Row, Row, Row Your Boat...

Resolutions made in the New Year are born in the inspired space of our minds, occupied by all the things we wish we could be or do. They stem from an authentic desire for change and to better the self.

Now, the bad news:  According to the researcher Richard Wiseman, nearly half of all Americans will make such promises to themselves each January, and 88% of all those lovely resolutions will fail[1]. That’s in the neighborhood of 156 million failed resolutions and disappointed minds each and every year.

Don’t take it personally. The truth is that the real fault lies in your brain. The brain cells that are responsible for what we commonly think of as “willpower” are located in the prefrontal cortex, right beneath your forehead. These cells help us stay focused, handle our short-term memory and give us our abstract thinking skills. They also help us to persist with tasks that we might not fully enjoy. Usually, the prefrontal cortex does a pretty good job, but when we introduce something that takes a lot of willpower – like a resolution – the brain simply can’t take it.

It helps to have a willing partner to train alongside you.

 

To put things more scientifically, this is what’s happening inside your prefrontal cortex, best described through a Stanford experiment by Prof. Baba Shiv:

 A group of undergraduate students were divided into 2 groups. One group was given a two-digit number to remember. The other was given a seven-digit number to remember. Then, after a short walk through the hall, they were offered the choice between two snacks: a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit. What’s most surprising: The students with 7-digit numbers to remember were twice as likely to pick the slice of chocolate compared to the students with the 2-digits. Those extra numbers took up valuable space in the brain—they were a “cognitive load”—making it that much harder to resist a decadent dessert[2].

Basically, your brain needs to be taught how to handle the weight of a major change. The more abstract the goal, the harder it is for the brain to do the heavy lifting necessary to keep you on a path to success.

 

Here’s the good news: There are ways to reduce the burden on the brain and help you to attain your objective. It’s actually quite simple. You must take that “resolution” and transform it in to a “habit.” For example, if your resolution was an abstract I want to eat healthier foods in 2013, you can translate that into an action by substituting a home cooked meal in place of take out one night each week. If you resolved that you would lose weight in 2013, you can select a habit like going to a fitness class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

According to Prof. Shiv, your chances of making a resolution successful increase by 50% by simply breaking down that abstract idea into its most simple action.

If February has found you already falling off the wagon, here’s the simple kick-start:

1.       Pick Your Priority. The brain can only handle so many tasks at any given time (remember our “cognitive overload?”). You need to identify one single thing that is meaningful to you, and let everything else go.

2.       Make a simple habit.  Choose something that you can do in less than a minute, like signing up for a fitness class or swapping a banana for your morning pastry.

3.       Be accountable. That means writing down the habit you have chosen, and sharing it freely with others. Tell your friends and family, and you will be more likely to follow through on your commitment.

4.       Reward yourself. A powerful study was performed at the University of Chicago that demonstrated clearly the impacts of providing positive feedbacks in changing behavior[3]. Give yourself small rewards for meeting goals, like allowing yourself an unhealthy treat at the end of a successful week following new dietary habits, or buying yourself a new running outfit after you log a certain number of miles.

Lastly, you have to remember that change can happen any time of the year. There’s nothing special or particularly meaningful about January 1^st. Resolutions can be made as you are ready, and after you have the proper plan in place. Big changes, as it turns out, come from the smallest steps.

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[1] The course of motivation

Maferima Touré-Tillery , Ayelet Fishbach

University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago IL 60637, USA

7 November 2010; 8 February 2011; 19 April 2011
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ayelet.fishbach/research/TF_JCP11.pdf

 

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[2] (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/the-willpower-trick/)

The Willpower Trick

By Jonah Lehrer January 9, 2012

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[3] Wiseman, R. (2007). Quirkology. London, UK: Pan Macmillan

I'm all about friendly competition. But this time, it's not on the bike.

 

My friend and fellow graduate of The University of CO Health Sciences, Alli, is holding a little contest over at Don't Panic Mom. She gathered together a bunch of us veg heads to write for her blog, and to post recipes for her readers to attempt. Readers are rating us on the following criteria:

 

Taste

Easy to Find Ingredients

Ease to Prepare (e.g. you don’t need special equipment).

 

The winner will be dubbed 

 

So, head on over and vote. For me. (Okay...or anyone else. Whatever.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the schedule of posts:

 

 

 

• Tuesday, Jan 29: Kim from Soulicious Life
• Wednesday, Jan 30: Sarah from Veggie Kids
• Thursday, Jan 31:YOURS TRULY
• Friday, Feb 1: Kareen from i_ameatingright
• Saturday, Feb 2: Jake from plantbasedonabugdget
• Sunday, Feb 3: Lacy from laughinglemonpie

 

 



I sometimes write for LiveWell Colorado, an anti-obesity and public health campaign in this state. Generally, I don't cross post my writing since my work for LiveWell is pretty specific in nature... But I like this post, and I think many of the women I know can relate.

