Argh.

You ever have those periods of time when you feel like there are things you should be doing, and you're not doing them?  Or where you can tell there's something intangible pulling at the back of your head, but you just can't place your finger on it?  Or maybe you come home from work and feel like you should actually be doing something, but instead you just sit in front of the TV?

I'm sure you have, because we're all human, and this is just a natural part of the cycle we go through on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis (the frequency is different for everybody).

The more I learn to practice GTD effectively, the less often I feel this way, as I can allow my brain to embrace the mind like water ideal, and return to old ideas when I see fit.  Still, it is impossible to feel and act productively one hundred percent of our time, and so the goal must be to maximize the amount of time we can exist in this state, and learn to accept (and yes, minimize, though this is less important than acceptance) the times when we do need to feel the way I currently do.

As an exercise to break out of this mental state, I write.  As of late, two things have been on my mind more anything else: squash and dancing.

I hav been dancing a lot lately, as we are running two jam sessions a week at Vibestreet Dance, and that requires that I come up with something to teach twice a week.  I can't even rely on teaching the same thing twice, as the same students may show up, and I end up feeling guilty about not being able to provide something new to them.  Maybe this is just something that I need to get over, as part of this whole exercise should be of benefit to myself, not just my students. A teacher that is not gaining something from each lesson that they teach is not missing out on part of the teaching experience, as are their students.

I have taken a couple of workshops lately, and they have been very helpful in showing me new ways of teaching something, as well as many new techniques that I would like to work on and incorporate into my own styles of movement.  Recently, I've been given lessons in breaking, locking, popping, and house dancing.  That's a lot of stuff!  Getting lessons in these new styles of dance is awesome, and is opening up my awareness and broadening my own inspiration to a great extent. However, this only results in frustration if I can't find the time to actually practice what I'm learning.  House, locking, and breaking are all very new styles to me, and really require that I take the time to sit down by myself and practice the basics. This is hard to do at home because of the way I have been feeling.

Even though I'm a reasonably experienced popper, I will never be fully satisfied with my level of skill (this is kind of a general theme for my approach to things I'm truly passionate about).  I often hesitate to teach something in class that I haven't had the time to sit down with and internalize. Part of the solution here, I suppose, is just accept that nobody's perfect, and that even if I'm still learning something, I can help the class with it.  One of the things that I really want to avoid is attempting to show my students something that I'm still learning myself, and in doing so, teach them bad habits, or end up getting them frustrated as I cannot break it down very well.

If you've read through the paragraph above, you've just seen me provide myself with some therapy, as I think I've come up with the solution to my first problem - just do it, and don't worry about whether or not the class is disappointed that I'm not perfect at a move.  We all need to learn, and there's nothing wrong with learning along with the rest of the class. Even better if I can provide a tiny bit of direction to help them along the right path.

The other thing that I think I probably need is a couple of sessions in the park with my ipod to just go over the techniques that I've been taught lately and internalize those. In GTD we have the concept of an open loop - something that requires action and is tugging at our mind.  Everything that I've learned lately is sitting in that same space.  It's occupying space in my head, saying "You should put some time into working on me, otherwise you'll lose this knowledge".

The other thing tugging at my mind has been squash. Although my opportunity to increase the amount of time and effort I'm putting into dancing has been incredible, and something that I've wanted to do for a looooong time, it's taken away from my ability to play squash. Although I've certainly been keeping myself fit (dancing requires a lot of energy, and I'm riding my bike as often as possible), I can feel the rust starting to creep up on my squash game, and this drives me nuts.  Part of the reason for that is because I trained so hard this past season, and was really feeling good about where my efforts had led me. 

Although all of our hobbies should be things that we do for fun, and don't become a burden on our mind, it's difficult for someone like me to make that leap and just let something be.  That's the nature of life though - if you want to do more of one thing, you are going to have to sacrifice something else.

In an effort to have my cake and eat it to, one of the projects I have set aside for myself to take on once I end my tenure at work, is biphasic sleep.  The notion of biphasic sleep sounds extremely silly when you initially hear about it: go to sleep more frequently in order to sleep less overall.  With one single phase of sleep during a twenty-four hour period, our body generally requires eight hours of sleep.  However, by breaking our sleep up, we are able to train our body to fall into REM sleep more quickly (which is the part of sleep that is evidently important), and thus require less sleep overall.

