Tag Archives: healthy living

Habit revamp

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Summer is here and I’m don’t have a morning routine anymore. I’m currently between sets at a gym I don’t usually go to, because last night I stayed with a cousin in a nearby city. I’m here 3 hours later than usual, which is perfectly ok, I really don’t need to be out of the house at 5:45 anymore… or anytime in the foreseeable future.

I don’t care about the actual time I work out, or write my daily blog post, or meditate, or take my vitamins, but I do care that I actually do these things very regularly. A perfect example is that today I went directly from cardio to weights and only now realize that I skipped my stretching routine… a key ingredient to keeping my back healthy and ready to do weights.

Basically I had a habitual routine that was rock soiled while I had a work schedule to plan my routine around, and now that’s gone. I’m not going to figure this out today, and new habits take a while to form, but I want to figure out a kind of flexible routine in terms of times of day, location, and summer plans. I don’t actually know how to do this, so it may be messy for a while. Even so, I know me, and if I don’t have systems in place I miss getting things done.

There is a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. That was me for a long time, now that I have more time I really need to create systems that will ensure all the healthy habits I developed are part of my new patter and pace of life.

If it hurts…

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I had sciatic pain from about December to March. It got bad enough that my doctor requested a pain specialist appointment for me, and I had it yesterday. Despite the fact that I’m no longer in pain, I kept the appointment so that I can learn more about my disc issues and maybe figure out some preventative measures to ensure I don’t end up in 4 months of pain again.

Have you ever seen that joke where a patient is talking to a doctor and says, “Doctor, when I poke right here, it hurts.” And the doctor replies, “Well then don’t poke there.” That’s essentially the advice I got.

The specialist said that I’m getting old, (it wasn’t intended as an insult, he told me we are the same age), and that the wear-and-tear that my back shows is typical for active people my age. He then said that of course I should stay active and keep doing what I’m doing. Then came the punchline: “If you do something and it hurts, then stop doing it.”

That’s what I waited months to hear. He told me that he used to do a lot of running until he had a knee replaced and now he walks. I asked him if I should stop using a weighted vest to workout, something I was doing before the pain, but haven’t tried since. His response you can guess, “Try it. If it hurts, stop.”

“But if it hurts, the pain might come back for a while.”

“Oh yeah, it could be two to three months.”

It ended with him joking that he could write me a note to give to my wife to get out of doing dishes for a while. I wasn’t amused.

I don’t know exactly what I was looking for, but it wasn’t this. I suppose I’ll just keep doing my physio exercises, keep going to the gym, and if something hurts, I guess I just stop doing that thing.

What gives way?

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I was reminded recently of the project management triangle. It refers to the fact that you can only chose two of the three: Cheap (cost) / Fast (time) / Good (scope). This is related to what I was thinking, but not really the essence of it. What this made me think of is how we are always making sacrifices.

Right now, my sacrifice(s) seems to be sleep and diet. Everything else is going really well for me. Work is busy, but smooth. I’m seeing a lot of my family. I’ve connected with friends. My workouts are going well. But I’m not sleeping great and I haven’t been paying attention to what I’m eating, or rather I don’t think I’m eating enough.

It’s so hard to have everything going in the right direction all at once. There is always something that seems to be giving way in order to ensure other things are going well. I’m sure that I’ll rebalance my sleep and diet soon, but then will something else falter? I’d like to think not, but that seems to be what happens. Is this a constraints issue like the management triangle? Or is it just me?

Battery recharge

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Next week is going to be extremely busy. I’ve got something on the go every day, and a couple of those days will take a lot out of me. I think this coming week will be the busiest of the month. I’m going to need to maximize my rest and be very efficient with my time.

I find weeks like this exhausting not just because the schedule is crazy but also because I end up getting less sleep. I head to bed wired and thinking about what I still have to do, and that results in me staying up later, and not getting as much rest. I am aware of this, and yet I can’t seem to break the pattern.

I’m me of my biggest goals in retirement is figuring out a better sleep pattern. I know that not having an all-day work agenda should make things better… but I fear that heading into summer, I’ll actually just stay up later. This is normal for me during the summer, when the days are longer.

