I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

I exercise every day because I lack the discipline to take a day off.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I’d love to hear your comments.

We talked about writing. Since that topic encompasses everything else that we both live and breathe, the conversation covered a lot of ground.

She talked about inspiration and the nocturnal activities of her particular muse. There was a voice that came to her one night to dictate notes for years’ worth of writing projects. I speculated about the creative unconscious, the unknown workings of the mute machinery of our brains that collects, organizes, catalogs, and stores images, sounds, smells, emotions, and abstract ideas and then assembles them into dreams, long-term memories, and all the wonders of fantasy. I wondered why she was so eager to give the credit for her brilliance to something outside herself.

I told her about the lessons I was learning from helping other people figure out how not to hide their lights under bushels. She remarked that I seem to get better and better at giving advice without wasting a lot of time listening to what I’m saying.

I told her a long-winded story about losing weight and finding discipline, and of my endless quest to apply what I’d learned to my writing practice. Simple rules. Do something every day. Everything counts. And the new mantra that I’d picked up from a fitness podcast called Fat 2 Fit Radio—If you want to be fit, emulate the diet and habits of a fit person. Don’t promise you’ll eat better tomorrow or that you’ll go back to the gym next week.

There’s a broader lesson in that axiom, I think, for the writer, the artist, or anyone who aspires to do more, to be better, to claim his gift and follow its implications. When do you want it? Someday, or now? I gave her a homework assignment—write 400 words on the topic of our lunch date. She dared me to do the same. I carried the assignment home, took it for a seven-mile run around the park, and tucked it under my pillow when I went to bed. When the next work day was nearly done, I wrote this blog post. But I could have written only this:

Start living your life TODAY as the person that you ultimately want to be.

About a year ago, a business development client and good friend said to me, “I love my job, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, my whole life is perfectly on track except for this one thing: I’m fat, and it makes me miserable.”

My answer was, “Well, I guess we know what to work on next.”

She picked a bad time to get me fired up about a new project—the second week of August. She’s not a big fan of Houston summer heat. But she somehow pushed through her reluctance and let me drag her out to Memorial Park for her first walk in recent memory on Monday, August 17, 2009. She was miserable—hot, tired, flushed, and running with sweat—and she made sure I knew it. About two-thirds of the way around, she asked if we could stop to rest. We parked ourselves on a bench for a few minutes.

It became a weekly routine. I never pushed her to establish a specific day or time, and in return, she usually spared me the excuses when I knew she had an evening free and I’d call to ask, “Up for a walk?” She made it through the brutal August and September heat to the payoff of a long, lovely fall. We started working in an extra day every once in a while. She scaled back the whining. I don’t think she was significantly less miserable, but she’d come to realize that the complaining wouldn’t do any good with me as her trainer.

When I started walking two laps around the park in the atypical cold last December, we modified our routine. I’d walk the first lap, then she’d meet me at the stretching area and join in on the second one. I tried always to acknowledge the effort it took her to get out there after nightfall in the cold and damp. By the time we’d extended her at-least-once-a-week streak into the spring of 2010, she’d quit needing a rest stop.

Now she’s coming up on the anniversary of the program. She reported to me tonight that although she hasn’t lost any substantial amount of weight, for the first time in a decade, she’s no heavier than she was a year ago. And there are more signs of progress: we’re making the laps in less time, she’s not experiencing as much next-day soreness as she did at the start, and she made it all the way through last winter without ever getting seriously ill. She’d been laid up for a week or two with bronchitis or bad chest colds at least once each of the previous three winters.

I’m very proud of her.

Right before we started her on the once-a-week program, I wrote her a long e-mail pep talk. I tracked down that message tonight to check whether my advice turned out to be any good. Here’s part of that message (emphasis added):

Don’t be discouraged by the slow pace of progress. The goals you’re going to be setting are for a lifetime, but it’s a healthier, more fulfilling, more satisfying, more pain-free, more energetic lifetime, and it will be worth the work…. [W]e didn’t get ourselves overweight in a year of bad habits, so we’re not going to fix the problem with a year of good habits. But making a few incremental changes in our lives—more good foods, more good habits, a little more dancing, a little more walking, some other fun activities that you’ll discover later—can change the trajectory and get us where we want to go.

