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The July Project: Day 1
I like to take on a new self-improvement project or two every month. I pick some part of my life that needs work, and then I try to give it time and attention every day. This week, as the first half of 2010 came to an end, I got the idea of collecting my favorite ideas about diet and exercise—a draft owner’s manual for my body, a reference I can turn to when I’m struggling to lose one more pound. Maybe someone else would like to read it, too.
I’ve lost about a hundred pounds in the last six or seven years. When people ask me how I’ve done it, I don’t like to give them the simple formula …[MORE]
I came up with this recipe and made it for the first time this morning. I’ve only eaten one of them, but I’m ready to call this an “instant classic,†a candidate for my scone hall of fame.
(Start with the basic scone recipe and instructions.) …[MORE]
Ingredients
- 1 batch of blueberry scones
- 6 eggs, scrambled, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a pinch of Cajun spices
- 12 oz. bacon, fried until crisp, drained on paper towels
- 1 pint nonfat Greek-style yogurt
- Fresh fruit (cantaloupe, honeydew melon, grapes, kiwis, and strawberries)
- Lots of coffee
- 1 amateur chef
- 2 hungry friends
- 1 breezy, sunny day with nothing that urgently needs to get done
Instructions
In a cozy Galveston weekend house, combine all ingredients in no big hurry. Later, walk on the beach for an hour. Follow with nap if desired.
One of my daily routines—and a stated goal of my “projects†for the last four months—is to write at least 3,000 words per day. I started this practice almost two years ago. Usually, most of the 3,000 words are taken up by stream-of-consciousness blather, rants, and what I’d call verbal sketching—writing down what I might say if I were going to write about something in a serious manner.
Writing 3,000 words usually requires two periods of about 25 minutes each. I try to get through the first one before I do any other work each day and the second some time after dinner. Sometimes the “3,000-Word Initiative†(or 3kWI) exercises yield blog posts …[MORE]
Note: This post is a sequel to Update: Walking Wherever—Within Reason.
 The first hurdle in the way of my Friday walk was Dallas rush-hour traffic. Less than 24 hours into my trip, and I’d already lost track of what day it was, so I was surprised to find a few million other people on the road when I set out for White Rock Lake. The second impediment was having lost any understanding of Dallas freeways that I’d ever possessed, so I failed to find the spur that appeared to cut across from I-35E to northbound I-45 on the Google map. Then, although southbound I-45 was clearly marked, I drove for miles without finding any signs pointing toward the northbound direction. It’s been my experience that the northbound and southbound parts of an interstate highway usually connect somewhere …[MORE]
Note: This post is a sequel to Walking Every Day, Wherever I Find My Feet.
 On my way to Dallas yesterday, I ran into a traffic delay in Spring and another one near Centerville, where I-45 was reduced to one lane for about five miles. It took more than half an hour to crawl through the construction zone. So I didn’t get into town until about 8 p.m., only to discover that in the two months since I made my reservation, I’d somehow confused my hotel (the Marriott Suites Market Center) with another one nearby (the Marriott Residence Inn Market Center). That mistake added another half hour to my already-too-long journey.
Nevertheless, as soon as I finished checking in, I dressed in walking attire and headed up the freeway to Bachman Lake …[MORE]
One of the challenges of committing to everyday exercise is figuring out what to do when you’re traveling. Fortunately, my favorite workout—walking—is the most portable form of exercise you can get. You can find somewhere to walk if you go anywhere with solid ground. (I’m told that cruise ships usually have walking tracks, too. Boooooring.)
I enjoy scoping out walking routes when I’m preparing to visit an unfamiliar city—or a familiar city from my pre-exercise‑fanatic days. When I went to Los Angeles for a conference last winter, I identified Griffith Park as a possible walking site. I met a friendly native at the conference who drove up there with me and showed me where to park and where the trail starts. I took wonderful walks there in the afternoons. On one side, I had a view of the pale purple San Gabriel Mountains …[MORE]
Last weekend I told some friends about the work of Aubrey de Grey, gerontologist and chief science officer of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Foundation. Dr. de Grey speculates that we’re eventually going to cure the causes of aging and that some day humans will live to be a thousand years old. That notion always gets me thinking about a question I find intriguing: How would you live your life differently if you knew you had another thousand years to live?
Let me put it another way: How would you treat your body if you knew it had to last another thousand years? Would you quit smoking? Would you be more careful about what you eat? …[MORE]
In some of her workshops, my friend and sometime coach Mattison Grey has offered a theory that everyone is about either fame, money, or winning, and that making this distinction can help you figure out how to help people get what they want.
I don’t know whether that idea holds water for everybody. I can’t speak for people who are about money or fame, and it seems to me that there might be all kinds of other things to be about—love, pleasure, or security, for instance. But as Mattison explained it to me, since my orientation is toward winning, the way for me to reach any goal I’ve set is to turn it into a game I can win …[MORE]
Last Saturday I took part in a workshop at Studio NiaMoves called “Exploring Mindful Eating.†Personal chef and food consultant Adam Miles talked about how human beings develop issues with food, and what we can do about it. His premise is that we start out with an instinctive ability to eat right, eat only when we’re hungry, and enjoy what we eat, but that we pick up bad habits, bad information, and a twisted relationship with food as we grow up. We learn to eat the wrong things, for the wrong reasons. But we can unlearn. …[MORE]
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