Although some people are absolutely insane and have managed to function quite effectively (arguably more effectively, if some of the blogs out there are to be believed) on as little as six twenty-minute naps a day (that's a mere two hours of sleep in a twenty-four hour period!), the goal I'm setting for myself is quite a bit more modest, and is based on the Hispanic tradition of siesta. The aim is to reduce my core sleep period to about five or six hours, and supplement that with a twenty-minute nap in the evening.  In doing so, I will be able to create (as though by magic) an extra two hours of spare time, everyday.

This almost sounds too good to be true, and it very well may be.  However, I enjoy an experiment as much as the next guy, so we'll see how things go.  I could end up with an extra two hours of spare time every night (which may also be essential, if the workload required for Law is what I'm told it is), or I could fail spectacularly, in which case I will have spent a couple of weeks deprived of sleep, and return to my normal monophasic sleeping schedule.  The worse-case scenario doesn't strike me as that bad, so why not try it right?

Anyhow, I think that's a sufficient ramble.  Our drop-in sessions at Vibestreet have been growing steadily, and last Monday we had about twelve people in attendance to learn some popping from myself, and some breaking from Steve (good strength training!).  If you're interested in learning more about any of this, drop a comment and I can blog and elaborate further.

When I graduated from University, my parents offered to get me a graduation present, or to just give me some cash to do with as I pleased.  My family is very practical this way; you can ask for gifts and have us find something along the lines that you are asking for, or simply get the money and spend it how you choose.  Some people think that this takes away from the spirit of gift-giving, and if that's how you feel, that's cool.  We've always found that it eliminates those awkward situations where you hint about something all year round, then get annoyed when you open something that is not at all what you wanted.  I've also found that there's plenty of room left for surprise in this approach, so it's all good with regards to that.

Anyhow, I'm digressing.  The point is that about 5 years ago, I got a bike for graduation.  For the first three years of my post-university life, Bay and I rented apartments that were very shy on storage space, and we had to leave the bike at my parent's place.  As a result, it really didn't see much use.  The next year we moved into our condo, in the process of moving, painting, buying furniture, and everything else, I kind of forgot that I even had a bike waiting for me. 

Towards the end of Fall this year, I remembered I had a hog waiting for me at my parents and brought it back with me.  I started riding the bike the same way I do everything - gradually.  However, as time has passed, and the weather has improved, I've become more and more enamoured with the sport, to the point that I no longer see it as simply a way to cross-train fitness to play better squash, but as a something worth pursuing on its own.

I'm going to mention some of the benefits of biking, and give a quick run down of what your options if you think you may be interested in getting a chopper yourself.

The Benefits

Biking offers a number of obvious benefits.  Chief among those is that it's an excellent form of cardiovascular workout.  Cardiovascular workouts are ones that keep your heart rate at a moderately-elevated range for a decent amount of time.  They exercise and strengthen your heart and your lungs, and are efficient workouts to burn fat (and we all want that right?). 

Biking gets you out of the house, and it doesn't require a lot of preparation on your part to start.  This might seem like a small benefit, but the longer and more involved the process is to actually begin your workout, the more chance you have to talk yourself out of actually doing it (I'm sure we can all remember times when we've talked ourselves out of going to the gym, simply by thinking about the annoying walk there before we even start the workout).  Grab your bike and your keys, and leave the house.  Start riding.  Worry about where you're going to go once you're on the bike. 

Riding also fits very easily into other parts of your life.  Although I initially started riding to train my cardio, I quickly started making it my primary means of transportation.  Instead of driving to my friend Steve's on a Friday night, I started asking myself, "Why wouldn't I just bike there?".  Instead of driving to the store to pick up a few select groceries I need for dinner tonight, why not bike there?  Why not bike to dance class instead of driving?  Once you start hopping on a bike regularly, you'll notice a couple of things: you start to see other places where it makes sense to take your bike instead of a car, and it takes a lot less time to get somewhere on a bike than you might think.  Riding from our place downtown to Town and Country shopping center, near the start of the Island Highway, takes roughly the same amount of time on a bike or a car, given that a bicyclist has the benefit of taking the Galloping Goose trail and avoiding all traffic.

Unlike jogging, the motion used to propel yourself forward on a bike is one that is impact-free.  Don't get me wrong - I like jogging a lot.  It's just murder on the knees, especially if you're on pavement.  A biker doesn't have to worry about these problems.  Riding every day will strengthen the muscles around your knees and activate the joint, ensuring that you retain mobility for a long time to come.

