The Kind of Stuff I Think About Waiting for the Microwave

This fall and winter I've been really getting into matcha lattes. If you don't know, matcha is a rich, bitter version of Japanese green tea. The astringency of matcha is a bit too much for me, but a few months ago I found out that combining it with a sweet, creamy latte results in a wonderfully warm, filling drink.


So I started ordering these things waaay to much from the cafe that is located devilishly close to my house. Much deliciousness, and a lot of wasted money over time. Which is why I was pumped to find these Nescafe HomeCafe packets last week.

You just heat up some milk in the microwave, stir in the powder, and you've got a matcha latte at home, at a fraction of the price. And it's just as good as the stuff from the cafe. Heh heh, they probably dump the same powder in their drinks anyway.

So, the other day I was standing in the kitchen waiting for my milk to heat up in the microwave to have a matcha latte, and as one does, I was absentmindedly reading the back of the box. There was the usual stuff about "enjoying the rich taste in the comfort of your own home blah blah blah". But what caught my eye was the beige box on the right.

If your Japanese isn't quite up to speed, allow me to translate.

"According to daily requirements, desserts and sweet drinks should be kept to about 200 calories to maintain a good dietary balance. So use the calorie chart well and control your sweets."

What stuck out to me was that in all my years of writing about this stuff, reading labels, and checking calories, I have never heard such a clear and unambiguous statement about how many calories of sweets a person should eat.

200 calories of sweets a day. What could be simpler? Combine this with the Nutrition Information on the back of packaging and the increasingly mandatory posting of calorie content at restaurants, and you've got a pretty foolproof way to keep your desserts and treats under control.

I'm no fan of counting calories (as you can read in this post) but the 200 calories number is certainly much better than the vague and unhelpful advice I grew up with. Remember this old chart?



This is what I learned as a kid. What a mess. As many have noted, it puts sugars and sweets at the top of the pyramid, denoting their more desirable status, and includes dairy as a mandatory food group for a healthy life, Ignoring the billions of Asian people that get along just fine without it every day, often with longer lifespans than milk drinkers, but I digress. Back to the sweets.

What does use sparingly mean? I could eat 12 Milano cookies, but I'll eat sparingly and only have 6. At 60 Calories a cookie that's 360 Calories, nearly two days worth of sweets in one go.

Other food pyramids try to break the sweets down into servings. They'll say something like "Sugars and Fats, 0-3 servings a day." What the hell does that mean? There's a pretty big difference between 0 and 3 servings of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Ice Cream (a 750 calorie difference to be exact)

So, a few years back the USDA redesigned the food pyramid. This is what they came up with:

Sigh... I get what they were aiming for. All the pieces of your diet work together, along with exercise, to create a "healthier you". (It looks like the dairy lobby got an even bigger slice of the pie this time.) So what have they done with the sweets? Can't find them? That's because they aren't there. That's right. The USDA, faced with the vexing problem of how to advise people about what to do with the candies, colas, and desserts, just decided to skip over them completely. Too bad no one else is skipping them...

If you tunnel down deep on the MyPyramid.gov webpage you can extract the following advice.

"For example, assume your calorie budget is 2,000 calories per day. Of these calories, you need to spend at least 1,735 calories for essential nutrients, if you choose foods without added fat and sugar. Then you have 265 discretionary calories left. You may use these on “luxury” versions of the foods in each group, such as higher fat meat or sweetened cereal. Or, you can spend them on sweets, sauces, or beverages. Many people overspend their discretionary calorie allowance, choosing more added fats, sugars, and alcohol than their budget allows."

So, there you have it, we're back where we started. For someone with a healthy, balanced diet, about 200 calories of sweets a day isn't a big deal. It seems that they are so scared of saying "it's ok to have sweets" that they choose instead to obfuscate this information and gloss over the whole issue of how many sugar calories a person can safely consume. If more people had the number 200 calories in their head they'd be a lot better off than all these vague and cloaked descriptions buried on web pages.

So, why isn't the 200 calories of sweets a day number more out there? Because it's a very inconvenient number. Getting back to cafes, if you were to seriously stick to the 200 calorie number, and went into a Starbucks, more than 2/3rds of the drinks would be off the table from the word go. (Check for yourself if you're so inclined) And you can forget the baked goods case.

The same goes for most candy bars, desserts, colas, and anything else that would fall in the "sweets" category. Once you really see the numbers, you'll realize that 200 is not very many calories. It means you can have ONE small indulgence a day, and that's it. If you have a sugared breakfast cereal, you're done for the day, even more than 12 hours later that night when you're craving something sweet after dinner. ONE bowl of cereal. ONE muffin. ONE candy bar. ONE mocha. One a day, and unless you're active, even that's pushing it. If you're going for really excellent condition like people who join the PCP, then you need to dial that back to one a month. I know, the truth hurts!

