Over the last few months I’ve been working towards a more healthy lifestyle. For me this has been a process of various small steps combined with a few drastic changes. As I was thinking about this I realized that it does not have to be a daunting task, a few minor changes can make all the difference in the world. To lose weight and to feel more energized does not require physical activity 5-6 days a week, although that will help of course
Here are 5 simple ways to change your habits a bit and which will have a definite result.
1. no more soda
Soda drinks like Coca Cola or 7UP are filled with sugar and other sweeteners. You’d be surprised how much soda you drink, so much goes by unnoticed. A good test to check your eating habits is to just write down everything you consume over a couple of days, I’m sure you will be surprised by the amount of snacks, candy and other things you eat.
I used to drink Coca Cola every afternoon and evening and Coca Cola has a super high concentration of sugars. I decided to try and change this and over the course of a month or so I was able to stop drinking it entirely. All I drink now is water, coffee and tea, and I absolutely love it.
2. eat through the day
The process of converting your food to energy your body uses is called metabolism. You could view your metabolism as the engine of your body, put in fuel and it’ll run. But the rate at which your metabolism processes food is different for everyone.
Science has proven that your metabolism is most efficient when it has a steady stream of fuel instead of 2-3 big peaks in food supply. You can do this by planning your food intake ahead. Most ideal is 6 eat meals a day. This will speed up your metabolism and make sure your body is processing food through the day.
My eating habits now look something like this: breakfast before I go to work. Then 3 times 2 slices of bread with various meats. Then when I get home I cook dinner and before I go to bed I eat some yoghurt with walnuts. This way my body gets a steady stream of food without having to process big meals at once.
3. no more candy
This used to be a major health disaster in my life. Every now and then I’d get a craving for sweet candy and nothing would stop me from satisfying that need. In my opinion this is somewhat of a vicious circle, the more sugar you consume the more your body depends on sugar intake for it’s energy. Cutting it out was harder than I expected and sometimes I just grab some candy.
So all in all I haven’t cut out the candy for 100% but I think I consume at least 95% less than what I did before consciously thinking about food. Now when I crave some candy I’ll just eat an apple or some other piece of fruit, this still contains sugar but it’s packaged in a much healthier way.
4. no late night snacks
One of my worst habits was eating unhealthy snacks just before I went to bed. I’d get a bowl of chips or salted peanuts or a few chunks of cheese at around 11.30-12pm. This is so bad because of the carbohydrates which you don’t use while your body is in energy saving mode (sleeping). Now I prefer some yoghurt with nuts, this is a lot better because it has a low carbohydrate count and contains a lot of protein and healty fat which your body uses at night to recharge the batteries.
5. walk or bicycle everywhere
With the exception of work I walk or cycle nearly everywhere I go. I even took the car to football practice, which is only a 5 minute bike ride. Cycling everywhere burns calories and also makes sure I don’t get lazy. Changing this habit took some effort because a car is very convenient, but I’m very pleased with the state of things as they are now.
These are 5 short tips to help you get healthier from this moment. As you see it doesn’t have to be a big effort, small things help just as much as great effort.
Today marks my first step towards a more minimalistic lifestyle. The wallet I was using was the one which I bought two years ago and needless to say, after two years of usage it started to disintegrate more and more.
Ever since I read this article by Leo Babauta on using a more minimalistic approach to what you have in your pockets, I decided to give a minimalistic wallet a try. With some simple Google searching on how to approach this I decided to just go for a simple rubber band, the money-band.
The idea is simple, to minimize the clutter in your pockets you take with you only the necessary items and in case of a wallet that are some cards and cash. The money band has the perfect size to hold 4-5 cards and some bills and that’s all you need anyway.