One of our favorite things about biking is that we see so much more of the city that we live in.  When you're walking, you're constrained to a small area, as you can only cover so much ground in a given amount of time.  When you're driving, you're focus is on the road, other drivers, and getting to your destination.  But on a bike, you can explore.  You've got the time to seek out new areas that you haven't been before, and explore new streets.  Since starting to ride, I've become much more acquainted with Uplands, James Bay, Esquimalt, Ten Mile Point, and Oak Bay.  It may seem trivial, but it is kind of neat to develop a familiarity with your home town.

Your Choices

Okay, enough wanking about the reasons to start biking.  What are the choices you have when buying a bike?

Your choices are generally three-fold, with some less-common and more trendy variations on top of those first three.

The Mountain Bike

A mountain bike is a bike that is specifically targeted for off-road riding.  They generally have a well suspended frame, which allows the bike to absorb a lot of shock that comes from riding on rocky terrain and taking drops as needed, and a frame that can take some (lots of) punishment.

Mountain bikes also come equipped with a hefty set of tires, in order to better grip the uneven ground that you'll be riding on.  You can take a mountain bike on the road, but you're going to notice some disadvantages.

For one, the extra thickness of the tires, and the multitude of treading, is going to mean that you have extra friction with the road, which will slow you down.  It won't feel like riding in sand, but it'll feel a fair bit soupier than if you were on one of the other options.

The heavier frame on the mountain bike is also going to lead to added weight that you need to pedal around.  On off-road terrain, this isn't going to be a problem, as you don't really have any other choice, and your riding is more geared to short spurts than to longer endurance riding.

The suspension on a mountain bike's frame will mean that riding on a road feels a little soggier.  Every time you turn your pedals, some of your downward momentum is going to be absorbed by the suspension.  It won't wreck your ride, but again, the little things add up.

A mountain bike is a great choice if you're a thrill seeker and like going for that kind of ride.  Downhill, highly technical riding, with a potential to fly over your handlebars and hurt yourself.  It's not for me, but it's a lot of fun for those that like it.

The Road Bike

Road bikes represent the antithesis of the mountain bike.  Their frames have zero suspension, because they are designed specifically to be ridden ... on the road.  Our roads are designed so that they provide as smooth a ride as possible, and so suspension is only going to slow you down.

The frames on road bikes are much lighter than those of a mountain bike, as you will not be putting them through much abuse.  The alloy that they use to make the frame will also be more rigid.  The composition of the frame and the lack of suspension on a road bike means that they won't be able to withstand nearly the kind of punishment that a mountain bike could, but they will provide a much crisper and responsive ride when you're on the terrain that they are intended for (roads, obviously).  When I talk about "punishment", I don't mean something akin to riding off a sidewalk's curb.  I mean taking the bike off a six to ten foot drop.  Road bike frames can handle some abuse - just not a lot.

The tires of a road bike are optimized for riding on the road, which means that they will have narrow tires with as little tread as possible.  The width of the tires are optimized to minimize the amount of friction you have to overcome, but provide enough that you can accelerate and pedal at a good speed.

Road bikes often come with a set of drop handlebars, which are designed to allow the rider to lean forward when they ride, creating a streamlined shape.  The handlebars are also closer together, bringing the hands closer, and creating a V shape relative to your elbows.  This also serves to streamline the rider and allow for faster rides.  Road bikes obviously come with shifting and braking components that work with these kind of handlebars.

All of the features of a road bike make them great to use in the confines of a city, where you are guaranteed well-maintained roads.  These features also make the bike suck as soon as you get off of pavement.  While it's possible to take a road bike on to trails, even the slightest bit of loose gravel can cause problems for your tires ability to stay in contact and provide you enough friction to effectively pedal.  The rigid frame and lack of suspension on a road bike will make a ride on a bumpy trail quite a bit less comfortable, as each shock will be transferred up through the frame and into your arms and legs.

The Hybrid Bike

A hybrid bike represents the midpoint between the two bikes mentioned above.  The frame is slightly less rigid than a road bike's, and will usually have some form of shocks on the front forks, and possibly on the seat.  These shocks will often have a feature allowing them to be locked out so that you can turn them off when you're riding on the road, which means you can have the benefit of shocks when you need them, and turn that off when you want the more responsive ride on the road.

The bike's frame will be a fair bit sturdier than a road bike, but not as much as a mountain bike, providing a good compromise between the ability to take some abuse and a bike that isn't too heavy.

Hybrid's usually have handle bars that are more similar to those of a mountain bike, and are outfitted with tires that are smooth in the middle (allowing for good riding on the road), and treaded on the outer edges (giving you good grip whenever you dip to the side, especially useful on trails).

