Jack Nilssen is

THE
HEALTHY
GAMER

This is another follow-up supplement to last week’s weight-training guideline: how I breathe.

The benefits of good breathing practices:

• Breathing provides a focus for channeling energy.
• Concentrated breathing can clear the mind.

Ki-Ya!

I’m not a very spiritual person, but I do believe that there are things a person can do that make them somewhat superhuman. Breathing in a manner that focuses energy and power is one of those things.

To me, correct breathing is not so much a magical event, as it is that I simply wasn’t breathing properly before.

There are as many guidelines to correct breathing as there are any other form of training, so I’ll simply lay out what I’ve learned to do:

• Breathe in on muscle relaxation or extension.
• Breathe out on muscle contraction or flexion.
• Don’t hold the breath.

I feel that breathing in is, inherently, a gathering of energy. I imagine I’m drawing in strength, charging a battery, or revving the engine with the brakes engaged. In terms of weight training, as the weight descends and the muscle is elongated and stretched, I breathe in and visualize the spring gathering tension. At the very peak of the extension and the intake of breath, I then reverse both movements, explosively exhaling and contracting the muscle in a release of the energy.

Many people have reported success using the inverse of this process, and if that works for you, great. The point here is creating a focused cycle of intake-outflow that is physically tied to the muscle movement. It’s a way to force visualization, which is a topic I’ll talk about more in greater detail in another article. For now, it’s a cheap and easy way to start building mind-body connections.

In biological terms, breathing is an oxygen exchange. The more oxygen the body gets during physical duress, the better it can recover and continue operating. Holding the breath prevents the flow of fresh oxygen, and may also cause other damaging effects such as burst blood vessels. In any case, I don’t advocate holding the breath. Timing the muscle contractions to the natural intake and exhalation of breath seems to be the smoothest way to work.

Focus on the Nothing

I’ve tried meditation many times. The basics are: sit in one place, quiet the mind, focus on the breathing. Almost universally, great yogic masters and other meditative arts practitioners advocate focusing on the breath. Why is this?

Try it sometime: sit quietly and focus on the breath. The intake, the air filling the lungs, the diaphragm pulling down, then the pressure as the air is released and the process repeats. What happens? By focusing on such an elemental process, other thoughts are driven from the surface consciousness. This is the great mind-blanking technique that makes meditation so effective. Meditation is such a perfect stress-killer simply because it makes the practitioner forget all the problems in the mind by providing a focus.

So how does this help in the training process? I see it as a form of meditation, only I’m not sitting in a half-lotus position in the garden of tranquility, I’m moving hundreds of kilograms of weight in the form of dumbbells, barbells, and my own body. I’m focusing so intently on getting the breath and the mechanical process of the muscle movement right that I’m forgetting whatever stresses may be trying to attack my surface consciousness.

Am I achieving enlightenment through pumping iron? I like to think so. And as muscle training is a conditioning exercise, meaning that I’m training my body to work in a very specific way, this skill becomes transferable. I can use my “calming breath” in situations outside of the gym. This is how meditative practice works. After spending years in the monasteries focusing on the breath, the disciples can descend the mountain and experience a transcendent calm wherever and wherever they may find themselves.

I highly recommend mastering some form of breath or another when learning the basic exercise forms. The heavier the exercise, such as the squat or the deadlift, the more critical this becomes. I found that once I learned to really focus my breath into the release of energy, I was lifting a significantly higher amount of weight, and increasing the overall efficiency of my training programs.

Breathe!

Last week I explained finding the one-rep maximum and using that to form a program of weight training.

I’d like to detail how I came to those conclusions about my exercise routines, and how my ideas have evolved over the past 10 years.

Here’s a list of things that did not happen to me:

• I did not suddenly realize the perfect techniques for exercise.
• I didn’t get stronger overnight.
• I didn’t reach my goals.

The Myth of Epiphany

An epiphany is a spiritual experience, an eureka moment, when someone suddenly finds the answers to the questions that have been bothering them.

With regards to training and a healthy lifestyle, I’m still waiting for this moment to come.  In the meantime, I’ve spent years and years in endless cycles of trial and error, experimenting with various techniques and programs hoping to produce a satisfying result.

