The rock is smiling at me...

Sometimes we have an excellent plan.  We have challenging, concrete, measurable goals.  We have terrific strategies.  We know what we want and how to get it!

And then we blow it.

It doesn’t matter if blowing it means eating the whole pizza or watching twelve continuous hours of Jerry Springer (is he even still on?) instead of exercising or both at the same time.  Blowing it means we get a brand-new mini-goal:  not letting one mistake totally derail us.

Cognitive behavioral therapy offers a blueprint for this mini-goal.  Here’s what we need to do to get back to what’s important to us:

Face it.  We did it.  Yep, that was us on the couch.  It happened.  But it is over now.

Think it over.  Consider what happened.  Maybe we had a Really Bad Day.  Do some analysis to sort out why we made such an unfortunate choice.

Think it over, again, but this time with what we should have done instead.  We could have transformed that Really Bad Day into a Really Kick-Butt Workout, maybe with punches or ball slams.

Track today.  Yes, we try to do this every day, but the day after a slip it is particularly important to write down what we are doing in the area we are targeting for change, whether that is what we eat or how we move or something else.

Get on with it.  It is not a good idea to do a punitive workout or an Eat-All-Kale day as penance.  We just need to work the plan we already have in place.  Start here, with this day, in this place, with this body.  Up from here.

Monday Workout: Christmas in July

I try to make Christmas come twice a year, once at the normal time and once sometime during the summer.  It’s this week.  Here’s how it works:  your true love wants you to be strong and powerful (or tired…).  He or she gives you one push press on the first day.  On the second day, he or she gives you two goblet squats and a push press.  On the third day, you get three overhead presses, two goblet squats, and a push press.  And so on, until you have done all twelve days’ worth of exercises.  No, I don’t know what we all did to deserve a true love who wants us to do so many burpees.  We can do this.

1 push press

2 goblet squats

3 Overhead press

4 1 leg squats each leg

5 deadlifts

6 burpees

7 pushups

8 renegade rows

9 mountain climbers

10 jump lunges

11 kb swings

12 plyojacks

Friday Book Report: The Bulletproof Diet

Dave Asprey’s book The Bulletproof Diet is, obviously, a diet book.  One does not, in general, read diet books for fun and this book does not encourage one to do so, although I have read many worse diet books.  There is a pattern.  Person feels miserable.  Person tries everything.  After much searching and gnashing of teeth, person finally finds the way and wants to spare the rest of us all that pain and suffering.  Buy this book.

This diet might work.  It includes foods my husband might actually eat, so we might even test it right here at home.  It eliminates the sugars that are the bane of the Standard American Diet.  It does focus on mostly whole foods.

Like all diets, it has idiosyncracies.  Asprey is obsessed with avoiding mold.  He adores grass-fed butter.  He has his personal list of must-have supplements.

The recipes at the end sound reasonably tasty and functional.  If you are looking for a set of directions, you could do worse than this book.

Not perfect

In general, I like to be efficient.  I like to figure out the best way to do something and then do it.  I want to work hard, get results, and get on with it.

Sometimes, though, it is better to do something than to do the perfect thing.  Maybe we overslept a little and there isn’t time for the ideal workout; it is okay to do a short version instead.  Maybe we discover that we forgot our gym shoes; we can improvise and try out a yoga class.  Maybe we are all set to bike and discover that we have a flat and no spare tube; this might be our chance to speed-walk the neighborhood.

Maybe we can’t be perfect, but we certainly can be pretty darn good.

Deep in and out

When we want to change our behavior, one of the things that can get in our way is stress.  Change itself is stressful and when we forget the milk, or get stuck in traffic, or get into a debate on the relative merits of the Marvel and DC Universes, we might fall back into old, unhelpful patterns, whether those involve slamming doors or eating all the M&Ms.

One of the simplest ways to deal with stress is something we have to do anyway:  breathe.

Yes, we do it all the time (unless we are dead, in which case we have a whole different set of problems).  We tend, however, to take shallow breaths.  When we get anxious, we breathe faster, too.

Making a point of taking deep breaths helps remind our bodies that we are not, actually, about to die.  We probably don’t even need to sprint at top speed away from a hungry bear.  It is good to practice taking deep breaths when we are not stressed so we are better at it when the time comes to help ourselves calm down.

So:  inhale and let your belly fill.  Exhale and hollow your belly out.  Sometimes holding the space for a count or two between the inhale and exhale and the space between the exhale and inhale can be helpful.  Even five deep breaths can give us the time we need to reconnect with our more serene selves.

Independence!

Today is Independence Day.  We can celebrate lots of things today, from the system of checks and balances in our government to the invention of fireworks to the opportunity to eat hot dogs.  Here are a couple more things we might want to declare independence from:

1.     Negative vibes.  Be yourself, your whole self.  Don’t let the turkeys get you down.  Being your own honest, beautiful, crazy person is the best gift you can give yourself and the world.  We need you to be you, because no one else can do it!

2.     Bad habits.  Take back your life from the cigarettes or the complaining or the sugar or the binge-watching.  You don’t need those crutches anymore.

3.    The stress machine.  Breathe freely.  Take the extra moment.  Enjoy.

Monday Workout: Pre-Holiday

Sure, tomorrow’s a holiday.  That doesn’t mean we can’t get in a workout today!  This one is less cardio-intensive than last week’s, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get our heart rates up as we lift weights.  Choose on the heavy side (you’ll know it’s right if you can barely complete the set; it is okay if you have to do 29 or 19 or 9 repetitions, too.  The goal is to max out.).  Three rounds.

step ups	30
ball chest press	20
reverse fly	10
squat	30
row	20
calf raise	10
lunge	30
deadlift	20
curl	10