My challenge is to find a routine where I’m fully recharging my battery because this is one aspect of healthy living I have not figured out. I can eat well and work out regularly with minimal effort now because these are habits I’ve developed. They don’t take motivation and discipline, they just get done as part of failing living.

A good night’s sleep still requires effort, and the discipline to go to bed early enough. I have to figure out how to routinize sleeping, rather than relying on motivation… Because my motivation isn’t strong enough. And weeks like the one coming remind me that sleep can make or break the kind of week I end up having.

And on that note… I’m off to bed.

Delightful start to the day

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I usually work out at 6am. Before going to the gym I’ll have a protein bar, and when I get home I make myself a protein shake. A few weeks ago I added a little something extra to my shake and I’ve been loving it!

The usual ingredients are high protein milk, creatine, and either chocolate or vanilla protein powder. My new ingredient that I added to the chocolate protein powder is a double shot of espresso. A trick to it is that after pulling the espresso shots, I put two cubes of ice in it and swirl it until the shots are chilled. Then into the blender they go.

I’ve always enjoyed my morning shake, but now it tastes like an extra special treat. I showed this to my wife and she added another ingredient, a half of a banana. This is also delightful. With or a without the banana these are a ‘10/10, I would recommend’ kind of treat to start your day.

Sleep cycles

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I know that the one area of my life that I can most improve is sleep. I tend to sleep 5-6 hours a night when it should be at least 7 hours. For years I’ve convinced myself that I don’t need a lot of sleep, that I’m one of those rare few people who can live on less sleep than most people. It’s a nice narrative to have, but I’m really starting to question if this is true.

My Garmin watch consistently rates my sleep as ‘Poor’ with feedback like this:

“Shorter than ideal, not enough REM

You slept a bit less than recommended, and your amount of REM sleep was low. You may feel more tired or moody today.”

In the last 4 weeks I have had 15 days with a sleep score under 60 and only 2 days with a score over 80. Those are not numbers to be proud of.

And yet I still go to bed later than I should, and on days when I do get to bed early, I’ll often wake up an hour before my alarm and sleep poorly until my alarm goes off. I don’t know what I’m going to do differently, but what I can’t do is pretend that this is good enough. I spend so much time trying to take care of my body, I need to make sure a good night’s sleep is part of that routine.

Recovery time

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I’m so frustrated dealing with injury recovery. I feel like I’m living my life in recovery mode.

Sciatic pain: 4 months of limited cardio, stopped my weekend walks for 5 weeks, and while now pain free, I am still coming back slowly so as not to trigger it again.

Golfer’s elbow: Ongoing. It reminds my that it’s still there every few days.

Teris major (the muscle behind the deltoid on my right shoulder): No idea how I injured it, but it stops me from getting a good night’s sleep, and has forced me to take it easy on all kinds of exercises to avoid pain.

My buddy is coaching me on keeping the weights I do down and focusing on good technique. I’m actually listening rather than being a stubborn fool who just pushes through pain like I’ve done for decades. But, dang, this is mentally tougher than actually pushing myself.

I’ve spent my athletic life being the underdog. I was the smallest kid being picked last on teams until Grade 10. Playing water polo and having the most inefficient swim stroke made me one of the slowest players in the pool… who had to work harder than anyone, with less rest, on every swim set.

I got accustomed to pushing hard to compensate for my shortcomings. What I lacked in talent I made up for with heart and effort. I learned how to push myself… hard! And now I know that this is not the way forward. Now I have to be smarter than to push through pain and injury. I need to be ok with showing up and doing the work that will protect me from future injuries rather than bring them on.

It’s so much easier to say than to do.

If I’m honest, this sucks. A few days ago I mentioned that I’d like to go one week injury free, I concluded in that post,

I’m reminded of the quote, ‘Choose your hard.’

When I’m sedentary my back aches. When I’m working out, different muscles choose to ache. Well, I guess I just have to choose my ache. Yet I’m actually not joking when I say, when I beg, can I please get one week ache free, just to know what that’s like.”

Being constantly in recovery mode is not the kind of hard I want, but it’s the kind of hard I have to face right now. Progress currently isn’t getting better or stronger, it’s not losing ground while I let my body heal. The trick is not to injure anything else in the process.

