Category Archives: Health

Loosing Weight – The Next Steps

In my post How To Set A SMART Goal I described what SMART goals were and why they were important. I also set myself the goal of loosing 23lbs by Christmas this year!

After setting a goal, any sort; short, medium, long term the most important thing is to take some action. No goal is ever going to be achieve unless some action is taken; but how do we decide what action to take and when to take it? In this post I want to go through the steps I propose to take to achieve my goal.

Right, I have to loose weight, what are my options?

  • Go on a diet. I won’t do this unless directed to by a medical professional because I don’t believe they’re the right way to go about loosing weight. I believe that if I diet I will reduce my carb. or fat intake, my body metabolism will slow as a result and if I slip off the diet the weight will just pile back on because my metabolism is slower.
  • Cut out unnecessary junk food. This is dieting in a way I guess; but it’s more of an adjustment to my diet than an actual diet. I can do this by eating healthier, fewer sweets & biscuits and more fruit.
  • Exercise. Oh dear, I knew I’d get to this one eventually.

Stop the list there, let’s talk about exercise. I’ve already said I’m not going to starve myself and only make modest changes to my diet so realistically the only way (weigh) I’m going to achieve this goal is to exercise.

I’ve already set myself a walking goal; but to be honest that is ramping up only slowly and I don’t think it’s going have a huge impact on my weight loss goal in the short, or even medium, term. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a contributor to this goal; but I’m going to need something more.

What else might I do?

  • Swimming? I can’t swim, tried to learn about 10 years ago. We won’t go there.
  • Running? Look, I’m having enough difficulty walking. Let’s walk before we run, please.
  • Cycling? Ah, this is a distinct possibility. In my thirties I was a reasonably keen cyclist, nothing excessive; but I could manage 60 miles. The point is, I was fit.

So it looks like cycling is my best bet. I have a bike and cycling is good aerobic exercise. I feel another goal coming on:

  • Specific – I will cycle 30 miles a week.
  • Measurable – I’ve a trip meter on the bike
  • Attainable – I feel 30 miles a week is within my grasp; but I may have to sacrifice something to fit it in.
  • Relevant – Yes, this will contribute to my weight loss.
  • Timely – By the end of June!

So I’ve a second exercise goal to help me loose that weight. Over the next two months I should be able to judge whether or not the pounds are starting to come off or whether I need to step up the exercise program. Until then I will work on integrating exercise into my life, something I’ve not done for many years now.

Taking A Break

One of the most difficult things for me to do is to take a break from the keyboard. When I’m in the zone I just want to keep typing; but over the years this has had a detrimental affect on my neck and shoulders.

I even had a little message pop-up occasionally to remind me, “Every hour take a 15 minute break.”.

Did this work? Did it heck!

Then I came across Workrave. This little program is designed so that I have to take a break when it tells me to. It’s very flexible and can be set up so that:

  • You periodically take micro-breaks of a short duration.
  • Less frequently you have to take a longer break where you do some stretches or take a walk around.
  • It will even limit the total amount of time you can spend on the computer each day.

So now I have a set up where:

  • Every 8 minutes I have to stop using the keyboard for 30 seconds. This is a micro-break.
  • Every 45 minutes I have to take a 10 minute rest break.

Because my day is very open ended at the moment I have switched off the ‘total time allowed each day’ facility.

When the break time arrives you get a audio and visual (pop-up window) reminder. If you ignore these then the pop-up starts to flash, first orange then red. However there’s no escaping your break because if you continue typing Workrave will add on the extra seconds you need to complete your stoppage.

The rest breaks advises you to get up from the computer and do something else. It will even pop-up a series of exercises to perform to help relieve fatigue and muscle stress.

You can, it you choose, postpone or even skip a break if you simply must; but then that rather defeats the purpose of running Workrave. I’ve been using it for less than a week and I can already feel my shoulders are less tense.

Oops time for a micro-break….

How To Set A SMART Goal

I’ve mentioned in recent posts that I’m over weight. I weigh 14st (197lbs to be precise) and my ideal weight for a man my height is 12st 6lbs. That’s 23lbs I have to loose if I’m to regain my ideal weight.

So the purpose of this post is to frame a goal to shed those pounds. Most of you will have heard of setting SMART goals to ensure that goals are met. I’m going to go through the steps of setting a SMART goal here to illustrate how a SMART goal differs from not-SMART goals and how it will help me achieve my goal.

