Buster's 43 Things entries
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Another stab at being healthy — 21 days ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about care about health for a year:I’ve managed to get myself in a bit of a health pickle recently. My original goal of gaining 10 lbs of muscle sort of failed due to my slow weights routine not really ever making much of a difference. I did get stronger, but I didn’t gain weight. And, considering my fluctuating diet (ie. Health Month), a few stressful months that led to not eating/sleeping enough, and a break when I got married and honeymooned, I’m now weighing more than I did at the beginning but suspect it’s fat rather than muscle.
In the meantime, I’ve found myself spoiled by slow weights and unable to go to the gym (it seems so futile to mess with those weights without a personal trainer), uninterested in running, and weighed down by honeymoon and holiday eating.
So, I’m gonna try to start a yoga habit. I’ve been reading meditation books and getting into the mindfulness stuff again, and trying to be more aware of the constant buzz in my head and body and how it influences my behavior, thoughts, posture, and mood.
It helps that there’s a yoga studio (and a good one) literally right under where I work. The only problem is that I rarely feel motivated to go in the morning, and have plans after work. But now that life is calming down, I think I’m going to try to start going to the 6pm classes. And maybe one on the weekend. They also have meditation classes, which I’m very interested in as well.
Just to be clear, I’m not much into the Eastern religion aspect of it all, and I’m not going to become a vegetarian or stop killing bugs that annoy me. But I have begun to think of health as something that is as connected to mental state as it is to physical state. And given my extra-stress levels recently, a little calming meditation and mindfulness is about the only thing that seems to work for me. Acupuncture helps too. And so does cutting back on the drinking. It all works together.
I guess that’s what health is, in the end: everything working together. Or something deep like that.
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Week two — 21 days ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about partake in a media diet:Okay, the 10 minutes an hour thing worked for a week, but didn’t really feel worthwhile enough to continue this week.
I think the real issue with media consumption is the tendency for it to turn us into compulsive multi-taskers. Speeding through tasks, switching tasks during lulls, intolerant of a thought that lasts longer than a moment, etc.
So, this week, I’m trying a new thing. One thing at a time. If I’m working on something, work on it without multi-tasking. If I’m surfing the web, surf it until the wave ends, then stop. No need to hop waves and live in a crazy chaotic whirlwind of snippets of information.
One thing at a time. I’ll try that this week and see if it’s any better.
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Test out our new personality quiz... — 21 days ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about Order the 43Things book (and tell the world while I'm at it):I’m a Self-Knowing Healthy Tree Hugger, according to this test.
It’s not linked from anywhere else on the website yet.
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Stuck on week 3 — 21 days ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about do 100 pushups:I did 100 pushups, but not consecutively. 20+25+15+15+20+10=105. That last 10 was not part of the hundredpushups.com challenge though, so it’s sort of cheating. If I could’ve done 25 on that 5th set that would be better.
Well, after doing 100 pushups in 5 sets, it’ll be a long road to doing 100 pushups in 1 set. How do people do it?
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make a monthly budget — 21 days ago
Buster McLeod Benson adopted this goal -
Order the 43Things book (and tell the world while I'm at it) — 28 days ago
Buster McLeod Benson completed this goal (worth it!) -
Starting today — about 1 month ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about partake in a media diet:I’m only going to surf my favorite update-heavy websites in the first 10 minutes of every hour. These sites include, but aren’t limited to: Twitter, Live Journal, Flickr, Facebook, Google Reader, and Tumblr.
I’m also turning off all email notifications, and any Twitter desktop notification apps I have.
The point of the media diet is to reclaim my brain. Especially my daytime working brain. The overload of update-heavy input has me switching sites every 5 minutes in order to see if anything new is posted. It’s like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, and will never end.
Much better to reclaim my brain and miss a few updates or links here and there.
I’ll try this out this week and see how well it works.
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partake in a media diet — about 1 month ago
Buster McLeod Benson adopted this goal -
write a Christmas newsletter — about 1 month ago
Buster McLeod Benson adopted this goal -
write a facebook app — about 1 month ago
Buster McLeod Benson adopted this goal -
Currently looping endlessly in week 3 — about 1 month ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about do 100 pushups:The 6-week program is at hundredpushups.com. I’m currently on week 3, and have been here for a while. I took time to get married and honeymoon in between, and now I’m hoping to get back on the pushup wagon.
