Continued from cover ...
sustainable. You’ll hit your goal, but then what? Are you going to eat only kale for the rest of your life and do the same exercises every week?
“Contrary to what you might have heard, there is a perfect time to do everything,” Breus writes. From that cup of coffee and your daily workout to when you watch TV, there’s a time for every activity in your day. And by a “perfect time,” Dr. Breus means a perfect time for you . Much of this book is dedicated to helping you learn your own habits and preferences, so you can customize your perfect time routine according to what will work in your own life. Breus is a scientist first, and his findings are based on hard evidence. His advice on when to wake up, for example, involves the use of a sleep monitor and is based on our internal biological clocks, which were, for thousands of years, activated by the sunrise. Humans were slowly brought into stage 1 or 2 sleep by the gentle increase of light. That method is less taxing on our systems and leaves us feeling more awake when we rise. This book covers everything, from learning something new or drinking coffee to meditating or using the restroom. Whether you want to read a book at the optimum time, or change your sleep schedule, “The Power of When” is a must-read. Michael Breus' 'The Power of When' hikes? Weight lifting? My answer to all of these is yes. You could do any of those things. You could do all of them! This is where your short-term goals come in. If you make a commitment to exercise regularly, you can set short-term goals that help fulfil that long-term one. As you start on your fitness plan, that 30 minutes of exercise might look like a half-mile run twice a week and some bodyweight exercises the other two days. As the weather gets nice, you might trade in those runs for a weighted pack on a long trail hike outside, or you could sign up for a club sport that has practice three days a week. If, down the line, you want to take up another hobby or new activity, your long-term goal gives you the flexibility to do so while ensuring that you’re always doing something. As you progress, your 30 minutes of exercise can ramp up in intensity. If you get hurt, you can tone it down for a while. By combining sustainable long-term goals with achievable short-term ones, you can set healthy goals that always leave you with room to grow. You can apply this principle to diet as well as exercise, and you can carry these flexible goals with you if you move towns or change jobs. It’s funny; we live in a world where every single exercise and diet plan is available, for free, online. But so few people learn to set the kind of goals they need to be healthy and fit. And when they do, they think of those goals as “pesky.” Let’s break that mindset this month and come up with some great goals that we can be proud of and strive for — today, tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives. Wishing you a healthy June!
Even if that was sustainable, it wouldn’t work. Our bodies are crafty; they want to find the most efficient way to do something possible. That means that we adapt quickly to new diets and routines, and our bodies will find a way to do those routines with the least amount of work. After a while, that old diet and routine won’t do much good. That’s the point where many people lose interest, and it can happen anywhere from a few months to a few years after you start working on your fitness. Here’s an example of a sustainable weight-loss goal: “I’m going to exercise for 30 minutes, four times a week.” At first, this may sound a little vague. Thirty minutes doing what? Aerobics? Trail
A T ime for E very P urpose
You know you’re supposed to eat right, exercise every day, and sleep 8 hours each night. You might even have a routine down from when the alarm goes off to when your head hits the pillow. But did you know
there’s actually a perfect time to do each thing every day? That’s the thesis of “The Power of When,” a new time-management book by Dr. Michael Breus.
Breus, a clinical psychologist who specializes in sleep disorders, realized that for some of his patients the time they went to sleep was actually more important than the amount of sleep they got. By changing when they crashed, they changed how effective that sleep was. “I wondered, ‘What else could this work for?’” Breus says. That wonder led him to look into what else could be timed for maximum efficiency. And the more he researched, the more he discovered.
2
(503) 248-0360
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online