Gayle, if you’re reading, congratulations! I’ll see you at the park one day soon.

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the end of last November, in an effort to jump-start a weight-loss regimen that had stalled, I made up my mind to walk twice around the loop at Memorial Park every day for the month of December. November 30 was a Monday, so I started one day early for good measure. The next day, just in time for my “official” December Project kickoff, the weather turned nasty for two solid weeks. December 1, it was raining and 45 degrees by evening. Then a cooling trend set in. By Thursday, there was talk of snow. I woke up Friday morning to moderate flurries.

At first, denial seemed like a comfortable attitude toward the weather. It wasn’t as if I could do anything about it. But a friend called mid-morning to warn me that it would get progressively worse as the day wore on. “If you must go, you should do it soon.” So I bundled up in two or three layers of shirts, a scarf, knit cap, a windbreaker, and my warmest running shorts. I give up the shorts when the weather gets so cold that ice starts to form on my skin, and not a minute sooner.

Snow was beginning to accumulate when I arrived at Memorial Park. There were plenty of parking spaces to choose from. In the course of 6½ miles, I encountered perhaps a dozen other people. Half of those were sightseers. They’d pull off the road, get out of the car, look at the falling snow—and the crazy man in the shorts—for a few minutes, and then get back in the car and take off in search of somewhere warm.

But the other half…those were my tribe! I recognized some of them as park regulars. With one in particular, a man in his late 50s, I’d had a mutual smile-and-nod pact for a year or two. But on that snowy December morning, I looked up to see him coming toward me with a big grin on his face. It felt like the right moment to solidify our bond, so as soon as we were within earshot, I said, “It’s days like this when you find out who’s serious.”

He said, “Hey, I’m from Colorado. This is like a nice spring day.” We shared the laugh and went our separate ways. A mile and a half later, we met again in front of the tennis center. We compared notes on which parts of our bodies had gone completely numb. There was a look of pride and satisfaction in his eyes that felt familiar.

When we were ready to break for our cars, he said, “See you tomorrow?”

I said, “Count on it.”

If you find something you love doing that’s good for your health, your self‑esteem, your sanity, and your spirit, you might become obsessed. It’s okay. You’ll be in good company.

We’re down to the last five days of the month. I woke up this morning thinking how easy it is to run out of steam right at the end of a project like this, and wondering what extra effort I might need to put forth to get the rest of the way to the goal, which was to give time and attention to this blog every day in July.

I was also thinking about how I’ve struggled for the last couple of months to get rid of the weight I gained while I recuperated after my eye surgeries. I’m close to that goal, but the last couple of pounds are hanging on tight. I’ve been banging away on my exercise routine as hard as ever, but with a lot going on in my work world, I’ve stumbled in the commitment to eat well. Too much snacking, too many poor choices, too many stray calories. Not enough veggies, whole grains, and lean meats.

So I asked myself, “What can I do with the five remaining days of July?” I have ideas for a few more blog posts. We’ll see if it’s enough to carry me across the finish line. But what else can I do in my sprint toward the end of the month? I decided to turn my focus to the practice I call “eating with intentionality.” For the last five days of July, I plan to pay more careful attention than ever to every bite of food or drop of drink that goes in my mouth. I’ll write it all down, and I’ll take my own advice about making sure that I eat only when I’m hungry. It’s a challenge. But we’re talking about five days. I know that I can do this for five days.

What’s the goal you’re working on? What could you accomplish toward that goal if you gave it everything you’ve got for five days? Ignore all the distractions—it’s only five days, after all—and give your time and attention to the facet of your life that needs them most right now. Five days of eating well, five days of exercising at your full capacity, five days of writing poetry, or making art, or doing yoga, or cooking nutritious meals.

Then come back here to the comments area and share with us what you’ve done.

I headed to the park for my walk early today because my first Learn to Row class was tonight. I arrived there around 3:30, the hottest part of the day. I didn’t have to wait long for relief from the heat, though. The sky clouded over, and then about halfway through the first lap, it started to sprinkle. It didn’t rain for very long—maybe about 10 minutes—just enough to get me miserably wet. Then the sun came back out and turned all the fresh rain into a layer of hot steam that hovered over the trail.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It was too humid to dry out from the wetting, but it didn’t matter, because another one was coming anyway. As I got to the last half-mile leg of the 6½‑mile walk, the sky opened up. This time, it was more than a sprinkle. The torrential rain continued until about the time I arrived back at my car.

