Day 87, Walking, Burpee Habit, and TinyHabits

Day 87 Record Keeping SRHI = 68
Day 55 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 73
Day 15 Walking = Total Implosion!
Day 101 Eating SRHI = 61
Day 1 Burpee SRHI = 12
Good night sleep, great wakeup.

My walking habit has totally imploded. And it makes sense - as I said in my last post, I neglected to have a good implementation intention and it was way too much.

I’ve decided to scrap it for something that’s easier and able to be done anywhere. I’m thinking this because I want the ability to do exercise anywhere in the world since I travel so much. I’m also going around Brazil and Argentina for 3 weeks during the up coming World Cup, so walking for an hour everyday would’ve been imploded anyway. 

Not that I’m opposed to it at a later point. But I feel burpees are a good, whole body habit that would be great for me. Fogg states to implement them at a certain time, so here’s my protocol:

After I  finish blogging on tumblr, I will do 2 burpees.

Yesterday I was trying to figure out what Fogg’s protocol was for increasing the load of the habit. At what point do you push yourself from one tooth, 2 burpees, 2 pushups, to a real set that will actually give you a result. In his TedX speech he put up a slide that said “plant a tiny seed in the right spot and it will grow without coaxing”

My assumption is that when the load is so low, you’ll want to spontaneously increase it on your won. He himself stated that his original habit of doing 2 pushups increased so that now he’s doing around 70 a day.

I want to join the next group TinyHabits project - it believe it starts next week. In it you choose three habits to begin and get coached on them for 5 days. My previous concern was that doing more than one habit leads to the collapse of them all. But if you lower the daily load, perhaps you can do more than one. I’ve decided to go ahead and try it and see where it leads. My habits will be burpees, backbends, and another one I haven’t quite decided on. 

In my rudimentary ideas of a habit formation equation, I’m thinking that Willpower over Time = Endurance. If the Willpower of an action is decreased, and Time stays the same, then presumably the Endurance needed for a habit will decrease as well, thereby cementing it easier into a habit. I’m curious if such TinyHabits react with respect to my Quarter Mark Theory - will they even enter a danger zone? Does habit formation occur quicker?

EDIT** Damn! I just missed the signup which closed on Friday. The reason I want to do this is because getting a certification requires you to do one basic session.

Day 85, Eating Habit

Day 85 Record Keeping SRHI = 69
Day 53 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 72
Day 14 Walking SRHI = 13 (Did not walk yesterday)
Day 100 Eating SRHI = 58
Bad night sleep, good wakeup

Eating Habit

I believe I have mentioned before that I’ve formed, almost by accident, an eating habit. A friend of mine tried cutting out grains and sugar, and had amazing results. He generally does this, occasionally eating things like pizza if he craves it, but to a minimum degree. 

I’ve read about the diet - I believe it would generally follow “Primal” rather than Paleo according to Mark Sisson and his fantastic blog, Mark’s Daily Apple.

When I first started I had a belt that I could barely get to the first hole. Now I’m comfortably wearing the same belt at the 5th hole (there are no more holes, I’m going to have to drill another one in if I’m using that as my progress).

I’ve lost quite a chunk of weight.

The efficacy of the diet itself is irrelevant to this project. My concern is about making it a habit, and this provides an interesting challenge. Part of the reason it’s been so effortless is because I allow myself “cheats” once a week or so. In fact my weight loss increases the day after the cheat.

And this brings up an interesting point - is a daily cheat and loosening of restrictions in any habit make it easier to form? I’ve definitely noticed a certain ease in this habit - up until now it’s almost been effortless, when, in previous diets I’ve gone on, it’s been quite hard. This might be explained away because I’m only now getting into the “danger zone” in my quarter mark theory.

The other problem is that it formed of its own accord, so I do not have data for the first 99 days. I decided that I would start tracking it now simply because I’m hitting that wall - the habit, which was so ingrained, is getting unstable, and I think recording it will help. I wish I had thought to record it from the beginning, but what’re you gonna do?

