Category: Fitness
-
Hello, my name is Alex, and I’m a coffee addict.
I’ll always be an addict. But for now I’m an addict who’s taking steps to drink less coffee. I plan to have at least two weeks of drinking nothing stronger than decaf coffee and herbal tea.
Earlier in the fall, I would’ve very much defended my addiction. There’s even an awesome CGP Grey video that says it’s okay.
But evidence began to mount that I couldn’t ignore. Baristas at my new favorite coffee shop told me I was drinking too much – and I was drinking nearly a pot of coffee at home along with all the coffee I had while there. My sleep was getting worse and worse. I was useless mentally until my 3rd cup.
These are not conditions for success. I could hear Tim Ferriss’ voice in my head all the time telling me to drink nothing stronger than green tea for a year (his advice to a friend who was addicted to stimulants.)
I’m not committing to a year, but I decided to start a reduction. My plan has been to back down a bit more every week then do at least two weeks of no caffeine at all:
- As much caffeine as I want until 12pm
- Up to 3 servings of coffee before 12pm
- 2 servings before 12pm
- 1 serving before 12pm
- No caffeine
- No caffeine
- ???
First week went better than I expected. I definitely found myself struggling in the afternoon for energy but wasn’t getting headaches and it helped with sleep from day one. Stopping at 12pm should stay around even after I add coffee back.
The second week I accidentally cheated. Because one of my favorite mugs is larger than most. But I didn’t realize how much larger. 3 cups from this thing is really more like 5. So I just re-did the 3-serving week successfully and sure enough I’ve been dealing with headaches, low energy, and difficulty with focus.
My enormous Star Wars mug. It drew me to the dark side with its vast amount of coffee. Today starts the 2-serving week. I’m genuinely worried about whether or not I can hold myself to it. We’ll see.
I’ve learned a couple things already though. One, I really prefer regular coffee to espresso when it comes to getting a caffeine fix. One day Ber was out running an errand in the morning so I had herbal tea at breakfast and she got us lattes. They say there were three shots of espresso in that latte but I may as well have had a glass of milk. I just need a steady drip at all times, it would seem.
Two, I don’t hate decaf as much as I remember hating it. I think I just remember all the times I wanted a bit of energy and didn’t get it. But I’ve been drinking a bunch of decaf in the afternoons and it’s not been so bad. It just makes me feel old.
Three, I really am an addict. It was a problem. I should have dealt with it earlier. I’m dealing with it now.
-
I ran the WWWP5k this morning and there’s still time for you to sign up! Wait, how does that work?
Any time between Monday, September 19th to Sunday, September 25th, travel a 5k anyway you’d like. Walk along the beach. Run on your treadmill. Jog with your dog. Hike in the woods.
Once you’ve done your 5k, post about it on your WordPress site, tag the post with wwwp5k, and publish it for the world to see. Need a WordPress site? Start one for free on WordPress.com.
Since Automattic is currently gathered in Whistler, BC, Canada for our annual Grand Meetup I had the pleasure of running with about 100 of my colleagues near our hotels. It was a rainy and wet, but not as cold as you’d think! Having not run once since my last 5k in May it wasn’t exactly my best performance but I did enjoy the outing.
To encourage Automatticians to join in this mornings run, we’re making a donation to Soles4Souls for every participant here at our Grand Meetup. How could I pass that up? Totally worth getting up early.
-
Back in December Ber made her intentions clear. Once the baby was here and she was cleared to exercise again, she wanted to get back to running. She decided to run in the Throo the Zoo 5k, which happens every year at the Louisville Zoo on the 2nd Saturday in May (the week after Derby.) Her enthusiasm spread throughout our family Christmas and my sister, Julie, said that she’d love to come down and join her for the run in May.
Fast forward to the spring and the time had come. Grace is here and healthy, and Ber was cleared to run once more. Her best friend and running partner, Kirsten, joined the team. Kirsten’s fiancé, Cory, joined alongside her. I’ve been jogging and working out for several months, so I decided I would run as well (so long as we could get a babysitter – Grandma was excited to help with that.) Together we formed Team Owlbear.
It proved to be a cool, cloudy day – perfect for a race. All had a good time!
Pre-race
Alex and Julie
Team Owlbear + staring guyFinish Line
Team Owlbear’s results -
But if you talk with people that love running, they’ll say, “Yeah! You just pop out for a quick run.” And if you ask them about the steps involved, they’ll say, “There’s just one. You just run.”–Derek Sivers on the Tim Ferriss Podcast
I love this example Derek uses to explain how humans tend to think of simple vs. complicated the same way they think of easy vs. hard.
People who hate running can list off all the steps of running and why each one is a huge pain. People who love running think nothing could be simpler.
Listen to his full story at 21:55 of this episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast. Or listen to the whole thing like I did – a great listen during a run!
—
-
-
Last fall I read this article from the New Yorker:
Stepping Out: Living the Fitbit Life by David Sedaris
I love Sedaris’ writing and I remember reading When You Are Engulfed in Flames in a single day. But this article seemed over the top even for him. How someone could get this obsessed over such a little nudge seemed definitely a work of fiction.
It may still be fictional in parts, I honestly don’t know, but I do now believe its possible to be truth. Automattic decided to give each Automattician a free fitbit this year, and I mine just arrived in the mail on Friday evening. All weekend it was at the front my mind.
A certain amount of this is just that it’s new, I’m sure. Gadgets that aren’t interesting when they’re new aren’t really marketable. But this feels different than when I got my Nexus 5 (that I still go on and on about how much I love it) or when I switched from Windows to Mac. Those are still tools to make me happy.
I want to make the fitbit happy. I drank water not because I felt thirst but because the fitbit said “Kinda thirsty over here!” Literally, that was a message on the app. Sure, once I started gulping down the water I realized how dehydrated I was, but the making the fitbit stats nicer was the trigger.
It’s a silly little game on my wrist, but I think I’m starting to like it.
-
The first Monday and Tuesday of every month, my gym skips the standard group workouts and does a set of “progress testing.” It’s a checkup of the following:
- Weight
- Body Fat Percentage
- # of Burpees in 1 minute
- # of Pushups in 1 minute
- Plank time to failure
- # of Pull-ups to failure / Hang time to failure
- Squat with hands overhead time to failure
I understand the need for such workouts in gym culture. It’s a way to open up honest conversation between trainers and members about where they’re at and what their goals can be. It’s the little bit of data we actually collect.
The process itself just disagrees with my soul. It feeds on a competition to beat oneself. I don’t feel better about myself after progress testing, I feel tortured. It’s become more about shutting my mind up than it is about testing my body.
Why can’t I just keep showing up for the sake of showing up? Since when is health a function of ambition? Can’t health be a function of activity without competition?
But this is also an arena where I’m no expert. I won’t pretend to know anything about making my body less out-of-shape, so I’ll do their system while it’s working for my only actual goal of “feel good about me.”
When that goal is attained, just don’t be surprised when this faux-competition with past versions of myself is the first thing I drop.
—
-
Alex "Gus" Gustafson 