I wiped down my iPod as well as I could with my soggy sweat towel and threw it in the trunk of the car. I grabbed my gym bag and headed for the locker room in the tennis center. Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t brought an extra pair of shoes—I’d planned to put my running shoes back on to go to rowing class. No time to go home for another pair, though, so I resolved to endure wet feet for the next few hours. I showered, toweled off, dressed, and then squished my poor feet back into the sodden shoes.

I’ve tried to find a lesson in today’s outing, but I’m drawing a blank. If you decide to commit to exercising every day—or sticking to any rigorous plan of action—there will be days when you have to walk around in wet sneakers, or the moral equivalent thereof. But you will have done what you set out to do. Maybe the lesson here is that not every day contains a lesson. Some days you just have to get through.

In 2008, I attended a lecture by Dr. Henry Lodge, one of the authors of Younger Next Year, a book that purports to offer ideas to help men fend off some of the physical symptoms of aging. The central theme of Dr. Lodge’s talk was a point that might seem counterintuitive: that we need more exercise as we get older, not less.

In the question-and-answer session that followed his presentation, someone asked Dr. Lodge, “So how much exercise is the right amount?” He replied that although no one has nailed down a precise, scientific answer to that question, a good rule of thumb might be four days a week in your 40s, five days a week in your 50s, and six days a week from your 60s on.

I was already exercising nearly every day before I heard Dr. Lodge speak. I didn’t need persuasion to keep doing what I was doing, but it was a pick‑me‑up to hear that I was exceeding his recommendations. From all that he had to say—and all that I’d heard elsewhere—about the benefits of exercise for managing arthritis pain, high blood pressure, lipid levels, bone loss, and other effects of aging, I suspected that he wouldn’t have tried to talk me into cutting back to four days a week, my tender age notwithstanding.

Today I joked to a friend that I exercise every day because I lack the discipline to take a day off. But I was only half-joking. The truth is, the last time I went a couple of days without exercise, I felt miserable, mopey, and disappointed in myself, and it took an unusual amount of effort to get my lazy butt back to the park the next day. For me, the rigid simplicity of the “Do something every day” rule is the source of its power.

I’m not trying to talk anyone else into exercising every day. It works for me because I get a psychological boost—and maybe a physical one as well—from the continuity and the sense of momentum. But I encourage everyone to devote time and attention to finding a routine that works for you. Challenge yourself. Try to figure out how much is too much. If you’re managing three days a week, experiment with taking it to four for a few weeks. Pay attention to how you feel, and keep notes about what works and what doesn’t.

And tell us what you’re up to in the comments section here!

I’ve written a couple of times before about Rule #2: Everything Counts. Today will be one of those days when I invoke Rule #2. I put in a long work day, then packed my bags and took off for Galveston. I didn’t get here until after 10 p.m., ate a late dinner, and then settled in to write. As soon as I publish this post, I’ll go for a walk. It’ll be after midnight, so I only plan to walk the four blocks down to the Seawall, then maybe a few blocks along the beach and back. That’s okay, because in this game of getting some exercise every day, everything counts.

I don’t entirely grasp the psychological mechanisms at work in Rule #2, but I know that it works. Maybe it’s a sort of mental safety valve to keep my obsessive tendencies from reaching critical pressure. I’ve also tried to understand it with the metaphor of a truce: maybe everything counts is a way of mediating between two warring impulses in my character—the one that wants to be healthy and fit, and the one that would rather relax and take it easy.

But the practical effects of everything counts are clear. On the down days, the impossibly long days, the icy-cold days, the sick-in-bed days, the surgery recovery days, it’s a compromise that lets me get to the end of my day still able to say, “But I got some exercise.”

More often than not, when I reach the exercise part of the day ready to invoke Rule #2, I find that I have a bit more left in the tank than I thought. Instead of walking down to the corner and back, I walk a mile. Or instead of walking a mile, I stretch it to two. Sometimes I discover that I have a whole hour of exercise energy left after all.

