A Year to Change: Conversations with women on choice, connections, and clarity in midlife

I like Mark Forster. I like his attitudes about planning and accomplishing. I like his writing style. I like his book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management. (Heck the title is enough to put me into some state of hero worship!)
This morning I read this bit about exercise over in his blog at Get Everything Done:

I would really like to develop a way of keeping fit that takes as little effort as possible, and has a high “stickability” factor - something which does not involve gym subscriptions, equipment, boring repetitions, leotards, forcing oneself out into the cold and wet, huge amounts of time, record keeping, instruction books or any of the other paraphanalia of most exercise programmes, even the simplest.

I really like “as little effort as possible!” I like the reports on his use of the “No S Diet” plan (gosh, do you think I’m a fan? And I’ve never even met the guy.) This is what I call a simple diet. The top three steps of the plan are:

• No seconds
• No snacks (three meals a day only)
• No sweets

Here’s the link to the diet originally developed by Reinhard Engels.

I like that the plan is simple. I need simple. I need just a few rules I can follow. (Check out my priority list on my other blog at Map the Future)

Small aside: Don’t even get me started on parents who make up rules for everything so a kid knows what to do in every situation. Note from an old mom: You can’t make enough rules. And kids WILL (selectively) forget them.

So for my own rules:

If I can do a thing before I can think … “Na, I don’t want to do that.”… then that’s a perfect small step. When I read about Mark’s search for a perfect exercise program with low effort requirement, I felt compelled to write again about my own program. I’ve done my mile or so walk in my own living room or kitchen about three times now. Yep, I know that’s not enough – in the three weeks since I started the plan. But it’s better than nothing. And I am encouraged by Mark’s search. Maybe mine will be able to stick.

Read about the specifics of my plan here.

The only equipment I need is my iPod. I could listen to it thru the stereo. But I like that the music goes straight into my brain without being watered down in the air. I have also found it’s best to do the exercise when there’s no one else in the house either to see me dancing like a maniac OR to hear me signing that which I can not hear.

Oh, and I should tell you, I did go back to Ace of Base – a dance mix or something. I like that it’s more than 6 minutes long so I can get into the moving. As they used to say on American Band Stand WAY back in the day, “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. I’ll give it a 92. Dick.”

Stay tuned!

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