Health, Day 8

Breakfast, 8 AM:  Egg white omelet and a VitaminWater Zero.  This time I left out the cheese in the omelet.  Things still were not turning out so well in the omelet department - for some reason, I'm really good at burning them.  Nonetheless, I successfully ate within 30 minutes of getting up, and managed to eat something healthy.

Lunch, 12 PM:  Roast beef sandwich (wheat bread + Swiss + mustard + lettuce + onions + hot peppers).  Went to Potbelly for a sandwich.  I modified what I usually get - got a regular sized sandwich instead of a big one, got a roast beef one instead of A Wreck.  Nutrition Calculator said that was a good choice that saved me like 300 calories.


Snack, 5:30 PM:  Same thing as yesterday.  Reduced sugar PowerBar.

 Dinner, 9 PM:  Grilled chicken, mixed vegetables, and a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA.  I gotta say, the Green Giant frozen packs of mixed vegetables are pretty easy.  You just microwave them for a few minutes and you've got a bunch of vegetables.  Wasn't feeling wine, so I went with a delicious beer (though just one).

Health, Day 7: Redemption Continues

Alright blog world, some explanation is probably owed:  due to a metric ass ton of snow being dropped on DC, our power was out until yesterday.  As a result, blogging that was already a little behind is now a whole week behind.  Expect a wreck of blog posts today to counteract that.

Breakfast, 8:30 AM:  Egg white omelet (zucchini, mushrooms, cheese) + whole grain English muffin.  Stone and I totally hit up the grocery store on Sunday afternoon.  As a result, I was actually able to make breakfast at home.  Unfortunately, this first attempt at an omelet sucked balls.  More improvement would be necessary.

Lunch, 12 PM:  Chipotle burrito bol and a Diet Coke.  Same business as usual.

Snack, 5:30 PM:  Reduced sugar PowerBar.  Normally, I would hit up some crackers or something from the snack shop on campus, but that doesn't seem wholly responsible.  So, at the grocery store, I hit up some PowerBars.  Usually these things are packed with sugar.  Not an option for hypoglycemics like me, so I went for the Reduced Sugar version, so we were in better shape.

Dinner, 9 PM:  Grilled chicken breast + mixed vegetables.  I hit up the Foreman grill and made a pretty healthy meal.  Less healthy was the three glasses of wine I had (hey, the bottle needed finishing), but I'm going to just assume that's better than drinking beer.

Health, Day 6: Attempted Redemption

If yesterday consisted of the low point of my efforts so far, then today was an attempt to do a little better.

10:30 AM:  Two McDonald's breakfast burritos.  Was pleased to wake up with no hangover.  Drank a VitaminWater Zero during the night.  This wasn't the most healthy breakfast choice, though it was fairly financially responsible - can't complain about breakfast for two bucks.

1 PM:  Fettucine alfredo with chicken.  Stone got up much earlier than I did and went to the store, and was ready to cook lunch.  Who was I to stop him?

5:30-8:30 PM.  Hit up a few glasses of wine.  Supposedly this is more healthy than drinking beer.  Less delicious, to be sure, but I'm considering subbing some glasses of wine for my usual nightly beer.

6:30:  Burrito (taco meat + cheese + peppers + lettuce) and chips with salsa.  Stone was again down for cooking.  This time, I helped a little.  These burritos were based on an online experiment, but turned out really well.  Also, the hamburger we used was very lean (93/7), so obviously we are health fanatics now.

We're almost one week in with the health challenge.  So far, things are not going particularly well.  Next week, we're going to start resolving this.  I went to the grocery store this afternoon and bought a bunch of healthy shit.  

For some sort of public accountability, beyond just posting pictures of things I ate on my blog, I'll make a few public acclamations.


This week, I will:

• Work out at least 3 times
• Cook meals at home at least 3 times
• Order pizza no more than 1 time 
• Have at least 2 days where I don't drink any beer
• Walk to the Metro at least 3 times rather than driving somewhere

Shit's gonna be intense.  Goal #1 will take by far the most will power for me.

Health, Day 5: The Dark Times

The Ferriss book recommends having one day a week on your diet for a binge, where you eat absolutely anything you want.  I guess we'll use that as an excuse for my Saturday, where absolutely no healthy activity transpired.

 12:30 PM:  Chipotle burrito (rice + black beans + steak + mild & corn salsas + cheese).  I rolled out of bed around 11:30, feeling a bit hungover.  This burrito, in combination with a VitaminWater, Diet Coke, and an ibuprofen, drove those feelings away.  And it just felt so right.

