Habit Building for 40+ Years
If you’ve been following along with my neurotic, borderline obsessive attention to habit-building, you must be wondering…
“Why is this kid fixating on habits so much? Shut up, already.”
Honestly — I feel the same way, sometimes. It gets annoying coming back to the same topic, over and over.
Before I dive in and ramble, I thought a story would help provide context:
Throughout high-school (and later Northwestern), I always balanced a ton of activities — hockey, scouts, the student newspaper — on top of taking classes, enjoying a social life, getting sleep, and working out regularly.
I generally balanced these well, even simultaneously.
That changed between my junior and senior years of high-school, when I broke my ankle during an ice hockey game.
While recovering, I spent almost all my time sitting or laying down.
My metabolism was a furnace before the accident, but now it was a low burn.
From then on, I struggled to stay in shape.
By the end of my junior year, I ballooned up to 205 — at 5"10', I was pretty out of shape.
I spent the next 6 months from June to November cutting down, dropping weight all the way to 170. I was exhausted, but I was in great shape.
As senior year of high school rolled along and I enjoyed the festivities of graduation, I rose back up to 185. Not huge, but not light either.
The following summer, I dropped weight again, this time getting as low as 158. My body looked great, but my energy levels were depleted.
It was an aggressive cut and I was ready to return to a “normal life.”
Unfortunately, this Yo-Yo diet took a toll on my metabolism.
My body now reacted quickly to fluctuations in food —my weight would zig-zag depending on the chicken or ice cream I ate the day before.
When I started at Northwestern, the rapid change elevated my stress levels to new levels. I squeezed in workouts sporadically and any semblance of healthy eating deteriorated.
When pledging started for my Greek chapter, the intensity picked up even more. Now I was always busy and barely sleeping enough. I ditched the gym to make up for lost sleep, and continued gorging on pizza and beer through the rest of the year.
By the time June arrived, I was back up to 206.
As in the previous summers, I dieted down. I returned to campus in the fall at about 180 — up a bit from the previous fall, but I felt comfortable enough.
My sophomore year, the same thing happened all over again. The workload of Northwestern, combined with the other activities around me, was enormous stress and I stopped exercising and eating well.
I spiked up to 202 by June, and then spent the following summer studying for the MCAT and cutting weight, guzzling coffee and sticking to a strict diet. When I took the exam in mid-September, I weighed in at 174.5.
Junior year, the same thing happened, but worse. Now I was in harder classes, taking on leadership roles on campus and extending myself beyond normal limits. I was tired, irritable, focused, and combative. As in previous years, I stopped going to the gym and eating well. At the conclusion of the year, I weighed in at 212. That was the heaviest point in my life!
I resolved be better the next summer and fall — I knew I couldn’t afford to continue cutting and re-gaining.
Except that’s exactly what happened.
I took a (somewhat) slower approach, dropping to 194 by the end of September, but I was balancing classes, an internship, and job recruitment. Eventually, it became incredibly difficult to balance, and the first thing to go was the gym and eating habits.
I was back up to 207 at the end of 2016.
At this point, there was no denying it: I would be stuck in this terrible cycle if I didn’t take control of it.
After receiving a full-time offer and starting my new job in January, I finally established a routine and was lost weight at a decent clip. By April, I was down to 188, about 20lbs from where I started 2017.
And then…
I went through the same transition / festivities as high-school: enjoying time with friends and generally eating and drinking without fear or attention to consequences.
I went back up to 199 by the end of August. Now that I’m settled in to Chicago, I’m back down to 195 in the last 4 weeks.
If it feels like the last few years have been repetitive… that’s because it has been.
Every time I became stressed, tired, and overwhelmed, I responded in the same way: cut out the “extra” and focus on getting work done.
It turns out, this is the exact opposite approach one should take when stress is mounting.
It’s at this point that you should double-down on the healthy habits like diet and exercise, because those are the ones that will release stress and keep you happier in the long-run.
Bigger Challenges, Deeper Habits
Today, my focus is different. Now, I’m thinking about long-term progress. The real long-term: 40-year long-term.
I want to look around me at 55 years old and think “Wow, I’m the only one my age still here.”
If I want this to be a deep-rooted process of growth, I need to build in habits that don’t fall off every time life gets hard, stressful, tiring, or I just feel lazy.
I am a really firm believer that all people revert to their engrained habits when faced with stress or unique situations. Under pressure, we return back to our baseline.
That’s why sports teams, musicians, first-responders, and military personnel all train so hard — when you’re running on adrenaline, you need to be able to rely on habits to carry you through. There’s no time to stop and think about the best course of action.
It’s also an incredibly powerful and encouraging sign — if we practice enough, these habits stick.
Soon, returning to classes and student groups each fall will seem relatively easy. Bigger, more demanding challenges are coming, and I need to be prepared to handle those in stride.
If my healthy habits like exercise and proper nutrition dropped off during college, what will happen when I confront the incredible difficulties that lie ahead?
Pro-Active Hindsight
I am trying to implement pro-active hindsight, asking myself, “When I am 60 years old, what will future Jake wish I started earlier or maintained as a young adult?”
In trying to anticipate my hindsight, my guess is health and fitness is something I will appreciate in 40+ years, and kick myself if I don’t prioritize.
My pro-active hindsights also include continual learning, creative expression, developing a craft, self care, and maintaining important relationships — all the other habits I’m building in to my weekly check-ins and daily habit tracker.
If I’m going to make these life-habits, I need to ensure a few things:
- The habit is engrained and sustainable. I can’t get hot and then cool off later just because I’m less enthusiastic. There are always going to be ebbs and flows, but I shouldn’t go dormant either.
- The habit should endure stressors and difficult periods of life. There are going to be incredibly challenging points in my life, and I need to ensure the habit is ready to sustain those periods. Accordingly, I should try to build this habit while under a degree of moderate stress so that it is trained and practiced to withstand the pressure.
- The habit is fun. This is about staying healthy, promoting wellness, and working towards a better version of myself for the next 40+ years; I better enjoy it, otherwise it’s going to suck.
Every week, I’m doing several check-ins to build in habits of personal happiness, financial well-being, and physical health. If I keep up these habits on an ongoing basis, eventually they’ll just stick completely.
Ben Franklin is one of the most famous examples of a self-improvement enthusiast — he started his own personal record-keeping and habit building at twenty years old. What were you doing at 20? I was stressed under a pile of work, eating pizza, and not pushing myself to continuously learn and reflect.
From here on out, I am building habits for the rest of my life.
