The Dad Exercise Reframe

I struggled to write this article. I could not really decide what point I wanted to get across. I could not decide whether to focus on exercise, eating healthy, being a good dad, finding motivation, or being disciplined. I decided that I wanted to focus on trying to figure out how to reframe my thoughts on exercise to improve my overall health and fitness to position myself to be a better and healthier father for my kids.

At the age of fifty-four, what can I do to challenge myself to improve, and what can I learn during the process that I can share with others? It is not part of my life plan to count down to age sixty, retire, and sit at some beach. I want to retire into a business I enjoy, continue to support my family, and give service to others, but also have the mental and physical health that makes my later years enjoyable.

How do we make fifty the new thirty? Can we accomplish things after fifty in the areas of health, fitness, career, and fatherhood the people think are just reserved for younger men?

I have some excellent exercise habits today, such as following a daily routine, tracking my results, and meeting my goals. However, there are also things about my fitness and health that I am not happy about. I weigh too much, my cardio is not great, and my flexibility is not great. The worst thing is not being able to live up to my kid's expectations for playing together outside.

Let me rephrase that: Our kids expect us to play with them. Making any time to play is a win; do not lose sight of that. My failure is more mental. I know I could play more. I know I could make it more fun just if I had more energy and physical dexterity to perform at a higher level.

My main goal is to address my weight issue, which I will document in more detail below. I want to turn this blog post into a public experiment to see if an ordinary guy like me can make some minor adjustments to my exercise habits and supplement them with a few other habits, like healthy eating, to create some real-world results. Can I improve my weight and physical health by implementing new habits that stick and become part of my everyday life?

Let's get started

In my recent past, I loved to go to the gym, run, and hike in the mountains. It had become something short of an obsession but most definitely a habit. I loved how it made me feel after a good workout, but what I really loved was the social aspect of it. There were so many things that motivated me about exercise it was nearly effortless to form a

The height and consistency of my gym and exercise days occurred while living in Japan. I would swim, walk, hike in the mountains, and hit the weights a few times weekly. Working out was easy because I had reframed it from being a workout to a fun social activity with the side benefits of some good exercise.

Scott Adams's new book, Reframe Your Brain, provides a great reframe. In it, he speaks specifically about exercise. Usually, we think that "exercising requires willpower and motivation." Scott's reframe is that "exercising is easier than not exercising if you turn it into a habit. "

Even before Scott's reframe, I had found my exercise reframe version 1.0. Exercising is easy when the reward is lots of fun social interaction with the side benefit of exercise. Fast-forward to married life, kids, and life's general business, and my exercise reframe fell apart. Exercise became a job, a chore, and no longer something I looked forward to.

Step 1 - Turning Exercise into a Habit

So, how do you go about turning exercise into a habit? Is there a difference between a good exercise habit and a bad exercise habit? Does exercise actually help you lose weight?

1. Set Clear, Achievable Goals: Start with specific, realistic goals like walking 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, or attending a fitness class twice a week. Setting achievable targets helps keep you motivated.

2. Track your progress: Keep a record of your workouts, including the exercises performed, sets, reps, and any personal bests. This helps you visualize your progress and stay motivated.

3. Find a workout buddy: Exercising with a friend or joining a group fitness class can provide support, accountability, and a social aspect to your workouts, making them more enjoyable and sustainable. Working out with a friend can increase your motivation and accountability. Plus, it's more fun to exercise with someone else.

4. Create a Routine: Incorporate exercise into your daily schedule at a consistent time. Whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening, find a time that works best for you and stick to it.

5. Start Small: If you're new to exercise or returning after a break, begin with short, manageable workouts and gradually increase the intensity and duration as your fitness improves.

6. Mix It Up: Adding variety to your exercise routine can keep things interesting and work different muscle groups. Combine cardiovascular exercises, strength training, flexibility exercises, and balance workouts.

7. Reward Yourself: Set up small rewards for reaching your exercise milestones. This could be as simple as treating yourself to a movie or purchasing new workout gear.

8. Focus on How It Makes You Feel: Pay attention to the positive effects exercise has on your mood, energy levels, and sleep quality. This can help reinforce your exercise habit.

9. Be Flexible: Life can get busy, and you might miss a workout. Instead of getting discouraged, adjust your schedule as needed and get back on track.

10. Listen to Your Body: Rest when you need to and don't push through pain. Balancing activity with adequate rest and recovery is essential for building a sustainable exercise habit.

