Pursuing Happiness

This post is quite the homage, and I think a good life goal would be to be the sort of person who has things like this written about them.

But also it's got great, concrete advice about HOW to work toward being that relentlessly positive person.

It starts with presence. According to studies, 46.9% of your waking hours is spent thinking about what isn’t going on in that particular moment. For instance, as you walk down the street, your mind often goes to future conversations or past events instead of focusing on the present.

 http://markfisherfitness.com/dedicated-pursuit-happiness/

Ten Good Commandments

Number one is THE reason I am the fit person I am.

1. Thou shalt feel the love

It’s impossible to sustain something you hate long term, so don’t concern yourself with what is the better calorie burner or muscle builder, but instead experiment with a variety of things. Embrace that which feeds your fitness soul and eschew others. If it is fun and enjoyable you will want to keep doing it.

http://www.bodyforwife.com/the-10-commandments-of-getting-and-staying-in-shape/

Biggest Loser Baloney

Kelly Coffey writes amazing things.

You should read them all.

Here's a good one to start with:

https://www.thrillist.com/health/nation/biggest-loser-study-a-formerly-obese-personal-trainer-reacts


I believe I've touted her before, but if not that's my monstrous oversight...go immerse yourself in the wonder that is she: http://www.strongcoffey.com/

You Cannot Be Quantified

This post is a moderated take on the "quantified self" trend.

We, as a society, are awash in data. In 2013, we as a collective whole had produced 90% of all of the data ever produced in the 2 years prior. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number is not at 99% with a bunch of trailing zeros.

Of course the health and fitness industry is aware of this and producing items to take advantage of the trend, allowing you the humble user to track all sorts of things, from steps per day to blood oxygen levels, and then compare them over days, weeks, and months. This is typically lumped under the banner of “quantified self.” Suddenly, it’s all about what we can measure and objectify.

 http://whole9life.com/2015/02/biohacker-conference/

I myself just got out of it a year or two ago. I was all over calorie tracking, both input & output, and seeking to measure every component of my health. For YEARS.

I have glorious spreadsheets planning and tracking and evaluating workouts, nutrition, sleep, time nature, averages, conditional formatting, you name it. I basically did, manually, what these magical little wearables can give you via the cloud in an instant.

In a word: exhausting.

Initially it was helpful stuff, giving me a whole-life viewpoint of places I needed to improve. I learned that time in nature is a HUGE factor for me. So is social time. So is complete downtime.

But eventually, it turned into seeking perfection, finding failures (which I can now see were "failures"), and unending spiral of frustration, until I simply walked away entirely, to save my sanity.

Now, what about you? If a device on your wrist or an app on your phone encourages you to move more, or rest more, or eat better, whichever nudge you need - then that's great! Use it!

But when it becomes a rabbit hole of obsession, tracking and measuring and evaluating and frustrating...knock it off. Throw it all out and just live. You can't keep increasing your steps and your sleep and perfecting your nutrition forever. You have to level off at a place that is easy, healthy, and sustainable, and simply stay there. And you'll get there by putting the proper habits into place.

These wearables are tools you can use to build healthy habits, but once you have the healthy habits in place, you simply don't need the tools any longer. Pass them along to someone who does.

Keep this perspective, and avoid the rabbit hole, my friend.

Financial Fun

Off my usual topics, but something I am intimately familiar with: the mindset of personal finances.

This isn't a how-to-save post, but a "find your WHY" post:

http://twocents.lifehacker.com/personal-finance-has-everything-and-nothing-to-do-with-1766425829

And it's highly accurate, my own experience tells me. I label my various savings accounts for specifics (vehicle, vacation) that keeps it practical (new tires, no problem, tap the savings account) but also ensures I don't mindlessly blow money on daily Americanos, so that I have ample funds stashed for this summer's mountain vacation.

But for some people, a daily Americano will light up their life, because travel isn't all that important to them, or because they have perfectly-placed friends ensuring free vacation lodgings, or whatever.

On the other hand, I don't need enough funds for a trip to Europe, so instead I will spend a lot of my money on my personal trainer, who is vital to my daily happiness.
 
The point is to know what you're working your ass off FOR, adjust your spending habits accordingly, and ignore what everyone else is doing.

Making Your Bed Is Stupid

Recently I watched a video about making your bed, and it was basically touted as the solution to all your woes.

Well, I call bullshit.

I never make my bed, and here's why: it absolutely doesn't fucking matter.

