good morning hick it's Tuesday so almost
exactly three years ago I finished a 100
day fitness challenge with my best
friend Chris that we documented on
YouTube and when it comes to big
lifestyle or habit changes I often see
30-day updates or 100 day updates but
today I thought I would share with you
the good and the bad from now over 1,000
days of regular exercise so back in 2017
after exercising 5 or 6 days a week for
a hundred days I was pretty fit I could
run seven or eight miles for instance I
was sleeping better my mental illness
had improved dramatically and I was also
getting lots more creative work done
like I wrote much of Turtles all the way
down in that period and now three years
later I'm mostly in better shape than I
was then I've shaved thirty seconds off
the pace at which I can run a mile I'm
stronger my blood pressure's good etc I
still work out with Laura our trainer
from 100 days twice a week and then most
weekends I bike or run so I almost
always get more than 150 minutes of
moderate or high intensity exercise per
week which is what my doctor recommends
for me the way I experience the benefits
of exercise looks approximately like
this like initially there's a huge
improvement fewer of my hours are lost
to anxious thoughts I have vastly more
energy etc but then the improvement kind
of plateaus I just noticed the collar
buttons aren't buttoned and I know
that's a big issue for some of you so
I'm going to button them right so even
though I'm better off than it would be
without exercise I feel like my
improvement isn't continuing which can
lower my motivation less motivation
means less exercise and then my brain
starts to get worse and it's really hard
to convince myself to exercise when I'm
feeling unwell and now we're in a
vicious cycle and that's why I was
always yo-yoing with exercise and while
I have experienced those vicious cycles
in the last three years because I now
recognize the pattern it's much easier
to break it and what I've noticed over a
long period of time is that while some
of the health benefits do Plateau others
look kind of like this like they slowly
keep getting better
for instance despite being very very old
I am currently the fastest runner I have
ever been also my mental health is
probably the best it's ever been like
I'm still mentally ill and I take
medication everyday and all that stuff
but like the rolling 90-day average of
my mental health is much better than it
was 5 or 10 or 15 years ago I've also
experienced a really helpful shift in
how I imagine myself which I know is a
weird thing to say but like I never
thought of myself as a fit or healthy
person in fact I often define myself in
opposition to fitness I was a nerd not a
jock I was a mind person not a body
person but now I'm much less inclined to
imagine my mind as separate from my body
I mean my brain is made out of meat just
like my muscles are my body is not just
like a sack that carries my mind around
and for me at least treating it that way
wasn't good for my body or my mind for
example I think exercise has been good
for my writing I don't think I could
write the anthropocene reviewed with my
old way of looking at the world or
humanity I needed to understand that the
duality I'd created between the body and
the mind or between consciousness and
the natural world was just total BS none
of this is to say that the last three
years have like been without challenge I
have bouts of vertigo which at times is
extremely destabilizing both literally
and figuratively and makes it difficult
to exercise and I've also had a couple
small injuries and a lot of aches and
pains some of which are just due to
getting older but some of which are also
due to being more active also I don't
love to exercise like even after 1100
days I don't know what a runner's high
is I don't like eagerly anticipate
training sessions but I have found a lot
of value in exercise because it is
engrossing a terrible word for a
wonderful experience exercise takes all
of me and it uses all of me and it
benefits all of me when I was a kid I
heard a comedian joke once that jogging
extends your life by the exact number of
minutes you spend jogging and I always
thought of that as a reason not to
exercise but now even if that were true
which it isn't by the way I'd still run
in fact I'm gonna go do it now on the
treadmill to be clear because it's very
cold and also because I want to watch
AFC Wimbledon Hank I'll see you on
Friday