about when he says that our environment plays a large role in what habits we have. (I’m still unconvinced that willpower plays no role, though. Having the bag in my bedroom will probably help, but I can still walk by it without using it, unless I throw some willpower into the mix.)

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Me Versus Making New Habits

May 24, 2008 | 8 comments

I’ve been reflecting on a trait I have, or perhaps one would say problem, and how I might get rid of it. What’s the problem? I have a hell of a time sticking to some things, despite how badly I’d like to be successful. I’ll think of something I want to do, or something I think I should do, and decide: alright, I’m going to do this. The motive is there, the intention is there, the will is there. The will ultimately disappears, however, and I’m not quite sure where the little bugger is getting off to.

I posted a little under a year ago about being in a Buddhist meditation group. The group has since had some problems in getting together, mostly due to scheduling conflicts between us. It’s amazing how difficult it can be to get 3-4 people together in one place for an hour… but I digress. What of my own daily meditation, which I had been doing at the time? Good question. I’m not sure what happened. My zafu and zabuton are still set up in my room, but I’ve sat down there once in months (a few days ago). Why? I just can’t bring myself to do it every day. I still want to, and I have the time, but when it comes around to doing it, something in my head just says “meh”, and I go do something else. And then the next day rolls around, I think “I should meditate”, and yet I don’t.

The same thing happened with my attempt at a health reboot. I had started keeping tabs on what I was eating, and I was exercising daily. And then I slipped, and then slipped again, and then I just fell back into the habits I’d had before: not exercising, eating generally like crap, and feeling bad about it the whole time. I’ve recently tried to get back into exercising, but it’s been a rather halting start. I’ve had more off days than on days, and unless that flips around, I’ll probably quit altogether. It was easy for me to start, as I found a form of exercise that I genuinely enjoy: kickboxing. I got into it, even going so far as to buy a punching bag (and to go to the considerable bother of hanging the thing, which was more difficult than I had anticipated.) But starting and staying the course are proving, of course, to be two different things. I’ve had the bag for around three weeks now, and it’s been used on 4 or 5 times. That’s not going to cut it.

So what’s the deal?

That’s the million dollar question, right? Well, here’s the problem: apparently, I’m human. Really. I did some googling on changing habits, and found that what I’m struggling with is pretty common. “Good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with, bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with” is a quote from Brian Tracey, a motivational speaker, and is perhaps the shortest and clearest summation of what I’m struggling with. The cliché “humans are creatures of habit” is a cliché for a reason, after all. We get stuck in our ways and often, it takes more than just brute willpower to change them.

Leo at Zen Habits (love the blog name) has a good post on things to avoid when changing habits, which of course is full of things I’ve been doing when attempting these changes. And I do mean full – I think I’m guilty of every single thing on his list. Probably the biggest thing I’m guilty of is not maintaining accountability. I posted here in the past about exercising, about meditation, and then said nothing more of it. In “real life” (whatever the frak that means anymore, right?), I was also pretty quiet about my intentions to change myself. Certainly, my wife knew, my mom knew, but I hadn’t really talked to them in depth about my goals. It was more like, out of the blue, I said “oh, by the way, I’m going to exercise / meditate / whatever every day, poke me if you notice I’m not doing so, mmkay?” I’m sure they responded in the positive, and then soon after forgot about me ever having said anything :)

But, that’s not really their problem. It’s not their responsibility, or anyone else’s for that matter, to make me accountable. I have to do that. I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that for my exercising and meditation, though. I could certainly post about it here, but every day? Doubtful on that. Twitter? Maybe, but there’s an awful lot of noise on Twitter, so I’m not really sure anyone would notice if I didn’t post a tweet of “exercised for the day” or whatever. Leo made a training blog to help keep him accountable, but I’m not really sure if I want to go that route; I’ve already got two blogs, and if I make a blog for every habit I wish to make or change… well, I don’t have that much time to blog! Perhaps I’ll just talk to the family again, in more depth, and ask them to make me give a report each day. Or I could put up a calendar somewhere (the fridge would be wonderfully clichéd but practical), and mark the days I did whatever it is I’m wanting to be doing. I’ll think on it some more.

But, like I said, I’m guilty of more than just not keeping myself accountable for my goals. After reading Leo’s post, I realize that I’ve been failing pretty much everytime because when I’ve tried to change my habits, it’s been a rather spur of the moment “hey, I’m gonna’ do this!” sort of thing, with little no planning. I never wrote down any plan, especially nothing specific; I didn’t think about obstacles, I was just going to do it, by the gods! And we see how well that goes. No meditation in more or less months, and my newfound kickboxing routine quickly disappearing into that pile of vague memories which start with “Hey, I remember when I tried doing that…”

So, the gameplan: keep Leo’s list of “things to avoid” in mind, while I figure out how I’m going to go about making a 30 minute meditation session and a 30-45 minute exercise session part of my daily routine. But as per his advice, one of those is going on the shelf for a bit; you’re not supposed to tackle two habits at once ;) More on this after I’ve thought about it some more and done a bit more research. And if you’ve not seen anything on this blog within a few weeks about this, call me on it. All of ya’.

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