Day 82 & Cold Water Plunging

Day 82 Record Keeping SRHI = 70
Day 50 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 74
Day 11 Walking SRHI = 25
Great sleep, great wakeup.
In The Shiver System, Steven Leckart talks about Ray Cronise, who, upon hearing about Michael Phelps’ reported 13,000 calorie-a-day diet, starts to experiment with cool water plunging to lose weight. Cronise, a former NASA scientist, did the math, and it didn’t add up. But he theorized that since Phelps was in a pool, something regarding the water’s thermal load might have something to do with the excess caloric burn.
The article talks about all the data he collects, and equipment he uses to track all this meticulously. He was famously mentioned in Tim Ferriss’ book, the 4-Hour Body in a section on how to lose fat fast. Cronise himself was on the weight loss path and found that he lost the pounds up to 50 percent faster when doing cold-related activities.
And from there it gets all hazy.
His blog talks about a lot of issues regarding it - and there’s no doubt there is something to it, and I love the ingenuity, and the recording and testing the Wired article and his Ted Talks mentions. 
But I cannot find any place where he actually describes his protocol. 
Some sources talk about how he drank a liter of ice water every morning, turned off his heater, did cool water plunging, “shiver walks” and maybe changed to a “plant-based diet” - a comment that one YouTube commenter says throws the causal connection out the window.
His blog is also confusing - the home page asks, in large letters “Would you like to lose 50% more fat in half the time?” and “I want to help you succeed!” - and those are great sentiments - but without a proper protocol, claims to meticulous recording and tinkering are less believable. Several commenters mention how they can’t find the protocol he used, and in answer he mentions that he still hasn’t collated the data and that he’ll release it at some point in some form.
What does all of this have to do with me? I’m doing my walks, I live near a beach, so i thought I’d do some plunging every day. Two things - I wanted to know exactly how long Ray Cronise did his plunges to lose weight, and I cannot find that information despite claims to meticulous note taking - he often responds with a “Check out the chapter on me in the 4-Hour Body.”
(And after rereading that section, I’m still not satisfied - Ferriss mixes cold water plunges and the ECA stack. Again, causality is confused. Also his results are very vague and not long term - “in four weeks I lost what usually took up to eight weeks with ECA alone and I did it without the side effects. I used two different protocols, both of which worked” and “nonetheless, looking at the bodyfat results, Protocol B appeared to be around 60% effective as the torture baths in Protocol A” - But he does mention Cronise had a 50+ informal test subjects - I’d be curious to see the data on that)
Second, I’m finding that plunging, even for the little time I do it, has a strong affect on me. I’m incredibly hungry and I tend to be exhausted - I almost have to take a nap and I have problems concentrating for the rest of the day. 
Now I have no idea as to the truth of these claims (though I definitely think there is something to it). Ray Cronise may well have the data, and is just not releasing it until he knows what’s going on in its entirety. He may have not taken notes during his initial weight loss. I may have completely missed it - I’m still looking into this!
But I believe that it is important that he disclose the data clearly, because from what I can see, it sounds vague, unsubstantiated, and, since he frequently responds to questions about it with a  "Follow Tim’s protocol and take lots of notes - I’m interested too" - at this moment it sounds like a marketing gimmick, especially since it’s associated with Tim Ferriss, marketer extraordinaire. 
I think this is a very interesting project, and I do look forward to anything else Ray releases. The “New Science” of individuals tinkering is something I’m obviously a big fan of. But my project is about slow and steady gains, and it’s amazing what claims to faster results come out of the wood works to distract me. Will increased hunger ruin my weight loss? Will the exhaustion be detrimental to willpower, and retard progress of habit formation? 
And other questions remain - what is the minimum effective dosage? Sure it works in the short term, but connecting short term weight loss to the long term weight loss that Cronise himself experienced and touts as a lead to all his research is an entirely different thing - what did he do during those weeks to get the pounds off?
For now I think it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Day 79

Day 79 Record Keeping SRHI = 58
Day 47 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 71
Day 8 Walking SRHI=20 - DID NOT WALK TODAY
Great sleep, great wakeup.

A few observations. First, doing my meditation before getting up has made my wake ups great - whether or not I’ve had a bad night of sleep.

Secondly, my record keeping is falling  - and I feel it’s falling because it is being affected by my walking. I wait until I’ve finished my walk (or in today’s case - not finished) in order to record. And in many cases if I don’t do walk, I don’t record until later because there is at least a potential to walk. It causes hesitation in my habit process.

And what this makes me think I should do is record the habit for the previous day - this well help with the timing and automaticity of record keeping.

This kind’ve makes me think that the SRHI should be added to to include changing external situations. I would think that it would be difficult to change a habit, but since I’ve moved and added another habit, my conditions have changed and it has dragged my scores down rather fast.  

Day 77 & Minimal Effective Dose

Day 77 Record Keeping SRHI = 66
Day 45 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 74
Day 6 Walking SRHI=16
Good sleep, great wakeup.

I did NOT go walking this morning - but I went a head and completed the SRHI for it. Missing days here and there don’t really seem to affect habit formation, especially in the beginning. Which brings up the question - what is the minimum effective dose? How many times can you skip a habit and still have it form in the same amount of time? That would be a very interesting question to test out.