Different people suggest starting habits different ways. Some say to start with behavior, like setting a New Year’s resolution or doing it every day for a month. Others suggest starting by changing your environment, like by putting a note on your computer monitor or daily schedule, wearing a device that measures your exercise, or joining a web page that tracks and reminds you. That’s all low-level tactics. Tactics, no matter[…] Keep reading →

Notice this pattern and you’ll know how to improve it. It applies to an activity. I’m thinking of exercise when I write it, but many activities fit it. The pattern When you’re not about to do it, you think of it as something you generally want to do. When you’re about to do it, you feel anxious, maybe to the point of fear. You have to overcome that anxiety and[…] Keep reading →

Happy Superbowl Sunday tomorrow, traditionally a day for drinking beer and eating comfort food. By my calculations, I hit 50,000 burpees around tomorrow too. You can read about my hitting 40,000 and 30,000 before that. Still haven’t missed any since my first set of ten in December 2011. Speaking of football food, before I exercise I think exercising will give me an excuse to eat sugary or other unhealthy food[…] Keep reading →

Regular readers know I read the New York City marathon results from the back to see the oldest finishers and finding meaning in the results, as in “On reading the 2010 New York City Marathon results.” The other day I got the official result “magazine,” opened to the back and found Margaret Hagerty, a 91-year-old woman who finished the 2014 marathon. She finished two seconds behind a 58-year-old woman. Eight[…] Keep reading →

I love learning about nature! I looked up about what happens to the mass you lose when you lose weight. A paper last month in the peer-reviewed BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal), “When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?” confirmed what I had read casually: you exhale it, or rather you exhale 84% of it. The rest is water, which we excrete “in the urine, faeces, sweat, breath,[…] Keep reading →

Have you ever wondered about when you lose weight what happens to the mass you lose? I didn’t think of it either. My first thought was that you excrete it. You lose some water and salt to sweating, but I figured that got replaced so didn’t figure into long-term weight loss. I didn’t wonder how the mass you lose would get to your kidneys or bowels. I read recently that[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday began my fourth year of burpees. I’ve written about them at length, so I’ll keep it brief today. A few sets of burpees are good fitness exercise. A few years of burpees is a solid foundation for a healthy life. Here are the top things they create for me. Sticking with them for a long time without missing any creates discipline, which is a foundation I can build other[…] Keep reading →

I noticed a package of chocolate on my shelf I’ve had for a while. I got it at an event at the Tesla store in Chelsea, which seems like a classy place. It looks like classy chocolate. It’s a package of four little truffle-like pieces. I don’t love chocolate like some people do. The first ingredient on this package is sugar. A while ago I might have eaten it, but[…] Keep reading →

My friend Dave got tickets to a rappelling class over the weekend. It may not have much to do with what I normally write about, but I can’t help sharing some pictures. Come to think of it, people do courses like these as part of leadership training. Taking that first step off the platform to where only a rope was holding you up, and that rope wasn’t tied around you,[…] Keep reading →