At my peak, I was hitting many of these items, allowing me to exercise at high-intensity levels five to seven days a week. Currently, I mainly focus on creating a routine (I exercise multiple times a day when my schedule is free), I track my progress (I live and die by my Apple Watch activity monitor, and I set a basic daily goal to close my three Apple activity rings (Move, Exercise, Stand).

My current move record is sitting at 421 days. I am not just sitting on the couch all day.

While I have a decent exercise routine, things are not optimized. I have seen significant improvements, I have not been able to maintain those improvements over time. I have break throughs that are momentary in time but not sustainable. As you can see from the chart below, I hit 91kg to 92kg for two short periods in 2019 and 2022 and briefly dropped below 30% BMI twice during those same periods. My current one-year BMI average is 33.1%, and weight of 96.6 kg are both sub-optimal. As of April 4th, my weight is 100.3 kg, and my BMI is 32%. Not great.

For this experiment, I will increase my daily routine of just closing my three rings on my Apple watch to have at least twenty thousand steps each day, and I will track my progress for ninety days. I will work to add more items as my routine/habit takes hold. I want to be cautious about putting too much emphasis on exercise as I believe waistline and weight are more about the type of food and the amount of food we put into our bodies.

Just for the Ruck of it!

Please note that I am a walking fanatic. I love to walk, but I also love to ruck. What is rucking?

Rucking, sometimes referred to as "urban hiking," is a form of exercise that involves walking or hiking a set distance while carrying a weighted backpack, also known as a rucksack. This practice is rooted in military training and is gaining popularity among civilians as a way to improve fitness. The added weight in the backpack can range from a few pounds to a significant percentage of one's body weight, depending on the individual's fitness level and goals.

The benefits of rucking include building strength and endurance, burning more calories compared to regular walking or running, and improving cardiovascular health. It's also considered a low-impact exercise, making it suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels, as long as it's approached with appropriate caution and gradual progression.

To start rucking, one can use a sturdy backpack and add weights or heavy items, gradually increasing the load and distance over time. I recommend to start with a light load and increase it by about 10% each week, depending on one's fitness level and goals. Rucking can be done alone or with friends, and it can be a versatile exercise that can be adapted to various terrains and distances.

I completely got off on a tangent. I will create a future article on my passion for rucking.

One last note before moving on. My exercise routine does not address the issues around our loss of muscle mass as we grow older. I will have to address that, as I know my power, especially in my legs, is not what it used to be. I do have a side goal. I have never been able to do a pull-up. That is something I have to accomplish. Additionally, my exercise routing does not address the fact that my flexibility is decreasing over time. I want to run another experiment with the folks at GMB Fitness to see what they can do with a semi-fit, semi-dad body individual and improve their overall range of motion, balance, and flexibility.

Step 2 - Creating good eating Habits

I will go fast here. I am not a nutritionist, but I would like to add that to my list.

I do have a few good habits. Soda and sweet drinks have been eliminated from my diet. Instead of a daily habit, those things are a once-a-month or once-a-quarter treat, but to be honest, they make me feel bad after drinking and do not taste as good as I remember. I also do not eat many processed foods like cookies, cereals, and other boxed foods. I am a sucker for potato chips.

For me, I just overeat. I am probably eating too late before I go to bed. For example, I will have that occasional snack before bed or overeat for dinner only a few hours from bedtime. I am also probably eating the wrong balance of food, as I have too many carbohydrates. I have done a good job avoiding pasta or bread in addition to my dinner, but I still have sandwiches and burgers, and I love pizza.

For this experiment, I will try to build the following daily eating habits and track my progress:

• I will work to minimize carbohydrates from my daily diet. This includes bread and rice, which I love.

• I will work to maintain a daily 16:8 fasting window of nothing after 7 PM and nothing before 10 AM. Note that this will be broken if this habit causes stress and inconvenience for my wife and kids. For example, if my wife is busy and needs to complete our dinner later in the day, I am not going to force my schedule on her.

We will continue to build on these habits and learn more together on the nutrition side but let's get started. I have been building many new good habits but one of my bad habits is to not start while I analyze all the options. Let's take the agile approach and try a few things, track and then improve over time.

I started tracking on April 6th, 2024. I have maintained 20,000 steps each day, but have come up short on my easting commitment. On the day I am publishing this article, I have started to hit my eating and fast commitment.

I am using a very basic tracker to monitor my daily process. It is paper based and you can download the current version I am using.

The-Day-Warrior-90-Day-Habit-Builder-Checklist

Download

Eighty-one more days to go, let's see what we can learn together.