Regular day working in London.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

This (and updated Habits).

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station

This is getting easier now.

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Did well with this again today. Both lunch and dinner were unusually filling, presumably because of this practice.

Habit 4: Always choose one of the top 2 healthiest option

Leek & Potato soup rather than muffins or cake.

Habit 5: Walk a minimum of 30 minutes a day (or 500 steps in bad weather).

Walked total of 35 minutes today (station->client and part of client->station).

No opportunity for the following though:

Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

Some of the blood test results came back yesterday, and apparently my cholesterol level is 6.2. Some googling leads me to believe that is at the top end of ‘Slightly Elevated’. Not a major worry in it’s own right, but coupled with my weight, it’s something else I should be addressing, so it’s on the body feedback list too. I suspect most everything I’m doing will help this anyway, but putting in the body stats helps keep it as a focus.

It’s been interesting to read that in the UK the recommendation is that a level of 5 or lower is healthy, whereas most of the rest of europe think that 4 or lower is healthy. I prefer to err on the side of caution, so I’ll aim for the 4 I think.

Thanks everyone for reading, and stick with me, with your help it’s working well and I’m confident I can maintain the momentum.

Support shift (early start) working day in London.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

This (and updated Habits).

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station

Focused walking, straight to the barrier-gates. Breathing through the mouth, never acknowledging the existence of retail outlets. Worked a treat again today.

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Still going strong. Still feeling nice and full after every meal.

Habit 4: Always choose one of the top 2 healthiest option

The really early start (being on the support rota) leads to a lack of wifely constructed sandwiches for lunch. In the past this has lead to a tradition of Bacon rolls for breakfast, Asta Fried Chicken Curry or Pret Meatball wrap & lemon cheesecake for lunch, a burger for the trip home, and a takeaway chaser on the settee. But oh no, not today.

Porridge (with skimmed milk) and a skinny cappuccino for breakfast. Moroccan Chicken & Couscous Salad with fruit-a-plenty for lunch, no snacking on the way home, and Cod in Parsley Sauce with Mashed Pots and Broccoli for dinner. Have to say I’m pretty happy with my choices here (although Debs gets credit for dinner choice, purchase & preparation).

No opportunity for the following though:

Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

Regular day working in London.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

This (and updated Habits).

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station

Tough this evening. Pangs started before I even got to the station. Locked my eyes and my mind on the target of getting to the platform, and consciously focused on it for my entire journey through the station. Even to the point of only breathing through my mouth so that I didn’t get any wafts of food smells. Made it though, and got straight to work on the computer as soon as the train pulled up and forgot all about being hungry!

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Almost forgot at dinner time, but remembered at the last minute.

Habit 4: Always choose one of the top 2 healthiest option

Major hunger pangs at 16:50 today, so into the office cafe and brought a plumb, banana and packet of grapes (rather than the traditional blueberry muffin).

No opportunity for the following though:

Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

Day at home (in between contracts). Relaxed, caught up with some sleep and did some coding.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

This (and updated Habits).

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Still good.

Habit 4: Always choose one of the top 2 healthiest options

Was hungry this evening, wanted a snack. No bananas, but had a weetabix, some blueberries squished up and spread over the top and as tiny amount of milk as I could manage. This in preference to my ‘past life’ evening snack of choice of two rounds of toast with cheese slices on top microwaved for 1 min 30 secs (ie toast in a pool of molten cheese and grease).

No opportunity for the following though:

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station
Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

A Saturday with the family in Worthing, Brighton & Crawley. Ate out at lunchtime and in the evening. At each stage I chose one of the healthiest options I could see. They didn’t always work out that way, but I’m deciding more and more that what matters is the fact I’m trying. If I can build that habit alone it would change my life. For instance, at Frankie & Bennys this evening I felt it was too cold for salad (freezing cold outside and we’d been walking on the beach earlier) so I went for the healthiest warm meal I could see – BBQ Chicken & Ribs. A quarter chicken and half a baby ribs portion, with Jacket pot. How on earth could I know from the description that the Chicken was fried??? But I tried. Further more (and very much in the vein of the burger ‘Bit But’) when it arrived and I realised it was fried, I took all the (lovely) greasy skin off, and I suspect much of the fried ‘badness’ went with it.