1:30 PM-6:30 PM:  With my hangover vanquished, we prepared for the highlight of the day: the Jayhawks game against Texas.  We hit up the grocery store for a large pack of Bud Light and a bunch of snacks.  So, over this period of time, I hit up some Peanut Butter M&Ms and about six Bud Lights.  Frequency of beer consumption increased as the Jayhawks began to lose.

7:00 PM:  Three pieces of pizza.  This was not enough to wash away the bad taste of the first Jayhawks loss of the season.  


All in all, probably the least successful day of attempting to be healthy so far.

Health, Day 4

Alright blogging world, my fidelity to blogging regularly hasn't been so good the past few days.  But I'm back now, and I'm going to make things right.

Friday was an intense day.  I went to work for a total of three hours, as a result of having a ton of flex time built up.  Stone also returned from Paris.  As a result, shit was wild.

Breakfast, 8:00 AM.  Two pieces of pizza + Diet Coke.  You may have noticed a pattern by now, which is that I rarely have any food in the house if I don't have leftovers from the night before.  This morning was no exception.  Diet Coke isn't usually my breakfast beverage of choice, but I was reeeeaally dragging this morning, so I needed a pick-me-up (especially since I don't really drink coffee).  This was an exception to one of my few semi-healthy rules, which is to try to limit myself to a single soda per day.

10:00 AM:  I think I had a VitaminWater Zero from the Korean deli but didn't take a picture of it.  That sounds like something I probably did.

 Lunch, 12:30 PM:  "A Wreck" sandwich on wheat (turkey + ham + roast beef + lettuce + onion + cheese + mustard + hot peppers + Italian seasoning) and a Diet Coke.  I was pretty amped about getting to leave work at noon.  Nonetheless, my social obligations had me picking up lunch on my way out with a co-worker.  It seemed wrong to eat Chipotle for literally every lunch this week, so we went to Potbelly's instead, at his suggestion.  This wasn't in keeping with my new (very haphazard) attempt to minimize carbs.

4:30 PM:  VitaminWater Zero.  I picked up Stone from the airport a bit before this.  In recognition that we would likely be drinking later tonight, I decided it was a good time to hydrate.

7:15 PM:  Calzone (sausage + mushrooms) and a Bell's Two Hearted Ale.  For dinner, I went with Stone and Amac/Alison to Faccia Luna.  It was delicious, but it was around this point that I decided the weekend was going to crush any illusion of healthy eating for a few days.

8:30-10:45:  Yuengling Lager x4.  We walked down the street to Kitty O'Shea's, and proceeded to celebrate Stone's return.  Around 10:30, it was Amac's bedtime, so we went home, Stone passed out from jet lag, and I played Xbox until 1 AM.  Bachelorhood is super tight.

Health, Day 3

Well, at least I walked to the Metro today...because that was about the only healthy thing that went down.

Today was a fairly hectic day at work, resulting in a general neglect of taking pictures of most of the things I ate today.  Hopefully a word picture will be sufficient to get your imaginations flowing.

Breakfast, 9 AM:  Scrambled eggs + turkey sausage patty + VitaminWater Zero.  Having consumed Indian leftovers, there was no food in my house.  Thus, the one-day-long trend of eating within 30 minutes of getting up died a rapid death.  I tried to go to the office deli fairly in the morning.

Lunch, 12:30 PM:  The exact same thing I've had at Chipotle the past two days.  This time I went and ate with a couple co-workers.  I pretty obviously fall into a rut with regard to eating Chipotle for lunch most days.  Even though I'm eating something moderately healthy (at least calorie-wise, according to Chipotlefan.com's nutrition calculator), it's probably good to branch out with my lunch choices.  The current issue is that all the other places that come to mind are even less healthy than my usual burrito bol (ex. Chinese, burgers, pizza), or are bland and uninteresting (i.e., Subway).  If the battle is between Subway and the third Chipotle of the week, Chipotle's going to win almost every time.

Snack, 5:30 PM:  I got stuck working late.  Around 5:30, I was starving, so I tided myself over with a handful of peanuts from the jar on my desk.  I was getting irritable, which could have been low blood sugar, or it could have been general pissiness from getting asked to work late at the last minute.  The world may never know.

 Dinner, 7:45 PM:  Pizza + Rogue Dead Guy Ale.  After working a long day, cooking was not looking good.  The result was the usual consideration of where to order delivery from.  I hit up Indian food earlier in the week.  I didn't really feel like Thai food.  This left pizza.  I limited myself to two pieces, so that was one minor sliver of responsibility.
 