• Other things can give you a sense of accomplishment first thing in the morning. Like, make coffee before you've had coffee, or cook up a big breakfast. BOOM, you rock.
•  Your bed should not be used for anything but sleeping & sex, so why should it look pretty? You only see it when you're about to crawl in or out. You want pretty, look at a flower.
•  When I leave my bed in the morning, my husband is still sleeping in it; I'm pretty sure HE wouldn't think it important for me to make it. 
• Also, we don't even share blankets, because I like to be tucked in like a child, and also I overheat easily. How does one make such a bed? Why WOULD one?

Does all that mean I'm destined to be a failure in life, Admiral?

No, but it might mean I never have bedbugs or stupid allergies from the wee critters who try to live in my sheets.

http://paleoforwomen.com/why-i-never-make-my-bed/

HA! SO THERE, MAN.

Just another reason you must not let people convince you that one simple thing will change your life.

It's not that easy.

MANY simple things will change your life, sure, but there is no silver bullet.

(Unless you're being hunted by a werewolf, I guess. In that case, you surely don't have time to make your bed.)

Habit Support

This post discusses a key thing to keep in mind when setting yourself up for habit success, particularly with new habits:

Once you hear it, the idea sounds ridiculously simple. It's a matter of accepting that your motivation will occasionally plummet, and that that's okay. If you can predict the obstacles you'll face during those times, you can help your future lazy self to be healthier and more successful.

How To Stick With Good Habits

6 weeks to a better, smaller, happier YOU!

Short-term transformations (lose 10 lbs in 30 days! 6 weeks to toned abs!) are a big thing, a big deal, a big addiction - and usually a big problem, in my mind.

I find it very difficult to support them, unless they are undertaken as a great way to build healthy habits, such as cooking more healthily, regularly exercising in a fun way, things that legitimately focus on HEALTH. And these do exist, usually within communities that are supportive and encouraging - if you find this, DO IT! It might change your life.

But such a healthy-habit focus is the rare exception, in my experience. These short-term efforts usually focus on appearance, because it's hard to measure changes in overall health in 6 weeks, or celebrate something as unsexy as 30 days of habit-building - but it's very easy to measure pounds & inches.

And that's what the consumer wants anyway.

So, the 30 days or 6 weeks are about the quick fix: drastic changes that can only ever be temporary...and you are then supposed to go back to your normal life, but svelter, and OBVIOUSLY happier.

The problem is, you may not be able to. You may think that the way you lived those six grueling weeks should be the way you live your everyday life. So you try to keep it up, but eventually you fail. Then you may give up on health & fitness altogether, or you may have simply completely fucked up your hormones, or developed an eating disorder. You most likely will regain the exact same weight you lost, maybe more.

It happened to me. I learned that those six weeks have great power to Fuck. You. Up.

This guy writes about his 6-pack #absperiment: http://greatist.com/fitness/six-pack-abs-six-weeks-one-year-later And what he learned, this right here, is absolutely PROFOUND, and yet you won't realize this until after you, too, have fucked yourself up:

You don’t need six-pack abs to be happy. And sometimes getting them can make you less happy than when you started.

YES. Except "sometimes" should be "99.99% of the time." And "less happy" should be "infinitely more miserable."

Honestly, I wish he had written more extensively about the impact on his mind, rather than keeping it short & sweet, because it's basically everything I've gone through since 2010. And I'm STILL not over it, nearly 6 years later.

Some days I get close, and much more frequently than before, but the evil voice, she always manages to get back in, and whisper her hateful chorus: "you're fat, you're getting fatter, eat less, try fasting again, go low carb, cycle carbs, you're gross, look at your belly, look at that cellulite, god, what are you doing, you're always going to be fat, you worthless piece of shit."

And this horrendously evil cunty internal voice wasn't in my head before the 6-week body-fat beatdown that made me equate my value with my appearance. Before, I was unhappy with my appearance, but it didn't define me. I felt strong and healthy and I was having fun with fitness, though I disliked my belly...and I wish to every imagined god that I had been content with that right there.

Because as I lost fat, I gained compliments left and right, and I loved them, soaked them up, put myself in a position to hear them again & again...and I began to believe that it was vital I be small & pretty, that it fucking MATTERED. So once I had fucked up my hormones, metabolism, whatever the science would call it, and gained weight despite giving all of my effort to undereating and overexercising, I became unworthy of compliments, I became unworthy of love, especially from my own damn self.

I am coming up on the 6-year anniversary of my 6 weeks, and the best way I could celebrate it would be to stop others, YOU, from doing this. I want you to learn from the mistakes of the rest of us. I do not want you, or anyone, to feel the way I felt...feel. Because it is no way to live your life. It's perfectly awful.



Sure, there's no guarantee this will happen to you. Some people spend 6 weeks on an annual or semi-annual basis targeting their body fat, and then go back to normal life, and don't spiral into long-term obsessions and eating disorders.