What I eat on any one occasion doesn’t matter, but having the Habit of trying to eat a healthy option will change my life. I realised today that I’ve been doing that since I started this blog, but now it’s time to make it explicit…

I commit to doing Habit 4: Always choose one of the top 2 healthiest options.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

This (and updated Habits).

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Wow this made a difference. Have to say that for the first time in years I really felt satisfied after eating just a main course in a restaurant. This is the BBQ Chicken & Ribs mentioned above. I virtually never feel this satisfaction. It’s usually either lingering hunger, or bloated sickness. It was a great experience. I really enjoyed feeling satisfied. I had no desire to have a desert. Really this wasn’t me just being good. I was happy and full (without feeling ill) and just felt nice. Very very weird for me but very very cool

Habit 4: Always choose one of the top 2 healthiest options

This is the big one. And I’m sticking to it – I’ve been doing it for days, but the 30 day count starts here

No opportunity for the following though:

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station
Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

My wife Debs cooks the evening meal for the family. Sometimes I’m home early enough to eat with Debs and the boys. More often I get back too late for that. Either way I phone Debs in the afternoon to find out what she’s planning for Dinner. I imagine this gives me something to look forward to, but in reality I’m just a bit of a control freak and like to know what’s happening in advance.

Anyway, as I walked through the front door I knew that Debs had prepared her homemade burgers for dinner. She cooked this last week as well and it’s lovely. Lean mince, quite dry, the healthiest version of a burger I could imagine.

Imagine then the scene. I’ve greeted Debs and the boys, and Debs has told me that dinner will be ready in about 10 minutes, she’s just got to cook the burgers. She goes into the kitchen and I chat for a couple more minutes with the boys before popping into the kitchen on the way up stairs to get changed.

As I poke my head into the kitchen I’m faced with a view I’d normally relish. Two juicy fat pink/red burgers, in a frying pan, bubbling and spitting away in a pool of oil, soaking up every drop they can.

This picture is like food porn for me. But my heart sank and I felt instantly sick. I looked at Debs and said all I could say was “BUT YOU’RE FRYING THEM IN OIL?”. I was so disappointed. I’ve tried so hard for the last week to do well on this health adventure. Eating fruit when I want doughnuts. Having reasonable portions. Eating more slowly and chewing lots. Today I even managed to pull off Habit 1. Only to get home and find the ultimate expression of what I’m trying to move away from, being lovingly prepared by the one person who’s supposed to be supporting me in this.

I went upstairs, and I’m not too proud to say I very almost cried.

I really felt sick. This was it, the end of it. In a few minutes I was going to walk downstairs and surrender to the hedonistic self gratification of fat soaked burgers. There’s no way I’d be able to blog with a clean concience tomorrow. No point in eating fruit or trying to exercise. It wasn’t like it was my fault. Debs did it, not me. I’d been as strong as anyone could expect, but Debs had let me down.

It was all over.

I lay on the bed and tried to figure out how to explain this to everyone I’ve told about the blog. They’d understand. Wouldn’t they? What if someone came up with a great idea for something I should have done. I’d be kicking myself tomorrow wouldn’t I. What might someone say? What could I do differently? What would I say to someone else right now in this second if they were in this situation? What would I advise them to do?

Well, the burgers could still be grilled couldn’t they? They’d only been in the fat for a few seconds, and the less time they’re in there the better right?

I called down to Debs and asked her to whip the burgers out of the pan straight away please, and then put them under the grill instead. She did.