I started with a very basic knowledge of exercise, gleaned from a few textbooks and manuals I’d picked up in my late teens, most notably Bruce Lee’s “Tao of Jeet Kune Do“.

The interesting thing about Bruce’s book was that it was simply an explanation of his training methodology and how he’d developed it.  It was a snapshot of the things he’d been doing at the time he wrote it, and I’d like the work on the Healthy Gamer to be taken in much the same light.  Everything I detail in this blog is merely a brief picture of how my programs fall at the time of writing.  Everything here is subject to change without notice.  I am constantly searching for new and improved ways to better develop my physique, and my systems are always evolving.

There Is No Instant Solution

I think the core consideration with regards to developing good health is turning those choices into lifestyle choices.

Lifestyle.  A style of life, a style for life.  Life-long efforts, and efforts without end.

Take the example of many popular commercial training programs and diets.  Many of them promise “a better, healthier you in only X weeks”.  “Lose X pounds with X efforts”.

So what happens when X is done?  What happens after the 12 weeks of training and diet are done?  Go back to the lifestyle choices that were contributing to the decline in health?  Cycle back down to an unhealthy life?

For me, this was my own habit of training for many years.  I’d adopt some program for a few weeks, begin to see results, reach what I’d set as goals, and then go back to how I’d been living!  I’d float between becoming healthy and living unhealthy.

I’d thought that was normal.  Psychologically, I was stuck in a cycle of self-gratification.  I’d set my goals too low, and then wouldn’t follow my programs long enough for them to become ingrained.

I’d get scared of becoming healthy.  I’d worry about being too thin, too strong, and overdoing it.  I’d had no comparative results to see if I’d been testing my true limits.  Despite not really understanding what the extent of my physical power really was, I was doing my best not to find it!

Crazy, right?  In order to truly adopt a healthy lifestyle, I had to break down these imaginary barriers, and the ORM system helped that a lot, because it set safe limits that continually improved.  It gave me a measuring tool that could also motivate, and also established the idea of the “unreachable goal”.

Still Dreaming the Impossible Dream

When I started training, my goals were simple.  Run for 5 minutes, then 10, then 30.  Lift X kilograms or pounds X times.  Go to the gym three times a week.

The problem was,  I’d had no idea what to do after reaching these goals.  It was like climbing a mountain only to realize there was nothing to do after reaching the top.  I’d finish a program, then fall out of training until I felt like I needed to get back “into it”, and repeat this cycle.

The sticking point here was the goal-setting process, and the difference between having little goals and a single big goal.  I realized that the ultimate goal was not a goal at all.

The process became far more important than reaching any artificial or self-defined end.

What does this all mean?  It means that my real moment of truth came when I simply accepted that the goal was something I’d never reach, but that the pleasure came from trying to achieve it.

A healthy lifestyle is its own reward.  The main “goal” for me is to try and maintain my systems for as long as I’m able, to adapt when I cannot fully follow them, and to change when necessary.  I don’t want ever want to “peak”, but I do want to keep steadily improving, every day, inch by inch.

This is where I get my self-satisfaction from.  It’s a realization that was years in the making, and one that came out of many, many, failures and mistakes.

Embrace the process, and the rewards will be boundless.

4 Steps to Gaining Strength

1. Stress a muscle until it can no longer be stressed.
2. Rest.
3. Eat protein.
4. Repeat.

You’re Stressing Me Out, Man

The inherent nature of a perfect physical training program should be its ability to adapt to the needs of the participants.

This principle makes for an infinite variety in physical development.

This is both good and bad.

Good, because you’ll never be bored. Bad, because the overwhelming amount of choices can paralyze the trainee. We don’t want paralysis, we want progress.

As with diet and heart training, there are some very basic ideas that can be used to form the foundation of any program. I’ve taken these simple ideas and, over ten years later, still find them to be of very practical value.

The basic idea behind muscular development is that the muscles are made up of cord-like fibers. When we stress these fibers to the point of exhaustion, we break them down.

When you cannot perform an exercise through a complete repetition, there’s a good chance you’ve broken down the muscle fibers enough to stimulate growth. This is where the adaptation process kicks in.

Muscles, Like Mushrooms, Grow in the Dark

Once the muscles have been stressed to the point of breaking, serious rest is required.