If you don't have a specific use in mind for your bike, I think the hybrid is your best choice.  It's never going to be a good as a mountain bike for off-road technical riding, and you'll never be able to ride quite as fast as a lightweight road bike on the road, but you won't be prevented from doing either of these activities.

These are the main three types of bikes, but there are a few more esoteric offerings out there as well.

The Townie

Townie bikes have been popular in the past five years or so, especially with women. Townie bikes are designed as commuter bikes, and are designed for comfort.  The handlebars are generally built for the rider to sit fairly upright, rather than bent forward, and often come with other attachments like handlebar baskets, or a basket behind the seat.

Some people refer to these bikes as commuter bikes, and I think that's probably fair.  If your primary intent in owning a bike is to get from point A to point B, this is a bike that will do you well.  The upright design of the handlebars will provide a comfortable ride, and this type of riding is rarely about pushing yourself. 

These bikes have a very romantic appeal to them, and evoke images of cycling through Paris streets on a sunny weekend, with fresh-picked flowers in the handle basket, along with a couple of baguettes.  If you primarily intend to use your bike to ride casually around the city, this is a great choice.

However, the things that make this bike romantic also make it impractical for serious exercise.  Upright handlebars create a poor rider profile for getting any decent speed up, as you will not at all be streamlined.  If you want a bike that looks cute and is comfortable, this is the one for you.  If you think that you may want to use this bike for an actual workout, I wouldn't recommend it.

The Single Gear and the Fixie

The Single Gear bike (not the correct name, but I don't know what it is) and its counterpart, the Fixie, have started to replace the townie as the latest trend.  Both of these bikes have grown out of the minimalist and bike courier movements, and are in abundance in Victoria.

The single gear bike is exactly what it sounds like.  A bike with just one gear position available to the rider.  Bikes like this will be lighter than most bikes, because the added weight of a the gears and a shifting mechanism are not present.  These bikes will typically come with drop handlebars, and two brakes, and that's it.  Pretty minimal right?  Although these bikes are certainly very trendy, I don't personally think they are a good idea.  Having gears allows you to make your mechanical work as efficient as possible.  I'm a big fan of minimalism, in general, but I think that this approach unnecessarily cuts out a useful function on a bike, and by buying a bike like this, you limit where you can take your bike.  Having said that, I suspect that bikes like this would probably cost less, due to the fact that there are less components being purchased.

Think that sounded minimal?  Well, the fixie goes one step further, fixing the pedals to the rotation of your tire, meaning that one full circle of your pedals correlates directly to one full rotation of your tire.  For this reason, fixies do not allow the rider to coast or back-pedal, and are not as mechanically efficient (meaning you require more energy input to achieve the same amount of work) as bikes with a system of gears.  Some claims have been made that this encourages better biking as the rider is forced to pedal through corners and adjust their speed appropriately.  I personally think this is a needless contrivance, but if people enjoy riding them, that's cool.

Depending on how far you want to take it, fixies can be found with two brakes (one for each tire), only one brake (I'm not sure which tire you would put this on - presumably the back?), or no brakes at all (in which case you are completely reliant on using your legs to slow down the rotation of the tires).  As of late, it has been popular to replace the drop handle bars with a completely straight handlebar.  This is about as minimal as you can get: Two tires, a frame, a piece of metal for a handlebar, and pedals.

Although minimalism and trendiness certainly have their appeal, it's still possible that the single gear bike may serve you well.  However, I don't personally see the value in a fixie, other than for aesthetic appeal.  If that's your game, then go for it.  If not, treat the purchase of your bike as an investment, and go for something that will serve you in the short- and the long-term.

Get a bike!

That about covers as much about bikes as I'm comfortable discussing with my own knowledge.  If you consider your options and choose wisely, a good bike is an investment that will serve you well for a very long time, and, provided you are the type of individual that will use one if you have one, will directly correlate to you leading a healthier, happier life.

We've now breached April, and that means a couple of things.  For a start, at least on Vancouver Island, the beginnings of Spring are tangible.  The sun's getting up earlier, staying out later, our cherry blossoms have bloomed and look beautiful against the backdrop of a clear blue sky, and it's getting easier to get up early in the mornings.  I was even able to go out biking in a t-shirt yesterday. 

It also means that most of the people that set New Year's resolutions for themselves (even if they didn't title them as such) to exercise more often, have now failed in that goal.  I'm not being pessimistic or cynical about human nature here (even though I am, generally speaking) - I'm just stating statistics.

