Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
It’s not always easy getting enough sleep. Sometimes, no matter how much I try, I feel like I’m not recharging my battery. I’m in bed early, and I wake up many times during the night. Or I actually get to sleep early and get a good night of rest one evening and then my body won’t let me sleep the next night.
Sleep doesn’t seem to accumulate as easily as lack of sleep. I can get a nice recharge from a few good nights in a row, but one bad night undermines that pattern and puts me in a deficit again.
I’m currently on a challenging cycle and it’s making my regular routine difficult, and exhausting. I’ve got to reset a positive sleep pattern, but if I’m honest… I’m off to a crappy start.
I’ll be back at work this morning after our 2-week March break. I’m already enjoying that I’m back into my routine, writing and exercising in the early morning. It’s easy to get off track, and to upset routines when on holidays. I missed workouts, I spent evenings looking for times to write, and I didn’t always eat well.
I am realizing more and more how valuable routines are. Routines are ways to instil discipline and habits so that they are almost effortless. I know what I will be doing next, with no thought and minimal effort to get started. It’s that simple.
When I head into work, I’ll also fairly quickly find myself in a routine. I’ll order my day (barring too many unexpected interruptions) so that I prioritize my team before outside distractions. I’ll create a ‘To Do’ list of priorities, and I’ll also try to find things to enjoy along the way… be it a conversation with students or interactions with staff. In other words, I’ll follow my routines, but also look for some novelty.
There is comfort in routines, but there is also the use of routines to find efficiencies so that I can also do things outside of my routines. My routines are an important part of my journey, but they are not the journey.
Just spent a week at my sister’s house visiting her family and my mom. I managed to get 4 nice hilly walks in, and a casual bike ride, but by far this was the longest I’ve gone without really working out in years. I’ll count the walks as exercise days, but now I’m home and about to hit the treadmill and weights for a nighttime workout session.
Usually I find ways to do way more exercise on holidays. I did do some pushups and leg dips one day, but if I’m honest, I had the time to do that or other body weight workouts on more of the days than I did… I just didn’t do it.
This isn’t me beating myself up for taking most of the week off. Rather it’s recognition that it can be easy to let things slide if I don’t pay attention. At home, my routines make things easy. I wake up, I get a workout done. It’s that simple. On holidays I need to either: build in a routine or make a conscious effort to workout. Or if it’s a week or less, give myself permission to have an easy week.
That said, I’m back home and my basement gym is calling me.
I started my fitness journey in January 2019, and it has occurred to me that over the past year, it has become a challenge to give myself a rest day. It used to be hard to find the time and the motivation to work out. The challenge was wanting to, and doing the necessary work. Now the challenge is allowing myself a rest day.
I’m realizing that while I give most of my body ample rest, (primarily doing just one muscle group in a workout when I’m working under morning time pressure at my home gym), I still work my legs daily with my cardio. My legs are not getting any rest. I need to reevaluate what I define as a workout, allowing myself to skip cardio 2-3 times a week. I also need to take a full rest day more than once every 2 weeks or so.
I’ve gone from it being hard to workout to it being hard to skip a day. And while that’s a script switch I’d like to maintain, I’d also like to ensure that I actually do skip some days. Not enough that it feels easy again, but enough that I feel the benefits of rest between working out.
Still, this is a good place to be! I’d rather be on this side rather than the flip side.
A few months back I started doing my meditation on my treadmill. It started because I was in a writing slump and my blog post writing was taking too long to write… Not leaving me enough time to do 20-30 minutes of cardio, meditate, and do a full weights workout on one body part before work. So I started to double dip and do my meditation on my treadmill. (Yes, I close my eyes, I hold the handrail and also wear the emergency stop clip… not that I’ve ever needed it.)
I actually find this a great combination. I do a walk with a weighted vest on incline, so holding the rail I’m very stable. I get a really good (Zone 2) workout, it’s not like I’m taking it easy. And I find that with my body busy, I’m better able to focus my mind on the guided meditation. And the bonus is that I’m getting two great things done.
Today I was struggling to write, very distracted, and decided to exercise first. I thought I’d double dip and write while on the exercise bike rather than treadmill, where writing would be awkward. 15 minutes into a 30 minute ride, I realized I wasn’t going to write anything while riding so I put on a 15 minute meditation to get me to the end of my cardio workout.
Five minutes later this post came to mind and I spent the next 10 minutes of my meditation and ride bringing my thoughts back to the meditation and away from writing this in my head. Essentially I made the meditation almost impossible to focus on.
This is the first time in a couple years that I’ve tried to meditate before writing, and I totally remember now why I do them in the order I do them. I can’t meditate knowing that I still have to write. I need the sense of accomplishment of my post to help clear my mind for meditation.
