About a month ago, I set a goal for myself to go to the gym every day for a month. The idea was largely predicated on a principle that I've seen in many other areas of life. Basically, if you do something often enough for it to become a habit and part of your routine, you end up feeling weird if it's missing.

For something that really should be part of my daily routine for the rest of my life, that seemed like a pretty good approach.

I'd heard people throw out a 14 day timeframe for things to "become a habit". In my own experience, however, that's proven to be wholly inadequate unless I already was inclined to do the thing.

So, I basically doubled the "conventional wisdom" and rounded to 30 days. The hope was that at the end of the 30 days, that mechanism in my brain that makes me feel guilty about not doing other stuff would be employed in keeping me going to the gym.

Measurement

I used Don't Break The Chain as a quick way to track whether I complied with my rules. I also kept an ad hoc kind of notebook along with my other notes for things like my weight and body fat percentage. I wasn't as thorough as one should be for really understanding what happened. However, I'm also pretty sure that if I'd imposed greater measurement requirements, I would have abandoned the whole thing.

While I don't have access to the REALLY accurate body fat measurements (i.e. the big water tank), I *do* have a scale that reports my body fat percentage along with the weight. It's the same scale I had when going to the weight loss doctor and the numbers were always fairly close to the ones that the more expensive equipment in her office reported.

I measured my weight and body fat percentage about 1-2 times a week for the duration. I logged those numbers along with the actual body fat in pounds, as calculated from the numbers that the scale spit out.

All of the workouts were between 30 and 60 minutes with most between 30 and 40 minutes long. I didn't track this for very long before patterns started to emerge. Most consisted of 25-35 minutes on the treadmill followed with 10-15 minutes of weight training.

The treadmill portion consisted of walking at 2.8mph at 9% incline with interval spikes of either a 15% incline or 1% incline and running between 6-7mph (only on some days). That consistently got my heart rate into the recommended range for cardio conditioning. I'd love to have gotten my VO2 measured before this (and should probably look even now), but didn't.

Weight training was mostly squats, bench press and seated row. From a training perspective, I pretty much just aimed to slowly bring up my condition without pushing things too far, so the weight stuff wasn't terribly intense.

Evaluation

Boolean Success/Fail

The actual goal was not achieved as I didn't actually make 30 days in a row: only 27. This is due in large part to my poor planning. The decision for the starting date was dictated almost entirely by the day that I finally got fed up and just jumped in. Had I looked at the calendar on that date, I would have noticed that I would be out of town in rural Iowa (where my gym is not) for my sister's wedding at the tail end of this 30 days.

However, once back in town, I started back up and it's clear that the *spirit* of the project took as going to the gym is now a habit. As such, I consider the project a success.

Weight and Fat

I expressly did not include any specific goals with regard to weight or fat loss.

At the beginning, my total body fat was 81.28 lbs. As of this morning, that's dropped to 74.24 lbs, for a drop in body fat of about 7 pounds. At the same time, my actual weight went UP from 253 to 256.

The combined math says that I gained 10 pounds of lean tissue and lost 7 pounds of fat in the last 30 days.

Cardiovascular

I wish I had tracked some things in this area better. Alas, it's probably unlikely that this will improve much going forward either. I *do* know that my endurance for bursts of running has improved pretty steadily.

Going Forward

Since the goal was to establish the habit of regular exercise, I do plan to keep this up. I've now been back on track for 2 days straight and see no reason to stop. There will undoubtedly be days like the wedding weekend where I can't get to the gym, but it looks like the habit is getting ingrained enough that those won't derail me.

I *have* heard from several people that I shouldn't be going every single day because I'll "overtrain". To me, that makes little sense, sorry. I spend 8-12 hours a day sitting in front of a computer plus 30-60 minutes of exercise on a treadmill and a few weights. That, compared with the amount of physical activity *demanded* of 99.99% of the population for all of human history except the last 30 years or even my own youth is preposterous.

Ten years ago, I left college and sat down, completing a slowdown that began 4 or so years earlier. When I left high school, I transitioned from doing chores every day and working on the farm to going to college. I stayed relatively active, riding my bike to class year 'round and doing IT support on campus, which required walking all over.

However, when I graduated from college, my situation effectively purged all of the physical activity I was getting all along. Because I'd always just gotten my exercise doing things I already had to do, I didn't pay attention to the fact that The Great Sitting Down necessitated changing my eating or replacing the activity.

