About three years ago, I went through a book called The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.  Brother Lawrence was a Catholic monk who lived in the 1600s.  He spent most of his life in a monastery kitchen, faithfully disciplining his heart to be aware of God’s presence throughout the day.

As a Christian, there are many times when I am aware of God’s presence (e.g., at church worship services, in personal devotion, etc.).  But, I would say for most of the day, 23 hours at least, I am not consciously aware of or thinking about God.  My days at work start with Bible reading, but by 5pm I am stressed to the max, consumed with the many tasks of a technology startup.

This week, my experiment is to be more aware of God’s presence throughout the day.  I have three methods I am putting in place to help:

1. I have turned on the hourly chime feature on my watch.  Every time it beeps, I stop what I am doing (if possible) and re-tune my mind to the fact that God is present, watching, and accessible to His children.
2. I am not listening to the car radio when I am in the car and using that time to be aware of His presence.
3. I am trying to talk to God more throughout the day.  Not flippantly, but constantly, just like Brother Lawrence.

This will be a week-long experiment.  I would love to hear your thoughts!

For the next 30 days, I will be waking up at 6:30am sharp.  I want to train my body to get up earlier.  Mainly, I want to make it to Crossfit training everyday.  But, I think it would be nice to wake up early on weekends too.  Between planting a garden and waking up early, I am now offically old.

Here are some things I am going to try to make it easier:

1. I plan to go to bed by 11pm.  This will give me 7.5 hours of sleep, which should be plenty.
2. I plan to set my coffee maker to have me a fresh cup ready to go, as a reward for getting my lazy butt up.

I am doing this for 30 days because I realize that in life there will be times when I cannot get up at 6:30.  But, for the next 30 days, it is on!

Anyone have any tips?

Biting your nails is disgusting.  I bite my nails.  I am disgusting. I no longer wish to be disgusting, so I must stop biting my nails.

My change for this week is to stop freaking biting my nails.  Not much left to say on the topic.

For what it is worth, my other changes are going quite well.  Day 16 in the Zone, down 4 lbs., energy is way up.  My Week 6 challenge is complete - the garden is buit and planted.  I’ll see you guys next week when I have more time and will to do a full post! Peace.

Lauren and I have wanted to do a garden for a long time, and we decided to bite the bullet. This week, my change is to start gardening.  Yeah, I know, when did I grow up?

Growing up, my dad always had a great garden.  One of our family traditions is to eat meals of just fresh tomato and corn.  My dad is so particular about eating the fresh corn, that he would have the water boiling on the stove before the corn was picked.  Literally, we would eat corn that was picked less than 15 minutes prior.  It was good stuff.

So, it is my turn to pick up the family tradition and start a garden.  We are particularly interested in using no chemicals and making it a completely organic garden.  I am doing a simple raised bed, bringing in good soil, and using a layer of mulch to allow for less watering.  I really don’t know what I am getting into, but I am excited.

Any tips for me?

This week, I am committing to live 30 days in the Zone. No, this does not mean I will be camping in auto parts stores for the next month.  It means that I will become zealous about eating according to the Zone diet for the next 30 days.

This will be a longer post, because I have learned a ton about dieting, fitness, and how I react to strict diet plans.  I think I have quite a bit to share on this topic, so hopefully you will learn a ton from this post.  In this post, I will also be interviewing myself (because I couldn’t think of a better way to organize this information).

What is the Zone?

The Zone diet was created by Barry Sears and is best described in the book Enter the Zone.  I highly recommend this book.  While the science behind it is somewhat complex, the practical day-to-day stuff is pretty simple.  If you don’t want to read that much, Crossfit Journal Issue 21 put a great PDF together a few years ago.  Read these!

Why such a strict diet?

I am an all-or-nothing type of person.  I can’t just eat right some of the time, because I quickly drift towards eating crappy food.  Before long, I am back to old diet habits.  I need something like this to give me structure and discipline.

Why limit it for 30 days?  I thought these were supposed to be permanent changes.

The goal of this 30 days is to “reprogram” both my mind and my body to eating healthy food.  30 days is not too bad.  You can do anything for 30 days.  After 30 days, I want to continue to eat healthy, but have an occasional cheat meal/day, especially in social situations.  But, as a rule of thumb, I want to eat healthy most of the time after the 30 days pass.  Jeff Barnett’s discussion of eating healthy 75% of the time is probably about right.

Isn’t it expensive to eat these types of food?

Not really.  Buy fruit in season.  Don’t eat out much.  Don’t eat 30 different kinds of meals, stick with 5 or 6 for a week.  You can keep it on the cheap if you want to.

How do you have time to eat this way?  I am too busy.

Honestly, it isn’t very hard.  It doesn’t take that much time.  It only takes about 15 minutes to plan out your meals for the week.  I don’t plan meals for each day, I just plan 3/4 meals and 1/2 snacks for the week and eat them multiple times.  For example, this week I planned 3 meals and 2 snacks (and rely on my wife to make a favorable dinner):

• Meal 1 - 5 blocks - Grilled Chicken Breast (5 oz), 2 cups lettuce, couple cherry tomatoes, 1/2 cucumber, 1/2 green pepper, 1/2 cup black beans, 1/2 cup kidney beans, 2.5 Tbs dressing.
• Meal 2 - 5 blocks - 4.5 oz of deli meat, 2 oz cheese, 1 apple, 1 pear, 1 plum, 15 almonds
• Meal 3 - 5 blocks - 1 cup egg substitute, 1 whole egg cooked with olive oil, 1 can pineapple, 1 grapefruit, 5 macadamia nuts
• Snack 1 - 2 blocks - 1 cup milk, 1 Tbs protein powder, 1 cup frozen strawberries, and one small scoop of cashews
• Snack 2 - 2 blocks - 1/2 canteloupe, 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 6 almonds

If you want some tips on how to live in the zone on-the-go, I suggest you read the Diet Secrets of the Tupperware Man.  Keep some healthy snacks with you.  Zone bars are OK (just glorified candy bars though), or you could try some Paleokits.