Here's the bottom line. These industries do not want you to know about the 200 Calorie a day mark. Because you might just buy less of their product. This is also why they don't want to post their calories. So people do their best to eat what they think is a proper amount, not knowing that even on a good day they've blown their diet in some serious ways, and find after a few years the fat is really getting piled on.

It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, you'll note that the matcha latte box with its very accurate and helpful nutrition information was made by evil international mega corporation Nestle. But only in Japan. Why?

I can think of three reasons.

1. The average Japanese consumer isn't buying a ton of extra sugar calories every day. They tend to, excuse the phrase, eat them sparingly. Perhaps this makes the package designers a little more likely to include helpful information without the worry of impacting number of units sold.

2. Being overweight is considered a serious condition in Japan. Everyone employed at a company over 30 years of age is required to have a check up at least once every 5 years. Over 40 is once a year. If your weight creeps up past a certain point, you're diagnosed with "Metabolic Syndrome," which is just a scary way of saying, "Hey, you're fat." People "diagnosed" with Metabolic Syndrome are required to see a counselor who gives them information and strategies to get the fat down. One of which is paying attention to calories. Hence, packaging that provides extra information is considered more valuable. (By the way, the Japanese diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome look like about the same weight as the average American, to me at least.)

3. Going out on a limb here, I'd say that Japanese society in general is more community oriented than the US, and that someone at Nestle Japan just thought it would be useful to society for them to put a little reminder on the back of the box not to over-indulge. Hard to prove this one either way but I'll put it out there as a subtle background influence.

This is not aggrandize Japan or trash other countries, it's to say that there is another way. We can be knowledgeable about what we put into our bodies without being health nuts, and we can design systems that help us stay trim and fit without having to scour the internet for nutrition content.

Try the 200 calories of sweets a day thing for a week or two, and see how much easier it is to moderate your treats when you have a reasonable idea about what moderation looks like.

And USDA, if you design another food pyramid in the future, give me a call first! I whipped one up in 5 minutes which is more accurate and easier to understand than yours.

Wellness-Hacking Your Hobbies

Week after week I'm up here on the site hammering away at the same things. Mainly:

• Eat vegetables, and I mean a ton of freakin' vegetables.

• Don't consume much if any added salt and sugar.

• Cook at home and don't eat pre-made crap.

• Exercise, and by exercise I mean consistent daily exercise.

• Don't buy gimmicky fitness equipment, and don't join a gym.

• Don't make excuses, either get fit or be out of shape, either way don't stress about it.

I remember reading an anecdote in one of Janwillem van de Wetering's books (either The Empty Mirror or Afterzen) in which an old Japanese Zen master takes his graduating pupils to his house. For years these students have been studying under the old man, and have the deepest respect for his teachings and authority. The master takes them to his house for what they think is a celebration, but it turns out to be a final lesson. He shows them an old beat up couch, and says, "This is where I sit, all day sometimes, and watch Sumo wrestling on TV." And then he takes them out back and shows them the recycling bin, "And this is where I keep the empty bottles from all the beer I drink while I watch the Sumo. Sometimes I get really drunk!" What the master is trying to teach his departing students is that they need to let go of all attachments, even to the idea of their teacher as a pure and faultless person.

This post is going to be a little like that.

Sometimes I'll go out to eat with someone and they'll say something like, "Do you mind if I order dessert? I know you're the health guy and everything..." Or when I meet someone walking around town the first thing out of their mouth, even before "Hello" is "Oh my gosh I'm so sorry I haven't been to the studio in a while it's been crazy busy at work and you know I'm going to come back, it really helps me, the exercise, you know, of course you know heh heh... how are YOU!?"

Here's a newsflash for everyone. I like dessert. I also like being lazy and skipping workouts. I like drinking beer and sitting on the sofa all day. Except I don't watch Sumo. I play video games.

I love video games. The 8 bit Nintendo came out in the US in 1985. I was 7 years old. I was actually given my first system by an older boy whose family was friends with my grandparents. I remember asking the older boy, "Are you sure!? I mean, it's a NINTENDO." He said, "whatever, I never play it. And I need that time for baseball practice anyway."

Baseball... Choosing a game where you just stand there while guys throw things at you as hard as they can? Over a Nintendo!? There's no accounting for some people's tastes. Needless to say, I took the game system off his hands.

For a extremely near sighted chubby kid with no brothers or sisters around, video games were a revelation. I've gamed my way through a Nintendo, Genesis, Super Nintendo, GameBoy, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, PSP, DS, and Xbox 360. Not to mention several dozen piggy banks worth of quarters at the local arcades.

