About ten years ago one of my improv teachers was talking about scene building as just being a matter of everyone bringing small pieces to the table and together a scene naturally comes out. More than once he illustrated it visually, saying “Brick brick brick brick – HOUSE” and then launching into this:
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, the idea of how so many good things are just that, a mix of ingredients carefully combined until you have the thing. It’s how we make a cake, a song, a business, a family.
On the flip side, ignoring ingredients is like randomly leaving bricks out of the house. Leave too many out and the house gets wobbly and cold wind and rain get in.
I know the basic bricks of my own life. Sleeping well is critical to having good mood and energy to do the things I want in the way I want. Eating healthily means I have more energy and, as I’m finding lately, makes me sleep better. A feedback loop! Exercise keeps me in a good mood but also gives me more energy and sleep better.
Much of time I have at least a few of those down. I might eat well and exercise but stay up too late. I might exercise enough but not eat well. In that case I might go to bed at the right time and wake up at the right time but poor eating means poor sleeping for me so I don’t feel rested.
Last year around this time I had most of the bricks in order. I was preparing for a long bicycle trip and riding enough that knocking out 200 km in a day was manageable. My eating was reasonable though maybe a bit poorly timed. Sleep wasn’t great (likely due to so much training) but it was reasonably good. The routine was there and I managed it. But then after one too many issues with our apartment, it was time to bail out and move. Training stopped, eating became less mindful (and often stress-driven). And since then I feel like I’ve been trying to restart like a car on a cold morning. I do a bit but it doesn’t quite take. I’m doing overall less than I want to be, eating poorly and doing what I’d call “riding in my life instead of driving it” So in the spirit of previous experiments with winter mood, I’m going to be working on getting all of my bricks solidly placed over the next few weeks. And then, once that’s done let’s see about adding a few things here and there.
What’s this going to look like?
I’ll be starting off with some really basic goals related to cycling, eating, and meditation along with some metrics I’ll be following.
The challenge with cycling has been my extreme skill at rationalization. Meh, the weather isn’t great, I’m tired, it’s raining, it’s too hot. My latest and most egregious one is this one: “I can’t ride to work anymore because it’s so hot and humid I arrive sweaty and it’s weird to ride just 6 km and then shower at work.” And so I went back to taking the bus. Then lately when I would get home it would be “too hot” or I was “already settled in at home so why go back out?” All the while knowing in the back of my mind that it is exactly this activity that keeps me in my best mood. A content creator over on YouTube puts it well:
I’m likely to feel crappy one way or another. Do I want to feel crappy because I rode in the rain or because I sat idle at home? Before you answer, don’t forget: it isn’t just feeling sad I didn’t go after all, it’s all of those delicious happy neurochemicals I also miss out on.
So though I’m on vacation today I tried a “pilot test”. I got up at 5:30, had food and was out the door at 6:30 and rode toward work. Then, taking note of the time when I passed the turn off for work, I kept on going. I can knock out 75-90 minutes of cycling before work, stop at work, have a shower and get to work at my usual time – but now with 20-30 km. Because I am on vacation I did take a bit of extra time and relaxed on top of a hill in Downsview Park for a bit.
So that’s my basic goal for the week: Out the door at 6:30 every morning regardless of weather to get in at least 60 min of extra cycling in. Doing the same on the way home is optional now though I may add it in in upcoming weeks.
Food-wise I have a really good plan from a sports dietitian that I know works really well. It describes suggested portions and composition of meals and allows a little treat here and there. Rather than tracking everything I eat I’ll track on a scale of 0-5 (3 meals, 2 snacks). If I follow the goal I get a point. Extra items not on the plan (e.g. a third snack) will mean I subtract a point.
Meditation is a simple thing. Though I don’t do it for a long time I do notice its effects in terms of keeping me on an even keel. 15 min/day is where I’ll start with this.
Sleep is the foundation of everything including how easy it is to follow everything else. It’s hard to get on the bike or resist an extra snack if I am half asleep. There are a few things that routinely sabotage my sleep:
- Late bedtime. If we’re watching something fun we might stay up a bit late. The fix to that is to simply set the router to turn off service to the computer we watch things on at 9PM. Once we set that I tend to get to bed by 9:15, read a few minutes and then am out. So that problem’s mostly solved.