As many of you know, I did lose about 50 pounds a couple of years ago by addressing the diet and climbing the stairs at my project site. Alas, again, when 28 flights of stairs were no longer between me and my desk, that loss stopped and I've spent the last couple of years pretty much stuck in the same general ballpark.

While I've messed with a couple of things on the dietary front, I hadn't really done much to acknowledge the physical activity side of things.

Knowing this needed to change, a few months ago, I did like so many others and signed up for a gym, went twice and then kept paying the bill, but little else. Once I'd paid for 3 months and never set foot in the place, I decided that something needed to change.

Clearly, economics says that the best way to ensure that I actually do this thing that I consciously want to do is to leverage incentives or disincentives. I'd heard about a site where you could take out a contract on yourself where money would be sent to a charity you disagree with if you don't follow through (stickK.com). I gave it a look and even got about half way through signing up before abandoning that idea.

The big problem is that even though the goals are weekly, you have to give them the total cost of failure up front. So, you could say that failing to exercise this week would cost you $10, but if you wanted to commit to a year, you'd have to give them the whole $520 off your card up front.

While that is a perfectly valid way to do it, I shied away at that point.

When I sat back to consider the situation, I remembered a study that I had read about the amount of effort people will go to to avoid something so simple as doors closing on a computer screen. That mirrored what I've seen watching other people play video games. Even simple games where you have to keep things going can lead people to get REALLY concerned when nothing more than a few pixels are going to "fall" or break through a wall, etc.

That same principle is what is at work in Jerry Seinfeld's "don't break the chain" productivity method. Given the effects that just losing that incrementing number of completed days, I wondered what would happen for me if nothing more than that number WAS the thing I'd lose by not going to the gym.

So, revived something I've done for lots of other stuff with a 30 Day Challenge. I'd go to the gym every day for 30 days. Period. The challenge wouldn't be over until 30 days in a row were touched by a visit to the gym. Of course, the first few days are often easy and then, hopefully, the cumulative effect of the incrementing number would kick in.

I'm not bundling any sort of goal to lose weight. I'm not bundling any specific gym routine; stepping in the door counts. And, I'm now 12 days in. Twice, so far, I've had a "reason" to miss, but went out of my way to do it anyway, something I've never done with previous attempts at physical activity.

In other words, it's working.

Photo: Bruce

This weekend, we again revisit the high holy day on my calendar. It sits in my favorite month of the year (though it's now sadder that my grandma has passed), with Sit on Your Ass and Watch Movies Day, fantastic weather, Halloween and the 25 hour day.

Digressions aside, the 25 hour day is usually used by most folks to sleep in on Sunday. However, consider the possibility of using the day as a much better starting point for what usually end up as New Year's Resolutions. After all, if you've been wanting to start getting up earlier, what better day than one where it *isn't* earlier to your body. Use the extra hour to start exercising, because you aren't giving up even a single minute of your normal 24 hour day.

What else?

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.

Photo: Bruce

A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me if I'd done any 30 day experiments lately and I realized that I'd fallen off from doing them. So, with 30 days left in May, today I started another one: daily tai chi and meditation.

My experiment parameters are to do 20 minutes of tai chi in the morning and 15 minutes of meditation in the evening. Initially, my tai chi is just the strength building exercises from my instructor, but will eventually be more form based.

My goals for this particular experiment are to feel more relaxed, sleep better, improve my stamina and flexibility and increase my ability to focus. Long term, I want to continue the drop in blood pressure and cholesterol that my 2005 diet brought. However, those are harder to measure on this timeframe.

My tracking method is going to be to write down my stress level, how well I slept and generally how I feel mentally/emotionally each day. The entries will be "write only" during the 30 days, so I can't easily see or be affected by the previous entries. Ideally, based on the cognitive psychology stuff I've been reading, I'd have something that randomly asks me how I'm feeling in each of these areas. That random questioning leads to better evaluations than the reflective kind that an end of day review does. So, I may write up something to pop up an interface randomly.

I chose these 2 methods of achieving the goals (before officially making it an experiment today) because the use of each has been shown in clinical studies to have positive benefits. I want to avoid anything which is peddled as beneficial, but can't repeat the benefits in controlled experimentation.