Fitness

I wish I had the dedication and discipline of most Americans
Average men from different countries, the American in front
Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

I wish I had the dedication and discipline of most Americans

My post yesterday about my heart rate of 49 beats per minute and how people choose to spend their leisure time got me thinking about living by your values--what leaders do. When they hear I exercise daily, people suggest I have some special discipline, dedication, or other skill. I wish! On the contrary, the average American's dedication and discipline for their values dwarf mine. I have to craft my life to make exercising easy--otherwise I wouldn't do it. Let's look at the numbers. My commitment I exercise on a four-day cycle: Day 1: 12 minutes of calisthenics in the morning and evening Day 1: Total time: 24 minutes, total cost: $0 Day 2: 12 minutes of calisthenics in the morning and evening, 45 minutes weight lifting Day 2: Total…

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June 6, 2018
My resting heart rate: Top 2.5%
Fitness

My resting heart rate: Top 2.5%

For some reason when I sat down this afternoon I opened my phone's stopwatch and counted my heart beats for a minute. I counted 52. I had just been walking around so after sitting a few minutes did it again and got 50. A few minutes later I got 49, then another 49. In physics labs in school, we learned to take at least 5 measurements. I downloaded an app to measure my pulse. It got a 49 too. I looked up "resting heart rate men 46 years old" and found this site, with this chart: It says I'm an athlete According to the page, my heart rate is in the top 2.5% of my age and sex, describing me as an athlete. I don't…

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June 5, 2018
Why inspire yourself if not to act?
Fitness / Habits

Why inspire yourself if not to act?

I just watched a bunch of motivational videos. Here's one, for example of LeBron James. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZTtcfm5NZE People keep remarking at my burpees or picking up trash or generating less trash than most Americans as impressive. I watch LeBron and I'm not in the same league. What I do is ordinary in comparison. It's not just that I haven't achieved what he has. I don't see how, knowing what Michael Jordan did, someone could say what I'm doing is impressive. I can't imagine how someone could watch a videos like the above and think anything less than professional athlete level is comparable. But they do. The only way I could see someone calling me impressive is if they simply see MJ as superhuman or beyond what…

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June 2, 2018
I Haven’t Eaten for 3 Days and It’s Amazing
I Haven't Eaten for 3 Days and It's Amazing, Joshua Spodek in Inc.
Awareness / Fitness / Habits / Inc.com

I Haven’t Eaten for 3 Days and It’s Amazing

I Haven't Eaten for 3 Days and It's Amazing It's Sunday and the last food I ate was lunch Thursday. I've ingested only water for 72 hours and the experience is life-changing. I love food, but I have eaten nothing and drank only water for the past 72 hours. Why? Partly because I kept hearing from friends and the media that they enjoyed fasting. Since swimming across the Hudson River, I've shifted my life from analyzing and planning--what decades of school taught me to do--to experimenting. I've found experimenting improved my life more so I keep practicing. My motivation The 4 main appeals to me of a 3-day fast were New experiences: A friend told me day 3 of his 3-day fasts made him feel…

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May 28, 2018
Glory and why I will get down on my knees tomorrow
Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

Glory and why I will get down on my knees tomorrow

For those who don't know, I do my kettle bell workout every fourth day, starting with the 2nd of the month, then the 6th, 10th, and so on of each month. Today is the 17th, so tomorrow I do it. (Incidentally, on alternate even-numbered days---the 4th, 8th, 12th, etc---I row indoors or run, depending on the weather). What does lifting have to do with getting on my knees? I don't have a bench, so I "bench press" from the floor. I don't like lying on a dirty floor, so I incorporated mopping the floor to start my workout. Still getting to the knees part. With a roughly 500 square foot (~50 square meter) floor, I found holding a big sponge by hand faster and more…

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May 17, 2018
The difference between delicious and yummy
Yummy food
Awareness / Fitness / Nature / Perception

The difference between delicious and yummy

Here's what I mean by yummy: Here's what I mean by delicious (a delivery from my CSA): What's the difference? "Yummy" food tends to have qualities such as: Little fiber Fried Sugar, fat, and salt provide the dominant flavors and textures Little raw ingredients Mostly yellow, orange, or brown Other colors often come from food coloring and don't represent the raw foods Sauces Packaged Corporate processing Many ingredients "Delicious" food tends to have Many colors Fiber Complex flavors and textures Mostly resembling the plants it's made of Few ingredients Nuance Delicious to me means that the food exhibits combinations of flavors and textures that complement each other to make me feel like saying, "that tastes good." I like nuance, subtlety, and complexity, all the more…

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May 9, 2018
Do American Restaurants Only Serve Comfort Food?
Do American Restaurants Only Serve Comfort Food?
Awareness / Fitness / Perception

Do American Restaurants Only Serve Comfort Food?