Somehow in that moment of switching life around and imagining I was helping a friend in the situation, all the emotion dropped away. The sick feeling, the guilty pleasure of impending fat burger, the disappointment at failing, the misdirected disappointment with Debs. It just fell away from me. And with a relatively clear and open heart I could see the situation and a reasonable course of action to make it ok.

This, for me, is one of the biggest victories I’ve ever had.

Everything was ok again, but I knew Debs was upset. I went downstairs and explained to her how I was feeling. She was almost crying herself! She’d just gone into autopilot and prepared food as she normally would. We chatted it though, and we’re all good, but wow look how I had reacted to the whole thing. There’s obviously lots of emotion tied up inside me about all this stuff. I need to keep a careful eye on it. When I’m all emotionally charged up like that I’m not inclined to make great choices. Switching things around worked well. I’m sure there’s some NLP thing about this but can’t remember it. Something about looking at yourself from the outside maybe?

I’m going to call these things “Big But’s”. These events, these moments, which have previously pulled me out of diets. I’m starting a list of them so that I can look back at how I’ve made it past them before to help me do it again.

So I’m still “In the program”. It could so easily have been different, but it doesn’t have to be. Onward and upward.

One more thing occured to me as I’ve been writing this. The way I reacted only makes sense if I believed that this was some sort of good vs evil thing. Once the burgers had been in a pan with oil they were ‘tainted’. The devils own burgers, representing the ultimate sin. I don’t want that to be how it works for me. It shouldn’t be about that. It should be about habitually chosing the healthy option in any given situation. Taking the burgers out of the frying pan and grilling them was the healiest option short of throwing away Debs homemade burgers. I made a healthy choice which I’m proud of.

I realised I didn’t do the feedback post yesterday, so here’s a catch up and today’s folded together.

Habit 0: Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day

I blogged yesterday morning and today

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station

I worked from home again yesterday, and it’s Saturday today so no opportunity.

Habit 2: When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want

Still coughing, and I had plenty of Clementines, Apples, Bananas & grapes yesterday and today. Whenever I’ve had a hunger pang I’ve been satisfying it with fruit. I haven’t really had the “I feel poorly so I deserve a treat” feelings though, I think I’m past that phase. So I’m chalking this up as no opportunity from now on until the next time I feel poorly.

And the new one…

Habit 3: Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy

Really established that today, and did it consciously both at Lunch and Dinner. Definitely improved the experience and so I’m sticking with it.

The program was good motivation for me, but the bit I want to blog about was a little thing they just mentioned in passing about how chewing your food more can make you feel fuller (more satiated). I’ve done a quick wonder around the internet trying to find the details of the actual study without luck, but will press on. There are many many references to this “fact” with various contradictory explanations for it, but I’d like to find some proper research material before I spout about it.

The lack of research information doesn’t stop me trying it for myself though. That’s exactly what I’ve done for the past few days, and I’m not sure of the results. It has however lead me to form the next Habit I’d like to establish and commit to…

Habit 3 – Pause before eating. Take your time and enjoy.

As part of chewing my food more I’ve found myself being more aware about the process of eating. This has turned out to be a very positive thing. No longer am I in shovel mode. I’ve always said that I love the act of eating as much as the food. But in hindsight I have rarely taken the trouble to savour the act.

Since doing this I have found my hunger sated by smaller portions than I would have expected just a few days ago. Maybe this can be attributed to chewing more. Or maybe simply being more concious of eating. Or possibly just that I’m eating more slowly. To be honest I don’t really care why. The fact that it works (at least for me) is good enough for me to build it into my habit system.

I have to say I think it has a deeper affect than simply making me feel less hungry. I believe it might be able to change what eating means to me. Sounds heavy, but really 99% of the time eating for me has been about stopping feeling hungry (or sad or ill or some other bad feeling). That’s pretty sad really.

I’m beginning to realise that eating can be about savouring flavours, smells and textures. Enjoying the fruits of somebody’s labour. Sharing the experience with family and friends. Talking about the food and helping the children learn about it. That’s infinitely more ‘right minded’ than packing stuff in my gob^* so that my gut feels better!