Simplify rather than shrink

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I don’t remember where I heard this, but the concept has been on my mind recently:

Simplify rather than shrink.

The idea is that retirement doesn’t necessarily mean becoming less, but rather doing less. No I won’t be going into work anymore, and the titles and responsibilities will be less, but that doesn’t mean who I am will shrink. It’s way better to perceive the changes as simplifying my life. I’ll be able to wake up later than 5am, I won’t have to rush my morning workout, or race to get my writing done. On the contrary, I can work out for longer and write more.

I don’t have to rush the making of dinner, or choose a meal based on speed of preparation rather than preference. I won’t have to give up the quality and healthiness of a meal for convenience. I can also commit to some projects mid-week rather than waiting for the weekend.

This isn’t a shrinking of what I do, it’s expanding the things I want to do, while also simplifying my life. It’s removing the commitment to a job that can sometimes take 10 hours of my week day and creep into weekends, (if not in workload then at least in mental energy).

This frame of simplifying rather than shrinking is one than I think works for me. It’s a metaphor that allows me to get excited about my upcoming retirement. It allows me to see retirement as a wonderful opportunity to expand the use my time on things that allow me to be more of who I want to be. There will be no shrinking, there will definitely be some simplifying.

6am Gym Goers

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I’ve been going to a gym, rather than doing home workouts, for about 5 months now. My usual time is to get there by 6am. One thing about the 6am crowd is that they are dedicated. You see all the same faces almost every day. And, you start to acknowledge the regulars when you see them. 

I always see one guy who paddles with a weight like he’s paddling a canoe. He does a lot of exercises I don’t really get… but he’s there every day doing his routine. There’s little miss cardio who attacks the elliptical for long periods and at a pace that I could never maintain. There’s the calisthenics dude that pushes his body to the max on every set he does, with an effort that I’d struggle to maintain day-after-day. There is the somewhat self-conscious overweight guy who keeps to himself, who works hard and ends his weight session on a stationary bike. There’s the old guy (I might call him that, but he’s probably just a few years older than me) who chats up everyone, and is always smiling. There is the girl who does RDL’s with such a perfectly straight back that I think you could use her back as an ironing board – impressive! There are two couples, the younger ones work out together, the older ones are obviously together but don’t spend a lot of time on the same machines and do completely different workouts. I could go on and on… because I don’t just see these people once in a while, there are there every weekday. 

I often wonder what their back stories are? What got them to be diehard gym goers who are so dedicated? What makes them push, what makes them commit to consistency? Showing up consistently and dedicating regular time to being healthy is a life changing habit. It doesn’t matter if a person is trying to build muscle, increase their max VO2, or just in maintenance mode. It doesn’t matter if they do exercises that make sense to me, or if they struggle with good technique, or if they lift way heavier or way lighter than me. These gym goers have one thing in common… they start their day in the gym. I tip my hat to the 6am gym goer crowd. 

Persistent and annoying

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Three Sundays ago, at the start of the March break, I felt a cough coming on. The timing was awful since I was hopping on a plane to visit my mom & sister the next day. I spent 10 days away and had the cough the entire time. I’ve been home for 5 nights now and the cough still persists. The good news is that I did see my doctor and it’s not in my lungs. The bad news is that I coughed a lot last night and this isn’t going away.

There are a couple things that I find extremely frustrating. First, I’ve really been taking care of myself, and yet I still catch this annoying cough. My stress at work has been low, I exercise and eat well, and I supplement with vitamins and minerals. I understand that you can be healthy and still get a cough or cold, but I don’t usually have them hold on for so long.

The other frustrating thing is that I’ve been dealing with sciatic pain in my leg since December. It was finally receding a couple days before this cough hit me, and is completely gone now. Don’t get me wrong, this is great news after months of annoying pain that altered my everyday living. The annoying part is that I’m finally pain free, and I’ve coughed every day since.

I feel like I haven’t had a healthy day yet this year… and it’s already April tomorrow! I’m trying to stay positive, but I’m tired of this. Tired of sleeping poorly, tired of coughing fits, tired of throat lozenges kept stuck in my cheek, tired of people looking at me like I’m going to get them sick. Feeling unhealthy has been both persistent and annoying, and I’m really looking forward to feeling healthy again.