Maybe it’s as simple as this: Half of what it takes to exercise is the will to begin. Let everything counts be your safety valve, the truce terms in your internal struggle, or the little white lie that gets you to the starting line. Then do as much as you can of what you came to do. It counts.

It takes a thought to make a word
And it takes some words to make an action.

—Jason Mraz, “Life is Wonderful”

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For two weeks, I’ve been kicking around a draft post about mantras. I approach the topic with trepidation, because I don’t ever want want to sound like I’m trying to spout “wisdom.” (Somebody please kick me in the head if I ever start believing I’m wise.) I have no wisdom except what I’ve borrowed from other sources, so I can only add my two cents—the results of experiments that I’ve carried out in the search for understanding.

I’ve never made any systematic study of Eastern spirituality, so I thought I’d better look up the word mantra to make sure that I don’t use it here in a way that tramples on the formal and traditional meaning. I found lots of definitions. Here are my favorites: “a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that are capable of creating transformation” and “a translation of the human will or desire into a form of action.” These definitions seem reasonably consistent with my own use of mantras to refer to the incantations I recite to encourage, inspire, and energize myself.

I put a lot of stock in the power of words, so I’ve collected several mantras. One of the wordier ones was the basis for Day 4’s brief meditation:

It took years of bad habits to get out of shape. It’s going to take years of good habits to reverse the damage. That’s okay. I’ve got years.

That’s a useful spell to speak silently to myself as I’m pulling up my socks, retying my shoes, adjusting my shorts, positioning my earphones, and clipping on my iPod. The words remind me that today’s walk is part of a lifelong project, and that the reward for my patience and persistence is having the strength and good health to do this daily ritual again, right here, right now, today.

But sometimes I run. When my arms are swinging and my legs are pumping and my lungs are working hard, 28 words is too hefty a mantra. The phrase I often use to drive myself forward at these times is:

I will be one of the body guys.

Should I try to explain exactly what that means? Depending on how you experience the relationship between your body and your mind—or spirit, or soul, or consciousness, or essence—I suspect that you either get a sense of my meaning already, or my explaining it wouldn’t help much. In any case, the meaning of my mantra is only important to me. I encourage you to think about mantras of your own. What words or phrases are capable of creating the transformation you seek?

As I wrote the words I will be one of the body guys just now, it occurred to me that I can make this mantra more powerful with a minor revision:

I am one of the body guys.

My exercise lifestyle is a constant—and constantly changing—state of becoming. Does it make a difference which words I use to describe my desire? The only way to know is to experiment.

Words have power. Find words or phrases that can translate your will and desire into action. Try saying them as you begin to exercise, or prepare a wholesome meal, or work on your art. If you feel so inclined, please share a mantra with us in the comments at the bottom of this page.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’m an emotional eater. I’ve learned this about myself over and over again, but sometimes the realization doesn’t set in until 10 or 15 minutes after the food goes down. Here’s the process:

1. Experience mildly negative emotion—frustration, boredom, anxiety, irritation.
2. Seek comfort in food.
3. Later, realize that I ate for the wrong reason.
4. Feel disappointed in myself.
5. Repeat process starting at step 2, ad infinitum.

I’m trying to train myself to anticipate step 3 before I act on step 2. This is the heart of my philosophy of “eating with intentionality.” I try to evaluate every single impulse to eat by asking the question, “Am I really hungry?” Sometimes my awareness that the answer is no is enough to give me a push in another direction.

But sometimes the answer is “no, but…,” and then it’s important to consider the follow-up question, “Then why do I want to eat?” When I have the strength and the presence of mind to ponder this question, I’m often surprised by the answer:

• I want to eat because I don’t relish the next thing on my to-do list.
• I want to eat because I had a bad day yesterday.
• I want to eat because I didn’t get the phone call I was waiting for.
• I want to eat because I don’t know what else to do next.

And so on. (See more Bad Reasons to Eat.)

If you’re an emotional eater like I am, try to cultivate the habit of asking, “Am I really hungry?” And don’t beat yourself up when an act of impulsive eating gets past your vigilance. One snack isn’t going to ruin the progress you’ve made, and wasting your energy on guilt or shame will only reinforce the cycle you’re trying to break. Recognize the emotion that’s troubling you, give yourself a pat on the back for paying attention, and renew your commitment to the changes you want to make in your life.