 

 

My body and I have a long history. It’s a story of loyalty and betrayal, of adventures and near-misses, of love and, yes, loathing.

We’ve been together for 34 years and, during that time, my body has let me down more than once. It embarrassed me at age four when, in the middle of a ballet recital, its awkwardness was cause for my instructor to tell my mother that I was “hopelessly lacking in grace.” In junior high, it was too boxy and boyish. It was unsympathetic to the curves of the other girls, and I had to hide it under baggy sweatshirts and loose-fitting tops. Somewhere around my teens, it decided it wanted curly hair. I resisted that with flatirons and hairdryers, and scores of thick, waxy products. Ultimately, it won that battle, and I was left to embrace those little brown ringlets. In my 20s, my body committed the ultimate act of betrayal, and my pancreas stopped producing insulin. My body and I will spend the rest of our time together with Type I Diabetes.

Of course, that same body also managed some amazing feats. During a particularly unfortunate phase in the late 80s, it endured hours of step aerobics in hideously shameful leotards. In my teen years, it eventually managed a pretty quick 500 freestyle in the pool. It stretched and adapted to carry two beautiful children. It nourished them throughout my pregnancies and after, as it made milk to feed them. My body was a devoted friend during three marathons, when she wanted desperately to call it quits, to slow to a crawl, and yet I forced her on to the finish. She has endured countless hours of training and racing. She’s crashed, bled, had a couple sets of stitches and one fractured arm, and never given up entirely.

Our bodies are glorious friends. We subject them to all manner of abuse: Starve them or force them to binge beyond reason, deprive them and belittle them, degrade them and hide them. Some women shame them, hate them, harm them. Still, throughout it all, they chase our dreams and grow old with us, keep the scars and lines that tell our stories and serve as our vessel as we enter the world.

In a culture where women’s bodies are so often misrepresented, it’s important to preserve the friendship between mind and body. I’m not sure when, exactly, women decide to turn against their skin and muscle and bone, and indulge chronic, negative self-talk.  I do know that it is both exhausting and, well, boring. All those mechanical reactions of disdain and disgust seem rather silly when paired with the ability of the body to accomplish amazing things.

 



The key, perhaps, in learning to tell our respective bodies how much we love them is found in using them well. Studies show that body dissatisfaction decreases significantly with exercise[1]. When you see what your body can do, when you allow it to feel good, you can’t help but allow your mind to follow along. You become more forgiving, and less tied to that cultural ideal of a “beautiful woman.” Two years ago, I weighed a lovely 122lbs., but my cycling suffered horribly for my slight physicality. Today, I race at just under 143lbs. I am faster, stronger and more muscular. In America, that thinner frame might be regarded as the prettier body, but I take great pride in my thick quads and calves, and the power they produce on a bike. My body is doing its job.

Today, I stand before myself in the mirror and see my boyish hips that carried my son and my daughter, my absurdly long arms that cradle the cat, my broad shoulders that can haul my bike over fences and stairs, my heavy legs which run faster than I ever imagined as a child. I love my body, and she has shown me time and again that she loves me in return. I tend to my body with the same love and care that I tend to the bodies of my two children as I kiss their bruises and bandage scraped knees. I remember that they watch my body and me as we go out into the world, and they hear how I talk to her when I see her reflection. I am filled with an authentic sense of gratitude at the ride we get to take together, as we find new adventures and accomplish our dreams.

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[1] University of Florida (2009, October 9). Exercise Improves Body Image For Fit And Unfit Alike.



 

Little spin through Boulder County.

 

I decided to bail on the office for about three or four hours in order to celebrate 66F degrees in January (that's 18 degrees Celsius, Scully). Got in a nice 50ish mile ride during my workday!

Not feeling the love from this farm. So sad.

Descending from the top of McCaslin. More fun to ride down than up. I'm a notoriously poor downhill racer...so I'm working on that. My top speed this day was 52mph, which isn't too bad! I get sketchy because there is so much sand on the road from the gravel trucks trying to keep the winter ice at bay. It makes for some scary pavement in spots.

The bad part about winter is that I do mostly intervals, so my fuel supplies get depleted. I mean, who needs Blocks for an hour on the trainer, right? Devoid of good options, I snaked my kids Kids Cliff Ropes. Shhhh....

