Establishing new habits

Good habits - doing things on a regular basis without needing to think a lot about it - are one of the keys to a healthy, happy life. But it's not necessarily easy to establish a new habit. Here's the story of how I started the habit of regularly taking fish oil.

The benefits of taking fish oil have been piling up, so I've been convinced for a while that it would be a good idea to take some regularly. I've tried pills, but they're just to big for me, and don't go down easily. Plus, you need to take multiple pills, and I also want to give my kids fish oil, and having them take a pill every morning would be a big pain. So, I researched liquid fish oil, and ended up buying Carlsons Lemon flavored fish oil on Amazon.com. This is not the nasty tasting cod liver oil from years ago, it has a light lemony taste. After thinking about it a while, here's how I established the habit:

1. I decided to make it a weekly thing instead of daily. It's lots easier that way, since you don't have the overhead of doing something every day. That's assuming you can remember to do it - usually daily habits are much easier to remember. There's no negatives to taking more once a week, rather than some every day.
2. For remembering - I have my palm Treo remind me every Sunday to give the kids some fish oil, and take some myself.
3. As soon as I get the reminder from my palm Treo, I put a small bowl with 3 spoons (one size for me, one for Peter, and one for Kenny) on the kitchen table so that it's visible the next time we eat there.
4. Before we eat, I'm reminded by the bowl with spoons that I need to get the fish oil out from the fridge and give us all a spoonful. This is critical - it puts an infallible reminder of the fish oil in a place where we're going to be very soon (kitchen table), and when we're all together and ready to eat.

Voila!

It does take some thought and planning to establish a solid new habit. And I wouldn't actually say this is solid yet - it's been about a month and a half. But so far, so good. And it's taught me some important lessons in establishing habits.

Making snacks less accessible

I love snacks as much as the next person. And by snacks, I don't mean an apple or carrot, I mean potato chips or popcorn.

Of course, for health reasons, I want to make sure I eat the less-than-nutritionally-optimal snacks only on occasion. So, I don't keep the actual snack on hand, so I could just open up the panty and start chowing. I keep the raw ingredients for snacks. For example:

1. Microwave potato chips - they're awesome, relatively quick to make, and not too unhealthy! And all you need is a potato, some oil, salt, and parchment paper. And a microwave, of course.

2. Popcorn. Need I say more?

3. I keep chocolate cake mix in my pantry - it takes me about 15 minutes to use it to bake some great chocolate chip cookies. I don't generally do this for myself, just for when there's kids coming over.

The theory is - make the healthy snacks easily accessible, and make the less healthy snacks just a bit harder to get to, but still doable.

Organizing tip - you need a "Donate" box right in your closet!

I used to be pretty good about getting rid of things - I'd occasionally (every year or so) go through my closet, and put aside things that I no longer needed. That still left a whole year or more for things to accumulate, though.

Recently I put a box, labeled "Donate", right in the closet. It's amazing what a difference it's made. Now, when I decide that I no longer want something, I don't put it back on a hanger until my yearly clean-up. I just put it in the "Donate" box. Having the box right there may not seem like much, but the mere fact that I don't even need to take an extra step makes a big difference. Then, when it gets full, I bag it and put it in the car to bring to the goodwill.

I've noticed this in a lot of areas of my life. The easier you make it to "do the right thing" (having the right foods right there when you want to eat better, exercise clothing and equipment ready when you'd like to exercise more), the more likely it will happen.

I love Sharon Mann!

My workout routine has undergone a significant change. I used to work out on the treadmill, while watching television shows that I had tivoed. But a friend told me about a kick-boxing videotape that she had, which gave her a really great workout. So, I decided to try some workout shows. And now I'm totally sold on Sharon Mann. She's always upbeat, and has a tremendous amount of variety on her show. The people that are doing the workout with her are all dressed differently (unlike some other shows, where they look like they're all in the same uniform). She does shows with step exercises, pilates, workouts on the exercise ball, "boot camp" type workouts. All great stuff.

I think it's made a real difference in my fitness level. Walking on the treadmill (even though I did a few push-ups and sit-ups) was much better than nothing, but now my workouts are much more varied, and I use so many more muscles. I really feel, moving around the house and picking up the kids, how much more fit I am.

Are plastic bags so bad?

There's been lots of news recently about bans on plastic grocery bags. The grocery store Whole Foods is not going to be offering them anymore, and they were banned entirely from Ireland.

What I haven't seen is any debate about the issue. Why are they so bad? The accepted notion is that they're bad for the environment because they don't degrade, and apparently last for thousands of year (which I have a hard time believing - thousands of years? Really?). And, wildlife can eat the plastic bags and choke.

Well, let's look at the plus side of plastic bags:
1. They're convenient! I can carry my son Peter in one arm and 2 plastic grocery bags in the other.
2. They don't break! Unless you really overload them, your average plastic grocery bag is tough. (especially the ones from Whole Foods - they were great!). Paper bags, on the other hand, break on me all the time, not to mention that they're difficult to hold.
3. They're tiny! I can shove a few in a little pocket of my diaper bag for emergencies.
4. They're waterproof! (See the above bullet point for why waterproof is critical at times.)

Okay, yes - plastic bags look terrible strewn about a parking lot. But that's not the fault of the plastic bags, that's the fault of the people littering.

Also, apparently creating recycled paper is much more energy intensive than creating plastic bags. And what about transporting paper bags? They're so much bulkier and heavier that they have to be much more expensive to transport (which means more trucks spewing more exhaust).

Looks to me like another "anything for the environment" movement without a whole lot of critical thinking applied.

Live with Regis and Kelly in NYC

My friend Jean and I went to New York City last weekend, to celebrate my 40th birthday. Lots of fun was had in general, but I've been itching to blog about our rotten experience with the Live with Regis and Kelly show. We didn't have tickets to be part of the studio audience, so we showed up at 7 in the morning (after getting up at 6 in the morning, which is 3 AM PST) to get line for stand-by tickets.

So, we stood in line for about 45 minutes in the freezing cold, and then got a numbered sheet of paper. I was #20 and Jean was #21. So far, so good - they told us to come back at 8:30, and we'd be let in, if there were spots, in order of our number. We hung out at Starbucks for a while, then headed back and waited in line again at 8:30. Close to 9:00, they started letting some of the standby people in. The part of the line that we were in was around the corner from the main door, so we didn't really see what was going on. We kept on waiting for them to call numbers, and let people in by number, but they never did. Eventually someone came out and said told us they'd filled the show, and that we could leave now.

There was a group of us there who had low numbers but who hadn't gotten in, who were really pissed that these low numbers that we'd waited in the cold for weren't even worth anything. They hadn't even gone by number at all! We complained to the lady who was handling the stand-bys, and she was so incredibly rude! She said "What's the matter, don't you know how to read numbers?", and "Didn't they teach you that in kindergarten?". I've never seen the Live with Regis and Kelly show, but lots of the women there were actually big fans, and now they aren't anymore!

The stand-by lady did eventually get us into the show about 20 minutes after it had started, and let us stand by the side of the set, where we could barely see anything.