- Too much dinner: If I make something delicious I’m tempted to have an extra serving. I can almost always count on waking up at 2-3AM if I do that. I’m not sure if it’s due to acidity or blood sugar but I will be up for 30-40 min.
- Too acidic/spicy dinner: This one’s really specific and is made worse by eating too much. I don’t have an issue with red or green chilli. A spicy batch of chole is fine (as long as I don’t eat too much), but if it’s got a ton of black pepper I suffer for it – sometimes for even more than a day. And the effects are the same: I’m awake at 3:00 AM with a brain that won’t shut down. (It used to throw anxiety at me when I did that but once I learned that it was just about my stomach I was able to diffuse the anxiety and instead it gives me things like repetitive lyrics or reminders (“Don’t forget to get eggs on the way home tomorrow!”)
What Metrics Will I be Following:
1. Minutes of Cycling: The aim is for at least 420 minutes/week. (7 days x 60 min). However, longer rides may increase that.
2. Average Sleep Duration / Quality: My Garmin watch tracks both, noticing if I wake up a bunch, toss/turn, or even if my heart rate variability is low which it calls out as “stress” (it can be mental stress, but more often in my case it can be about digestion. A really great example of that happened a couple weeks ago:
Sage and I went to a food court. I picked up chole bhature (curried chickpeas and two big pieces of deep fried bread). I have a bad habit from my childhood which is to make sure I eat everything I take (especially if it tastes as good as this!) When I left I was stuffed with a bunch of really heavy food. My stress which might be around 30% when relaxing (and as low as 5% when sitting at my desk) spiked up to almost 100% and sat there for an hour to the point my watch suggested I might want to do something to relax. I was fine! My stomach was just working hard to digest an excessive amount of heavy, greasy food. Knowing that this was the issue, I didn’t listen and instead went out and rode 50 km. By the time I came back, even after a long ride my stress was near normal again. This is a great illustration of how eating a reasonable amount of healthy food is not just good for keeping at a healthy weight and having good nutrition, it’s how I ensure a good night’s sleep as who can sleep when their stress is off the charts?
3. Average stress for the day. This will for sure vary because exercise can play with this number a lot. On the one hand, a long bike ride will make it go up – especially if I don’t do a great job of hydrating or fuelling. On the other hand, low to moderate exercise has the opposite effect. It makes me simultaneously relaxed and alert. After a bike commute to work, for example, I might find my stress in the single digits and even my pulse will drop down to 60 or below – sometimes both stress and pulse lower than if I were asleep. I feel happy, content and calm. So ideally this project will increase the frequency of that feeling.
So with that, here’s a snapshot for my time two weeks ago: (Last week I did some riding for vacation and so it doesn’t really represent my starting point in the same way.
Cycling: This week was the week I first decided that I would slow down my bike commutes to work due to the heat/humidity. I rode a sum total of only 45 minutes as a result this week all on July 7. Not good!
Meditation: I sat for 5 out of a total of 7 possible days. Not bad but not great. I am pretty sure I rationalized it by being in a big rush and feeling like “There’s no time!” which is almost always nonsense.
Stress: That week seems pretty representative with an average of 38%
Sleep: I have quite a bit of data on this. Sleep score is an estimate of how I slept based on stress and an estimation of how much time I spent in light, deep and REM sleep. Quality relates to that in a more verbal way. Sleep need is estimated based on how I’ve been sleeping and how active/stressed I’ve been. Here’s that data:
This is interesting. As you can see, while the Internet shuts down at 9 and I go to bed soon after I think I’m reading a little more than I thought. I say this because I do fall asleep extremely quickly (within a couple of min – often I count backwards to help me fall asleep and I might count less than 10 before I’m out).
Mood: This one’s harder to estimate because it’s been two weeks ago. I don’t remember any particular high or low points so we could likely call this an average week.
I’ll be back on Sunday afternoon with an update. I don’t expect major changes in metrics right away. However, it will be interesting to see how hard I try to rationalize not doing various aspects and how successful I am at resisting. I’d say “Cross your fingers for me.” but let’s be honest, this is 100% based on my choices.
