January’s challenge of no gluten, sugar, or coffee was the hardest one I’ve done so far. And yet, at the same time, I think it might have been one of the easiest. By the end anyways, I didn’t even have to think about it. I had made a new habit thinking about what I was eating so much that it wasn’t really conscious any more. Healthy eating just happened. It didn’t start out that way though.

The first week was really tough. I remember running up against my first piece of chocolate during the challenge. I tried. I really did. And then I ate it. Instead of focusing on why I shouldn’t and all the benefits with sticking with my challenge my brain short-circuted, told me that I wouldn’t last through the challenge anyways, and then put my hand on the chocolate. There’s no way to resist after that. After a couple of instances like that I was wondering if I really could do this. I wasn’t sure. I had to try. Just focus on one day at a time. One day at a time.

The second and third week took a little bit of work as well but they got easier. The turning point was one day at work. Normally, I’m a huge sucker for free food. If it’s tasty and free there is 0% chance I will turn it down. It’s usually in my stomach before I’ve had a chance to think about it and possibly decline the offer.

So there they were, sandwiches on fresh buns and cookies. A bunch of them. They were just sitting on the lunch room table, leftovers from someones meeting. I felt it. “Free Food!!!” my brain was saying and before I knew it I was opening up the plastic cover. Then the little angel on my shoulder kicked in (for the first time this month it felt like).

“What are you doing?”

“But…”

“What is your amazing, fancy challenge about this month.”

“Right.”

And away I went. The interruption actually happened between trigger and response. It seems like if you can groom this break in the chain to happen, you have a chance to actually do what you want to do after a trigger happens. If the interruption doesn’t happen, you’re toast. There’s no way you can resist. You’ll just keep going the same as you did before. No change. So much for a challenge.

Think about what you want your actual reaction to be and you’ll have a chance. Your brain will do what you want if you tell it over and over. And over. And over. And over. And then a few more.

Since that day, things went smoothly. Sure there were terrible food, coffee and donuts around but I held off. It was tough when I was hungry and the food of some delicious donuts came wafting through the office but I held one.

Then I had a binge day at the end of the month. What a great idea! I think I made myself sick by eating too much. Chocolate, pizza, cheesecake, a burger, milkshake. Wow. Put that all together in a sentence and it sounds terrible. I may have gone a little overboard but it was sure tasty.

What did I learn from all this?

Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do

If you sit there and think of what you can’t eat all day, then you’ll go out and eat it. If you’ve ever ridden a mountain bike you’ll know this idea quite well. If you look at the  tree while you’re riding, you’ll hit the tree. If you look at the rock, you’ll hit the rock. If you focus on the trail, you’ll ride on the trail.

I forced myself to focus on what I could eat and made that as delicious as possible. I also made sure I had enough to eat all the time. Being hungry with no proper food is a guaranteed ticket to the vending machine full of crap. This is where the habits come in. Making all the meals you normally make are habits. You’ll need to adjust to remake these habits if you want to make new healthier things. Force yourself to find new recipes and make them a lot. Keep the good ones and toss the rest. Eventually you’ll replace all your standard meals with awesome food.

Make good habits easy

This one is dead simple but it can be so hard. It was in front of me the whole time but it took Brian from PhilosophersNotes to point it out in one of his notes. If your good habits are hard to accomplish, you probably won’t do them. It doesn’t matter how much you want to, if it’s too much work, you’ll bomb. Make it super easy. He puts his toothbrush within easy reach so when he’s done eating in the evening, teeth are brushed and that’s the end of eating for the night.

For healthy eating, make sure there are tons of healthy snacks and food around. Make big lists of easy healthy recipes and make them ahead of time. Make large batches so you have leftovers if you feel a lazy day coming on. If something about eating healthy is hard, make it easier. If a bunch of friends eat out a lot and you don’t want to, make them come over for a potluck, or just don’t hang out with them during the initial stages of your eating challenge.

Make bad habits hard

If something is very difficult to do, you probably won’t do it. For example, if you smoke, only keep one package  in the house and keep it in a safe under a pile of books in the back of your closet. You need to have lots of time between the trigger or the initial craving and actually smoking. The longer the better. It gives you time to think about what you’re doing (And the little angel on your shoulder to react. She’s a little slow.)

