Day 140 – The New Habit

With much fear and trepidation I am publicly stating my new habit ambition. I am very pleased to announce today is my 140/90 day. That means I have kept the core 365 commitment for 14o days. I have kept the wake up at 5am, run at least 1 mile, do +1 pushup, situp, squat routine for 90 days. Yes, today I will do 90 pushups.

I can now say that I have two really good habits. I set out with this 365 commitment to become a disciplined person. I suppose that an outsider looking in at me – would probably take first glance and say – wow, you are really disciplined. Oh how they do not know the struggle! Anyone who has actually read this blog (probably only my wife has – she is still my #1 and only fan I think) will understand the intense mental struggle I have gone through to build enough mind calluses to overcome the fear, uncertainty, and doubt to get to the point of keeping these two new habits.

Well – officially – I am starting the third. And this one is going to really suck. That is why I am going to RISE AT DAWN and everyday EMBRACE THE SUCK. I am committing to myself to measure everything I eat or drink. EVERYTHING. I am going to consider, measure, and record everything that I eat or drink everyday. I have put a great deal of thought into what was the absolute best next habit to develop. I had many candidates – some really awesome ones I must brag – but at the conclusion of my consideration I have decided that nutrition was a core habit that could no longer be ignored.

What was the habit that I needed to build that would absolutely guarantee that I eat healthy?

#1 – CONSIDER carefully everything I intake before I do so. If the food has a label, perhaps I should not eat it. If the food has a package or is obtained in a drive thru, probably bad. If the food has multiple ingredients, probably bad. If the food has a expiration date stamped on it, probably bad. Borrowing from some crossfit blog,  I need to consider if my food is a meat, vegetable, a nut or a seed, a small amount of fruit, a very small amount of starch, and absolutely no additive sugar (I am not a crossfit person btw, pushups are good enough for me – pull ups – maybe later).

#2 – MEASURE. That is right – measure everything. This will force me in a very harsh, disruptive and difficult way to actually think carefully about quantity of food. I consider the food itself, then I measure the quantity. I need to weigh, or calculate the food serving size before I consume the food. Even if I eat something bad, measuring it will automatically put me in a mindset of eating smaller amounts. I am not going to like it, it is not going to be easy. However, I will eat slowly, more carefully, and fully understand the amount of food I am putting into my body.

#3 – RECORD – I need to write down exactly what I eat and record the results. No sense in carefully considering, and measuring if I am not recording what I eat and drink and keeping a record of it and recording progress. This will also be extremely inconvenient, but it will allow me to look back and evaluate changes to my diet that I want to make in order to produce different results.

So there I have it. 140/90/1 – I am on Day 1 of Consider, Measure, Record what I eat and drink. This is really going to be a miserable exercise – but I will let you know how it is going and what the real tangible benefits are.

Guy Reams (140)
365 Member