It’s 9:01 am, I just finished my morning routine. Normally, I would have already finished my routine before now, but I got a late start to the day. I woke up to feed my cats and felt like I needed another hour or sleep. So that is what I did.
I’ve had morning routines in the past and I would argue that we all have a morning routines. It may not be a routine that serves us and our goals, yet it’s our routine, our habit nonetheless. In mid March, I started reading “The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller. I wrote multiple blog posts about what I was learning from the book.
Yet it wasn’t until the very end of the book, that I realized this is a MUST for me. I wrote about this story in the post, “The Boy who found his World”, and how it impacted me emotionally on a very deep level. My goal original was to have my ONE Thing, be this blog when I started reading the book, yet the story at the end made me realize that I need to be “my” ONE Thing.
I needed to choose me.
At the time, I didn’t really know what that meant for me and how I was going to do it. Nonetheless it got me thinking, what if I actually do choose me. What kinds of changes do I need to make in my life? In all honesty, I want to make more changes than I can manage at one time right now. So this was a challenge.
In November of 2017, I transitioned into a new job and I wanted to perform and make a mark in the first 90-120 days. I didn’t realize that I was stressing myself out and not giving me the space to deal with the stress and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I started consuming processed sugars again, which I had greatly reduced and lost over 30 lbs doing so.
When I thought back to how I had originally lost the weight, I didn’t lose that 30 lbs because of any one habit. It was a portfolio of habits that I had gradually put into my life starting on Dec 27, 2016. The first habit I had integrated at that point to lead to the weight was the habit of walking with my Fitbit to get 10k steps a day.
I decided to recommit to walking again
On March 26, 2018, I decided that I wanted to make the habit of doing an evening walk again a goal of mine again. I hadn’t completely fallen off of my walking, but I hadn’t made it a priority. And when it’s not a priority its easy to not do it!
I also decided that I would collect data of my habit creation in a spreadsheet, making it very binary: 1 – if I completed a task, 0 – if I didn’t. Those who know me know that I can be a little obsessive when it comes to data and optimization, I’m not sure why. I just always have been, it could be the fact that I’m a mathematician and data scientist, but this trait goes further back than my formal training. A story for another time.
So I had to decide what data points am I going to collect? I settled on collecting the following data points.
- Date
- Weight
- Fat %
- Hydration %
- BMI
- Bone %
- Muscle %
- Morning Glass of Water
- Morning Meditation
- Evening Meditation
- Morning Walk
- Evening Walk
- Read 15 pages in a book
Originally I also had packing my lunch and taking it work, not drinking sodas, and reducing sugar intake. These were removed because I felt like at the time it was important to build consistency within these habits first. And quite frankly, I wasn’t consistently walking in the evening. I wasn’t walking at all in the morning. I was doing my meditations, sometimes!
It was important to build consistency within these habits first.
I know, I know… it’s been 54 days, since I start this. If I would have altered my diet first I could have already lost 10-30 lbs. I chose this path because I wanted to truly become a different person and having this habits in my life help to support that goal.
Back to the data and building the habits!
I am collecting the data about my body from a Health-o-Meter that can be purchased for around 35-40 bucks. I’ve had this scale for at least 3-4 years and it has been totally worth the initial investment. It should be noted that these scales don’t always give you the best readings in terms of muscle and fat % and not all of the percentages will add up to 100%. ( Part of the reason behind this is that water is contained in both the muscle and fat cells. ) They are very good though at gauging differences in percentages, etc.
There are a few things that stand out to me in the data
Firstly, I increased my Muscle % by 1.8% and the same time I decreased my relative Fat % by .6% overall. The actual delta doesn’t matter because I haven’t committed to changing the diet yet. I look more into these metrics later. The main take away is that they are both headed in the right direction for my bigger goal overall.
As I said before it’s been 54 days since I started collecting these data. Again, my first habit that I wanted to commit to integrating into my life was the evening walk. So I wasn’t holding myself to a standard per say on the others. Here is the data:
Which habits am I integrating and in what order?
If you look at these stats there are a few things that are interesting. You can almost see which habits I integrated and in what order. I started first with walking, meditation and reading in that order.
This process made me more aware and I started to feel an increase in energy overall in just 3 days! I feel more mentally fresh, alert and aware overall. (One note that I haven’t done my evening walk or meditation today, so those percentages are lower than they would if I had already completed them. )
The current habit I am looking to integrate in my life is daily reading and then my goal is to work on my dietary habits next along with exercise. I know that walking is considered exercise and I currently am averaging about 17k steps a day according to my Fitbit. For me, I am looking to integrate more resistance training to increase my muscle, which is congruent with my overall goals.
During this time, I have encountered a lot of resistance within myself. I have felt the desire to not get out of my bed and to sleep in longer. Regardless, of when I actually get out of the bed. I fully intend to do these habits daily, if I don’t do it one day. That’s okay, I don’t beat myself up about it.
You don’t get fat by eating one donut
It’s about the consistency of the action in the long run.
I am reading The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, it’s ironic because a lot of this book is reinforcing a conclusion that I had come to on my own. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable because it most certainly is! The goal is to distill “The Morning Miracle” down and aim to start optimizing the morning routine and when it actually happens.
I will be blogging about my continued successes in developing these habits. I might start posting weekly recaps and I most certainly will be blogging about the changes I am going to make to my diet. If you have made it this far in the blog post, first I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read my words. Second, I would like to challenge you to integrate one habit into your life over the next 30 days that will add value to your life.
I don’t know which habit you should establish first, I just know in my body that this process is helping me so much. It’s truly a form of exponential growth. Lets take a Baby Step Toward Greatness together. If you’ve enjoyed this post, please do me a favor, share it and sign up to be notified of future posts.