Essentially, I can only double dip in the right order, with a physical and a mental activity, but there is no triple dipping! Nor is there double dipping of two mental activities. I’m the poster boy of ‘there’s no such thing as multitasking’. For me meditation while I’ve got a blog post to write is an invitation to completely ignore meditation, or to inconveniently and ineffectively task swap so that I do neither task well.
Write first, then double dip exercise and meditation. That’s my lesson for the morning.
I’ve got my weight vest on. However, I don’t want to get on the treadmill, which is why I’m wearing the vest. I want to crawl under my blankets and not think about having to shovel the driveway later.
But yesterday was a rest day and I refuse to be someone who misses two days in a row. My habit of regular exercise is part of my identity. Am I motivated right now? Hell no! Am I going to work out immediately after writing this? Absolutely!
Make your habits about who you are and not what you do… and you don’t need motivation… you just get it done.
It started January 1st, 2019. I was almost 30 pounds overweight and I decided that I’d had enough of working out, getting busy and lazy and not working out, and yo-yo-ing between these two states… while progressively getting further out of shape.
In my 1 year video reflection, back in late December 2019, I was able to share that I’d basically lost the 30 pounds and was back on track for staying healthy. Now, years later, I’ve put back on about 12 pounds, but a completely healthy 12 pounds. I’ve added almost an inch to my biceps, I have great definition on my (still skinny) legs, and my shoulders/traps are probably where I see my biggest gains.
Here are my key stats this year:
Workouts – defined as a minimum of 20 minutes cardio and some weights (unless it’s a Coquitlam Crunch day when I don’t usually go weights).
Meditation – At least 10 minutes, usually 15 or 20 minutes guided meditation on the Balance App.
Daily-Ink – Daily writing on this blog.
Writing/Creating – Intended to be for writing beyond my blog regularly but mostly just tracking conversations with my uncle.
Workouts: 326 days or 89%
Meditation: 313 days or 85%
Daily-Ink: 366 days or 100%
Writing/Creating: 53 days or 14.5%
Reflections:
Workouts: I’m actually setting a goal to work out less in 2025. I’ve made some good gains and think they can be better if I gave myself more rest. This is especially true for my legs. I think working out cardio 10-12+ days in a row is limiting my leg recovery time needed to see them grow a bit more. Lack of rest might be why my legs are a lot stronger but still skinny. For upper body, many of my workouts are just a single muscle focus, and so I usually get enough rest between hard sets for specific muscle groups.
Meditation: These could have been qualitatively better this year. It’s not an issue of volume but definitely one fit quality. In 2024 I found that writing was taking me a bit longer in the morning, and so a lot of times I ended up doing a walking meditation on the treadmill to make up the time. That said I’m not convinced that those meditations were necessarily moving me towards my meditation goals as much as dedicated time would.
Daily-Ink: I’ll keep my blog going another year. And while I’ve basically maintained daily writing for 5 and a half years, I still want to track it.
Writing/Creativity: The largest area for growth is in being creative. I’m going to do a couple things to improve this. First, I won’t be counting conversations with my uncle, even when we are recording them. What I will count is video editing of the videos he and I record, as well as writing not related to by blog. A goal related to this is less social media time… Reducing distractions and focusing on creativity. My writing/creativity goal will be a minimum of two days per week, 104 days a year, or basically doubling last year’s total while not counting the vast majority of days I would have tracked last year. I won’t meet my uncle less often, I just won’t be counting these Zoom visits as part of my creativity goal.
Ultimately I want to see two outcomes this year that will result from my tracking above:
Gain 7-8 pounds of muscle. This is a big jump for me. In my 30’s and 40’s I had a hard time maintaining a weight of about 153 pounds. If I worked out consistently for several months I’d get my weight to 155 but struggled to put good weight on beyond that. When I stopped working out I’d drop a few pounds and sit closer to 150. By December 2018, at age 51, I’d (unintentionally and without awareness) let myself go and weighed just under 185 pounds, with all of that extra weight being unhealthy. After year one of my healthy living goals (reflection shared again here) I was back down to around 155. Now I fluctuate around 167-169 pounds and would like to bring that to 175 pounds. Basically, it took me about 5 years to gain 12 pounds of muscle and I want to add 8 more this year. Increased protein and more dedicated weight training will get me there if I maintain my positive habits and get a bit more rest between (harder/smarter) workouts.
More creativity. I think 2 days a week of doing something creative is realistic and attainable. Reducing social media distractions will be key. I’m going to automate my blog going into social media, and add time limits to all socials for Monday to Friday as a starting point. I’ll see how that works and re-evaluate my success after a month.