I kept waiting to grow out of videogames, but the games just grew up right along with me. And so I find myself now, 20 odd years later, still way into games.

Now this puts me in an interesting situation, because playing a video game goes against almost everything I tell people to do in both yoga and the PCP. Mainly, it involves long hours of sitting with hunched shoulders, completely sedentary except for a few finger twitches. Over time, this will mess up a person's posture, muscle mass, and fat percentage in a big way.

So how could I with good conscious dispense advice on staying away from chairs and inactivity and participate in the same activities myself? The easy answer would be to say, "Well, I have an active job, I'm on my feet all day, and I'm so good in other aspects of my life, so what's the harm?"

This reeks of the number one mistake people make, rationalizing bad choices. Avoid this at all costs. When you feel the need to rationalize something, you're actually listening to the alarm bells of your psyche. Going through with the rationalization (I worked hard today, I deserve this Snickers bar) puts you on the fast track to poor health. Feeling bad/guilty about something is an important correction mechanism, and smothering that instinct with a bunch of excuses and loopholes will only end in trouble.

So, I knew that my rationalizations were a joke. But I still wanted to play some videogames.

The second answer was to just accept the cognitive dissonance that arose when I spent an afternoon gaming. "Yes, this is not good for my body. Screw it, I'm doing it anyway." This too is a dangerous path to tread, as a kind of destructive self-loathing spiral tends to take hold. Once you've made the choice to do something unhealthy, the next choice to do something unhealthy becomes even easier, cause hey, you've already blown it, right? The "acceptance of self-loathing" technique had the side effect of making game time much less fun, as the nagging voice in my head wouldn't shut up about how this really wasn't a very helpful practice for my body, and that I would feel it the next day.

But I still wanted to play some games!

Thus was born the middle path of gaming. Behold!

Technique 1: Gaming doesn't mean losing leg flexibility. In fact, it's a great way to spend time in deep stretches. This works best for portable gaming. I played through the entirety of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories in wide angle forward bend. 30 plus hours of gameplay. 30 plus hours of groin stretches.

"Gaining XP in real and virtual worlds!"

I often play DS games in a supported backbend. 30 minutes of this a day will keep your spine as supple as a cat. The PSP, at least the launch system I have, is too heavy for this. (Somebody mail me a PSP3000!)

"A new perspective on this Professor Leyton puzzle might help..."

Basic idea, stretch while you game, read, or use a laptop. It's not rocket science.

Technique 2: Strength training is a perfect counterpart to games. Gets the blood pumping and is a nice way to get grounded in the real world. Here's one of my favorite combos.

Street Fighter 4. Play an online match. SFIV online is pretty brutal. Those guys in G1 are not messing around. If I pull off a win...

"boo ya!"

then I do an easy set of neutral grip pull-ups, an exercise I really like.

"victory lap!"

But if I lose my match...

"son of a !"

it's a tough set of regular pull-ups plus a set of chin ups combined with leg raises, which I detest.

"Failure will not go unpunished"

After the loss I'm usually kind of mad at myself so it feels like a kind of penance. Then back to the Xbox. Repeat for an hour and you've gotten a great workout, as well as your Street Fighter fix. This can be modified for any exercise and any game that gives you a break every few minutes.

I won't bore you with all my other little tricks, because you're probably not a gamer. What's important is that you see there are ways to work with your little foibles and hang-ups besides shutting them out completely. The idea of becoming a healthy person isn't to erase your former self, it's to become your true self. That might mean someone who loves videogames, or baking, or movie marathons, or any number of things that can coexist happily next to your wellness based lifestyle.

We tend to slip into a mindset of all or nothing when it comes to health. There seems to be a false choice between being a couch potato or a gym rat, an out of shape office drone or an annoyingly chipper aerobics teacher. I just want you all to know that there is a middle, and that most truly healthy people dwell there, not at the polarities.

So take a look at that one thing you love to do but that you know is making a negative impact on your health. With a little thinking outside the box, it can probably be modified to support your body rather than breaking it down.

Being healthy is important, but not more important than being yourself. Game on!

Thinking About Habits

It's been a busy few weeks of PCPers finishing their projects up and reentering the "real world". I always instruct Day 90 PCPers to take a non-optional 3 day vacation from any kind of workout or diet regimen. There are three reasons for this:

1. To give their bodies time to recover from the very tough final week of the project.

2. To give them some perspective and make sure dedication to the plan doesn't transform into obsessive dogmatic behavior.