Why is it, that so many people set off with such good intentions, only to give up completely in less than three months time?  I think it's because they've failed to follow the cardinal rule of exercising (and working towards a healthy lifestyle): Have fun.

I mentioned New Year's resolutions, but this phenomenon really applies to any "get fit" kick that people embark upon.  Sometimes it's after a vacation that resulted in two weeks of drinking and zero days of exercise.  Sometimes it's after a long camping trip, and is preceded by a lemon juice/cayenne pepper cleanse (that's a topic for another time).  After a sustained period of feeling unhealthy, we're all pretty keen and full of motivation to flip the tables and get things started in the right direction.

You run out, buy some new gear, and head out the door for a grueling 1.5 hours at the gym, or a 45-minute jog, after not having done either for over half a year.  The results are predictable: You've got new gear and resolution-level motivation (I like to think of this as artificially-inflated motivation), both of which propel you through the work out.  You're not enjoying more than the first couple of minutes of it, and by the time you finish up, you're a heaving sweaty mess.  You head home, crack a beer, and tell yourself that you'll be doing that three times a week from now on (some of the truly brave/naive push this to five times a week).

However, when you wake up the next morning, your muscles are screaming in protest, and you can barely sit down.  "It'll be better tomorrow, in time for my next workout", you tell yourself, only to discover that that pain sticks with you for almost an entire week, holding your next workout hostage until it subsides.  When you're finally feeling whole again, you get yourself ready for the next workout, even though the only thing you can think about is the week-long pain that you've gone through, and the torturous upcoming hour or so that leads you down that path.

Does this sound familiar to you?  If not, go away - this post isn't for you.

The fact is, none of the above sounds like any fun.  What is the motivation for someone to continue with the above routine?  Getting fit?  Being healthy?  Looking good?  These are all abstract, long-term goals.  They are abstract because "being fit", and "looking good" are very nebulous terms.  It's very difficult to tie those down to something tangible that we can point at and say to ourselves, "Look at what I've accomplished!". 

These goals are also at a disadvantage because they are purely long-term goals.  No one gets fit after three or four workouts.  No one is going to look good in a couple of weeks - it's just not how the body works (so if you're planning on taking a vacation, you better start exercising now.  You're not going to get your body "beach ready" in a few short weeks).

Disclaimer: Yes, sometimes it is possible to get short-term results very quickly with radical dieting and over-exercise, but trust me, these short-term gains come with a very hefty price: the inevitability that in the long-term you're actually training your body to put on more fat, and yourself to practice negative yo-yo habits, instead of positive lifestyle changes.

No - if we want to make changes to our lifestyle that are healthy and are going to stick, we must obey the cardinal rule.  We have to have fun doing it.  No workout will always be fun, but whatever activity we are choosing for ourselves needs to have some kind of intrinsic value that we can appreciate and enjoy in the short-term.

There are a couple of factors that we have to account for in order to meet this goal:

1. Do something that you enjoy.

It's so easy, right? If only that was the case. 

Most people, when they make a resolution to get fit, choose either jogging or lifting weights at the gym, usually because these are the most obvious choices.  Jogging doesn't require much effort to start doing, and gyms are all over the place.  When we think of getting fit, these are usually the first two choices that come to mind.

However, does this make them the right choice for someone?  Absolutely not.  Just because a lot of people are doing a particular activity doesn't mean that it's going to be something you enjoy.  Do you like being outside?  (Consider this question honestly - you're not writing a personal ad here, you're trying to figure out your best choice of exercise).  Is planning out a route going to be something that you enjoy?

How about the gym?  Are you comfortable working out around a lot of other people (I've overcome this, but I hated it when I first started).  Does lifting weights seem like something that you'll enjoy?  Is there anything in particular about the culture present at a gym that will entice you to keep coming back?

Incidentally, this is an excellent reason to avoid the temptation to run out and buy yourself a new set of shoes, or a new tight-fitting t-shirt to wear to the gym.  Doing so may temporarily inflate your motivation, but it will also lock you into an activity that you should be approaching with the intent to evaluate initially. 

This lock-in is motivated in part because of our tendency to be swayed by the sunk-cost fallacy.    The motivation that you think you'll get by buying-in to a new activity is artificial at best, and self-defeating at worst.  By approaching something without investment, you're allowing yourself the liberty of changing to a new activity if you don't enjoy this one.