I like pushups. They’re simple, over quick, free, and can be done almost anywhere. No equipment required, and the workout is as much arms as it is back and stomach.
100 is a lofty goal though. But it’s concrete, and I’ll definitely know if I’m going towards it or away from it if I continue the program.
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do 100 pushups — about 1 month ago
Buster McLeod Benson adopted this goal -
Untitled — about 1 month ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about elect Barack Obama president:Here’s what I did on election night:
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How to plan our Honeymoon — 2 months ago
Buster McLeod Benson wrote about How to plan our Honeymoon:
"Focus on eating, drinking, and walking around instead of hitting all the tourist spots. I guess that applies to all vacations, not just honeymoons."
How I did it: Here's a Lists of Bests list that shows the cities that we visited.
I used this site called Tripology to find a travel agent that I liked. In the end, I went with Nancy Whelchel who turned out to do a great job of figuring out the kind of trip I wanted, and then executing on the plan in a very organized manner.
This was the first time I used a travel agent and it actually worked out a lot better than I had hoped. A few days before the trip I received a packet in the mail with a full itinerary of our trip, according to the schedule and desires I had given. I had vouchers for people to pick us up at the airport, hotels, trains between cities, and other things like private cooking classes and wine tours. I referred to the itinerary as our "choose your own adventure" and consulted it whenever we needed something to do or were arriving in a new city.
I was a little afraid that having it all planned out would ruin some of the serendipity of the trip, but it did just the opposite. It provided a solid backbone upon which all the serendipity could live within. Instead of worrying about where we would stay or how we would get there, we got to focus on the food, the walks, the friends, and the gelato.Lessons & tips: I kept most of the plans secret from Kellianne so that it all simply unfolded while we were there. That was a lot of fun, and since this was her first time to Italy (Europe even), it made the magic that much more magical.
Resources:
- Travel agent from Tripology.com
- Eyewitness Italy
- Rick Steve's Italy
- Acceptance that gaining 5-8 lbs while enjoying gelato, vino, and pasta is okay
It took me 30 days.
It made me enjoy my honeymoon
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lose weight — 3 months ago
Buster McLeod Benson completed this goal (worth it!) -
How to lose weight — 3 months ago
Buster McLeod Benson wrote about How to lose weight:
"It's just science, but because hunger and craving is such an emotional thing, the real challenge is to create motivation that's stronger than those emotions."
How I did it: The way I lose weight is by making it a game. Games are fun, and if you happen to be highly competitive like me, offer a way to create motivation to achieve your goal beyond the normal motivations of looking better and feeling healthier.
Make it a game by giving yourself short term goals, on the scale of a week or a month. Recruit others to play as well. Determine a list of arbitrary rules that you think will result in a healthier diet and exercise routine, and talk about it in the context of the game rather than in the context of weight loss.
Tricking yourself into feeling motivated is have the challenge. Maybe the whole challenge.
Some ideas:- Create an arbitrary "reason" to lose weight, like throwing a big party.
- Create enough rules that it is clear that you are stepping outside your normal routines for a period of time, like a month. For example, I choose rules like "no alcohol, caffeine, or dairy" which alone are responsible for layer of fat throughout my body.
- Not going out to drink means I have extra time to kill. Use it to go on walks, start a 100 pushup challenge, or take up yoga.
Lessons & tips: Remember the whole time that losing and gaining weight doesn't need to have high emotional trigger potential. The emotional weight is what we need to work around first, and then you can deal with the science of it alone, which is a much more formidable task.
Avoiding processed foods, alcohol, dairy, refined sugars and flours is 75% of learning to be healthier. The other 25% is adding a bit of walking and other activity to your life where it wasn't before.
Long term changes that could improve your quality of life, and therefore your motivation, and therefore your ability to accomplish goals could include things like moving to the city where you can walk to grocery stores, parks, gyms, and even work. Or taking up a new interest and researching the hell out of it til you feel like an expert in something you knew nothing about before. Experiment with new things, find the ones that stick. Building self-confidence is a great motivation for losing extra weight.It took me 21 days.