Let’s begin with defining what we mean by a SMART goal. In case you haven’t guessed SMART is an acronym; it defines all the attributes a goal should posses for it to be achievable:

So how do I make my weight loss goal into a SMART goal?

Specific
A specific goal names exactly what the goal needs to achieve. An example of a non-specific goal I hear quoted often is, “I’m going to be successful’. Successful at what? How do you define or measure success? This non-specific goal in too open to interpretation and needs to be stated in terms of something real, like finances for example.

My goal is to loose weight. Specifically I’m going to loose 23lbs in weight so that I weigh 12st 6lbs.

Measurable
I used to get this confused with being specific. If course if I’m going to loose 23lbs then it’s measurable – haven’t I just said it’s 23lbs?

Really this attribute is about having the structures in place to measure your progress towards the goal. I’m not going to wake up one morning and say, “Hurray, I just lost 23lbs” (well I might; but more fool me if I do). No, I need a pair of scales – something to physically be able to measure my weight with and so determine my progress.

I have scales at home so my goal is measurable.

Attainable
Goals are great; but they must be set within some sort of boundaries. For an extreme example I might set a goal to take lunch on Pluto – not really attainable is it? Another nice example I saw recently on another blog was a goal to be the next king of England. As the writer pointed out, unless you’re in the royal blood line or you’ve a huge army prepared to conquer England by force this goal is not attainable. You could argue that all goals are ultimately attainable; but here you have to look closely at your goal – are you prepared to devote the time and energy to attaining this goal? If not then it’s not attainable.

Loosing 23lbs is attainable. I put it on, I can loose it.

Relevant
How relevant is this goal to the overall plan? It would be great to have a goal to be the next king of England; but if the overall plan is to gain entry to a Buddhist monastery then the goal isn’t relevant to the plan.

Loosing weight contributes to my desire to live a long and healthy life and so contributes directly to this. Yes, the goal is relevant.

Timely
Goals must be given a time frame for them to become real entities in your life. If I have a goal to loose 23lbs; but don’t give it a time line then where is the motivation going to come from to actually make me take the effort to shed that weight. Believe me, it will take effort.

This is often the big blocker. Here I have to nail my colours to the mast and state by when I’m going to loose that weight. Here goes….

By Christmas 2007. I’m going to loose that weight by Christmas this year.

There, I’ve stated it publicly for all to read.

Let’s recap this SMART goal:

  • Specific. I will loose 23lbs.
  • Measurable. With the bathroom scales.
  • Attainable. Yes, it’s within my abilities to do this.
  • Relevant. Yes, it will contribute to my health and longevity.
  • Timely. By Christmas this year (2007).

In a posting in the near future I will demonstrate how I’m going to achieve this goal.

Walking Goal Week 1

The week went well. Target 3 days, accomplished 3 days.

The dog (Chester) has started to come along, which is OK so long as he doesn’t want to keep diving into the ditch; but most of the time he’s kept up.

How has this contributed to the (so far unstated) weight loss goal? Well so far it hasn’t; but at least I haven’t put on any weight this week, which is a good thing. Mrs. H., on the other hand, has lost 2lbs over the week, so many congratulations are due to her.

Next week will present some further challenges. On Monday I have an interview in Cork at the time I’m supposed to be walking, and on Wednesday I shall be in the office at midday. Both will attempt to derail me from my target so I must try to work around these obstacles.

Will let you know how I get on next week.

Get Rid Of Clutter.

My good lady wife was often cajoling me to, “Get rid of the clutter” and for a long time I didn’t really heed her advice. Until, that is, I decided I was going to de-clutter my home desk.

My desk at home serves as both my home office and my personal PC space. It was cluttered! As well as all the PC equipment on the desk I had:

  • Code print outs from work
  • Reference books
  • Non-work related books
  • Music CDs
  • Software CDs
  • Ornaments

You get the picture? One day I realized how crowded I was feeling. Not only could I not find the stuff I wanted; but the stuff I didn’t want kept falling on the floor. It was time to get organized.

The next time I sat down at my desk it was a joy to open my laptop. My wife commented afterwards that I’d looked more at ease and more confident as I started work that morning. I felt much more in control and on-top of things. I could expand my horizons by not being overwhelmed by irrelevant stuff.