Do American Restaurants Only Serve Comfort Food? Can you eat delicious and healthy away from home? You probably want to eat healthy. It's hard in American restaurants and markets, which may devote over 90% of their space to packaged and fiberless industrial food products. Maybe you put the effort in to avoid industrial food products in favor of fresh, whole vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds. If you're like me, you learned to love the subtle, complex, nuanced flavors that come with fresh. Maybe you even learned to dislike that restaurants cover fresh ingredients with sauces or coverings that are sweet, rich, salty, or all of the above. They hide the vegetables in piles of rice, bread, pasta, and other filler. I call sweet, rich, gooey, cheesy, twice-fried, and such "yummy" (after this nsfw "yummy phase" comedian's explanation). Most…

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May 4, 2018
Cold showers aren’t hard showers. They’re easy workouts.
Fitness / Habits / Inc.com / Leadership / SIDCHAs / Tips

Cold showers aren’t hard showers. They’re easy workouts.

Cold Showers Aren't Hard Showers. They're Easy Workouts. Confusion about their purpose scare people from realizing their value as one of the easiest, cheapest, and effective improvement practices. I've written here many times on the benefits of cold showers. I've blogged more about them. You wouldn't have clicked on the headline if you weren't curious about them or already doing them. Inc. is a community of achievers and has covered cold showers many times. Many talk about science behind their benefit, but since double-blind controlled experiments are hard--how do you create a plausible placebo?--I find credence in their effect I see from them for myself. Having taken hundreds of cold showers (credit to Joel Runyon for starting my habit), I've found that they create Resilience…

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April 22, 2018
My salt experiment
Awareness / Fitness / Habits / Nature / Perception

My salt experiment

When I was a kid, my mom and stepfather switched from salted butter to unsalted. I remember the unsalted tasted bland, like nothing. I couldn't stand it. Some time later---maybe weeks or months, I don't remember---I tasted salted butter again for the first time. It tasted terrible! It was way too salty. Of course, the amount of salt in the butter didn't change. I did. My taste buds had adjusted to the overly salted butter and stayed that way until I stopped overly salting them. When I stopped amping up the salt, they returned to normal and found the overly salted butter overly salted. I also remember that after tasting both, I preferred the unsalted. The salted butter only tasted like salt. The unsalted had…

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April 21, 2018
How not drinking soda became trivially easy for me
Enjoy Coca-cola!
Fitness / Stories

How not drinking soda became trivially easy for me

In college in the late 80s, amid a global movement to avoid doing business with companies doing business with apartheid South Africa, I stopped buying Coca-cola products. Years later, Mandela became president and my conscience felt clear about buying their products. They make a lot of products, so I had to research all their stuff. I thought, I remember why I stopped drinking coke, but I don't remember why I started in the first place. I couldn't think of a satisfying answer so never restarted. I don't think I've had a coke product since. Soon after I stopped drinking any sodas, sweetened or not. I think I may have drunk Minute Maid products before finding out how deceptive they are, as I wrote in When…

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April 20, 2018
Thoughts on stretching while stretching
An L-sit (a bit better than I can do)
Fitness / Habits

Thoughts on stretching while stretching

I used to be limber, in my twenties. In a hurdler stretch I could touch my nose to my knee with my knee straight. During my twice daily burpee-based calisthenic routine I do a couple stretches---my hamstring for sixty breaths immediately after the burpees and a bridge stretch for nine breaths near the end of the routine. I didn't start stretching to get limber, though. I keep reading that flexibility doesn't help reduce injury or increase performance. I started with the goal of enabling an L-sit. Lifting against gravity is hard enough. Having to push against my hamstring is too hard to overcome. As an aside, I could hold a L-sit for ten or twenty seconds within the past year. Now I'm trying to do…

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April 17, 2018
Fitness and Lego (Audio)
Saturday Morning Hudson River podcast with Joshua Spodek
Audio / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs / Stories

Fitness and Lego (Audio)

I've been exercising more than usual for the past few months, amid travel. You might say I haven't given my body time to recover, and I probably haven't, but I find it glorious. This episode explains why. It's about Fitness Travel Lego Eating Burpees Sidchas Discipline Diligence Resilience Lugubriousness Struggle Glory and so on.

