Nine days days left, Week 3, 30 Day Challenge

Thirty days of growing a beard and eating healthy are paying off. I've lost 2.9 kg, just shy of 1 kg a week, and I've have past the dreaded ichy stage of beard growth. It's been so easy to use the myfitnesspal app that the week has flown by and I've been able to record absolutely everything, food and exercise.

Photos etc. to come next week.

C.

Goals and motivation, Week 2, 30 Day Challenge

Well, I've broken the two week barrier and I'm on track. I've had a healthy lifestyle and I haven't trimmed the beard. All in all looking good. I can even include this funky little banner below to show how things have gone so far. 

Created by MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter

2.2 kg lost since day 1, (lost an additional 0.4 kg in the last week). I walked 24 km and kept under my calorie goals for the whole week. 

But here is the BIG news. After looking at my current BMI I've realised that I need to loose about 27kg to be safely within my healthy weight range. That is going to take a lot more than 30 days of exercise. So how am I going to keep motivated to exercise and loose weight. Well much thought I've decided to couple my goals for weight loss with my top bucket list item of being weight-less. So here is the plan.

Once I weigh less than 81kg I going to book a flight to San Francisco to fly with Zero G "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience true weightlessness" (quoted from their website)

I didn't realise the pun that I'm losing weight to become weightless, but I think it's actually a really great connection. So it looks like this weekly blog post will have to continue until there are photos of my zooming about in a Zero G cabin!

Beard photos coming soon. C

Embracing Failure - Preparing for Success Week 1, 30 day challenge

Last week I wrote an article about how I was going to realise my New Years Resolutions by doing them for at least the next 30 days. This week I am happy to report that we have had some failure and some success. While I have cut back significantly on caffeine I have had one cup of coffee and one beer, and even though it may not seem like much it's still a failure in terms of the goal I had set. I even haven't been walking to work and back. So for these particular goals I might setup another 30 day challenge. 

However I have also had a lot of success over the last week. I have lost weight, about 4lb (1.8 kg). I have been tracking what I eat and I have increased the amount of exercise I normally do. I've been using a web app and iOS app called MyFitnessPal.com. It is an amazing tool that let you track your calories from food and calories burned from exercise, it even motivates you every day by telling you how much weight you'll loose in five weeks if you keep up the good work. You can track your weight, neck, hip and waist measurements and you get great feedback on how many calories you have left for the rest of the day.

After walking 23 km and resisting to shave for the last 7 days I'm still on track to achieve my overall goal of getting healthy and growing a beard. Till next week...

The 30 Day Challenge

My New Years resolutions for 2012 have all flown out of the window. I wanted to grow a beard, lose weight, exercise and not drink any beer, Coke or Coffee for the entire year. I should have realised that this was going to be difficult simply because these resolutions are all about changing habits.

I have a habit of getting easy frustrated with an itchy beard. I tend eat maybe more than I should. I drive almost everywhere I go and tend to drink more caffeine drinks out of pure habit. 

So I've decided to get healthy and grow a beard for the next 30 days.  The idea is inspired by a TED presentation given by Matt Cutts. In his talk, "Try Something new for 30 Days".  The idea is really simple. You can do almost anything for 30 days, big changes will be a lot of fun to try and smaller changes may likely become new habits.

So what exactly am I going to be doing over the next 30 days. We'll put simply. I want to eat mindfully; eat the food pyramid the right way around; cut out coffee, coke and beer; grow a beard and walk to and from work instead of driving.

This may seem like a lot but I kind of sum it up as one simple package. I just want to life a healthy lifestyle and see what I look like without shaving. 

This should be worth the wait. I'm going to write up about it every week, so stay tuned, another update will be online by Thursday of next week, with photos and maybe even exercise stats.

As Matt says in his talk, "the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not", so what are you going to do for the next 30 days to change your life?

Building creative work environments

I have always been fascinated by the different aspects that make up an effective work space. Why is it that people can more productive when working at home, in a quiet office, or an airport lounge? Is there a way to bring some of those qualities to our work places. Recently I saw a TED presentation by Jason Fried which I think goes a long way to answering these questions. Work distractions, management styles and meetings can have a negative impact on productivity.