When the body is allowed complete bed rest, the self-repair systems activate and set to healing the broken fibers in the muscles. This is the next stage of adaptation, and is the key to increasing strength, because the fibers come back stronger.

The body is expecting to continue having to lift, push, press, or move a similar amount of weight in the future, and is preparing to do so by adapting. This cycle of tearing down and building back stronger is the essential idea behind physical development.

How much rest is enough? This varies from person to person, but if the rest period is considered a recovery time, the amount needed will depend on how much repair is required. The heavier the workouts, the longer the sleeps.

The Body is Built in the Kitchen, Not the Gym

The key nutrient in the rest-repair process is protein. Imagine protein as the glue that binds and develops the broken muscle fibers, and you get a pretty good idea of how important it is.

Again, how much is enough? Opinions, and mileage, vary wildly. The only way to answer this is to experiment over time with different ranges of proteins. If following the basic diet principles I laid out, simply avoid taking more calories than needed and maximize the protein intake. Or start from a suggested minimum (some sources claim a gram per pound of bodyweight is sufficient) and build up from there.

I’ll be discussing the different parts of a detailed diet program in the near future.

Protein is not steroid! I’m constantly amazed by people who believe that increasing the amount of protein taken will somehow produce massive muscles. This is a four-part chain, and each link is critical. The protein is useless without training, and the training is useless without rest, and it’s all pointless without…

Doing It, and Then Doing It Again

Repetition. Physical development, when controlled and monitored, is an upward-spiraling cycle. There may be hard limits, such as age and genetic predisposition, but those limits are incredibly hard to reach even with the best of modern training and science.

It’s not enough to train for a day, a week, a month, and expect to even approach these limits. Only after a lifetime of effort can the true heights of individual physical power be achieved.

Fortunately, there is infinite variety in programming to keep us occupied!

One more article to discuss foundation principles, and then I’ll start showing you what I do personally on my own journey to discover my true limits of health.

Progression: The act of advancing; moving forward in measurable increments.

When it comes to a healthy lifestyle, there are no instant solutions.  This is a huge problem for most of the developed world, as we have grown accustomed to a life of convenience.

A remote control, push-button culture of immediate reward for minor effort pervades modern living.

I’ll tell you right now: health is a lifelong commitment.

It’s not a part-time habit that can be picked up and dropped whenever there is inspiration.

It is either a way of life, or it’s self-deception.

I can hear it now, “Wow, Jack. Take it easy. There are shades of gray in your black and white!” I agree. I understand that there is weakness and struggle, and there’s always some degree of failure.

For me, it’s enough to aspire to perfection.

Let’s switch gears a bit here. You know, dial it back.

How can I continue, week in and week out, year after year, to follow my lifestyle to the extent that I do?

The answer is easy, and simple: I find it very rewarding to do so.

Why do I find it rewarding? The short explanation lies in the magical and mystical systems of progression.

Gamer Interlude: the Grind

In gaming terms, particular to massively multiplayer online games, “grinding” is defined as: “repeating an activity until a result is achieved, esp. a dull and seemingly pointless activity.”

For a lot of people, non-gamer specifically, this summarizes the gaming experience in general! I’ll address this thorny issue in a future article, and while I don’t completely agree with that opinion, there is some truth to it.

Now, if I can spend hours repeating an action in a video game (such as collecting coins) for an intangible and often unpredictable (and, arguably worthless) reward, how can I transfer this ability into realizing real and physically measurable results?

Again, the answer is progression.

In a game, the basic idea is that a system of reward exists, with specific rules for achieving success.

The degree to which a player can achieve this depends on how well the game is designed and, not so obviously, how determined the player is.

In modern game design, the systems most often implemented are those that set easily achievable objectives that provide minor rewards, then ramp up both the difficulty and quality as the player challenges higher levels of play.

I take the same approach when I design my training programs.

So, what levels do I need to set at the beginning? What rewards will tantalize me enough to even bother making an effort?

Check back for the answer in this Friday’s article!

What is Cardiovascular Exercise?

• Training that increases the strength and efficiency of the heart and blood vessels.