2.  Have fun while you're exercising.

Don't start out with a goal that is far-fetched and ridiculously challenging.  Give yourself a goal that is reasonable, and that will give you the space required to appreciate the activity that you're doing.

When a lot of people first start out jogging, they run intervals, jogging for five minutes, and walking for one minute.  This kind of approach is great, as it lets you ease into your new workout regime, and gives you time to look around you and really enjoy what you're doing.

If at any point during a workout you start to feel that you just want it to be over, maybe you need to dial back a little bit and take it a little easier.  Be willing to adjust the goal that you set for yourself at the start.  Remember: it's much better to adapt your goal and succeed than to adamantly stick to your initial goal and then give up on your routine all together.  Your goal is to find something that you are going to make a part of your lifestyle, not to simply get through the current workout.

3.  Push yourself

This advice may seem to conflict a little with the above item, but it's important that you maintain a healthy balance of the two.  Above all, your number one goal should be that you're doing something that you enjoy, and that you're doing it in a manner that allows for that enjoyment.  Once you've found that balance point, take yourself out of your comfort zone and push yourself.  It doesn't have to be a lot, and you don't need to go overboard.  Just be willing to make yourself work, and to get yourself sweating.

Items 2 and 3 may prove elusive for someone that is only just beginning a new workout routine.  The longer you workout and exercise, the more in-tune with your body you will become, and the easier time you will have understanding when you are ready to push yourself further, and when you need to dial back a bit and give yourself some time to simply be present in the moment.

Remember that, above all, in order for exercise to become a lasting part of a healthy lifestyle, you really have to enjoy it.  You're not going to be able to force this, so be willing to look until you find something that is right for you.  If you discover that you hate lifting weights at the gym, don't treat this as a failure on your part - treat it as an opportunity to adapt your goals and to try something new.

Ian Newby-Clark has a fantastic post on acquiring good habits and the pull of just-one-more over at his blog, My Bad Habits.  I can't recommend this post enough, as I feel it fits very well inline with my own approach to self-improvement.

The core of the approach is that if we want to succeed in shedding our bad habits, and acquiring and developing new, good ones, we need to be patient and give ourselves time to actually create habits.

Every time you are aiming to correct a bad habit, the best way I have found to think of that is to consider that you are in fact adopting a new habit.  Sure, this new habit is simply the baseline that you would like to maintain from now on, but it's still a different habit, a different way of doing things, and a different routine in your life.

Many of us make overly ambitious (and no doubt noble) resolutions at various points throughout the year (for most of us, that is January 1st, but many of us also adopt cleanses and other approaches at other times).  When we fail, as is almost inevitable based on the size and scope of the habits we are trying to train ourselves to follow, we see it as a complete catastrophe and walk away from the desired change, only to pick it back up again in a year.

If we really want to make positive change in our lives, the most important thing is being willing to accept that it will take time to make a change, and to give yourselves that needed amount of time.

In Ian's words:

Changing myself takes a lot of will power, and I only have so much. Will-power is a limited resource and, presumably, I'm spending a lot of it right now getting myself to the gym. My new workout "habit" isn't exactly a habit yet. It's still being formed. Most of the time I go to the gym happily, but sometimes I need to force myself out of bed. Sometimes my schedule changes. I might go on vacation or a child might get sick (or both . . . ). My habit of exercising regularly has to be so ingrained that I always find a way to get in my workout, no matter what the circumstances. I'm not there yet. I'm still too easily thrown off by day-to-day variations. Because I'm not there yet, splitting my will-power between two efforts at habit change would put me in danger of not following through with either habit change.

Although I have always been fairly fortunate in that I'm a pretty active person and was raised to appreciate the benefits (and fun) or exercise and sports, I can certainly attest to the importance of giving yourself the time to let a habit truly sink in and actually become a habit.

Early successes are important, and will certainly bolster your motivation.  However, don't let yourself get complacent after your initial success.  Stick with your progress and affect positive change in your life.  After all, if you're anywhere close to my own age (30), you are now at the point in your life where you get to choose the habits that stick with you for the rest of your life.  Make them good ones.

It’s just shy of two weeks after the new year, so I think that it’s a good time to check in with myself after the goal I set towards the end of last year to focus heavily on fitness and healthy eating. As I mention in the blog post I’m planning to publish shortly after this one (just needs editing now), I’m not really a fan of New Year’s resolutions. However, I’m absolutely in favour of setting goals that are achievable, pursuing those goals, and treating failures or stumbles as an opportunity to re-evaluate your goals and determine if you need to set your immediate goal a little lower, or stay the course. So, that’s really what this is - a chance for me to check in, see how I’m doing, evaluate my progress, and then see if I need to change.