Do not buy unhealthy food. Get rid of every single unhealthy thing in your house. If it’s there, it will get eating. Don’t go grocery shopping hungry. Always grocery shop with a list. Only buy what’s on the list. If you haven’t to drive half an hour and pay money for something that’s unhealthy, chances are it won’t happen. If the chips are two feet away from the TV, they’re going to be gone in 5 minutes. Tell everyone about your challenge. Everyone at work knew what I was doing. Those donuts looked incredible but everyone would have said something about why I was eating a donut during my challenge.

Patience

Change can only come so fast. When something is deeply engrained, it’s going to take a while to change. Take things one moment at a time. Even a day can be overwhelming when you think of the whole thing. One minute at a time. Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing this minute? Yes? Awesome. Next!

Deal with each craving as it comes. You can beat them! Once that one is dealt with, give yourself a pat on the back and then move one. There will be more but don’t think about that right now.

Get to the end of the day

Similar to the idea above. Just get to the end of the day. That’s easy right. It’s only ever a few hours away. Just get to the end of the day and then the next will be easier. And the next even easier.

Healthy Eating: Find awesome recipes

This one is specific to healthy eating. Find good recipes. If you don’t have good healthy recipes, how do you expect to eat healthy. Healthy food just doesn’t fall out of the sky. Read everything you can on healthy food and healthy living and then go get that healthy food. Stock your fridge and pantry with the healthiest food you can find and only eat that. Once healthy food is your only option, it’s easy to make a choice between snacks or meals. Healthy or Healthy? Easy choice.

February’s Project Launch Challenge

I had a few ideas for what I wanted February’s challenge to be. The clincher was that I finally decided to set a date for the launch of the PureOutside Adventure Kit for Mount Benson. It’s a hiking guide for the trails on Mount Benson in Nanaimo. I’ve been pushing it around for the last 8 months and nothing’s really happened with it. So as much as I hate deadlines, I put one on it. Guess what, it’s happening. I’m working like crazy on it to get it to a launch-ready state and it’s coming out March 2, whether I like it or not.

That meant I won’t have much time to work on another challenge this month. Finding time to work on the guide is hard enough as it is. If I had another fun challenge to compete with my attention, I know which would get done first. I decided that since this will be my first product launch, I’m going to use it as a challenge.

The challenge has a couple different parts. The first is to actually launch this thing. It’s been a long time in the making and I’m scared to put it out there it must happen. Nothing better than a 30 day challenge to kick it into high gear and launch the crap out of it. The second is to learn how to launch well. I’m sure things are going to be haywire right from the start and I know it’s going to take a few launches to really get it right but I’ll be devouring everything I can find on launching products. Conveniently, Tyler Tervooren’s Bootstrapper’s Guild is all about launching a product right now. I’m in the middle of that info so I’ll be putting into practice what I learn right away!

That’s about it for me right now. Back to working on the hiking guide. If you have any tips on launching digital products, let me know! I need to know everything I can!

Having only 50 things(and posting about it) has definitely been the most impressive feat of Colin’s I’ve seen. I know others have done the same but I saw Colin’s first so I have to credit him with that one. When I first saw the post I was amazed and vowed to do the same thing one day while travelling the world.

I immediately got to thinking about what I would get rid of. To get myself going I started a minimalism challenge on rcThink. Creating the challenge forced me to look at what I didn’t need and what I could get rid of. At the time I was living in a place that had a decent amount of space. If I didn’t use something, I could just box it up and it was out of sight. The problem with that was that I had boxes of stuff I never used. During the challenge I got rid of a ton of stuff that I never used and also a few things that I used but didn’t really need any more. The most important result of the challenge though, is that I now look at everything with a critical eye. Everything that’s in my place has to serve a function or at least look pretty damn good to stick around.

There is a problem with this lifestyle though. When things become digital, it’s easy to minimize the things you have to carry around. Writing digital documents means you no longer need paper. Listening to mp3′s means you no longer need cds. Reading ebooks and websites means you no longer need books, magazines and newspapers. Communication using Facebook, email and skype means you don’t need a land line or cell phone. That’s all well and good when everything you do is online. Some activities just aren’t digital though. Running, hiking, biking, offroading, skiing, and wakeboarding are just a few things that I do that are not digital and they all require specific gear to be done. Unfortunately, I can’t use only a computer to take my truck off to the edge of town and ride my mountain bike around in the hills.