The Fundamentals of Cardio

1. Do an activity that raises the heart-rate.
2. Continue until satisfied.

Raising the Heart-Rate

Welcome to the second week of Healthy Gamer! If you’re just joining us, it’s good to have you aboard. I urge you to look back to last week’s articles, as I’m building off foundation principles from those.

I’m introducing cardiovascular training (”cardio”) before strength training as I feel the benefits from establishing a good cardio program outweigh those provided by bodybuilding.

A good, sustainable cardiovascular program is one of the key ingredients to burning excess body fat.

One of the hallmarks of a good cardio program is that it is sustainable, or comfortable enough to continue for the months and years necessary to form a satisfying body and maximize heart-health. It must also be flexible and accommodating. These details will vary from person to person, but again there are some very basic principles we can apply to find a program suitable to our needs.

The first thing is understanding heart-rate and how it relates to fat-melting and strengthening of the cardiovascular system.

Warning! If you have a heart condition, or suspect one, disregard everything in this section and listen to whatever your doctor tells you. I have no experience working with a heart condition or any form of heart disease, and all of my conclusions come based on results from using my own healthy ticker.

As with the Mifflin St-Jeor equation for measuring calorie requirements, the Fox and Haskell formula is widely accepted as a very rough tool for measuring the maximum heart rate, and thus determining how many beats per minute the heart needs to reach for training to occur.

I’m aware that the Fox and Haskell formula is total crap. It was never researched fully, and science has since proven that there are other, more accurate ways to measure the maximum heart rate.

I’m a lazy man, though, and I took the Fox and Haskell result as a basic starting point and worked off of it, determining for myself what my limits were.

Here’s the formula. I like it because it’s simple, not because it’s scientifically accurate:

220 - Age = Maximum Heart Rate

Pretty simple, right? The scientifically accepted “training zone” is 50% to 75% of the heart rate maximum. The results of this formula will not be exact, in fact they can be off by as many as thirty beats per minute. It could be the difference between a ball lying on the fairway and one in the rough, but it’s probably not out of bounds and can still be played with.

For me (at the time of writing) this produces a target zone of 94 to 141 beats per minute.

Measuring the Heart Rate

One of the easiest methods for measuring the heart’s current beats per minute is to take the first two fingers and press them firmly into the carotid artery, just under where the jaw hinges into the skull.

Use a watch to count out a ten-second pulse, then multiply this result by 6 to get, again, a rough idea of the heart rate. There are far more accurate ways to do this, but I’ve never needed that degree of accuracy. A ballpark figure is fine with me.

These days, I take my estimated target heart rate and divide it by six, to save myself the multiplication when I’m on the road training. I get 15 to 23 beats in a 10-second period, and this is the range I generally stay in when doing my cardio.

Getting Satisfaction

I’ll be talking about progressive training in the next article. For now, knowing the basic target heart rate zone, getting the body into that zone, and keeping it there for a period long enough to have some effect are the key points.

Moving the body rhythmically is a fine way to stimulate this. Walking, dancing, swimming, having sex, riding a bicycle, and shadowboxing are all great examples. I do light jogging to get my heart rate going.

When I started, I actually used a treadmill with a heart rate monitor set at a pace that put me in the low range of my target rate. As I was a smoker and hadn’t made any concerted at improving my cardiovascular health, it wasn’t long before I got tired and stopped. And that had been fine. I’d simply set the place where I’d tired as a benchmark (which back then had been a lowly 10 minutes) and set myself a reasonable goal (30 minutes) and tried to get to and maintain a pace that challenged myself.

I also listened to my body closely, and at almost no point in my training career have I exerted myself to a point that I felt was dangerous. In fact, I’ve kept my exertions to a low, almost lazy, amount! I’ll be outlining exactly what I do in a future article, but it’s enough to say that I really haven’t needed much to get personal satisfaction out of my regular cardio program.

I think it’s up to each person to decide just how much is enough, and not to press themselves outside of self-established safe limits. I know, there are a lot of people who disagree and say that real growth and development comes from pushing the boundaries we set for ourselves. I respond by saying that my own boundaries have naturally evolved over time, through careful and safe repetition of work within my pre-established limits.

What are your limits, and how have you established them? They may be lower than what you’re capable of, and only through careful experimentation can new limits be set.

Let’s see if we can’t find those safe limits.

