Replace the mats with treadmills and you have my kind of a zen garden!

There’s a point on a long run where you reach this state of mind that’s just… well, I’m not sure if I can describe it in words.  It’s partly like meditation but it’s not as empty of thought and it’s a little like sleep only with dreams that are a lot more vivid.  Your conscious mind gives up trying to control you and your subconscious mind begins to roam far afield.  That’s the point where running stops being a chore to be endured and starts being an activity to be enjoyed.

The key to getting to this state is to stop thinking about running and just run.  That’s hard for me because my brain has a mind all its own.  I’m thinking all the time.  I’m trying to solve work problems, I’m trying to figure out what to write in my next article, I’m even trying to figure out what to do after the run.  Mostly though, I’m thinking about running.  Am I running too fast?  Too slow?  Is my breathing too fast?  Has it been 10 minutes already?  Do I think I’ve gone a mile yet?  Should I count my steps?  Will that make the run go by faster or slower?  Geez, I want this run to be over with already!  Those are the thoughts going through my brain, and those are exactly the kinds of thoughts that make running miserable.

The Zen Of Television

I used to be able to zone out with a TV in front of me.  I would get on one of those treadmills with the TV attached and my brain would zonk out into Law & Order land.  Sure, the occasional commercial break would interrupt my trance, but the silly plots and made up characters would be enough to distract me from thinking about running.  Sadly, my brain outsmarted me yet again.  It figured out that the time interval between commercial breaks is 10 to 15 minutes depending on show and now it counts those breaks as a way of measuring my progress.  ”Seven more commercial breaks and you’ll be done” my brain tells me and I’m back to being miserable and thinking about running.

Meditation While Running

The solution was something I picked up in my meditation practice and it was a very simple technique focused on breathing.  Breathing meditation teaches you all about focus because it asks you to do nothing but focus on your breath.  Feel the air flowing in and out, feel your lungs expand, feel your chest rise and fall.  You can pay attention to other things on occasion but always go back to the breathing.  Always go back to the slow in and out pattern of air entering and leaving your body.  It’s amazing how much sensation is actually involved with breathing when you pay attention to it.

Yes, sometimes your conscious brain will intrude with thoughts of due dates, work projects and bills to pay.  Sometimes your mind will wander far afield, but you’re always there to catch it and bring it back to the breathing.  Sooner or later (it takes me an average of 3 to 4 minutes), you’ll find yourself in a semi trance, a calm place where the conscious mind no longer rules your thoughts.  That’s where I want to get to while running.

So these days I do a variant form of breath meditation while running.  I don’t focus on the TV screen or the person in front of me, I focus only on my breathing.  I pay attention to the rhythm of my body.  I listen to my heart beat and I keep my mind from wandering.  If I find myself thinking of other things I bring my mind back to the present, back to the breathing.  Within 3 or 4 minutes I find myself in that running zone where time flies by and your body no longer strains to keep running.  It’s a wonderful place, amazingly refreshing and amazingly pleasurable and it’s sure helping me train for that marathon!

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By the way, it’s even easier to do this when running outdoors, especially when you have a nice view to run through.  Since you can’t really close your eyes while running, a pretty view will distract your visual senses and allow the rest of your senses to focus only on your body’s rhythm.

Sooooo tasty!

(Get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about chicken!)

I always recommend that people eat more chicken.  It’s extremely healthy and filled with good protein.  However, one of the most common complaints is that chicken breast is too dry (and a bit too expensive).  So here’s a quick recommendation for varying up your chicken consumption.

Rather than going for the breast, why not give chicken thighs a try?  You can now find boneless thigh fillets at most supermarkets at a price that’s usually better than the breast fillets.  If you’re averse to fat then they might require a bit more trimming than most breast fillets but I actually to keep the fat on there.  It gives the meat a much juicier texture and, by comparison to high fat meats like pork and beef, the fat content is still low.  In other words, it’s tasty and good for you!

Quick Recipe Idea

This is one of my favorite ways to cook a good thigh fillet.

1. Heat up a pan with either olive oil or, much better, left over bacon fat until the fat / oil is sizzling
2. Toss in the fillets and spice them liberally (by which I mean pour it on!) with yellow curry powder.
3. Sear both sides like this for about 45 seconds each and then lower the heat to low to finish cooking the chicken.

Total cooking time is about 10 minutes and the results are delicious!  We eat these in the following ways:

• Shred the chicken into small pieces and put them in a small tortilla with hummus spread on the inside.  Makes for a great packed lunch.
• As is with a green salad on the side.
• As is with a baked potato
• As a snack with some cherry tomatoes

Enjoy!

Maybe I should have tried this posture

I usually sleep on my side. It helps me snore less (which my wife appreciates) and helps combat my sleep apnea. Unfortunately, I’ve been having trouble sleeping for the past few months due to pains in my hip bone. No matter which side I slept on, after 30 or 45 minutes, the hip bone on that side started feeling painful and that pain wouldn’t go away for hours. 3 hours into the night, both sides were hurting and I was having trouble sleeping.  So I started experimenting.