So the problem I have with extreme minimalism is that I have a ton of outdoor gear. Yes, there is a few things that I could probably get rid of but most of it I use on a regular basis. I’ve got dive gear,a wakeboard, a snowboard, skis, hiking and camping gear, mountain bikes, dirtbikes, and kayaks and a bunch of other things. That’s a lot outdoor gear that I just can’t see getting rid of. I use some piece of my collection every single week. I take nearly 50 things every time I go ski touring!

What I’m trying to say is that I’ll never only have 50 things. Doing all the outdoor things I do regularly requires owning some gear of some sort.

Even though I won’t ever be able to own less than 100 things myself, I still use guys like Colin and Everett as inspiration to simplify my life. They’re like the people that climb Everest to me. It’s something incredible that is inspiring and I want to learn from but I don’t think I will ever do it myself.

There are a number of national parks and excellent day and multi-day tramps in New Zealand. The many kilometers of tracks in Abel Tasman National Park are among the most beautiful and easiest to access. About 40 minutes out of Nelson on the top of the South Island of New Zealand, the park stretches some kilometers along the coast allowing easy access by boat. Many of the hikers take a water taxi to one of the drop off points and then spend a few days walking back.

Up early to catch the bus out to Kaiteriteri, we had clear, sunny weather for the day. It started a bit cold but promised to be beautiful after the sun came up and we could no longer see our breath. We passed many apple orchards on the way out while attempting to absorb the incredible amount of information our interesting and opinionated bus driver threw at us. How many tons of apples does New Zealand export? Where does it all go? What types of apples do they grow in this region? What do they taste like? I can’t remember any of the answers but this guy could tell you without even blinking.

Finally hitting the edge of the park, we hopped on a catamaran taxi that cruised out to Anchorage. The scenery was amazing. The bright sunshine helped as we slid past beautiful beaches, huge rock formations and a pile of seals baking in the sun. Arriving at our destination, the catamaran pulled up close to shore extended the ramp down to the sand and we were off. After a few photos of the beach we just found ourselves deserted on we head into the bush anxious to see the views ahead.

From Anchorage back to Warahau there are a couple routes possible. The beach track is about 12 kilometers taking you along the beaches and low on the hills in the woods. The inland track is a bit more adventurous heading in from the beaches and to the tops of the hills. Originally we had planned to go a bit further along to Bark Bay and walk all the way back, giving us more to see and a longer walk. At the boat though we discovered they don’t allow you to go any further than Anchorage on our trip any more because of the amount of time it takes. Too many people were getting ambitious on the track and coming in late.

With the longer walk along the beach out of the question, my group headed up the inland track not quite sure what it would be like or what we would see. We were rewarded with amazing views of the beaches and out over the straight from the tops of the hills. The track was definitely much steeper and longer than I had thought it was going to be but most of us were up to it and took it in stride. A few people grumbled and complained every time we hit a steep section but were very happy to hit the downhill sections.

The trailhead ends at a bridge just outside the township of Marahau. A couple of us slipped off our shoes set off straight across the expanse of beach that separated the water from the town while the others stuck close to the trail and stopped at the bridge. We weren’t quite sure where the bus was supposed to pick us up for the return ride so we rocked up to a picnic table in town by a small shop and lounged in the sun. After an ice cream on the beach and collecting everyone that came with us out to the park we were on our way back to Nelson attempting to hear the random commentary from the driver.

Three Sisters

It was freezing in the mountains. The sun was still shining when I rolled in but it sure wasn’t that warm. I quickly got out the pants and jacket and made the most of the heat from the sun. I strolled around town, taking a look into some of the shops and grabbing some groceries and then it was back to the hostel to shave. I had yet this trip and my beard was getting to be a fair length, the longest I’ve ever had it. I originally had a goal of letting it go all trip just to see how long it would get but it was more annoying that I thought so the time has come. I’ll post photos soon.

Outside later my face felt cold, I had gotten used to an extra layer of warmth. It would be nice to have it gone for running though, it was just too warm most of the time. Later I checked out the Edge film at the theatre there. This particular video plays on an oversized cinema a few times a day. It’s not quite Imax sized but it’s considerably larger than a regular movie screen. The movie was about the Blue Moutains, everything you can do in and on them, and how unique they are. It starts with the recent discovery of a type of tree deep in the mountains that has survived since the age of dinosaurs and is found no where else on the planet. The theme and feel of the movie definitely tugged on a thread that made me want to protect places like these for our children to see. Most of them are dissappearing all too quickly.