 

Quick stop to check the BGs. I usually test about every 45minutes to an hour on a hard ride, unless I feel lousy. An easy spin? Less frequently. I have a pretty good idea of where my blood sugar falls on the bike...but I also like the security of knowing. I use disposable meters, generally, so I don't have to worry if they get wet or lost.

Final MAX values. Nice watts. My average was significantly lower...about 160.

The Threshold Test.

Many of you know all about this bit of agony.  The goal is simple: to find the glass ceiling of your performance. It takes in to account your Vo2 Max (or your maximum aerobic capacity), your heart rate and your Lactate Threshold (basically, the fastest pace you can maintain for 30 minutes without feeling like your legs are on fire).

Most people use Heart Rate as a gauge of effort when they are at the gym, working out. The problem is that your HR can be impacted by a lot of external variables, which have little to do with your efforts. How much sleep did you get, how much caffeine did you drink, are you sick or stressed, what is your resting heart rate...

Instead, it's a bit more effective to use an actual measure of effort on the bike (watts), and to set those parameters against your actual ability as opposed to some general calculation (the whole 225-your age business).

So, Saturday morning was an all-out sufferfest. I should say that I almost bailed. My head wasn't in a good place. I wasn't having a crisis of confidence, nor was I feeling particularly bad. Mostly, I was working through some unexpected and relatively minor changes to my racing, and I was wrestling with the internal dialogue that asks, How much does this really matter? I guess that's a question that all of us ask from time-to-time. Without getting too weighty, training takes an enormous amount of time from my personal life, and I am often forced to inquire if the opportunity costs are worth the rewards of what I get to do. Sitting in my kitchen, staring at my kids with my shoes in hand and feeling a bit dejected by recent events, I was really settled on finding an answer.

The answer was, This is what I know how to do. This is my clarity. My sanity.

And, you know, when you are going all-out for what seems like forever, you don't have the luxury of thinking too much.

I trotted off to the studio.

I got in a good 20 minute warm up. My legs felt a bit stiff, and I was regretting working out the day prior. At the same time, I was feeling strong, and I was really focused on getting an accurate result. I spent the next 30 minutes doing a Time Trial, bringing as much as I could to the effort. (The key, I think, is the little mantra I keep in my head: You've been here before. No matter how miserable I am in the moment, I know I've visited this space in the past, and I survived it.)

I think I got psyched out a bit by my coach who cautioned me not to start too hard. You need to pull the same watts at the end that you pull this first ten minutes. Pace yourself.

I didn't. I actually erred too far to the conservative end. My watts were lower the first ten minutes, and my highest numbers came the final eight minutes of the Time Trial. That shouldn't happen. At the same time, I feel comfortable saying that I left 95% of my efforts on the bike. I still felt I had some reserve at the end...also something that shouldn't occur.

My coach agreed. Looking at the numbers, they seem a bit low...but not too far off the mark.

I'd agree. Overall, I think I should have pulled about five to ten percent higher numbers across the board. Still, for January, my numbers were solid. My Power to Weight Ratio is sitting just under 4.0, which is where I'd like to be when I race in March. That's totally attainable. I sustained a HR of about 160BPM throughout which, again, is pretty good. And I conquered that little bit of doubt chipping away at my motivation. Better still.

Sunday should have been a nice rest day...but the weather was beautiful, and I still had some cobwebs to clear. I headed out on the bike for a 30 mile ride. The last ten miles were absolutely freezing, but the purpose of the ride was well served. I woke up this morning, back at the studio and ready to work.

I have this thing that I say to myself in times of difficulty...

 

 

 

 

Do, because knowing is not enough.



I think we always know what we should do. It's the doing part that catches us. People know they should exercise, eat well, watch less TV or skip the drive-thru. Executing that knowledge is the real challenge.

There's actually a name for this phenomenon: The Knowing-Doing Gap. If you study business or health administration, you know all about it. Companies hire consultants, dump all kinds of money and resources into studying ways to improve, line up employees at mind-numbing seminars and then?

Then do nothing. Implementation is hard, and so it's easier to dream without direction than to make something happen.

 

I had a crappy week. It started with my husband requiring a second surgery to fix some lingering nerve damage from his bicycle crash last June. Sedated Dennis is a recipe for disaster. The man is an anesthesia sponge, and so I spent a full day tending to a babbling fool doped up on pain meds. Again.

 

Then we got word that a friend had suffered the unimaginable loss of her 18 year old son. I cannot describe the heartache this family is enduring at the present time. I can tell you that, as a mother, there is a pull when you hear of the loss of a child. You feel drawn to cradle your own children until you can't inhale another breath.
 