3. To give them a taste of how it feels to crave exercise and healthy foods.

That third one is what I want to talk about today. What surprises people who complete the program is how quickly their old habits die and are replaced with newer healthy ones, and how it is literally hard to stop jumping rope and eating well after three months of it. How does this happen?

To start with, the human mind is probably the world's best pattern recognizer. Take a look at this completely random collection of water vapor:

Bet it was pretty hard for you not to see the face, right? Given just the slightest hint of a known pattern, the mind will fill in the gaps. We do this with our ears too. Listen to this first clip of random noise made by a piece of software that converts sine waves into audio:

Random Sine Wave Clip

and now listen to this sentence in English.

and go back to the random sine wave clip again.

The second time it's almost impossible to not hear the sentence, no matter how hard you try. (Thanks to the Skeptoid Podcast for turning me on to these samples)

This is all to say that every day your mind and body are out there trying to make sense of the disordered and random universe. If you start engaging in a certain behavior, your mind will begin to accept that behavior into its standard operating procedures. If you woke up every morning, went to the bathroom mirror, and slapped yourself in the face for 20 days straight, you'd find yourself on Day 21 heading towards the mirror for your daily slap without too much thought. Your pattern building part of the brain doesn't distinguish between good, bad, fruitful or wasteful activities. It just bends towards the things it's used to.

This is why it's not all that difficult for a Day 60 PCPer to get their workout done. By Day 60 doing the workout is just what you do. There's no sluggishness in the brain when the thought "Time to workout" comes up. It's a familiar and actionable idea. If you stick with the healthy habits you'll find, like recent PCPer E did, that it's actually harder to sit around the house eating junk food than it is to exercise and eat well.

I've thought a lot about habits in the past few years. In no particular order, here are some insights into how they work and how you can harness them to bring wellness into your life.

• There are many grades of habits. They occur over various periods of time. Something you do only just once a year, every year, is still a kind of habit.

• The more often you engage in a behavior the more likely your doing something habitually. You may not be aware of the habit even as you follow through with it time and time again. For example, I was going through my year end receipts and noticed that I go to one cafe for about two months before switching to another cafe for a month, followed by a month of almost no cafe visits. Then I seem to repeat the pattern again. We're probably on dozens of these habit-loops at any given time.

• When habits have a strong physical component they get very sticky. Putting something into your body will set up a habit-loop in just a few days. This works for both helpful and unhelpful products, so be careful about what goes in consistently, for it is what you will crave.

• Somewhere a line is crossed from habit to addiction. I see this line as the point when the higher thinking parts of the brain can no longer overrule the momentum of the habit pattern. Addictions are never good, even when they are to healthy things like jogging. I have seen runners come through my studio who are torn up all to hell from their exercise and refuse to quit until their knees are completely wrecked. Watch out when you feel like you're approaching the addiction line. Dial it back!

• Barring strong physical addictions such as drugs like nicotine, most habits can be short-circuited in less than two weeks. It seems implausible, but I've seen it time and time again.

• However, those two weeks are crucial. If you partake in the activity just once during those 14 days, the timer resets and you've got another two weeks ahead of you until the habit is broken.

• The best way to break a habit is by just shutting it off. Cold Turkey will be painful but short. If you try to wean yourself off step by step it will take forever and may not work at all.

• Just because you're not doing something anymore doesn't mean the habit is broken. If you're still dying for a brownie every night after dinner but keep denying yourself, then you still have a brownie habit. It's the desire for a brownie that is the habit, not the consumption of it. When you find you haven't even thought about a brownie in a few days, then you know the habit has been demolished.

• Starting a habit works within a similar two week horizon. Is there such a thing as Hot Turkey? If there is, that's what you need to do. Let's say you want to form a healthy habit of eating fresh veggies and fruit. Eat them every day for two weeks. Don't miss a day. You'll find yourself craving broccoli and apples in no time. Read any PCPer's blog to see this in action.

• The best way to form a new habit is to have a plan. Daily charts that you can check off, someone keeping tabs on you, and little reminders around the house will all make the transition easier. When you find yourself doing the new activity without needing these little props, then you can be pretty sure you've formed a solid habit.

Once you recognize that you are a being made to recognize and reproduce patterns, you can start to see how most of the things you do aren't spontaneous at all. Your actions are usually the end products of habit loops formed sometime in the past. This is not something to be worried about. Spend your time sculpting your habits towards positive things, and watch as your brain keeps you on the rails without massive expenses of willpower.

And if you find yourself in the grips of an unhealthy habit, take a deep breath, and just stop. Right now. It will never be as hard to break a habit as it is today. Tomorrow will be just a sliver easier. And the next day a little more. The hard work is now!

Maybe I'm weird, but I find that incredibly motivating.