So, what were the goals? Nothing particularly specific, mostly that I wanted to be mindful of my calories, cut back on drinking, and though I hadn’t mentioned it explicitly, I wanted to make sure I was getting in exercise about six days a week and lifting weights five days a week. When I say exercise, I really mean something aerobic. Lifting weights burns calories, but nothing compared to squash, running or biking. I treat weightlifting as a cross-training exercise.

I was using livestrong.com for a while to keep track of the calories that I was eating on a daily basis. Livestrong is a great tool for this, and I highly recommend it. What did I learn? Well, I was eating about 20% more calories, on average, than I needed to. For those that are curious, this, for me, was roughly 400 calories a day. Cutting that many calories is not that difficult if you are aware of it and willing to make changes to do it. Just not eating is the worst approach, because it’s not sustainable. I made the changes I wanted to by making sure I had healthy snacks at work (fruitsource fruit bars and fresh apples, cheesestrings, low-fat whole grain crackers, and granola bars - make sure they aren’t dipped in chocolate or peanutbutter though) cutting back on drinking (more on that shortly), and snacking less late at night.

Now that I’ve got a general feel for how many calories I’m eating daily, what the number of calories that something contains is, and how many calories I need, based on my fitness regime, I haven’t been using livestrong very much. I think this is fine, since the website was only there as a tool to help me achieve my goal, not the goal itself. I may start using the website again if I feel that I’m starting to slip and eating gluttonously (note: this doesn’t mean drinking one extra beer, it means eating three chocolate bars in a day), but otherwise, I don’t feel like I need it anymore.

Did this change make a difference? Well, it’s tough to say. When I started, I weighed about 190 pounds. When I weighed myself at my parents, right before the start of the holidays, I was roughly the same weight. This doesn’t necessarily indicate a failure though, as I’ve been working out five times a week, and I (and Bay) can tell that I’ve been putting on muscle-mass. As a result, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve shed unneeded fat, and replaced that with heavier muscle tissue. Sounds pretty good to me. I’m going to chalk this goal up as a success so far.

Am I going to continue on with this? Absolutely. I don’t set my goals as something that I achieve and then discard, and neither should you. This goal is intended as a lifestyle change, so now that I’ve determined where I want to be, I will keep at it. The benefit is that it only gets easier from here, since the habit is setting in.

How about cutting back drinking? Well, I approached this goal by initially cutting out all of my alcohol consumption, and then gradually re-introducing. This allowed me to re-calibrate myself, and gave me a fresh benchmark from which to determine how much drinking I felt comfortable (from the point of view of obtaining my goal) doing. I also bought, and continued to stock my fridge with, O’Douls non-alcoholic beers. They make a lager and an amber, and although I normally prefer medium to dark beers, I think their lager is the better of the two. Non-alcoholic beers aren’t great, but they’re not horrible. When I come home from a squash match, I feel better about myself cracking open a non-alcoholic beer with 60 calories than I do a regular beer with twice that. Plus, it has a small placebo effect on me that partially quenches my desire for alcohol.

Why don’t I just stop drinking completely? A couple of reasons. The most obvious one, to me, is that I enjoy it. I love the taste of beer, I love drinking with my friends, and I love some irish cream in my tea on a rainy day. Put simply, I don’t want to stop drinking completely, so trying to set this as a goal is just a way to set myself up for failure. I want to make sure I’m always setting goals for myself that are reasonable, and inline with my personality. Anything else is a waste of my time. The second reason, and this is similar to the first, is that it’s something I do with my friends, and is a part of the squash community. Having a beer with a friend after a tough squash match, or when working on their computer, or just hanging out - these are all things from which I derive great pleasure, and I don’t want to remove those from my life.

I think I was pretty successful in attaining my goal. As I mentioned above, I was successful reaching my caloric goal, and cutting back on drinking definitely helped towards this. I essentially cut out having more than one beer after a squash match, and stuck to drinking non-alcoholic beers at home on the weeknights. I’m pretty happy about this result, and I’m going to give myself a checkmark on this goal too.