But...those people probably aren't scouring the internet for topics like this. They don't rush from link to link, trying to find the secret to the happy life a smaller body will give them, if they could just GET IT.

So, let me pull back from all that rambling about my messy life, that I can't tie up in a bow (some day, I hope), and simply beg you: use caution.

Short-term transformations aren't inherently bad, but they are dangerous territory.

Why not craft your own challenge instead?

Seek sustainable life changes during the next month. Add a healthy habit like replacing soda with water, toaster pastries with eggs, or takeout pizza with homemade. Instead of watching that crappy TV show every Wednesday night, join your SO for a walk through the neighborhood. Instead of sitting on the bleachers during your son's soccer game, make laps around the track.

Skip the beat-you-to-a-pulp cardio-based fitness classes that leave you feeling like a fat heaving cow compared to the tiny perky instructor, and invest in a good personal trainer who can teach you how to lift. Join a softball league and quit your dart league.

Do a Whole30, not for weight loss (ever), but to learn exactly how your body responds to different foods (and then make a planned, careful, slow reintroduction phase, not a simple return to "before").

Or, focus on the mental, and spend 6 weeks working on loving your body for what it is, what it has done, what it can do. Because it's damned amazing, no matter what it looks like.

Little things like this are unsexy, but oh, my friend, the changes you will experience will be lifelong, and so much more beneficial than shaming yourself into pursuing a tinier version of you. You are capable of so much more than looking pretty & thin. You are not an ornament.

When you're 90, and looking back on your life...what will you be most proud of?

It won't be losing 10 pounds in a month, and it definitely won't be giving yourself an eating disorder.

You will be VERY proud of having built a healthy life, which gave you many quality years of enjoyment.

So do that.

More of that.

ALL of that.

You Say You Want A Resolution (Or Not)

I'm finally sharing some specific resolution talk, three weeks into the year.

Oops.

But actually...maybe now's the perfect time to talk about them anyway.

If you've picked the right ones and are #killingit then you should pat yourself on the back, and peruse the article in case you could incorporate one or two into your new world o' ass-kicking.

And if you picked the wrong resolutions and are #awfuckit then try these on for size, for easy steps back toward feeling as though you're winning at life.

They are also good if you are completely anti-resolution.

Basically, I'm saying everyone should read it and EVERYONE WINS:

http://paleoforwomen.com/6-uniquely-helpful-new-years-resolutions/

You Need Fun - Lots of It!

Sometimes the big important things are as small as this: how to have more fun in your daily life.

Here's a great little post about exactly that: http://whole9life.com/2014/02/take-back-the-fun-part-2/

You Are Perfect[ly Imperfect]

This is a quick read, but a little nugget of gold:

It is like when you really want a bag of chips. You say to yourself, "You can't have chips. They are bad for you. They have too many calories. They will make you fat"  You listen, then you go to the refrigerator and eat some carrot sticks, then some yogurt, then a piece of cheese, then an apple. None of these things satisfy the initial craving. SO..you end up with the chips anyway. Why not listen to your need in the first place?

Find your things. You will need certain things in your everyday life (my things include coffee, reading, lifting, running, time with friends, writing, daily salads), and you will need certain things in your max-stress life (my things include less running, less time with friends, more reading, potato chips).

And most of all, you need to forgive yourself for needing those things. They are simply what you need. There is no judgment.

http://www.loveyourbodyproject.org/#!Perfectly-Imperfect-Sound-Familiar/c1fhr/564227050cf21009be806611

Habits: How-To

Ah, the new year, a fresh, blank calendar just waiting for us to fill it up with plans, made by the person we want to become.

It's that "Monday reset" feeling, but in bulk, times 365 366 (it's a leap year).

Let's make this year's plans stick, and let's not do it by co-opting some crappy magazine's "how to overhaul your life" list.

I'd bet my pinky toe that you've done that, and it didn't work - not because you suck, but because truly, that kind of overhaul never works.

Here's what does: http://habitry.com/blog/the-only-habits-that-matter

You Failed, Now What?

Oh hey, if I haven't said it already, those Habitry peeps be geniuses.

Well, here you are. You failed at a goal you set yourself. 

Maybe it was a New Year’s resolution, or maybe it was a longtime dream.

Regardless of what kind of goal it was, it can feel terrible to have failed at achieving something you want. And yet it's a very common experience. People often fail to get things they want and have worked for. Just as common is the urge to dwell on the negative aspects — to say that you didn't want it enough, you weren't good enough, or you just didn't try hard enough. 

Simple, straightforward questions to ask yourself at this point: http://habitry.com/blog/3-questions-to-ask-yourself-when-you-fail-to-achieve-a-goal?mc_cid=c76b4dff03&mc_eid=83986a8796