Health, Day 2

Alright blog followers (all 2 of you).  Didn't get a chance to post yesterday, but at least I was vigilant in taking some pictures.

Breakfast, 8 AM:  Butter chicken + palak paneer + basmati rice.In keeping with the advice of the Ferriss book, I opted to eat breakfast within 30 minutes of getting up.  Normally, this would be rare, since I don't have much food around the house.  Luckily, I had leftover Indian food.  Suffice it to say, things were not up to par once reheated in the microwave.  Reheated palak paneer definitely makes the list of foods that were not awesome for breakfast.

In more positive financial news, eating breakfast at home saved a few bucks that would usually be spent on hitting up the deli in my office.  Still, y'know, I enjoy getting a VitaminWater Zero to break the monotony of being in my cubicle all morning.

Lunch, 12 PM:  Chipotle burrito bol (black beans + fajita veggies + steak + mild/medium/corn salsa + cheese + lettuce) and a Diet Coke.  I had the same thing as I had for lunch the day before.  So sue me.  I do this all the time.

Happy hour, 6:15 PM:  As is the usual tradition on Wednesday evening, we hit up the Galaxy Hut for happy hour.  I started off with a porter from Ballast Point, and followed with an Allagash White.  

Dinner, 7:30 PM:  Cheeseburger + mushrooms & onions + Harp lager.  Look, lets be honest.  This was not a healthy dinner choice.  But it was half price burger night, and everyone else was going.  What kind of asshole was I to ditch out on that?  Anyway, the only minor healthy choice made here was to avoid the 20 varieties of fries that I had as options for a side and go for vegetables...sorta.


In a very minor saving grace for this day, I've gotten back in the habit of walking to the Metro, rather than driving to work.  This meant I walked a total of at least 2 miles yesterday (as well as on the day before).  Baby steps...

Health, Day 1

I'm positive that the topic of a healthier lifestyle is something that will take up many entries for me, because it's the area of my life where I probably put the least effort forward. 

First, a little background.  In the broad sense, my health is pretty good.  I'm not overweight or anything.  I had a physical within the past six months, and my doctor indicated that I'm in good health (cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, etc. were all within normal or better limits).  That said, there are myriad areas for improvement.  I've lived most of my life being a fairly skinny guy, being blessed with a fairly high metabolism.  This has sadly started to change as I've gotten older.  I'm 5'10" and weigh around 160 pounds.  This gives me a body mass index of 23, which is in the normal range.  However, hardly any of that weight is muscle, and as I've gotten older and gained weight, I can see the beginning stages of love handles.  Now seems like a good time to nip that in the bud, before I get older and my metabolism slows down more.  I'd rather get in the habit of being healthy early on, rather than truly become overweight and have a much bigger uphill battle to get back in shape.

My current diet and exercise regimen really has nowhere to go but up.  I'm not big on sweets, but I eat out for the vast majority of my meals.  I'm really not great about cooking.  Part of that's due to time (having class two nights a week makes for fairly late dinners if I cook), but beyond that, I just generally lack enthusiasm for cooking after being at work all day.  My choices for eating out include a lot of pizza, burritos, and other fast food.  These are clearly not great options.


General ideas for improvement:

• First, and most obviously, I could simply order better food.  Less fast food, less fatty stuff.  On a failed fitness kick this summer, I did develop at least a couple better options for eating out in the vicinity of my office.  Chipotle burrito bowls are a decent option, when you forego sour cream, a tortilla, and other extras.  I also ate a lot of Subway, which can be moderately healthy, but to be honest, I get sick of it fairly rapidly.
• I could also obviously start cooking more often.  The Ferriss book points out that it's not realistic (especially for bachelors who never cook) to suddenly turn around and start planning to cook every meal.  I've tried this, and it works out poorly - it's a good way to buy a bunch of groceries, cook for a couple days, and then waste a bunch of food I never cook.  More realistically, I could shoot to start cooking dinner 2-3 days a week.  Beyond that, I could start having breakfast at home.  I hit up the deli in the basement of my office almost every weekday for breakfast.  That's not only an easy way to save some money, but it's also better for me.  I can make better choices for what to eat.  Ferriss also points out that eating within 1 hour of getting up burns a lot more calories and gets your metabolism moving. I regularly put off breakfast till 10 AM, so this would be an easy area to improve in.
• The Ferriss book also suggests tracking what you're actually eating.  It mentions taking pictures of everything you eat (on your phone, or whatever's easy).  The idea is that you're more cognizant of what you're eating if you're tracking everything.  Ideally, if you share those pictures publicly, it's also a good way to ensure better accountability.  I feel like this is sorta weird, but I guess I'll give it a shot at least temporarily.
• Finally, exercise obviously makes a difference.  I'm still contemplating this one more, and I'll cover it in a future (very near future) entry.