What do you hate about the Zone diet?

By far, the thing I miss the most is eating/drinking at night.  I am a sucker for beer and salty food (I don’t much care for sweets), and I get really hungry around 7pm.  I think this is because I have trained my body to eat that way for 20 years.

I also hate the fact that I can’t eat much rice/bread.  I have become quite the bread snob these days, and I love a good slice of homemade, fresh bread.  I have to limit this quite a bit on the Zone.

What other tips have you learned over the years?

I have started many 3-month eating challenges over the last 10 years.  Most notably, I completed a full Body-For-LIFE challenge and I was very strict for the entire 3 months.  I ended up losing around 35 pounds.  However, I have also started many other food challenges that I didn’t complete.  Here are two main things I have learned:

1. Day 3 is the hardest. For me, it is easy to make it through days 1 and 2.  I am a little bit hungry, but overall I feel good.  There is something about day 3 that always tempts me to quit.  Maybe it is a carb craving.  Maybe I start to question why the heck I am doing this (after all, I am happily married, reasonably healthy, etc.).  Getting past day 3 is killer.  Just so you know, I started this challenge on Monday just because I knew that I would have to write this post on Wednesday, giving me a little extra motivation!
2. Week 3 is the second hardest. I don’t know what it is about the 3’s.  Week 3 is when I start to forget how much better I am feeling and am tempted to have a couple of cheat meals.  Trust me, I have made it to Week 3 a number of times, only to be back eating with old habits in Week 4.

How will you know what improvements this diet will have on your body and energy levels?

It is pretty much common knowledge that eating properly and exercising is good for your brain, energy levels, and overall health.  But, I took some measurements so that I can at least measure the body changes over the 30-day period.  As of April 12, 2009:

• Weight: 203 lbs
• Body Fat: ~21% (measured by Accumeasure 300 - not the best, but good enough for this experiment)
• Arms: 14 in.
• Shoulders: 46.5 in. (widest point)
• Belly: 37.5 in. (measured at belly button)
• Chest: 43 in.
• Neck: 15.5 in.
• Quads: 25 in.

So, that is it for this week.  30 days in the Zone.  Anyone want to join me?

In general, I am an inherently negative person. I think that I can point to several reasons for why I am so negative (e.g., pride, sin nature, and other unnamed reasons), but I want to start working on this problem. This week, I am going to work on being more of an encourager. I don’t want to find fault in everything.  I want to build people up, not tear them down.

My actionable step for this week is to set an iCal alert to remind me to encourage someone (out of the blue) in some way each week.  Typically, this will be a quick email or written note.  My hope is that as I start thinking of people to encourage, I will get into the habit of regularly encouraging others.

Next week is Week 5, so look for a bigger, sweeping change for the month. Peace.

Over the last nine months, I have witnessed an increasingly lazy attitude to recycling by both myself and my family.  To be fair, it is HARD to recycle in Alabama.  For most things, you literally have to drive it to a facility (consuming gas!) and it is on the other side of town.  However, this is not an excuse.

For this week, my change will be to get more serious about the 3 R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle. This is more of a mindset than an actual change.  For starters, I won’t take plastic bags from stores. I hate it when you buy a small pack of gum and they want to put it in a bag!  I will start taking a coffee mug around so I don’t have to use one from the store.  Simple things.  Overall, I just want to make recycling a more concious part of my life.

This week, I am committing to flossing every day.  Specifically, I will floss every evening before bed.  I have no problem brushing twice a day (once in the morning, and once in the evening), but I am very sporadic about flossing.  I never flossed as a kid and never got into the habit.

Apparently, there are many studies showing the benefits of flossing (preventing gum disease, cavities, preventing bad breath, etc.).  Here are a few articles that I found to be helpful:

• MSN Health and Fitness article on the benefits of flossing.
• eHow series on flossing.
• PDF on how to floss by the American Dental Association.

Also, you will notice that I made a change to the site (look in the nav bar at the top) so that you can keep track of how I am doing in each weekly change.  So far, so good.

So, my week 1 change is to exercise 15 minutes a day, 6 days a week. 15 minutes should be totally doable - even if I am having a lazy day.

Those of you that know me know that I am a very big supporter of Crossfit.  Since Crossfit workouts are typically short and intense, this should work well with my goal.  I can’t recommend Crossfit enough - you have to try it.  It is totally addicting and the community is fantastic.  I recently got my Level 1 Cert… so I know how to do the moves, I just need to do them.

Here is my challenge to you - exercise 15 minutes a day.  Really, 15 minutes is easy.  It doesn’t have to be Crossfit.  It could be as easy as walking for 15 minutes. Just get moving!

Also, I am looking for encouragement and motivation from you. Feel free to comment or send me a note.