Doing Everything I Know That Makes a Difference

Last weekend, I recommitted to healthy living as my number one priority, and I told you I am starting a new plan. This week I'm back to share.

My motivation is sky high. I want to set a good example for my kids, and I want to keep up with them on the ball field for a few more years. I want to keep my health for decades and strengthen my quality of life. And I as mentioned last week, while it's what's on the inside that matters, thousands of years of human history suggest people are judged by how they look more than we'd like to admit.

So what to do? What would I do if I really meant it? How would I place my bet to get maximum health as efficiently as possible?

CHRZ.

Ok, so I have an unnatural fascination with acronyms. I like to have a snappy, memorable device to capture big ideas. CHRZ, pronounced "chores", stands for the four things that I believe absolutely get results in improving health, well-being, and effectiveness:

C - Calorie counting
H - High intensity interval training
R - Reasonable rest
Z - Zero in-box

Calorie counting. As a long-time observer of dieters, it's clear to me calorie counting is the most effective way to go. Over the 100-plus weeks of the Pounds Off Playoff, I've almost always lost when I've counted calories, and usually just went sideways on everything else. The examples of calorie counting leading to huge weight loss are too numerous to mention. My plan is to eat 700 calories less than my maintenance amount.

High intensity interval training. I bought into the conventional wisdom of the 1990s that even moderate activity will improve your health (and on some level, I suppose it's true). As a sedentary person, it was alluring to think all I had to do was park in the farthest space, squeeze in some 10 minute walks, or take the stairs instead of the elevator. But a recent blog at nytimes.com makes a compelling case that brief, high intensity training is the most effective of all. The post advocates one minute at near max effort, followed by one minute of recovery, for a cycle of ten reps total. While I'm very new to this approach, I can't help but notice how similar it is to riding our super hilly local bike trail, which is basically a minute of uphill followed by coasting, repeated several times. I saw results from those rides almost immediately. My plan is to do HIIT sessions 3 times per week, in addition to other activity. 

Reasonable rest. I remember a news report from years ago that said people are better rested if they go to bed at 10:00 than at midnight, even if they sleep for the same length of time. It made no sense to me, but my experience has been exactly that. If I go to bed late - especially if I have to fight to stay awake - I don't feel as rested the next day. And if I don't feel rested, it is much harder to keep to a disciplined eating plan. My plan is to get to bed in the 10:00 hour. 

Zero inbox. This may seem like the old, "One of these things is not like the others...", but hang in there with me on this. We all know stress can lead to overeating. The single most effective thing I've done to combat stress is empty my in-boxes. These days, that's my physical in-box at work, my email in-boxes at work and at home, my Instapaper account, and my DVR. When the content piles up, it weighs on me. I'm not breaking any new ground here, just using the tools productivity developed by experts like David Allen and Merlin Mann, who coined the term "Inbox Zero." My plan is to stay as close to inbox zero as possible at all times, and clear all in-boxes by midnight Saturday every week.

I'm already a week into this four-tier strategy of doing my CHRZ every day, and I'm seeing results. More to come...

Why Didn't I Think of This? Awesome.

At some point, I stopped checking posts on Jack's blog. A casualty of my super busy life of the past year, I guess. My loss. But this holiday weekend, I found the time to check back in on a few blogs, and found a gem.

As a big-time baseball fan, and James Earl Jones fan, this post in the style of Field of Dreams would have been perfect on Pounds Off Playoff. Great stuff, Jack!

(If it's been a while since you've seen Field of Dreams, here's a link to a video clip of the speech by James Earl Jones' character, Terrence Mann.)

Refocusing Over President's Day Weekend

This summer, I very nearly ended this blog, as I was moving into the job I've held this year and I knew it would basically command my undivided attention. I kept the blog for one reason: my journey is not complete. Now that I'm entering a new phase of my career, it's an opportunity to reassess my priorities and achieve the goals of the Pounds Off Playoff.