• When did I feel the pain?
• What did I do the day before?
• Were there any days where I didn’t feel this pain?
• What was different about these days?
• When did the pain start?
• When did it go away?

Basically, all the analysis that I put into things like “when did I get fat?” now went into figuring out why I wasn’t sleeping well.  The end result was a little surprising.

The Problem Was Right There, Staring My In The Butt

Initially, I thought it was the running and walking that was causing these pains.  I’ve been running and walking a lot more this year as I train for a marathon and commute to work.  I tried to cut back on the amount of running I did but it didn’t seem to help.  The pain remained, even on weeks where I wasn’t running that much.  The actual breakthrough came during our last vacation when I noticed that the pain had gone away about three days into the vacation.  This was odd because we were actually doing quite a bit of walking and running during our vacation.  Then we spent a day driving from Charleston to Savannah and the pain came back.

What I ended up noticing is that my sides hurt after days in which I spent hours and hours sitting down.  This made a lot of sense since I switched jobs this year.  I’m now running a whole team of people and a suite of products.  That means way more hours in a chair without the hourly breaks I would do before.  I’m also working on my own little start up which means even the weekends were being spent in front of a computer.  So I experimented a bit…

Test Test Test

I spent some days taking hourly breaks and some days sitting down for the whole day.  The results were consistent.  Sitting made my entire body stiff and that in turn caused the aches in my hip bones that I was feeling.  Taking hourly breaks prevented that.  In fact, I found that a 20 minute walk every two hours was enough to have me sleeping like a baby!  Oh, and exercise had nothing to do with it.  Even running days didn’t cause the pain, it was definitely the hours in the chair.

Conclusions

• Being sedantary is bad – If you have an office job, make sure you take breaks with some kind of physical activity.
• When in doubt, analyse and test – People are willing to accept all sorts of things without even thinking about them.  When I told a friend about these side aches, their response was “well, maybe you’re just getting old”.  Screw that!  things don’t just happen.  There are causes when you look for them and ways to prevent them if you try hard enough.  A bit of critical thinking is key and can help you improve your health in ways you never even imagined.

I actually incorporate pushups into my chest workout, usually doing them between sets of other exercises.  I also do them as part of an abbreviated exercise program if I’m somewhere without access to a gym, like a hotel on vacation.  I even do a few pushups at work, in a conference room so I don’t need to explain my behavior to anyone , when I need a break from sitting in front of the computer.

Now the key to push ups, as with most exercises, is form.  Badly done, pushups can injure.  Properly done, they’re a great way to work out your lower back, abs, chest, shoulders and arms.  Which why I was ecstatic to see that someone has put together a great video showing exactly how to do a good push up.

Notice his emphasis on keeping a straight back and good stance for both arms and legs. This is the key to a good push and it matters a lot more than any gadget the infomercials try to sell you. You don’t need hand stands or one handed push ups or even one leg on top of the other. Just follow the excellent form shown in this video and enjoy this great exercise.

Hardboiled eggs are great but take a little too long to make

People are trying way too hard to be healthy.  They make it seem like it’s a difficult job just to find something good to eat, that it requires hours of work and days of preparation to make a healthy meal.  Nonsense!  Healthy meals are easy, quick, cheap and tasty.  Well, at least some of them are.  So here are a few quick breakfast ideas to get your day started right.

• 2 eggs over easy, 1/2 tomato chopped up, 1/2 cucumber chopped up – Total preparation, around 5 minutes.  The eggs are amazingly nutritious and the veggies add a bit of crunch plus a lot of fiber.
• 2 slices of bacon or 2 small links of sausage, 1 cup of fresh greens, 1/2 cup of chopped up red peppers – Again, 5 minute preparation time.  Just cook up the bacon or sausage and chop up the peppers at the same time.  When it’s ready, sit down and enjoy.
• 1/2 cup black beans, 1/4 chopped white onion, 1/2 cup chopped green peppers, 1/2 chopped tomato – Heat up the beans and, when they’re hot, just dump the veggies right in there.  It tastes delicious.  Base preparation time is 5 minutes again but if you want to get fancy, you can spend an extra three minutes sauteing the peppers and onions.
• 1 chicken boneless and skinless thigh, 5 or 6 cherry tomatoes, 1 cup fresh greens – Cook up the chicken thigh in a pan.  Sear it first on both sides and then let it cook on low heat for about 10 minutes.  Then chop it up and put it on top of your chopped greens and tomatoes as a salad topping.  I love seasoning the chicken with curry powder but let your own preferences guide you on that.  By the way, Chicken thigh is way better than breast.  Good, healthy fat content without being too big.

See The Similarities?

Each of these is a basic portion of healthy protein paired up with fresh vegetables.  I like to fry the protein in animal fat (usually left over bacon grease) but olive oil works well too.  You get a solid serving of fat, protein and fiber all in a fast, easy to make meal and that’s going to keep you feeling full and satisfied all the way to lunch.

