Sledgehammer Workout, Practical Diets and Hedonic Adaptation

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a geek who's been applying geeky problem solving to some of the biggest day to day issues people face: weight, fitness, time management. I tend to gravitate to lifehacks that are driven by this kind of practical approach because it's the approach I tend to take in my own solutions.

I lost the 60 pounds that I did last year by calorie counting and climbing stairs. After I moved to an office without the stairs, my progress stalled, so I've been looking for a decent way to get some exercise to bust out of the rut.

His approach to exercise, which he calls "shovelglove" (that will be the last time I call it that for reasons I'll explain in a bit) uses a sledgehammer to mimic real-world work. It's done for 14 minutes a day, driving fenceposts, chopping wood, shoveling, rowing a canoe, etc. The name comes from the fact that he started out primarily doing the shoveling motion and wrapped the hammer in a shirt to avoid scratching the floor.

I'm not going to be calling it by the name he does because: a) I have carpet in all of the rooms I do this in, so won't be doing the cloth wrapper and b) given how it actually uses a sledgehammer and most of the movements aren't shovels, the name no longer makes sense in the other direction either. I just think it needs a marketing makeover. I'm just calling it a sledgehammer workout.

I grew up doing most of the kinds of work that this exercise mimics, so it's kind of reviving muscles that haven't been worked in a long time. Of course, it's sad how 15 minutes of this now can leave me tired when 8 hours of it used to be no problem, but that's the point, isn't it?

I've also been doing bodyweight squats (crouch down and touch the floor, then stand back up) and started out being able to do about 10-15 2 weeks ago and am up to 100 as of Friday.

On the diet end, his approach has an extra level of intrigue, given some of the reading on happiness that I've been doing. Several of my recent book reads have brought up the concept of hedonic adapatation, which is how we gradually get used to good things in our life. The No-S Diet is all about making sweets, snacks and seconds into special occasion events again. It's only in VERY recent American-style society where we've had enough cheap food to make it possible to eat those things on a daily basis. By putting them in on special days on a "sometimes" basis, we also can avoid the constant cycle of hedonic adaptation as well.

Instead of becoming numb to the true pleasure of eating some of the best foods on earth (chocolate, cheesecake and the like), we end up truly savoring and enjoying them when we do eat them. Don't believe me? Take some food you both enjoy and eat regularly. Skip it for the next 10-15 times you normally would eat it. Then have it again and tell me that the first time back isn't WAY better than it usually is.

By putting that back in a little bit at a time, you make the saved-for special foods even better and focus on eating single-plate meals during the week.

That makes his eating approach both sensible as well as appealing to someone who genuinely enjoys food (a little too much). Given how I already pretty much can and do end up doing a calorie count on every plate, I'm going to try some blend of this dietary approach along with the exercise for a while and see what happens.

I can already tell that the exercise is paying off. My legs are not only getting stronger (10 to 100 squats is a huge improvement), but more definition is showing up as well. The same is true on my arms and shoulders too.