Judo blues

It was the first practice back at Judo last night. Good gosh am I super-weak. And inflexible.

Still, I'm joyous to have returned, even thought he absence was only three weeks, I had been unable to much prior to the Christmas break due to a fractured finger. Prior to THAT I had retweaked my knee (which had had a torn ACL) so I had been taking it easy seemingly forever.

It's obviously I had been 'taking it easy' in how out of shape I felt. The only consolation is I know from experience that keeping at it and giving it solid effort quickly pays dividends in improved performance. I'm seeing that at work with my stairs habit, going up the 5 flights of stairs to my office used to be a huffing and puffing inducing affair. Now I get up to the 4th floor before my legs start burning a little. My endurance is improving. It's amazing how quickly it happens. My total volume of no/low impact activities has gone through the proverbial roof, and I'm feeling it. Future habits to incorporate will include weight training, flexibility training, bodyweight gymnastics, etc. All those little good habits every day make a real difference.

Food is the important thing to be focusing on though. Diet soda, tea and water are the only approved drinks right now. Eventually I'll eliminate diet soda as well. I haven't touched food yet but I'm kicking around a habit related to food that might make it easier to eat right vs. just making a habit of not eating certain food. That doesn't make sense but maybe it will in the future.

Another brick in the wall

So I'm glad I haven't tried to have a news years resolution to eat well because I would have totally bombed it.

I keep building up my habits, and now I've decided the frequency I'll try to adopt new habits. It might be a bit aggressive but I'm going to try it. I'll pick one or two things a week, on Mondays, to try to incorporate.

I'm well on my way to standing (standing right now!) at work and bussing is going good. I haven't tested bussing with Judo yet, but that's OK. This week I'm going to try to eliminate all caloric drinks (non diet sodas, orange juice, milk, etc) and see if I can make that stick. Tea, water and diet soda for me. Now, diet soda is bad too, but I can't win going whole-hog so baby steps. Later on I'll try to eliminate diet soda as well.

My second new habit I'm trying to implement is the 100-pushups program at hundredpushups.com Basically, I'll do their regimen three times a week to try to move me to 100 pushups. At my judo height I could do about 50, but now I sadly struggled to do 10. This will be embarrassing as Judo restarts tonight.

So this week: Push ups and no caloric drinks. Another two habit legos to stick in my new me. If I choose 2 a week and can make them all stick, by 2014 I'll have 104 habits that are "things I do" that build me towards my goals instead of moving me away from them. Think of the power of all those small chagnes compounding over time!

Exciting.

2012 Closing

I don't have a musing end of year post or anything. Just here at work on December 31st, standing of course. Lots of promise and possibilities for 2013. I have so much stuff I want to internalize, improve, change, conquer, etc and for the first time I'm divvying it up into smaller bits instead of trying to become a whole new person all at once. New Years Resolutions don't work, so don't make them.

I'm pretty sure I can make this standing thing stick. I'm pretty sure I can make taking the stairs stick. I'm pretty sure I can make taking the bus work in my schedule and stick.

Then, I can focus on improving my nutrition, not all at once but bit by bit. No soda, for starters. And I can probably simultaneously focus on some exercise. Walking 30 minutes a day, 100-pushups program, work on my gymnastics poses, yoga/stretching, lifting weights, etc. One thing at a time.

I may have mentioned I do Judo in a previous post. I do, and I'm so out of shape right now due to bad diet, neglect and injuries that I have some catchup to do. I would really like to, at some point in 2013, compete in a tournament and do OK. Not shooting for a gold medal yet, just would like to legitimately win a match again.

Baby Steps. That's my theme for 2013.

Slow!

So I'm already starting to fall into a last trap of trying to imagine big future changes all at once. I know me, these changes are too big to implement and have stick all at once. It would be a recipe for failure. Taking a deep breath, continuing to lengthen the list of changes I would like to eventually make, and sticking with standing desk and riding the bus. And taking stairs at work when possible (up only, down just puts pressure on knees without a ton of extra calorie burn)

Habit Legos

I'm contemplating the great number of improvements I want to make in my life, each one supported by habits. Automatic behavior is the easiest way to get something right, but you can't change all your behavior at once, at best you can focus on one or two things and try to turn them into habits, then when it's automatic move on to a couple more habits.

Right now the habits I'm focusing on are standing at my work desk and taking only the stairs at work. The combination of those things should burn enough Calories to cause me to shed about 12-15lbs in a year. Of course, I can't eat more to compensate and the additional activity should increase my hunger, but that's alright. If I focus on eating very nourishing, healthy foods, I still come out ahead overall. More out = More in and BETTER in. That should help reshape my body. Other plusses to these goals are increased muscle mass, endurance, strength, focus, saving money on commuting, etc. These three small legos together add up to a big change. But the real reason I chose them was that I'm at a new job where I'm at work, working on a computer for 8 hours a day. That is BAD. Sitting is bad for us. I am not going to get any traction on any other health goals with this giant fitness suck of sitting for 8 hours a day. Now it's not like standing around is a ton better, but anything I can do to turn this 8 hours into something closer to training instead of de-training is a good thing. That's why I'm focusing first on these goals.

I have a HUGE list of items I could have chosen. Eating only natural unprocessed foods, working out every day, morning runs, making the bed every day, keeping the house cleaner, sticking to shopping lists, sticking to budgets, etc, etc but I can't be successful trying to absorb all that change at once.

So. Standing. Stairs. It's a start.