In the middle of it all, though, I have to carve out time to train and do the work I need to accomplish. I've been getting good returns on my training thus far, and I refuse to cede any ground at this point. Plus, I have a fancy new Colnogo CLX3.0 hanging out in the house, which is motivation enough! (Never mind that it is currently 4 degrees Fahrenheit in Boulder, meaning I am riding said bike on rollers in my kitchen. It's actually kind of cruel.)

 

So, I'm doing the work. At the same time, I have to push aside the fears in my head that tell me I am not doing enough. I have the tendency to go back and re-examine my training plans, look at different tracks and wonder if they are better, worry and talk about worrying and worry some more, and then let that doubt compromise my efforts. Then, I come back to it: Reading isn't doing. Talking isn't doing. Get on the bike and focus on quality, not quantity.

Fear is probably what puts an end to most doing.

 

On a brighter note, I had begun to feel like I was hitting a plateau in terms of pushing my functional power and my endurance. This morning, however, I saw an awesome increase in my sprint speeds and cadence. A hopeful sign since my sprinting has always been a point of weakness. I am anxious to see how my indoor training is going to translate to time in the saddle once things thaw out and warm up a bit.

 

And, you know, when you are working hard enough, you really are only able to do. One of the things I have always liked about exercise is that I reach a point where I can only focus on the task in front of me. I push myself to a limit where the only this one thing can fill the space of my mind. Today was that kind of day. I was alternating between sprints and climbs, pushing myself to my threshold on every sprint set and then using the climb as a working recovery. It was misery. All I could do was watch my watts, focus on sucking in air, and trying to keep my legs moving. My only thought was to ask, Is this your 100%?

 

There's something kind of peaceful about being in the moment, and executing.

 

Like many Americans, my good friend recently resolved to drop some weight after the first of the year. She committed to eating better and working out no less than four times each week. She bought a treadmill and some sweet new kicks. And, this morning, she stood on the scale for the first time since December 31st:

 

 

I've only lost a pound?! No way! Sad panda.

 

She was disappointed, but not wholly dejected. She's got at least 50 pounds to lose before reaching the threshold of a normal BMI, and had hoped for better results after nearly two weeks of dedication. At the same time, she's a realist. She gets this will be a process.

 

I took a quick inventory of her efforts. Her plan is sound, and her nutritional habits are good. She's tracking calories and logging food intake. True to her resolution, she is working out four or five days each and every week. Here, however, is where things take a turn. Her "workout" consists of walking one mile on the treadmill, and then doing a lot of sit-ups, push-ups and light weights.

 

This is, of course, better than nothing at all. It's more activity than she is used to performing and, in time, it will pay some dividends. If she really wants to get some traction on weight loss, though, and see an improvement in her fitness, she is going to need to depart from the comfort zone of mild resistance training and a stroll on the treadmill. She's going to have to embrace being uncomfortable.

 

This is why people don't workout. It actually kind of drives me crazy when I hear people talk about "working out" in the context of "sipping Gatorade on a brisk walk." (It's locomotion. Not exercise.) Most people can exert themselves beyond the point they realize, even with a poor base level of fitness. Worse still is when the same group of individuals lament about weight loss or lack thereof. It's tough to tell someone that they are not working hard enough. But my friend? She's just not putting in the hard work.

 

The sensations of breathlessness and burning muscles, for example, correlate with the intensity of the effort. When you're out of shape, numerous receptors all over your body beg your brain to slow down. Your brain is trying to tell your body that you cannot maintain this kind of activity. As you work each system, however, fewer receptors holler for mercy because your body is no longer working so close to its maximum capacity. Eventually, the number of receptors screaming at your brain will level off, and more pleasant sensations will be able to rise to a conscious level. The signal that was once an emergency siren will become just a familiar signpost: I've pushed this hard before. I can handle it. It'll be OK.

 

But most people bail before they get to the happy place. They feel exhausted. They can't catch their breath. The sensation of true work produces anxiety, and it's simply more comfortable to hang out in the lower zones. This is actually the theory behind gyms like Curves, where women push to about 60% of their MAX. The idea is that a little activity will produce results for the more sedentary client, while not being so challenging as to make the client miserable, unhappy, fearful and unwilling to return.

 

This is also the reason that I squarely told my friend to get a trainer. She's not going to push her body toward fitness without one. Instead, she will continue to do what comes easier at the expense of her goals.

 

 

I have a power test in a week. Before I go in, I will have that same type of anxiety. I'll be nervous about how much it will hurt - about how much suffering I can take. I feel like that before races, too. But I also get the pleasure of athletics now in a way my friend cannot because, having attained a good fitness base, I can sample a number of sports and experience the various pleasures each has to offer.