The Secrets to Controlling Bodyweight

1. Know how much energy (calories) the body needs.
2. Increase the amount to gain weight.
3. Decrease the amount to lose weight.

Pretty obvious, right? Most everyone understands points 2 and 3 as common sense, but without a clear understanding of point 1 there’s really no effective way to use them.

10 years ago, before I came to Japan, I weighed 90 kilograms.

The irony here was that I felt rather slim and trim for an average Canadian boy. I’d been working out fairly regularly with weights and calisthenics, but there were two key factors I had not included in my lifestyle: diet and cardiovascular training.

I’ll be talking more about those two points next week, but for this article the focus is on how I started on the road to a tighter body.

Knowing How Much Energy the Body Needs

The way I found out my daily energy (calorie) requirement was long and somewhat arduous, with a lot of trial and error and self-experimentation. I believe that to truly refine and understand how many calories are “correct” takes that amount of personal dedication. There is no one formula or program that can show someone how much they need to eat.

Fortunately, there are some rough scientific guidelines that can serve as a foundation. One of the most commonly accepted formulas for calculating daily calorie requirements, and the one I used, is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation. The result of this is then multiplied by a number representing personal physical activity level.

First, find out how many calories the body uses while just sitting around:

[10 x (bodyweight in kilograms)] + [6.25 x (height in centimeters)] - [5 x (age in years)] + 5 for males or - 161 for females

Then take the result and multiply by a number representing the daily activity level:

• 1.200 = sedentary (little or no exercise)
• 1.375 = lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week)
• 1.550 = moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week)
• 1.725 = very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week)
• 1.900 = extra active (very hard exercise/sports and physical job)

Determining the exact number to use for the activity level is one of the hardest things to do. What exactly is “hard” or “moderate” exercise? Personally, I simply make 1.2 the lowest possible (staying indoors all day and playing video games) and 1.9 the highest possible (building a pyramid for the Pharaoh 18 hours a day).

Presto! The result of these calculations gives a very general figure that can be used as a starting point for controlling calories. I cooked up a basic Excel sheet for this:

(click the above image to download the Excel sheet for yourself!)

Gaining and Losing Weight

Knowing how many calories the body needs on a daily basis is great, but how does it help with changing the way the body looks and feels?

If I consume 2,809 calories a day, and my activity levels remain the same, and I don’t age or get any taller, I will neither lose nor gain weight.

If I eat more than this, I’ll gain weight. If I eat less that this, I’ll lose weight.

Ah hah! Herein lies the great difficulty, and also the solution to all the problems.

Knowing how many calories are needed to sustain the body over a 24-hour period, and having the target of losing or maintaining bodyweight, there is no excuse to consume more than this.

Okay Jack, so how do I know how many calories I’m taking in? Here comes the first bit of drudge-work from the Healthy Gamer:

Keeping a Food Journal

Now, let me state right off the bat that it took me forever to get into the habit of keeping a record of the food I ate. In fact, the only way I ever managed to do it properly was when I got myself a PDA and a little diet tracking program. That made it easy just to whip out the software and plug in my stuff as I ate it. I understand that one of the main reasons for not wanting to keep a food journal or difficulty in keeping one is that the average person eats a lot of random stuff.

Keeping a food journal is a pain in the butt, but it’s something that has to be done. There is some consolation, though, in that it doesn’t have be done for very long. Once a pattern of eating can be seen in the journal, then averages can be taken.

While it would be possible (and maybe more efficient) to take in a lot of dietary information at this stage, it’s probably not necessary. The most important figures that need to be gathered are food weights and calorie amounts.

Here’s where things get rough, and by rough I mean vague. Unless I carry a scale around with me wherever I go, I have no real way of knowing exactly how much food I’m eating. So I have to guess, and that’s fine. We’re looking for ballpark figures here anyways, and while I should strive for perfection, I’m easily satisfied with approximations, because knowing even a basic figure here is infinitely better than not knowing at all.

If you eat a lot of pre-packaged food, you’re going to have an easy time of this. Almost all pre-packaged food in the developed world now comes conveniently labeled with Nutrition Facts. Your country or region may have different standards for this, but somewhere on that label there’s going to be information on the serving size and the amount of calories per serving.