So, without further ado, here's what I ate today.

Breakfast, 10 AM:  Went to the deli in basement of my office.  Scrambled eggs + a turkey sausage patty + lots of hot sauce.  And a VitaminWater Zero. (And a censored company letterhead).

I've also attempted to drink a lot more water.  I drank about 3 of these Nalgene bottles of water over the course of the day.

Lunch, 2 PM:  Chipotle burrito bol (black beans + fajita veggies + steak  + mild/medium/corn salsas + cheese + lettuce) and a Diet Coke.  The Ferriss book hates on starches a whole lot, including rice, and claims you should replace them with better stuff like legumes (including black beans).  So, I got some extra black beans as an experiment to replace my usual rice.  The results were...okay.  The taste is fine, but the consistency of the burrito bol doesn't work as well when you don't have a base of rice.  According to the nutrition calculator, though, it saves a sizable amount of calories.  Jury's still out on this one.

Snack, 6 PM:  Peanut butter crackers + Powerade Zero.  On nights when I have class, I don't get home for dinner until fairly late in the evening.  As a result, I'm usually starving if I don't have a snack.  For blood sugar issues and otherwise, I hit up the snack shop on my way to class.  I tried taking a picture of the crackers in class without anyone around me noticing.  I'm not sure I was successful.  We'll count that as a barrier to overcome once I start writing an entry on my social goals.

9 PM, dinner:  Butter chicken + palak paneer + basmati rice + Magic Hat #9.  As I mentioned above, I really have no enthusiasm for cooking, especially when I've been busy all day.  Beyond that, I lacked any groceries in my apartment.  The result was ordering delivery from Delhi Dhaba.  I'm not sure this was a particularly amazing health choice, but compared to the usual delivery choice of pizza (or driving down the street for fast food), it was a minor step up.  
I don't think butter chicken wins many health awards, but at least it wasn't fried.  Palak paneer is perhaps a little better - it has spinach (good) and paneer (a cheese...probably not as good).  I felt a little torn about the rice, after dutifully foregoing it for lunch, but it was between that and naan bread...which seemed more obviously carb-ish.  Finally, beer may not be the best choice I could have made.  That'll be a tough habit to break - I usually have a beer once I get home from work/class.  Red wine would be better, but frankly, I just really prefer drinking a beer.  This seems like a ripe area for negotiation.  In general, it would also be better to not eat dinner this late - there are only a couple hours to burn off any food energy before you go to sleep.  I'll need to think about how to rectify that as well.


The next step seems like setting some actual health goals, and starting to make a concerted effort to cut things out that I really don't need.  Sounds like an entry I'll write later.

Fleshing Things Out

While it's easy in the abstract to simply say that I want to do "better" with various aspects of my life, that seems like a pretty shaky basis for any sustainable changes.  I think that's also been a problem with past attempts at responsibility (with regard to healthiness, especially).  It was easy to say that I should work out more, or eat more healthy foods.  After a while, though, those really abstract goals seem to break down.  It's hard for me to feel very motivated to keep being healthy if breaking those habits doesn't seem to derail any real plan.

So, in order to actually make some progress, I've thought about some guidelines for any area of self-improvement I try to make.  (Suggestions welcome)

• Set goals:  I should be explicit about what I want to accomplish.  Less body fat?  Save more money?  Try new things?  All of these practices should have a goal attached to them.  If you can't fail at it, it's not a goal.
• Be concrete:   If it's a goal, what are the metrics to use to track progress towards it?  Consuming a certain number of calories?  Losing a certain number of pounds?  Putting X% of my income into savings?
• Be accountable: This is basically the entire purpose of this blog.  I'll commit to things publicly, and I'll keep track of them with this blog.  I want to have people give me crap if I lapse.

Beyond just "being less of a piece of shit," I should probably isolate the specific areas I want to see improvement in.  Each one is big enough to get its own entry, but here are the areas I'm currently considering.