Finally, one more goal unrelated to my tracking will be a reading goal. Watching that December 2018 reflection video again I was shocked that I listened to 26 books that year. I think this year’s count was 6, with 3 partial reads to finish, although I did listen to a lot more podcasts. I want to improve my book count. I think this will also help with my creativity.
One final reflection: Overall I’m pretty damn proud of my 2024 stats above. Yes I have some ambitious goals ahead of me, and I’m always pushing to improve… but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I’ve been on a 6 year journey from an overweight and unhealthy 51 year old to a 57 year old who hasn’t been this healthy and strong since I was an athlete in my 20’s.
My ultimate goal is a great healthspan to go with my lifespan. I want to be able to do things in 20 years that most 77 year olds can’t imagine doing. I want to be hiking, traveling, and living a vibrant, healthy life well into my senior years. I think I’m on the right path.
It’s definitely the holidays for me. The time is 10:19pm and I’m just starting my writing. I haven’t meditated yet, (and missed the last couple days), and haven’t worked out yet either. Why? I’m off of my routines and my morning habits are not getting done to start my day.
Although it was not a busy day, I did get some important errands done, and don’t feel like I wasted the day… but here I am feeling very little motivation to get a workout in. I will, but it feels like effort.
That’s the difference between good habits and routines versus motivation. When I have my routines set, writing just gets done. Workouts get done. Meditation gets done. Zero motivation needed.
But let my routines slip and suddenly everything gets harder to get started. And getting started is the hardest part. Some days I feel like crap and just go through the motions simply because that’s part of my routine. Some of those days continue to feel hard, but sometime the act of getting started is all I need to turn the day, or at least my mood, around.
Routines help me get started. No motivation required. And now it’s time to finish this and get started on my workout. I think I’ll do a walking meditation on my treadmill and that’s one less thing to have to motivate myself to do. The best thing I’ve ever done for my health and wellbeing has been the strict routines I’ve created to get my healthy living goals done. I just need to rethink how I maintain these routines over my holidays.
Ok, let me start by acknowledging that rut-tine is not a word. It’s a play on the word ‘rut’.
Rut: An uninspired routine or pattern of behavior that one continues unthinkingly or because change is difficult.
Routines are so important. When you routinize a habit the habit becomes easy. There is no need for motivation when your habit has become routine. Case-in-point: I will meditate and exercise as soon as I finish writing this. No effort required, this is my routine and that’s what I do next. Minimal effort required to start the process.
But just like it takes no effort to maintain my healthy habits, routines can serve bad habits just as easily. For example, I generally don’t snack after dinner Sunday to Thursday night. No treats, no beverages, just dinner and then bed without any other food. I developed the habit of not eating after dinner precisely because when I do, it’s almost never a healthy snack. However, I have a weakness for chocolate covered almonds and almost every night for the past couple weeks I’ve taken a handful of these delicious treats after dinner. And this has led me to other more unhealthy snacks as well.
Essentially I fell into a rut-tine, an unintentional routine that is less than ideal. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until I’m sitting on the couch with a handful of chocolate almonds or a bowl of chips. But this is a minor thing, I’ll run out of chocolate almonds and I’ll soon return to my disciplined routine of not snacking 5 days a week.
However this got me thinking… What routines and habits of mind do I have that are more rut-tine than routine? How many little mental scripts do I have that I would be better off not having? How have I routinized bad habits that are either mentally or physically unhealthy or unhelpful?
Because it’s easy to stay in a rut once that rut is part of what we do daily. And we need to recognize that we are in a rut or the rut-tine just takes over and we say rutted. We need to identify the difference between a good routine and a rut-tine, and then change the latter into the former.
One of the best parts of getting older is that unlike when I was half my age, I actually listen to my body. Four days ago I did my Norwegian Protocol cardio workout and really pushed hard. I also did a bicep workout. Three days ago I did a hard incline walk with a 34lb weighted vest. Then I did pull-ups and step ups with the vest still on.
Two days ago I did a really challenging leg workout out then had some knee aches through the day. Yesterday I did a light 20 minute stationary bike ride to get the blood flow to my legs and hopefully reduce the lactic acid buildup from the leg workout. Then I did a hard chest workout.
Today I know I need a break. Sure I spread out my workouts and don’t overdo any one area, except maybe going a bit too hard on legs. Sure I have areas like my back or abs that I could focus on today while giving my other muscles a rest. But I can tell I need a rest day… my body is telling me so.
Younger me would have felt guilty taking the day off. Younger me would have pushed through, not realizing that my very healthy knees almost never bother me and maybe a rest day is in order. Younger me would probably have worked out today and dealt with any pain as a result, as if it’s nothing to worry about, until it was too painful to continue.
But not today. Today I rest. It’s a wonderful rest day! And I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