If you eat a lot of home-cooked, supermarket-bought, fresh, healthy, non-labeled produce, let me say: good for you! You’re probably a lot healthier than most people simply by eating natural food. Yet you won’t be able to have at-a-glance Nutrition Facts like the Dorito’s-eaters will. Fortunately, there are many resources available on the Internet. The one I’ve used the most extensively is Mike’s Calorie and Fat Gram Chart For 1000 Foods.

Fun JackFact #1: I eat the same basic diet, every day, and have done so for the past three years. I often add other things to the basic core (as I have a huge margin to play with, 1,000 calories) but I never miss a core meal. Here’s how my food journal for my basic diet looks:

(click the above image to download the Excel sheet for yourself!)

You’ll notice I’m on what might be considered “extreme calorie rationing”, and I have a very, very good explanation for this. I’ll be revealing that particular secret in a future article.

This process of “calorie counting” is the single most important one to take when starting to adjust the diet. Only by knowing how much energy is consumed on a daily basis can assessments and adjustments be made.

I’m painting in very broad strokes here at the beginning of these articles. There are many details to fill in over time, but for now the main things to consider is that by understanding what the body requires, and knowing how much we’re currently putting in, we can then begin to manipulate these amounts within safe limits, and shape the body to our desires.

There will be no crash dieting from the Healthy Gamer.

Rather, I’m looking at offering gradual lifestyle changes over a long term (ideally an entire lifetime), and knowing how much is enough is the first step.

So, are you eating too much? Now you have some tools for approximating an answer, the free time, and the power to choose whether to use them or not!

Next week I’ll start talking about the basics of cardiovascular training (the great fat-burner!) and strength training. I hope you enjoy the weekend!

Grande Honey Milk Latte, Hot.  Because I Can.

Basic Steps for Time Management:

1. Create a visual representation of a typical week’s activities.
2. Make an accounting of daily time expenses, ranked in order of importance.
3. Evaluate available free time.

Know thyself. It’s a phrase as old as time, but one that fits perfectly with the concepts of my lifestyle.

Before we can adjust, or change a thing, we must understand its fundamental operations. This is especially true about time management.

For the beginning articles here on Healthy Gamer.com I’m going to give out what I feel are the rules that define how I’ve become healthy and maintained my lifestyle. These rules are the result of over 11 years of self-study and personal experimentation, and are how I formulate any changes to my development programs.

The rules, however, are not absolute. They are subject to change, and they often do change as I grow with experience. Perhaps one of the main things I stick to in regards to personal philosophy is that nothing is static, or permanent. Everything adapts as time passes, and that which does not or cannot adapt is left with a severe disadvantage as environments and conditions evolve.

As you’ve seen at the start of this article, I laid out the key points as they relate to the title. For many people, these will be enough to get started with. I’ll structure the main articles like this, with details following the points so as not to waste anyone’s time. You’ll always be able to find the main ideas at the top of each entry, with expansion and explanations following.

Create a Visual Representation of a Typical Week’s Activities

In order to understand how much time is available, it’s important to see how much time is being used. There are a variety of different methods for this, and I choose to use Apple’s iCal as it’s a “free” piece of software on my desktop and it makes a pretty picture.

The first thing I do is consider the core activities that make up my week. Work and sleep are my main “measurables”, meaning they have specific start and end times:

Looking good so far. I’ve included my commuting times in the “work” schedules for simplicity. Next I’ll slide in my existing training schedule, something many of you may not already have:

Funny how they all slid in perfectly between sleeping and working!

Now, I know myself pretty well, and I know that if given half a chance I’ll play games. I also have a regularly scheduled Dungeons and Dragons session every Monday. (You may notice that the D&D overlaps with the working time, and this is because I game very close to my office, and what is usually commutation time is added at the front of the gaming session.) I get a bit greedy here and simply block out huge chunks of time for myself:

Finally, the little cherry on top these days is a two-hour jam session I have with a friend and colleague of mine. We rock the house every Friday afternoon and get our ya-yas out:

That’s the visualization part taken care of. Already I can see that there are large chunks of unfilled time, and I see those blank spaces as holding infinite potential.