• Health:  Specifically, exercising more and eating more healthy food.  By far the one that's the most challenging for me.
• Finances:  I don't really have problems with debt or anything, but I don't really have much planning that guides my spending habits either.  It would be nice to have a better idea of what I should be doing with my disposable income, beyond just spending it on random stuff that strikes me as cool (though doing that is admittedly pretty fun).
•  Social:  I don't really worry about not having enough friends, but I admittedly fall into ruts when it comes to not really varying the things I do for entertainment.  My introverted side also makes it a little too easy to spend time alone.  So, it would be good to motivate myself to get out more, try new things, and meet new people (as well as being better about doing stuff with people I'm already friends with).
•  Academics:  Being a graduate student, I have to keep up with classes.  On the surface, I get good grades, but my study habits are not what I'd call stellar.  I regularly slack on doing readings for class, and I put off writing my papers until the last second.  This strikes me as the opposite of what a responsible person would do.
• Employment:  Probably the topic I'm going to write the least about, due to general sensitivity.  Nonetheless, in an abstract sense, it would be good to be more productive at work, and be generally more proactive (especially at taking on tasks that would be useful for career advancement).
• Home life:  The stakes for this one aren't very high, but I'd like to be better about cleaning habitually and other general grown-up behavior.
• Other:  This is just a catch-all category for everything else that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else.  It primarily includes random tasks in my life that I put off doing.

My general plan moving forward with this blog is to dedicate entries to each of these things (some topics, like health and finances, are probably big enough to merit multiple entries).  I plan to set out some goals for each one, and provide general updates on how I'm meeting them (hopefully every day, if anyone can stomach reading this blog that much).

Leading Things Off...

I've thought about writing a blog off and on for a couple years now, but had always held back due to never having a very good answer to the question, "What are you going to to write about that people would care to consistently read?"  I have plenty of opinions about politics, music, movies, and everything else, but I had a hard time believing that my opinions on those topics were so revolutionary that people were going to choose to read mine, given all the competing options out there.

This blog isn't going to be about that.  While I'm sure I'll diverge from the primary topic at times, this blog is about tracking my attempts at self-improvement.  For several years now, I find myself going through the same pattern:  

• Notice that I'm not as productive/healthy/adventurous/responsible as I feel that I should be
• Vow that I'm going to do things differently from now on
• Make dramatic changes to the chosen area of my lifestyle
• Stick to my new responsible lifestyle for about two weeks
• Feel good about what a responsible human being I now am
• Start making little excuses to lapse on my new-found will power
• Exceptions to my discipline build up and reach a breaking point, and I find myself back where I started

 This blog is a small part of my attempts to break that cycle.  A couple weeks ago, on a whim, I ordered The 4 Hour Body, by Tim Ferriss.  I ordered it after reading a review of it in Wired, not because I had any particular desire to take up a wild new diet or exercise routine.  Ferriss' general theme is that there are lots of ways to greatly improve your health and well-being that involve very little effort or exercise.  His points are interesting, but that's not really what struck me in the first couple hundred pages I read. 

Ferriss tells lots of stories to get his points across, but one of the most interesting is about an old computer programmer friend he ran into, who had been obese, but then lost 70 pounds.  When asking his friend about what major tipping point finally motivated him to lose the weight, his response is really thoughtful:

"I am, in most of my endeavors, a solidly successful person.  I decide I want things to be a certain way, and I make it happen.  I've done it with my career, my learning of music, understanding of foreign languages, and basically everything I've tried to do. [...]  If I want a better-than-average career, I can't simply 'go with the flow' and get it.  Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome.

[...]  Yet here I was, talking about arguably the most important part of my life - my health - as if it was something I had no control over.  I had been going with the flow for years.  Wishing for an outcome and waiting to see if it would come.  I was the limp, powerless ego I detest in other people." (pp. 38-39)

This struck me, as I generally consider myself a pretty capable person.  I've been successful at many things in my life.  Most of them took some level of self-discipline to accomplish.  Getting a good job, getting into a good grad school, being successful at debate - all of these things involved solid amounts of work.  It occurred to me how odd it was to pat myself on the back for being a committed, effective person in these areas of my life, while simultaneously dismissing eating healthy, exercising, and not procrastinating as just "not really my thing," apparently beyond the spectrum of things I could stick to.

I'm writing this blog to make my attempts to be a better person more concrete, but there's more to it than that.  I could just keep a journal if all I cared about was tracking what I was doing.  What a blog offers is some form of public accountability for my success.  Ferriss references the Hawthorne effect, where people work harder when they think they're being observed.  In addition to that, you can check out my roommate's blog, while he engages in a similar endeavor.

A couple weeks ago, when I was asked if I had any New Years resolutions, I responded off the cuff, "Maybe just generally be less of a piece of shit."  That's not a very concrete resolution (it probably encompasses everyone's New Years resolutions, in the abstract), but that doesn't make it a poor choice.  What I plan to do in the days ahead is to make that resolution a bit more real by first setting my goals, and subsequently, tracking my effort to achieve them.  If you're interested, keep reading.