When I received my money bands (I ordered 3 just in case one breaks) I started to clean out my old wallet and with every item I retrieved from it my surprise got bigger. This is the list of items I had in my wallet:
3 loyalty cards
2 casino cards
2 credit cards
1 ATM card
1 public transportation card
drivers license
2 used subway tickets (Valencia and Milan)
1 football ticket (ADO Den Haag – FC Twente)
4 used train tickets1 speeding ticket for €218,- which still hurts
3 stacks of receipts for ATM visits, purchases and other random stuff
2 photo containers
1 €10,- bill
1 €20,- bill
€5 and change in coins
key to my house
And here is a photo of the mess that came from my wallet:
This really came as a surprise because I knew my wallet was a mess but I had no idea of what was actually in there, most of it I hadn’t touched/needed for over a year.
And now on to what’s changed. With a money band I have with me 5 cards and some bills, that’s all. I added the key to my house to my key ring which also has my car keys and the keys for work.
This is what my wallet looks like now:
I’ve only been using this wallet for two days but I’m already absolutely 100% in love with it. It’s super convenient in my pocket and I only have stuff with me that I use on a regular basis. Everything else is at home or in my car.
That waking up is an important part of each day goes without saying. What is less commonly known is that the way you wake up also has a big effect on how your day goes by. Whether you are energetic and full of motivation or feel like you lack the energy to get anything done, you can influence your day for the better of it.
It is for that reason that I decided to try 30-day mission. Over the next 30 days every morning when my alarm rings, I will get up that instant instead of snoozing for a good 15-20 minutes. I think the main benefit I will experience from this is that I’m a lot more alert from the moment I open my eyes. Getting up right after your alarm sounds forces your brain to get active.
The 15-20 minutes I expect to win every morning should be put to good use. Why wake up early if you don’t plan on doing anything even remotely useful. Because of my rigorous work-out schedule of late the first thing I’ll do before I eat breakfast is stretching. Stretching your muscles after waking up will make your muscles more flexible and prepare me for the physical activity of everyday. Overall it will also increase flexibility which in turn will improve my overall athletics.
Because it is the first time I’m attempting a 30-day challenge I’m going to specify the PDCA-cycle in depth where in the future I think I’ll just write out a piece and incorporate PDCA into that.
plan: every morning when my alarm sounds, I instantly rise and get out of bed. The goal of this is that I get more active and have more energy throughout the day, as opposed to lower energy levels when I snooze for 15-20 minutes before getting up.
do: I’ll leave my alarm clock somewhere away from my bed so that when the alarm sounds shutting it off would require me to get out of bed. After I wake up I’ll just leave my bedroom so that my bed won’t lure me back in, it’s evil that way.
check: monitoring progress and adjusting when things don’t go according to plan is part of any succesful project. Every 3-4 days I’ll evaluate my progress and update this blog post so that you can all monitor my progress.
act: this is hopefully an unnecessary addition to this blog post, but if the checking step requires action I will adjust as we go along. I’ll update this blog post on this point as well.
Having planned out the whole challenge it’s time to start. The first day will be October 12, 2011. During weekdays I’ll have a set schedule of waking up, on Saturdays and Sundays I’ll determine my alarm time the night before.
Update 1 I’ve been doing this for well over a week now and apart from the weekend I must say it’s really been an improvement to my day. During the day I feel more alert and it seems like I have more energy.
The extra 15-20 minutes I have every morning have been spent reading the paper and stretching muscles. There have been no notable improvements in my flexibility but that is not something I’m expecting right away. If I keep this up however, I’m sure that I’ll get more flexible and that my muscles get less sore after workouts. All in all it’s a definite improvement which I’m definitely keeping in my schedule.
Recently I took the time to determine what’s important in life, the things I value and believe in, that what truly matters. I read a piece about living your values and the red line through that article was that you need to consciously determine your values because time is limited and because human beings are super easily distracted.
This holds true for me as well, one day I live with some values in mind, the next day I go about it in a very different way. Putting some thought into this, I hope to get my life more in line with what I want to accomplish and believe in.
In an abstract way you could see life as a very long string of decisions, some small and some major. To take these decisions you need a framework, a guide to lead you to the best decisions possible. Having a set of core values as a framework for these decisions will make sure that your decisions are aligned with what you want to be in life.