Whilst Ive been writing these posts the last couple of weeks I’ve also been surfing around reading blogs by fellow travelers in the 21st century. Some of these blog sites I’ve found to be absolutely over loaded with all manner of:

  • Google Adsense advertisements
  • Feedburner subscription links
  • Other advertisements (frequently blinking fast enough to induce a fit)
  • Pictures of recent readers

So much stuff, in fact, that it becomes difficult to determine the true purpose of the blog as the real stuff, the content, gets swamped by all the extraneous material.

I think a blog is a an expression of the person. Why not de-clutter your blog and let the person shine through?

Stepping Out

Well we did it.

My wife and I did our first days walk, something that’s to become part of the rest of our lives.

It felt good, the weather is sunny and warm, legs got a good stretch and lunch (a light ham salad and some fruit) tasted all the better for it.

Here’s to a life time of walking.

Body Fat

Here’s something I learnt today:


That 1lb of body fat contains about 4100 calories.

Here’s something else:

In one hour of aerobic exercise I can expect to burn about 300 calories.

So to burn off 1lb of fat I’ve got to exercise for 13 hours and 40 minutes.

Wow! That’s a lot of exercise!

Setting Myself a Goal

This is a time of upheaval in my life with my permanent job coming to an end at the end of May and I’m in the process of reviewing all areas of my life. In GTD terms I’m doing a full review at 50,000 feet.

One of the areas I’ve really let slip over the years, if I ever had a grip on it at all, is my overall fitness level and in particular my weight. Some time ago quality pair of scales, the sort that tell you your fat and water percentages; but when I got on them yesterday I realized it was about 12 months since I last weighed myself. No need to tell you that I had put on weight!

So my current weight is 197lbs and my ideal (target) weight for a man my height is 173lbs. That’s 24lbs I’ve got to loose. Ouch! In fact I’m only 0.8 Body Mass Index (BMI) points away from being obese (double ouch).

OK, this is getting depressing. Let’s move on.

This goal is intended to contribute to the overall goal of improving my fitness and loosing those 24lbs. Note that I’m not defining the weight loss goal here as I have to do some more work defining that one. This goal is to start me back to gaining some sort of fitness as well as making a small contribution to losing weight.

The goal is to walk for 20 minutes, unencumbered, 3 days a week for a month.

This may not seem like a very arduous goal to achieve; but in the past I’ve set goals like this that were doomed to failure from the off because they were over ambitious. For example; walk for an hour 3 times a week. An hour for me is a long time to fit in around all my work and personal commitments and it was very rare for me to actually get away from my desk for an hour.

On the other hand 20 minutes is just 10 minutes outbound and then home again. This I’m sure I can do and part of the idea of doing this for a month is to establish the walking goal as a habit. The “unencumbered” bit is to stop me from hanging my camera and / or binoculars round my neck which are guaranteed to slow me down. This is walking for exercise sake and nothing else.

The intention is that if I can achieve this for a month then I increase the time to 30 minutes for a month, then 40 minutes and so on; but let’s get this month over with first.

So I have tomorrow marked as the first day and the end date is 7th May.

Here goes….

Things I've Learnt Today

One of my major stressors is the gap between who or what I think I am and how I then behave.

For example I think I’m a good enough parent; but then have occasion to yell at my daughter then I get stressed. Or if I think I’m a caring husband and then have an argument with my wife I get stressed.

So I have to realize that I can be the one thing (good parent, caring husband) and still do the other thing.

Back To Work Stress

Here I am, back from a week off work. The week away was great; but the return to the grind is less so.

I don’t imagine I’m the only person who suffers from the back-to-work blues; but my stress levels are off the scale today. It’s a bit like walking along enjoying the sunshine when BAM! You walk into a lamp post. Ouch!!

What is causing all this stress? Stress originated in the ‘flight or fight’ response system; we get stressed when we’re getting ready to either run away from a situation (flight), or to face it head on (fight). This was great when the situation was a wild animal; but these days is this an appropriate response to daily domestic or work situations? I don’t think so. OK, I agree that some stress is a useful thing; but often I get stressed over things that are inappropriate, or my stress level lasts longer than is appropriate.

If you do a search for stress related stuff you’ll find masses of it on the net. Trying to read all that would really get me stressed out. However there’s a few pointers that I’ve gleaned from an initial scan of some of the material:

  1. You can alleviate stress once you’ve got it by using relaxation techniques (I guess we all knew this) but…
  2. It’s better to learn not to get stressed out in the first place and so…
  3. I have to learn what my stressors are.

So this is one area of personal discovery for me; find out what causes me stress and learn how not to get stressed out. I’ll report back how I get on.