I came to Katoomba to see these Blue Mountains so the second day I was there I headed out to Echo Point. You could be in Katoomba for days and not know that it hangs on the edge of a cliff that drops into the valleys of the Blue Mountains and offers stunning views off the cliffs and mountains on the opposite side. Due to my lack of time here, I elected to just do one of the basic trails that starts at Echo Point, follows the cliffs over to Katoomba Falls and then descends trail and stair to the valley floor then across towards the Three Sisters. The trail and waterfalls were incredible and I was off in my own little world until I hit the Giant Stairway.

Katoomba Falls

It was over 300m up to the pathways along the top of the cliffs and I was at the bottom. Thankfully someone decided to put a huge set of more than 800 stairs straight up the cliff so I could get to where I wanted to go. Bless their heart. Mine sure felt like it was going to explode on the way up. As usual, I was trying to keep up the pace all the way up the metal and stone stairs that was more like a ladder in some places. Most people I passed were going down and while they were having a great time commenting on how steep it was, I could only grunt in response and try to smear the stinging sweat somewhere other than my eyes. I survived the great climb and took in the awesome sight of the Three Sisters at the top.

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Mount Warning

I made it out there around 12 and thankfully it wasn’t smoking hot. The few days before had been quite warm and I was not looking forward doing the steep ascent in the heat. It begins with more stairs than I can count and then turns into steep switchbanks peppered with rocks and more stairs. I made a point of going as fast as I could on the way up to see how hard it would be. It turned out to be just regular, pretty hike up a big hill until you get to the rocks near the top.

Not steep at all

About 300 metres from the top the trail goes from dirt to rock and seems to go straight up into the bush. They’ve kindly installed a chain railing the rest of the way up to help anyone silly enough to do the rest of the climb.  Being impatient about getting to the top, I hopped onto the rock on all fours and motored past everyone. I paid for that little show of faux athleticism though, and spent a couple minutes buckled over at the top catching my breath.

Once my breathing returned to a healthy rate I could enjoy the incredible 360 degree view from the top of the mountain. There are 4 viewing platforms at the top so you do have to circle around to get the full view but it was definitely worth the battle to get up the hill. Out one side you can see off into the rest of the mountains in the area and a valley or 2 and then the other side looks out towards the ocean and Byron Bay on the coast.

It's all worth it for the view.

A quick lunch at the top and I was ready to begin my final assault on the trail. I did find the trail beautiful and the people fun to talk to on the way up but there’s always something nagging at me to go as fast as I can, just to see. The climb up the trail is tough but it’s different muscles than the way down. I find there is different thinking involved on the way down. All that’s involved in climbing the trail is keep going, keep going, keep going. On the other hand, heading down is much more fast-paced and exciting. One slip and you’re bones become well aquainted with rock, one trip and you’re heading over the cliff into the brush. It took just under and hour to get up to the top, and coming down less than 40 minutes.

I smiled at the many comments on the way down that masked the “WTF!” expressions on the other hikers. Near the end is always a battle to continue the pace. Every muscle is tired and just placing your feet requires intense concentration. The rapid fire stairs didn’t help either. They were an awkward distance apart and either were too close or to far to allow comfortable running.

Sweating bullets and grinning like a fool, I emerged from the trail to the carpark and stopped to catch my breath and cool down. One more hike completed and one more summit to add to the Summit List.

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Beach at Cable Bay

I needed to get out of the house for a little bit of fresh air this morning so we headed down to the Cable Bay Trail in Cedar, south of Nanaimo. Sunday mornings there’s a large group that heads out there will all their dogs in tow ( or rather the owners in tow) to hang out on the beach and get a nice walk in.  I highly recommend the hike to everyone that just want to get outside for an easy walk and to see the beautiful place before the traffic level goes through the roof when the new resort goes in.

Some more information can be found here:

http://www.trailpeak.com/trail-Cable-Bay-near-Nanaimo-BC-750

http://www.nanaimoinformation.com/cable-bay.php