The cost for all of these is relatively low, with most of these meals averaging around $2 to $3 if you add up all the ingredients.  Making them for more than one person is very easy and doesn’t usually take up twice the time.  In fact, I sometimes make an extra helping for Julie without spending any extra time at all.

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If you got any good breakfast ideas, please feel free to add them in the comments.

We Ran Right By Here

This post is being written from a hotel room in Hilton Head Island.  Julie and I are on vacation this week spending time in Charleston, Hilton Head and Savannah.  We’ve been having an incredible time so far (Charleston is an absolutely beautiful city) and we’ve also been staying pretty healthy.

Getting Exercise

• Running – Every other day we get up a bit earlier and go for a run.  We pick out our course the day before and try to find something that will be interesting and fun to run.  For example, in Charleston we found a great run along the waterfront and through some historic districts.  The houses were incredible and we found ourselves chatting about which one we’d like to live in as we ran.  Today we ran on the beach in Hilton Head, something I’d never done before.  It was absolutely beautiful and we kept spotting dolphins in the surf as we ran.  Both times the run felt like a natural part of the vacation instead of an interruption of it.
• Walking tours – We walk everywhere.  We spend hours and hours walking every day and it helps.  I think we spent at least four hours walking each day that we were in Charleston.  We walked through the historic neighborhoods, we walked through the market district, we walked through Folly beach and we even did a walking ghost tour of Charleston which was a bit lame, but still took 90 minutes.  Sure, it’s not a fast walk but 4 hours will add up!
• Activities – We’re picking out a good mix of relaxing and active things to do.  For example, here in Hilton Head we’re going for a two hour Dolphin cruise but we’re also going on a 4 hour kayak trip.  Tomorrow we plan on biking through the island.

Overall, I think we’re actually getting more exercise than when we were at home, but it’s something we have to consciously choose.  It doesn’t just happen on its own.  It’s easy to get lazy and just take the trolley tours, the boat excursions or sit on the beach, and while those may be fun, more physical activities can also be enjoyable.  I have to tell you, there’s nothing like walking through a city to really get to know it.

Eating

This is the problem area.  Vacation means eating out and eating out means eating too much.  Dessert with every meal, fried sea food at every restaurant, steaks for lunch and buffets for breakfast.  How the heck do we not gain 20lbs like this?

Well, nothing to do here but have a bit of discipline.

• Don’t tell yourself that vacation is a reason to eat like a pig but do relax and enjoy life a bit.  Eating dessert is ok (I’m waiting for my ice cream sundea as I type this) but a buffet every night might be overdoing it.
• Limit yourself to one or two big meals a day.  That means if you ate a big breakfast and a big lunch, you don’t get to have a big dinner.  That usually keeps me from overeating and feeling too bloated to do anything fun.
• Speaking of which, remind yourself that there are vacation activities you won’t enjoy as much if you overeat, like hiking, biking and so on.  Even better, have a significant other who reminds you of this

Relax

Do you know why I save money?  It’s so I’ll have it to spend on the things that matter, like vacation.  Think of food the same way.  I live healthy all my life so that I don’t have to worry about missing out on South Carolina’s world famous She-Crab soup when I’m here on vacation.  If I happen to eat a few calories more than I usually do, that’s fine.  Those calories will melt right off when I get back home.

• Exercise your back
• Exercise your shoulders
• Exercise your legs
• Can be done with or without weights
• Can be done as a stretch of as an exercise

The answer?  The Squat Bender!

Check out one of my new favorite exercises:

As you can see, it’s a squat merged with a toe touch.  The two exercises together become a single movement that works out your entire body.

Note – This gentleman has great form.  Notice how smoothly he moves between the forms, with no swaying back and forth.

How To Use

I love this exercise because it’s so versatile

• Add Weights – This makes for a great part of a resistance workout, particularly during a legs or back day.  It’s a compound exercise that will workout multiple muscle groups and recruit others for stability.  Best of all, you don’t need a gym to do this, just a pair of dumbbells.
• Slow It Down – If you slow this down and do it with a light or no weight, it becomes an excellent stretch.  Take your time, do a full cycle in around 10 to 20 seconds and really listen to your body as you go through each motion.  Do ten reps of this and your core will be ready for anything.  Again, this can be done anywhere.  Been sitting at your desk too long?  Get up and spend a minute doing slow reps of this exercise.  You’ll feel incredibly refreshed afterwards.
• Speed it up – If you can do reps of this in under 4 seconds your heart will start beating like you’re running a sprint.  It’s an involved exercise and doing it at high speed requires concentration and stamina.  A set of 20 fast reps would be a great part of a cardio calisthenics routine.  Alternate a quick set of these with quick sets of push ups, sit ups and jumping jacks in your hotel room during a business trip for an excellent cardio workout on the go.

It’s an awesome tool for a variety of fitness goals.

Enjoy!