Category Archives: Fitness

A reader’s SIDCHAs

on August 13, 2015 in Exercises, Fitness, Habits, SIDCHAs

A reader and friend wrote about his SIDCHAs: Hey Josh, How’s it going? I was reading your blog and found your SIDCHA example and explanation post. Really enjoyed the distillation of it all, especially as my insecurities have many times led me to search for info rather than action. One thing I have been (attempting to) do is a Daily Review. It’s just a checklist of all the SIDCHAs I[…] Keep reading →

60,000 burpees!

on August 12, 2015 in Exercises, Fitness, Habits, SIDCHAs

Somewhere around today I hit 60,000 cumulative burpees since starting in December 2011. I don’t keep track rigorously, I only know I haven’t missed a burpee. Sometimes I do a few extra, like to show someone how to do them, if I lose count and want to make sure I do enough, or if I want to make up for eating candy. What started as ten burpees per day has[…] Keep reading →

Old man still got it

on August 11, 2015 in Fitness, Leadership, Stories

My team won the first sports tournament I played in on Sunday that I remember since college (which I don’t remember that well). I may have won some tournaments playing with the elite teams I played on in club and the co-ed team I went to Nationals with in 1998. There’s nothing like the feeling of winning a hard competition. It was just summer league, more of a fun league[…] Keep reading →

SIDCHAs in the wild

on July 29, 2015 in Exercises, Fitness, Habits, Leadership, SIDCHAs, Stories

After driving a smelly twenty-seven-year-old pick up truck with wobbly steering and a barely functional clutch all night from my cousin’s wedding outside Pittsburgh to my friend’s networking day-long workshop in Manhattan, one of the session leaders asked the attendees to describe ourselves. I was too tired for small talk. He gave us paper and crayons do illustrate our descriptions. I asked if I could demonstrate instead of illustrate. He[…] Keep reading →

Justified! Research confirms that restaurants aren’t that healthy.

on July 15, 2015 in Fitness, Nature

Days after posting “Eating at restaurants seems weirder the more healthily I eat. Same with pre-prepared food” I found the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition posted an article, “Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults.” It found that eating at fast food and full service restaurants affected people’s diets roughly equally—in particular, increasing calories about the same amount, as well as other indicators,[…] Keep reading →

Eating at restaurants seems weirder the more healthily I eat. Same with pre-prepared food.

on July 11, 2015 in Awareness, Fitness, Habits, Nature

I can’t believe the changes in how I see food my last two changes in food habit created. And I can’t believe how easy and cheap the changes were. The changes were to buy a farm share, where I pick up fresh vegetables from a drop-off place near me each week, and the other was my two-and-a-half-week experiment not buying food where I had to throw away packaging after. Each[…] Keep reading →

A 30-year Sidcha: running, swimming, or biking every morning

on July 8, 2015 in Fitness, Habits, SIDCHAs

The New York Times wrote about a woman who ran, swam, or biked every morning at 6:30 for thirty years in “On the Trail, Every Day for 30 Years.” She has over a quarter-century on my burpee sidcha! The article begins: Just after 7 a.m. on a sunny Wednesday in June, a 61-year-old woman darted in front of taxis in Columbus Circle outside Central Park. A few seconds later, she[…] Keep reading →

July 4, 1939: “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth”

on July 4, 2015 in Fitness, Freedom, Leadership

Lou Gehrig was one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century. He died in his prime from the disease often named after him. On July 4, 1939, he gave his retirement speech, which I copied below. Some career highlights from Wikipedia: He was an All-Star seven consecutive times, a Triple Crown winner once, an American League (AL) Most Valuable Player twice, and a member of six World Series champion[…] Keep reading →

Making a habit stick makes other habits stick easier

on June 15, 2015 in Exercises, Fitness, Habits, SIDCHAs, Visualization

In yesterday’s session on starting habits, when I described how easy it was finally to floss my teeth daily after I started my burpees. An attendee asked me to clarify. After the session ended, others asked me to clarify more and the following diagrams emerged. Starting burpees This chart schematically shows my burpee habit performance. Flossing before burpees This chart schematically shows my flossing habit before I started doing burpees.[…] Keep reading →

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