I've had two "epiphanies" this week, in the wake of not getting a job I put my all into as interim. The first was stumbling on the following logic: Hypothetically, would I give up a portion of my salary to weigh less and be healthier? The answer is an unequivocal yes. So maybe it's a blessing in disguise that I have time to work on my weight before getting the bigger job. The second epiphany was realizing that fewer than  5% of people with the job I applied for are significantly overweight*. (I'm not saying that's why I didn't get the job.) So while I'm focused on my health for all the right reasons, statistically the fact is that losing weight may help my career, too.

*It's not a physical job, if you were wondering...this being President's Day, it's kind of like how all of the recent presidents and nominees range from very thin to slightly overweight. I mean, Bill Clinton was ridiculed for his weight, with this great SNL sketch and the nickname "Bubba," but if you look at him, he really wasn't even truly obese.


I just spent the weekend making a plan and I'm going to spend the week implementing it. I'll write about it in depth next week. I'm fortunate that I have my health, and I'm going to do everything I need to to keep it that way. Staying healthy is my my number one priority, and it should have been all along.

Again, thanks for your support.

Long week, short post

This has not been a stellar week for me. I thought about skipping posting this week (I post every Sunday), but decided to go ahead. In a nutshell, I was appointed to a position in my organization in September when my boss vacated it to take another job. I've put my all into it and I don't think it'd be braggin' to say things have gone very well. Until this week anyway, when I had to interview for the permanent appointment. Long story short, it's a very attractive job, there were a lot of hot candidates, and this just wasn't my time. I'm not out of work, so nothing tragic here, just disappointment over what might have been. I've also had my first cold in forever, my omnipresent eyeglasses broke 24 hours before my interview, and registration for the Big Climb closed before the rest of my team could get registered (my wife and sons are in, at least). It was just one of those weeks. My eating wasn't stellar - I wasn't really able to concentrate on weight loss - but it wasn't a disaster, either, considering the circumstances.

The reason I decided to post is that I decided not to skip my stairs training this morning, which I did before awaiting the phone call from the search person. It was easily the best I've felt all week. Exercise really does help you combat stress, and thank goodness for that. My training stairs have 68 steps and I increased from 12 to 13 flights. On track for the 20 needed for The Big Climb.

If you're interested in stair climbing, I just came across a very good introductory article on stair training.

I appreciate all of you who still check in here from time to time. Now that the craziest part of my job is behind me, maybe I'll be setting a better example on the eating and exercise fronts.

P.O.P. World Series Update and Stair Training

Game one of the Pounds Off Playoff World Series is in the history books, with calorie counting taking the early series lead! I lost four pounds totaling up that key eating metric and gained slightly under the guise of eating natural foods. I thought it would be easier to follow the natural foods plan, since I've done things like "no junk food" and "no sweets" before, but it didn't work out that way this time. Our major winter storm and a preoccupying work event hasn't helped, but I wonder if calorie counting would have supported me better through those things.

Calorie counting has been a reliable "go to" plan every time I've used it. I may modify the World Series to keep counting in some way in both plans. But for now, I'm just back to counting until the 14th.

Unlike the rain, snow, and ice I've faced, yesterday was just SUNSHINE!

As for Big Climb training, it's on schedule. Yesterday I climbed the back stairs above a local school - over 800 stairs - and for a change it was gorgeous!!! So if you're keeping score, I've trained in snow and ice, rain, and now warm sunshine. The view from atop the stairs is magnificent on a day like today. And I was joined by my wife and a colleague who is joining our climbing team, so it was a great day of team training for the Four Seam Fastballs!

And I've added a training race. Drum roll please...

I'll be participating in the Cove2Clover 5K race in March. Cove2Clover takes participants up Snake Hill south of Seattle, for a vertical ascent of 800 feet over the first mile of the race, similar to the 788 feet of elevation in the Big Climb. Cove2Clover is on March 11, two weeks before the Big Climb, so it seems like a great fit for my training schedule. And it benefits several local charities and the local school foundation. I'll mix walking and jogging, but mostly I'm looking forward to climbing Snake Hill!