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March 31, 2018
Food and travel in the United States
Fitness / Nature

Food and travel in the United States

I've been back four days since ten days traveling to Salt Lake City and back, my first time on the road that long in a while---in particular, since improving my home cooking and farmers market shopping. Nearly all the food I found on the road was yummy or comfort food. I could feel the skin on my abdomen getting softer as fat grew under it covering my abdominal muscle. Even when I went to a place touting all vegan, local, organic, and all the food buzzwords, it was still comfort food. The vegetables were minimal and covered with some rich sauce that covered the vegetables' flavor and texture with creaminess. Don't ask me how since I only know the result, not how they achieved it.…

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March 30, 2018
7 Healthy Sounding Articles that Normalize the Opposite
7 Healthy Sounding Articles that Normalize the Opposite
Fitness / Inc.com

7 Healthy Sounding Articles that Normalize the Opposite

7 Healthy Sounding Articles that Normalize the Opposite When did being sedentary become the standard? Facts alone rarely influence behavior. Would you be surprised that many journalists who sound like they are promoting health are actually promoting the opposite? Do you notice anything in common in these headlines? From the New York Times: How Exercise Can Keep Aging Muscles and Immune Systems 'Young' From the New York Times: How Exercise May Help the Memory Grow Stronger From the New York Times: Exercise May Enhance the Effects of Brain Training From Neuroscience News: Exercise Increases Brain Size From The Guardian: What's the ultimate way to defy depression, disease and early death? Exercise From the BBC: Exercise 'keeps the mind sharp' in over-50s, study finds From the BBC: Cycling to work can cut cancer and heart disease, says study The…

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March 20, 2018
Why I Always Take the Stairs
Why I Always Take the Stairs
Fitness / Inc.com

Why I Always Take the Stairs

Why I Always Take the Stairs Exercise is everywhere if you want it. And it simplifies your life. I've written before about how lazy I am, but how much fitness helps my career, relationships, and mood, so I find ways to integrate exercise into my life without taking time or resources from the rest of it. On the contrary, exercise consistently gives to the rest of my life. Today, let's talk stairs. I live on the fifth floor and come and go from home several times a day. If I take the elevator, I have to make extra time to exercise for the time I'm standing in the elevator depriving myself of getting my heart pumping. It's faster and more convenient to take the stairs and not spend the same time making…

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March 10, 2018
1,600 calories per hour
Fitness

1,600 calories per hour

For a long time I didn't keep track of how fast I could row on my rowing machine. At some point reaching 1200 calories per hour was a big feat, compared to my steady state in the 900s. Later 1300 calories per hour was big, even if only for a few strokes. Eventually I hit 1400. When I hit 1500 I figured it would be my last big hurdle because of the effort it took to reach. I could reach the mid-1500s for a while, probably over a year. Last week I hit 1600 calories per hour. Actually, a bit more, but I don't remember the exact number. I was busy rowing as hard as I could. I hit it in more than one interval.…

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March 3, 2018
Easy and meaningful? Or pathetic?
What happened to active lifestyles?
Fitness

Easy and meaningful? Or pathetic?

The dictionary defines pathetic as Having a capacity to move one to either compassion or pity In this post I'm not using pathetic to mean an insult in its familiar meaning. I mean it as having a capacity to move one to either compassion or pity. How else would you describe these suggestions for New Year's resolutions in this article, 8 Easy, Meaningful New Year's Resolutions for Better Health besides evoking compassion or pity? Get some physical activity daily. Get enough sleep. Don't smoke. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Eat and drink less sugar. Some might consider me insensitive to people's challenges. I'm not criticizing or judging people who don't exercise or eat fruits and vegetables. I feel compassion for them, not pity, which would…

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February 2, 2018
Should New York City Sue Mayor de Blasio? (Inc.)
Should New York City Sue Mayor de Blasio?
Fitness / Inc.com / Leadership / Nature

Should New York City Sue Mayor de Blasio? (Inc.)