Hey, how about those holidays? Well, I made a decision heading into the holidays. I decided that I would allow myself to open up the gates, cut loose for two weeks, and then tighten back up. I did this because I know that I possess a finite amount of willpower, and I know that the holidays are a time when there are a lot of opportunities to eat and drink. If I tried to restrict myself during this time, I would probably be miserable, annoyed, and severely stretching the limits of my willpower. Atheletes know that to train effectively, you need to spend time throughout the year where you give your body a rest and let it recuperate. The mind is no different, and if you’re exercising your willpower, you also need to make a point of giving it downtime where you don’t have to exercise it.

Incidentally, I read a study recently that had tested whether or not your willpower was affected in the long term each time you tested it, and this turned out to be true. This means that if you have a goal to not buy clothes at all this week, and you go window shopping once every day, you will be weakening your willpower each time you go window shopping. If you want to maintain your willpower, the best way to do it is to avoid situations where it will be tested altogether. (I’m not advocating that you should cut yourself off completely from something you enjoy doing. Just be mindful of the fact that you’re weakening your resolve each time, and keep this in mind before making the decision).

The last goal was to focus on fitness. Generally I try to avoid setting goals that aren’t measurable. I mean, how can you check in with yourself on a weekly basis and ask yourself if you’re really “focusing on fitness”? I actually had something more specific in mind when I decided on this approach though, as mentioned above. Weights five times a week, and no more than one or two days a week without any aerobic exercise.

So how did I do? Well, the first step was getting my bike back from being stored at my parents. It turns out I really like biking, so this made things a lot easier. If I didn’t have a squash game booked, I now had two options that I could pursue instead: jogging or biking.

Generally speaking, I think this goal is the one I am most proud of. I’ve managed to continue with my lifting regime for at least two months now (probably closer to three), and I don’t find that it is cutting into any other part of my life. This is a pretty ideal situation for a goal that involves establishing a change in your lifestyle. If, after pursuing it, you can look at your current daily routine and not feel dread or like you are going to have to make drastic changes to fit something in, you’ve achieved your goal. Like I mentioned before, I’ve noticed a visual difference, and I definitely feel stronger. But, looking any different was not my goal. Let’s check in with the rest of the goal.

To further this goal, I’ve been getting up early some mornings to go jogging with Bay. Bay is part robot and able to achieve her fitness goals based on seemingly impossible conditions, such as having five hours of sleep, but I’m not, so it’s been a challenege some times to get up. Jogging is a great way to condition your heart and lungs, and with a set of headphones and an iPod, it’s very enjoyable. I load up my iPhone with my favorite skeptically-themed podcasts and spend an hour learning while I’m jogging.

As far as being successful, I would say that this goal has been my most successful. I have been training hard on the court, and my game has improved thanks to my efforts, and the excellent coaching of Mike Johnson. However, on top of that, I have absolutely noticed that a higher level of fitness has made a huge difference. I can play in long grueling rallies with the confidence to know that I have the energy and the conditioning to make it through to the end. After a tough rally, I’m recovering my breath faster than before, and in rallies where I’m really chasing the ball to recover, I can make a good shot, settle in, and get back my wind to continue onwards.

All of that aside, the most significant change I’ve noticed has been mental. With a higher level of fitness, I have the confidence to play the best shots in a rally. The funny thing about squash is that the more tired you become, the more inclined you are to play low percentage shots. These are shots that will only be effective a low percentage of the time, but will outright win you the rally when they do win. Generally speaking, you should steer clear of these shots, especially when you’re locked in a difficult rally. However, when you start to get tired, your mind plays tricks on you, and tells you “End the rally now, don’t keep hitting the safe shot up and down the wall. Just put the ball away and win”. With a higher level of fitness, I can quash this voice and say “Sucks to your assmar Piggy, I’m playing safe shots up and down the wall until an opportunity to apply pressure to the opponent presents itself”.

So, definitely a checkmark goes to this goal. As an added benefit, coming back from holidays was much less brutal than I had expected, likely just because I had a fairly high level of fitness going into the ‘days, and so even given the excessive eating and drinking, I was still able to come back afterwards feeling relatively fit.

How about the process of getting back into the swing of things after the holidays? Well, by the end of two weeks, I was pretty much ready to get back into things. I’d had more than enough to drink, loads of junk food, and generally I was feeling pretty lazy. This is generally the way everyone feels when they make their new year’s resolution - fed up with their excess, and ready to get on the healthy wagon. The only difference is that I’m just returning to the same gradual process that I put into place earlier this year, rather than making a giant sweeping change.

So, that’s about it. Hopefully this is helpful for anyone reading that is trying to come up with a different way to set and achieve goals. In summary - set achievable goals, pursue them, check in, and revise as needed.