Make an Accounting of Time Expenses

Time is money, right? It can be added up and manipulated much like currency, so I use Excel to keep muck around with this.

You may be thinking, “Jack, what’s the difference between step 1 and step 2?” In fact, these steps are interchangeable, and one can be done without the other, depending on personal preferences. Some people really need visual input to understand a concept, others are just fine with the facts and figures. I use both to ensure I have a total picture of what I’m doing, and as you’ll see there is an additional benefit.

In Excel, I first put the most important number in the top corner: the total time given. This is one thing we all have in common: we all get 24 hours a day with which to live our lives. Some of us have greater obligations than others, but we all have the same amount of time to complete our goals. This magic number I break down into minutes just because I found going to seconds a little too anal-retentive. I’m not that detail oriented!

I then form the columns and rows according to activities and the time they consume as measured from my visualization in iCal, and end up with this:

Now, this is pretty rough. I haven’t accounted for a lot of sundry things like housekeeping, time spent in the shower, random naps, drunken debauchery, and so forth, but it does give me a pretty good idea of how much free time I have.

Sure, a lot of this time exists between activities, which is part of the point of coming up with the visualization, but knowing that I have about 2 and a half days of free time I cannot say, “I don’t have enough time for -“.

Evaluate Free Time Available

So hopefully we’ve managed to account for most of the usual weekly activities, and we’ve gotten a nice picture of how all that time lies, and we finally have a figure we can play with.

For me this is 2.5 days a week. This is more than a third of my allotted time! To take this further, this is 10 days a month, and 120 days a year.

It’s great to know that I have a lot of free time. Even if this had only come out to a couple of hours a day, I would still be able to look at it and say “I can do something with this. I have the resources. I can make plans around this. I don’t have to sit and complain that I have no time because, holy crap, I actually do have time.”

Personal Note

This time management exercise was the second thing I did after making the first step. I did it all on random scraps of paper, as I hadn’t had a personal computer at that time. I drew pictures, pie charts, bar graphs, and accounted for myself and my activities, all by hand.

Back then, my sleep schedule was different and I had no fixed training schedule. I was more or less aimlessly working towards undecided goals.

Once I knew what time I had, once I had a clear picture of what I was doing, I felt an upswelling of personal power and control. I knew that I was the master of certain parts of my day, and that I was wholly responsible for the results I produced with that time.

It was from those meager beginnings that the lifestyle began to emerge, and I started to wonder: what can I do with this time?

What can you do with your time? Stay tuned to Healthy Gamer.com for some possible help with this question!

The first and most important step I took when changing my lifestyle was simple. So simple, in fact, that I believe anyone can do it.

I’m often asked how I manage to maintain such a strict lifestyle. I always laugh, because for me the way I live now is a lot less “strict” than it used to be.

I often wondered about the “secrets to success” and how people managed to achieve greatness. Were they gifted? Was there some kind of magic involved? Was it all about being in the right place at the right time?

I’ve found, through experience, that there are fewer things more deceptive than my perception of success.

One of the main points I’d like to hammer home about my lifestyle is that it is one of patience and diligence. Success in anything is the result and culmination of effort. Without the effort, there can be no reward.

Behind each beautiful body, healthy physique, and educated mind, there are countless hours of diligent and often unseen work.

You know that old proverb, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”? That one step is so simple, and so easy, that once I took it I often stopped later and kicked myself for not realizing it sooner.

It’s all about choice.

Each and every person living in a free society has the personal and inalienable right to choose how they live. I’ve never tried to deny a person that right, and I expect the same treatment in return.

So, it’s fine to choose to drink until early morning.

It’s great to choose a pack of donuts at the supermarket.

It’s wonderful to choose to sleep until noon on weekends.

But none of these choices ever gave anyone a healthy body. So I got to thinking, what choices can I make that would improve my health and set me on my way to a healthier lifestyle?

Today, this is all it comes down to. When I’m lying in bed and the alarm rings at 04:30 in the morning, I could choose to keep lying there. But I know now, through experience and education, that I don’t need to. I know that if I choose to get out of bed and get on the road for a run, or down to the gym for a pump, that I’m doing something positive and productive.

I’m making the choices that guide me towards my goals, and I believe understanding this is as good a starting point as any.

What kind of choices are you making?