Consistency Month

For my on-line running group, August was consistency month. I decided to use their techniques to up my game, and it worked pretty well!

This is the calendar of my walking from Garmin,
showing walks (of a mile or more each)
recorded on the Garmin walk.

I decided on a minimum baseline for every day: get dressed in my exercise clothes, walk for a minimal amount, and then come home and work out for a few minutes. The "minimum baseline" for each started out at 10 minutes, but I exceeded that every day and so mentally raised the baselines. It's clear that doing something every day consistently is paying off.

I'm walking a lot! No running in August, but walking to do errands as well as exercise walks added to my mileage. Now, in September, I'm starting up with my "micro-running", as I call it. But I don't think I would have started it if I hadn't built the base by walking.

This is my lower tech basement calendar,
showing what proportion of an hour I worked out each day.
"G" stands for days I went to the gym for training instead.

I'm also very consistent on the working out in my basement. Some days, I feel like crap, but I've really learned on a visceral level that some time working out is going to make me feel better. What I do at home is a combination of functional fitness, working out with weights, and stretching. I've ratcheted up my minimum from 10 minutes to 15 - but I'm consistently doing 20-30 minutes each day so far in September.

These have not yet become automatic habits. I still have to plan for it, argue myself into it, each day. But because both the walking and the working out are pleasurable in themselves, it's getting easier. And, I continually remind myself, this is not what I need to get out of the way before I can start my day. This is my day. As we learned in Younger Next Year, this is my job from now on.