^{* Gob is British ’slang’ for mouth.}

Professional judgment is: I’m better working from home if I can, both from a spreading the contagion point of view, and apparently it’ll likely clear up quicker if I take it easy.

But this was an opportunity to break another bad habit. I realised as I left the pharmacy having picked up my antibiotics, that almost without fail, my normal course of action would be to buy a doughnut (well it’s 3 for a pound, so 3 doughnuts) on the way home. Yep, when I’m poorly I clearly deserve a sweet sticky ball of sugar and fat. So here’s my approach for breaking that habit…

Habit 2 : When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want.

I figure I am feeling rough, so I deserve to feel I’m getting a treat. But it might as well be one with a degree of in-built damage limitation. I find it hard to believe that I can gorge myself on oranges, apples and bananas enough to have anywhere near the impact that 3 doughnuts would have on my health.

I’ll chat about feedback in more detail soon, but I need to start it now. I need to see how I’m doing. I need to get feedback. So I’m going to start a score table for my Habits. I’m going to score my habits based on the number of time’s I’ve actioned them vs opportinities I’ve had vs target actions (target always being 30 for me). So here we go:

Habit 0 (3/3/30) : Blog on JustBigBoned.com every day
Habit 1 (0/0/30) : Take a different walk through the train station.
Habit 2 (1/1/30): When I’m feeling poorly I deserve as much fruit to eat as I want.

There we go – I’m doing ok so far I think (patting self on back). It’s not much – but it’s progress.

All very well, but why do I think this is so important? Well it brings together stuff I’ve heard from various sources in various guises. All the great motivational speakers seem to refer to it in one way or another. I feel it gets over complicated. At the end of the day, if you’re finding yourself doing something that’s contrary to what you think you desire long term, then I’ll bet there’s a Habit in there somewhere. Likewise, the things I did, the actual actions I took, that made the biggest difference to my finances, were the simple regular little things that became almost ritual.

Habits are like auto-pilot. For me I can find myself doing things out of habit that I don’t really want to do. Things that 10 seconds before I swore I wouldn’t do. I mean I really believed I wouldn’t, and yet suddenly there I am buying a burger at the train station on the way home! This particular example has happened to me more times than I can count. Similarly buying a pain aux chocolat from another shop at the train station on the way into London in the morning!

Can you see a pattern forming. So can I. I have bad bad bad habit’s associated with the train station. I thought about it tonight on the way home.

There are several factors involved. For instance when I’m about to get on a train, I won’t be able to get anything to eat for 30 minutes or more. What if I desperately need food before I get to the cooked meal waiting at home for me? Then there’s the smell. Strong, wafting, juicy smells that get my mouth watering instantly ( yes I bet Pavlov’s feeling smug). Then there’s the layout. In the normal course of events, I pass within 2 metres of the damned Burger ‘dealers’. Finally my tummy, which 10 seconds before was simply an inconvenient lump in front of me, suddenly becomes the centre of my universe. It’s growling, it’s aching, damn if it isn’t actually hurting it’s so hungry. I swear I feel the same as a malnourished child in Africa on one of those charity appeal films. Seriously in that moment it feels like that. But how can it feel so bad when 10 seconds earlier it didn’t feel like anything at all.

Basically in that moment I’m an eating machine being lead around by these pre-conditioned responses. I’m a mindless moronic thing that has to eat. This is what I mean by a bad habit. It’s not like I can have a rational set of thoughts right then. Some how I make up all of these really poor excuses to justify my need to remove these bad sensations and satisfy myself with what my body clearly craves. But again, if my body really craved it, then how can it begin so suddenly?

I have to draw the conclusion that it’s all made up. My head and my body is making all of this up. I’m feeling these things, and acting upon them out of habit, not because I, me, Dave, consciously chooses to, but because the Dave/Habit/subconscious has somehow taken control and is running the show. I think I’ve proven over the years, that facing these habits head on doesn’t work. This habit part of my brain can beat me hands down and 99% of the time gets what it wants. So what can I do?

