I cannot say that I am exactly a "prompt" person, or even all that organized, from small things cluttering my room to how I go about my life as an individual. These are things I am working on dialing in as I age, but growing up I was always excited to not have limits, rules, and guidelines, you know, real punk rock stuff. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending who is reading I guess, having diabetes has forced me to reexamine my life multiple times over the years, in terms of food, guidelines, and daily habits. I spent nearly all of my 20's looking into how to better handle my diabetes in a more natural approach. It was never easy, having most doctors say what you are doing is "witchcraft" and not proven in medical terms was extremely discouraging as a teenager, but now that science can see even further into our bodies and how they work than they did ten years ago, things I thought then are now being proven as fact in our bodies, and is very exciting to know I was not just following some random theory or test trials from the 1950's. It was never that my doctors did not want me to know this information, they were simply not nutritionist and only could prescribe more insulin. That concept has always baffled me. Especially when you got someone as old as Hippocrates saying, "Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food." How are you going to explain to that guy that this flaming hot cheeto is going to aid in health? Now, to bring that full circle, as I stated, having diabetes has taught me to be punctual and accurate with carb counting and doses, along with sleep, hydration, fitness, and so much more. I was lucky enough to meet a man when this large change in my life was happening many years ago. I had sold my car and committed to only pedal power. I was maybe a month or two in at this point and a man named Gene Nacey, owner of Cycling Fusion, needed a lab rat; someone with type 1 diabetes who wanted to develop their cardio fitness via indoor cycle, and by doing so, lower their A1C readings (in short terms this is a number associated with, on average, your past 3 months of sugar readings). Not only did my A1C decrease, but my day to day readings had less fluctuations, and I was able to eat more and take less insulin on those days. Not to mention just over all healthier feeling and much more energetic. All of that great news and info can be an entire post I'm sure I'll dive into at some point, but one of the greatest lessons Gene taught me was so simple, "If you don't record it, you can't measure it." It doesn't matter what your goals are, or if you are overachieving them, or maybe underachieving them, if you do not record the data to go back and analyze later for future use, it's useless. So that brings us to the main point of this post, and that is the process of designing and altering a personal schedule that fits your needs via; physically, nutritionally, recovery, and everything in between. This is something that is done when starting a new fitness journey or, for example, coming back from an injury. Another reason maybe, you are strong in sport A and your friend wants you to try sport B. All fitness will not transfer if you have never done it before, so you may have to develop or alter your current fitness habits to include new rituals or mind muscle connections. So throughout the rest of this read I will be covering how to find your limits, figuring out what your overall goal is, and how to fine tune that along the way. A big inspiration for this post was being on week 4, of about 6, of recovery for my broken wrist. I kind of hit an all time low nutritionally speaking. I started out strong when it first happened fasting and eating properly, then the stages of recovery from a broken bone fully sunk in. Not to mention, living in a rather unstable society with pandemic fears still looming. I was binge eating sweets and substituting all my greens and carbs with processed food or canned products. I felt like I had fallen so far from being a bike messenger for five years riding nearly 30 miles a day to a depressed, lethargic, unmotivated piece of shit. After feeling sorry for myself and being angry that I was stuck on this couch, I began to clean and organize and reorganize my life and room and the energy started to flow again. I then dove back into some new documentaries about nutrition and climate change and decided then and there it was time. The road to recovery is long, and you have to be willing to venture down it, no free rides here. The most important step of this whole process is again, write it down. That's what I did the last two weeks. The first week I kept it short and sweet. I highlighted the goals I wanted to achieve. For example, no meat this week or a total vegan week. Mapped out when I could get cardio in and how far. Any bands or weighted exercises. Plotted out the recovery days. A rough idea of if I were to be fasting or eating regularly that day. I also include my weight at the beginning of the week. I may hop on the scale throughout the week but that weekly weight means more. That shows if your process is actually working. If you are new to fitness these can be small goals. Maybe start with a walk around the block everyday. Or you are in bed by 10:30pm every night this week. I want to make that clear, no goal is to small. You may be crushing it at the gym hitting the most weight you ever lifted before, but imagine if you were getting 8,9, or 10 hours of sleep, not loading up on pre work out and coffee all day, or was not stressed from an overworked job situation. See, there is always room for improvement. This is the 1% gains technique. Just showing up everyday is not enough, have to do just a little bit better than before. With that attitude and mindset, if you do just a little bit better you are training your brain to push past what it thinks is possible. We usually assume what is possible from what we have seen others accomplish, but when you take away all that and focus on yourself just becoming a little bit better than yesterdays you, you can hopefully see how this becomes super expansional! Every part of your life just gets a little bit better a little more efficient; that will provide the large base platform to help stack the building blocks higher and higher to eventually reach that larger goal. So as you sift through your life and figure out what you would like to improve on, make that a priority for the week. DO NOT BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF. If you slipped up a day or an afternoon, its ok. You can reset. I like to take note of why or how I felt that caused me to slip and record that! Then the following week maybe you can avoid whatever it was. Now the real goal is to be always adding new stuff so again, make them short and sweet. Give yourself a pat on the back when you get them done as well.
Imagine a world with everyone always trying to better themselves and having like minded individuals around who understand that pain and struggle of self improvement and are there to help aid you through instead of constant hate and doubt that lurks in the troll waters of social media. This utopia and mentality led to me getting a tattoo on my middle finger a few years ago now, simply stated, "be better." The idea of "fuck you, be better!" Like, what else you doing? You are your own 401k, diverse stock portfolio, or social security. Without health, none of those things mean a thing! I think it is a real shame people don't see things this way. It's ok, none of that will take away from you accomplishing what you wrote down and set out to achieve. It is not all sunshine and six pack abs, especially when we are talking about longevity health and wellness. You have to be willing to put in the work and suffering today to make it to that future day and feel healthy then too. So just as I do for myself when I feel I am slipping or I feel a sugary craving coming along, I stop and look at my hand and read aloud in my head, "be better."
Finally, I want to rap this up with just conquering small habits daily. By attaching a new habit to an existing habit, our brains can much more easily comprehend and thus making it easier to "teach a new dog old tricks." For example, maybe it is meditating while your coffee pot percolates, start stretching in the shower, or brushing your teeth with your other hand. Just by making the brain stray a little bit from what is normally use to doing can help connect new neurons and prevent brain fog. Again, this process can be applied to any point in your personal growth and development as a human and an athlete. Having had numerous injuries over the years has unfortunately made me start from scratch, more than once, when it comes to fitness and long term goals. On the other hand that has helped me figure out my personal goals along with being better suited at helping others poke around and discover something new about themselves and their own personal outer limits as a human. It is all that simple, we have to start somewhere if we want to go anywhere, and I hope reading this makes you want to take more control of your own life and record things to analyze later and truly tell if you are getting better. If you need assistance with getting on track or looking over what you are currently doing, I am more than happy to schedule a convo and assist any way possible. Thanks for reading everyone, write them goals down and cross them off!