Using a long list of possible values I picked the ones what most appealed to me and the list looked like this:
Acknowledgement
Adventure
Bravery
Calmness
Cheerfulness
Confidence
Courage
Dexterity
Efficiency
Enjoyment
Excitement
Financial independence
Fitness
Flow
Humility
Inspiration
Justice
Leadership
Mindfulness
Reasonableness
Self control
Self reliance
Sincerity
Spontaneity
Strength
Thoughtfulness
Trustworthiness
Valor
Warmth
Wonder
Of course this list is too long and not prioritized, and some values overlap. So I grouped the values in a shorter list of core values and prioritized them in order of importance.
Prioritizing them was even harder than I expected, I must’ve changed the order of my values at least a dozen times and more often than not the reason for changing it is because I feel the items low on the list should be higher. Which results in the higher items getting a lower rank, thus creating a nice little circle that drives you crazy.
In my opinion this is also the reason why this list is constantly changing, evolving even. As you develop yourself more and more your view on the world and it’s problems and possibilities changes. What’s important today is less important tomorrow. You could see this list as a picture, capturing only one moment in a world of constant change.
As for the list in it’s current state, this is what I came up with:
Joy
Fitness
Mindfulness
Confidence
Inspiration
Warmth
Cheerfulness
Honesty
Wealth
Succes
Adventurous
Courage
Humility
Prioritizing this list feels more brutal than I expected because these are currently my true core values so I appeal to all of them strongly. Also, this list is probably very different than what it would look like had I listed my values 6 months ago and it will probably change over as little as 6 months as well.
On this page I’ve listed my values and given a description stating how I interpret these values and how the effect me in daily life.
What are the core values you use as a framework for life and the decisions you make?
Writing this blog post means that the world is finally about to get acquainted with No Itinerary. No-itinerary.com will function as my personal blog, platform to vent on, and chronicle the steps I take in life. Recently I started to take a huge interest in personal development and trying to become a better person every day. Here you will find the things I learn and care for.
But that is not all, as I will treat this as public diary, subjects will vary from time to time. On the About page you’ll find out more about who I am and what No Itinerary is about.
One of my biggest and favorite pastimes is reading. Over the years I read a massive pile of books which led me to the decision to start working on a reading list. Here you’ll find the books that most influenced me. I’ll try to add reviews as over time this blog will start to grow. Hopefully this list will also compel me to start reading more because over the last six months I haven’t read nearly as much as I would like to.
One of my goals in life is to see the world (cliché much?) and because of that I’ve started jotting down things I’d like to see/do/attend. I’ve labeled this my travel goals list and I’ll check off and add more things as we go. For now I’m contemplating crossing off climbing Mont Blanc somewhere summer next year. Mont Blanc, 4810 meters high, the roof of Europe.
In a conversation with a friend some time ago we were talking about music and I showed her a quote that said “Music is my comfort zone”. We both agreed that applied to us. Music is very very important in my life and that’s why I’ll regularly post Youtube bits on here. I decided not to make lists because my music flavor comes in way too many colors, when it’s good music you can bet on me loving it.
At last one of the main topics of this blog will be personal fitness and health. This is because over the last couple of months I decided to radically change my sport schedule and eating habits. Apparently food is also approachable from a scientific point of view and over the past few weeks I’ve been looking into what good and bad food actually mean and how your body works in relation to what you are feeding it. Combine this with a rigorous 5-6 times a week sport schedule and you have a pretty powerful combination, or at least I like to think of it that way.
And then, when winter is coming around, my heart skips a beat when it starts snowing in the alps. Skiing is the one thing you can start talking to me about any time of year and I’m game. Last year even tho it was 32 degrees and we were swimming in Lake Balaton, Hungary, me and some friends were talking about not being able to pass up on a good skiing session had we been offered that very moment.
Allrighty dear readers, thats a wrap for now. I’m planning to write at least 500 words every day but will have no set frequency of posting and no planning of where the subjects are headed for, I’m just going to write because that’s what I like to do.