I think the key for me is that this all comes on so quickly. There is a point as I’m walking toward the station when none of what I’ve discussed here is happening. I’m regular Dave, walking along, thinking what I’m thinking or listening to a Podcast or whatever. Then some moments later I’m the mindless eating machine. There’s no noticeable transition from what I can tell. But it does always happen in the same circumstance – the station concourse.

This gets me thinking along the lines of NLP ‘pattern interrupts’, but I can’t be bothered to get Tony Robbins to throw a glass of water at me every-time I enter the train station. Instead I think I’ll try a few little things and see how I get on.

Habit 1: Take a different walk through the train station.
I’m going to develop the habit of using a totally different entrance/exit, and take a totally different route to my platform. One that doesn’t pass the demon Burger ‘dealers’.

Coupling this with my 30 days makes a habit belief (more on this in a future post), I hereby commit to enacting Habit 1 for 30 consecutive days (that’s 30 consecutive working days – I’m not going into London on a weekend just to avoid Burger King!).

I’ll report here on my progress and whether it helps break the bad Habit.

Let me tell you a little about myself before I go any further. I’m a 37 years old married man, with two young children. I live in Surrey in the United Kingdom, and travel by train to work in the City of London most week days. I write software for a living which requires activity of the brain, eyeballs, wrists and fingers only. The rest of my body is free to vegetate and it does. And then there’s food. Oh how I love food. Sweet sticky fatty naughty food that makes me feel good. I know I comfort eat, and I do it because it comforts me (at least in the moment). Other than that vice I’m a pretty “good boy”. I don’t smoke and I drink very little. But health wise I’m a mess. I play no sports. I do virtually no exercise. I’m seriously overweight, unfit and unhealthy. I get ill more often than I should. My energy levels are generally low, and I don’t sleep particularly well.

That was cheery wasn’t it! So why am I doing this blog? Well I’ve been thinking a lot about sorting my health out, and that was the problem. Thinking was all I was doing. So I wanted to take some action. This blog is the start of that action. “well done, type away, that’ll help” I hear you say, and it’s a fair point. But I figure I’ll start with what I’m good at and work out from there.

You see I have changed myself for the better, financially, and I figure some of those same principals could apply to changing my health! The last two years (2006 & 2007) were pivotal for me. Prior to that I was wasting every penny I earned. I had massive interest payments on a mountain of debt. Now I’m debt free except the house, and I see my savings growing every month. I can’t tell you how confident I feel about the way I handle money now. It’s fundamentally different. I’ve changed, for the better, and if I can change that, then presumably I can change my health too.

During all that thinking I did I decided there were 3 key things that got me the changes I wanted: Habits; Feedback and Accountability, served on a platter of simplicity.

I’ll discus these 3 keys in more detail in future posts, but here’s a quick summary. I changed my Habits, dropping bad habits and forming good ones. I set things up so that it was easy for me to get feedback on how I was doing, to see my progress. And I made myself accountable to others for everything, from sitting down regularly with my wife to review our debt, to telling friends and family every time we met about what I was trying to do (so that they’d keep asking me about how I was getting on).

So why this Blog? I want to use this Blog to experiment with these 3 keys to changing my behaviour. To document my progress for my own sake, and hopefully find others who’ll share their thoughts, feelings and ideas with me so that we can help one another. I want a record of what works and what doesn’t, and a record of the hard facts of my progress. And I want a way to be more accountable. Friends and family aren’t enough, I want the world to hold me to account (well at least you, even if you just accidentally bump into the blog).

So that’s it, the beginning. I have a theory that if you do anything for 30 days in a row, then you’ve developed the habit, so let’s see if I can post here EVERY DAY for the next 29 days and begin to chart my way to being healthy.