Should New York City Sue Mayor de Blasio? Will New York City's mayor stop personally doing what the city is suing tobacco companies for? Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio explained why the city was suing five fossil fuel companies: For decades, Big Oil ravaged our environment. They knew what they were peddling was lethal, but they didn't care. They used the classical Big Tobacco playbook of denial, denial, denial, and all the while they did everything to hook society on their lethal product. Have they been punished for it? No. In fact, they've made trillions. Think how cynical that is. Then take a look around you at the results. Swaths of California have gone up in flames. We are seeing snow in Florida. The Arctic ice…

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January 17, 2018
When hunger feels good
Greasy, restaurant food without fiber
Fitness / Nature

When hunger feels good

I don't know anyone who likes eating more than I do. When I see food that I like to eat around, I eat it. I don't know how people stop eating. So I don't like feeling hungry, but I realized a time I like feeling hungry. I noticed it because cooking my famous vegetable stews in big batches means I almost always have delicious, filling, wholesome food ready for me at home, easier to heat up than canned soup or a TV dinner, since I don't even need a can opener or to open a package. When I'm out and there's only food that's far from fresh fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms---restaurants or catering with too much oil, not enough flavor, fiber-removed, too much bread or…

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December 23, 2017
My morning routine featured on MyMorningRoutine.com
Fitness / Freedom / Habits / SIDCHAs

My morning routine featured on MyMorningRoutine.com

Joshua Spodek Joshua Spodek is author of Leadership Step by Step and host of the Leadership and the Environment podcast. An adjunct professor at NYU and leadership coach and workshop leader for Columbia Business School, Joshua currently lives in New York City. What is your morning routine? To the untrained eye my morning routine (and all my other routines) seems to take away what it actually gives me: freedom. But that's exactly what all my routines give me—mental freedom, in particular. Here's why: First, since I live on the fifth floor, each time I got home I used to decide between taking the elevator or the stairs. There are plenty of things I'd prefer to think about than how to go upstairs, so that meaningless…

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December 21, 2017
Morning Routines and Success (Inc.)
Exercises / Fitness / Freedom / Habits / Inc.com / SIDCHAs

Morning Routines and Success (Inc.)

Morning Routines and Success You show me a successful person and I'll show you one with daily habits. MyMorningRoutine.com brings today's successful people's habits. You show me a successful person and I'll show you one with structured daily habits. The more successful, the more self-imposed, challenging, relevant, and active his or her habits. Even bad-boy athletes, apparently self-indulgent rock stars, and counter-cultural artists have habits. Rather, the long-term successful ones do. The most successful people in history and the world today are noted for their habits--success by their own standards, which could be money but could also be artistic output, peace of mind, or whatever they valued. Just as your habits can create success for you by your standards. What makes a habit valuable and effective If…

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December 20, 2017
Pre-dawn glory
Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

Pre-dawn glory

With the Rocky movie franchise overdone, it feels hard to imagine the original when it came out. Neither the movie nor Sylvester Stallone were institutions. I grew up in Philadelphia and I remember some of its popularity, certainly for Rocky II. It was nominated for 9 Oscars and won 3. If the Rocky movies are about anything, they're about a man finding within himself the discipline and motivation to achieve greatness through incredibly hard work, foregoing fancy equipment or flash in favor of homegrown, homemade grit and basics: you have all you need, you only need to dig deep enough to find it and act on it. I think we like the movies so much because we know we can approach that practice and ethos…

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December 13, 2017
The U.S. president appealed to Americans to eat less meat and sugar.
The U.S. president asks Americans to eat less meat and sugar
Fitness / Leadership

The U.S. president appealed to Americans to eat less meat and sugar.

100 years ago tomorrow, the United States President appealed to the nation to eat less meat and sugar. The reason then was to support allies in World War I. The stakes today seem less acute but comparably high. If the president could do it then, a president can do it now. The current president might not, based on how much sugar and meat he eats, but in principle a president could. He spoke of individual self-sacrifice, which American culture seems to eschew today. We eat so much sugar and meat, we could cut a lot and still consume more than they did. The irony is that consuming more fresh fruits and vegetables would improve our lives, based on my experience at least, not be a…

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December 12, 2017
Lifting weights in my 40s: strengths and weaknesses
kettle bells
Fitness

Lifting weights in my 40s: strengths and weaknesses

Lifting weights in my 20s made me tired that day and sore the next two, though I didn't lift regularly or follow a program. Now in my 40s, lifting a couple times a week plus twice-daily calisthenics make my muscles feel tired all the time. ... but I can do multiple sets of weights I couldn't lift off the ground months ago. If I were against fitness, as most Americans seem to be in practice, I'd call feeling tired all the time a problem. It's not. Lifting the weights that I barely could a few months ago is easy. Funny how getting stronger leaves me feeling weaker.  

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December 4, 2017

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