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Its that time of year (as I sit here writing this on New Year's Eve) when everyone is supposed to be relaxing in a post holiday bliss and contemplating what constructive changes you can make to your life in the next year when in reality you're more likely contemplating the size of the credit card bill that will arrive in January, which of your presents you can return to the shop and you get bombarded with bloggers listing their 'Top 10 widgets of 2010' whilst subtly trying to sell you stuff.
So following in that vein- and also because I know a lot of random **** and genuinely want people to be as healthy, happy and fulfilled as I am, here are a few of my own thoughts and tips selected at random for how to make your next year better than your last.
Training and exercise
I'm not going to patronise you by reminding you that if you want a fit and healthy body, you need to be doing this. (Oops, just did). Though in the grand scheme of things, remember- you can't out exercise an unhealthy diet. That pint of beer or bar of chocolate you just had? That's probably a 30 minute fast jog on the treadmill to burn the calories off. Someone once said that nothing tastes as good as being in shape feels and while neither me nor anyone who's had a medium rare Argentinian steak washed down with a bottle of malbec followed by a cheesecake as big as a dinner plate will agree, I hope you get the point.
Talking of running, they say that if you do something repeatedly for 30 days, after that it becomes an ingrained habit. Well, the folks over at Nike+ reckon that once you upload the data for just 5 runs onto their system it becomes a habit. For me, the whole Nike+ thing turns running from something pretty boring to something pretty cool so if you fancy getting your trainers on, check it out. (if you have an iPhone you don't even need to buy the transmitter)
If you go to a gym, I recommend you don't employ a personal trainer, apart from someone like me, obviously). This might seem a pretty strange thing for me to say, so I'll elaborate. In my experience, most personal trainers produce pretty average results. This is due to (a) inexperience and lack of knowledge but most importantly, (b) due to their 'frame'. What this means is that- assuming they are gym employees, or self employed, they don't really care about your results, they just want to get you to the gym, sell training sessions and for you to keep coming back. You will probably get some results, but are short changing yourself long term. 80% of women mainly need to lose body fat, and don't like being told that cardio and sessions on the power plate are a completely retarded way to go about it. Same for the 50% of men who need to do this, too. And for the other 50% of men that also need to put on some muscle mass- doing dumbbell curls on a bosu ball or press ups and lunges all day doesn't do squat long term.
That's why I recommend you find a trainer that looks like he knows what he's talking about (i.e in better shape than you) or stop reading the muscle comics and reading some of the classic books on weight lifting and adding muscular bodyweight like Starting Strength, or Brawn. A good short cut is to buy a program like this, Show and Go, which I highly recommend.
Or if you think you're big enough but want to cut some bodyfat, check out the unbelievably named but very effective Body of Fire program I reviewed here. Or if you're serious about doing some training but really can't or won't get to the gym but can work out at home, check out something like the Turbulence Training (created by a Scottish personal trainer, Craig Ballantyne) or the P90X program, (a very in your face and cheesey, but extremely effective program from the US).
Diet and nutrition
Instead of amazing you with some new Daily Mail grabbing headline ("New cancer beating wonder food"), considering most intelligent adults (and friends of mine, if different) know what a healthy diet is, I'm just going to give you a quick take home tip- if it comes in a packet or box, don't eat it. At a stroke this rules out most of the processed and starch rich food that is the problem in most people's diets.
As an added bonus, I was reminded the other day of some really cool research related to humble cinnamon. Taken in sufficient quantities, it does amazing things to blood sugar levels (it keeps then down) and alters the insulinogenic properties of food (i.e insulin producing). This is significant as high insulin levels (triggered by excess sugar intake) are a major cause of fat gain (ask a type 2 diabetic).
Anyway, the tip is this- if you regularly drink much milk (say in your morning late or cappuccino)- start adding cinnamon powder to it in as much amount as you an handle. Unless you're vitamin or protein deficient, milk is a major source of empty calories, is full of sugar (its called lactose but its a sugar, just like that found in a jelly baby) and you shouldn't be drinking much of it. But if you're going to- stick a load of cinnamon in it and report back to me how much weight you've lost.
I see that with the new year has also come with the release of a book - the New Evolution Diet- and re-invention by some scientist of the popular 'Paleo' style of diet. 'Paleo' diets is so called because followers believe that the human body hasn't really changed much in the last few thousand years and can't cope with all the different food stuffs found in the modern diet. You should therefore eat like a caveman and consequently the diet is basically to avoid various things like grains, dairy, refined sugars and even- for some die hard adherents- fruit. If you can stick to this, it works quite well- not because (assuming you don't have specific food intolerances) there's anything magical about it but more because by avoiding those certain foods, you just tend to east less calories plain and simple.
This whole Paleo thing leads me onto (because one thing that caveman didn't do is sit around eating all day and only ate pretty infrequently) something else which is pretty exciting and may be the next thing in 'dieting' to go mainstream. Its called "Intermittent Fasting" and is basically a new take on plain old fasting where food is only avoided for a certain number of hours a day, or days per week. One of the most accessible books on it is called Eat Stop Eat and I'll be reviewing this in the near future.In the meantime, there is a ton of information for you to google if you're interested.
Life and productivity
First mention goes to a book I read last year that (along with a number of other things) changed my life. Its called the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, and was a New York Times best seller for practically a year. If you have any interest at all in working fewer hours, being more productive, happier, organised or having a second passive income you owe it to yourself to read this book. (He's just released a new book called the 4 Hour Body which is full of similarly effective tips for your body and health. I'll be doing a full of review of this shortly as I believe its so awesome.)
Another book that you might find interesting if you liked my post on minimalism and being happy, I highly recommend you check out the blog of Leo Babuta, Zen Habits and pick up a copy of his book, Focus.
If organisationally your life is a complete mess, I highly recommend a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. You can find the book on Amazon on go to his site here. This finally gave me both the structure I needed to deal with my personal affairs (mainly consisting beforehand of piles of paper and admin containing everything from bills that needed to be paid NOW to interesting magazine clippings that I might one day be maybe interested in reading again, but also the methods for dealing with it all in an efficient and easy manner. If you Google it, you'll see Getting Things Done (or 'GTD') as its known to officianados) is something of a cult topic and after a bit of hunting am sure you'll find something really relevant to you.
And if you find GTD relevant to you, use a Mac to schedule your organisational/work commitments and also have an iPhone, I highly recommend the app ToDo which syncs with your 'to do's on your mac in a really convenient GTD manner.
Also, whether you work at home or in an office, you probably realise that trying to focus on tasks for long periods of time is not a very efficient way of working, so if your job permits you to manage your own time, I highly recommend checking out the Pomodoro Technique which is a cool site all about using- yes, that's right- an Italian cooking timer in order to improve your productivity. There's also a convenient iPhone app.
Finally, the few of you that work a lot from home (like I do) will find this a god send. Ever sit down to do some work but find yourself dragged to Facebook or your favourite news site just 'for a few minutes' that turns into an hour? Realise that on tap information about everything under the sun is actually a curse? Well, Freedom is a simple piece of software for Mac or PC which when activated disables your internet connection for a pre-set period of time enabling you to get on with what you're supposed to be doing, internet free. I'm using it now in fact- try it.
Anyway, have a safe and happy new year.