It made me healthier
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How to post to Twitter and Flickr at 8:36pm every day for a while — 3 months ago
Buster McLeod Benson wrote about How to post to Twitter and Flickr at 8:36pm every day for a while:
"A hobby that can last a lifetime!"
How I did it:
- I set a daily alarm on my iPhone to ring at 8:36pm.
- At 8:36pm, every day, I take a picture using the Mobile Fotos iPhone app.
- I title, tag, and upload the photo using that same app.
- Using the Exposure app, I click through my recently uploaded photo, and upload it to Twitter. This ensures that my Twitter post matches the subject line of my photo, and includes a link to the Flickr photo.
Lessons & tips: The key here is to make it a simple habit that doesn't require too much disruption of whatever you're doing at the time. For me, if I'm with someone that doesn't know about the project, I've found that it's an interesting thing to talk about for a while.
Also, make sure that you don't stress out about whether or not you're doing anything "interesting" at 8:36pm, since the whole point of this project is to capture your everyday life rather than the editorialized one that you can display with all of your other Twitter and Flickr and blog posts etc. The point is to thing of the long view, to capture that story of your life that is moving so slowly and steadily that you can't even see it. If you keep up on this goal for ten years, or twenty years, or a hundred years, it will be an amazing thing to look back on.Resources: All you need is a phone with an alarm, a camera, and the ability to text message to Twitter. Having an iPhone of course is my preference, but it's not absolutely necessary.
It took me 30 days.
It made me immortal
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How to do a cleanse — 3 months ago
Buster McLeod Benson wrote about How to do a cleanse:
"The juice is the important part, forget about the toxin absorbers and digestive stimulants!"
How I did it: I've done this a couple times now. The first time I blended my own fruits and vegetables and fasted for 4 days. I did a lot of research and learned that you really can't go wrong with drinking blended fruit and vegetable juices for a couple days.
This last time, I decided to try a packaged solution from BlessedHerbs.com. It came with an instruction manual, different levels of difficulty, digestive stimulants, and toxin absorbers. I thought this would create a more controlled and advanced level of cleansing.
I did do some research on this and thought it was a bit of a stretch even then, but it wasn't until after day 3, having read the instructions, websites, wikipedia pages, etc that I began to see their program as intentionally misleading.
I'm all for doing something out of silliness and being a bit out there (for example, psychics and cults are interesting to me) but I disliked the sensation of having been tricked into paying $100 for supplies that claimed to do something that they didn't actually do.
The digestive stimulant claims to remove "mucoid plaque" from your intestines, with pictures supporting what mucoid plaque looks like. There are even contests to send in pictures of your disgusting mucoid plaque. Of course, after a little research, I learned that this plaque is simply what the combination of the two supplements looks like when ingested during a fast. It's a funny phenomenon for sure (as fun as swallowing a nickle and waiting for it to come out) but it's not what they claim it to be. That, and according to Dr. Weil, the colon sloughs off its outer layer daily, rejuvenating itself like all other parts of your body.
What are toxins anyway? I know they exist, but a solution that claims to remove them from you in a visual manner is probably trying to trick you.
The juice fast itself was great. I feel calmer, more clear headed, and more grounded than I usually do. And nobody will dispute the value of a juice fast every once in a while for the mental benefits alone.Lessons & tips: Research juice fasts, avoid packaged and marketed products that help you do something that can be done with fruit, vegetables, and a blender.
Resources: Dr. Weil articles:
Articles about mucoid plaque:
It took me 6 days.
It made me clear-headed
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Picked it up yesterday. — 3 months ago
Buster McLeod Benson added an entry about buy a bespoke suit:I tried on the suit for the final time yesterday, with the shoes, and I’m totally in love with it, so much as someone can be in love with an inanimate object.
The bespokeness continues, though, because Scott Kuhlman is also making my shirt and bowtie, and they too are going to be totally awesome.
The whole process has been truly delightful, and I recommend Kuhlman for anyone in Seattle who needs a perfectly tailored suit.
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do a cleanse — 4 months ago
Buster McLeod Benson completed this goal (worth it!)
