Flexing The Muscles

Sad state of affairs when there's a day with no blog entry. Well not a proper one at any rate. Those that know will recall I started off here by trying to rebuild my writing muscle by exercising it properly. The method of training was to write at least 750 words every day as driven by the 750words.com website and it served me very well for a couple of months. Got me into a routine that I doubt I could break very easily now - at least not without a good holiday off the grid completely - and even then I'd want to write about it.

But this is of course only one muscle. There are many more that also need attention. So, if you've tried that and liked it, you might also like buster's latest offering: Health Month, The Game healthmonth.com. Here's this spiel, and very good it is to....

You want to be healthier. You even know how to do it. If you had to.

It has just never quite become important enough to be prioritized over all the great, fun, and tasty reasons to be a little less healthy (oh sweet unhealthiness). That, and changing habits is not only difficult, but sometimes scary, right? You wonder if people will still like you if you say no to that 6th drink or that office cupcake.

Health Month is about taking the SCIENCE of nutrition and behavior change and combining it with the SOCIAL GAMES of the recent social web to help people improve their health habits in a fun and sustainable way. We're happy to leave behind the sketchy get-thin-quick schemes and boring fads that you can't relate to (and half-suspect of being more harm than good anyway).

The formula for living healthier has 4 ingredients: 1) the information (you have most of that, and we can help fill gaps), 2) the ability (you have that too), 3) the motivation (who doesn't want to be healthier, at least a little bit, right?), and 4) the fun and sustainable trigger. The reason. The self-challenge. The game that helps you live healthy, not because you have to, but because it's fun.

Basically you set yourself some rules and then you have to live by them. The system gives you 10 lives to start with and when you don't abide by your rules you lose a life. You also win points and fruit (virtual not real) as the game progresses.

Each morning there's an email in my inbox asking me to report yesterday's achievement's. There's no point in lying about it just to save a life - you're only cheating yourself. I'm doing reasonably well this month having so far gone for 12 days without losing a life. I did slip a little earlier in the month, but I'm more focused again now. If you stick at it, it definitely works and anything that helps you get healthier has to be a good thing.

Health Month is all about designing your own health rules, and then trying to stick to them. We provide the points and the motivation.

Here’s how it works:

Before the game starts

• Choose your rules
• Make your bets and promises
• Choose how you want to play
• Games with 3 or fewer rules are free
• Games with 4 or more rules are either $5 per game, or $50 per year to become a member
• If you can’t afford to pay, you can also seek sponsorship. Every paying player can sponsor one person per month, or they can choose to pay for you

• Introduce yourself to the other players and wait for the game to start After the game starts
• Mark off your rules every day
• Get points
• Share your progress

We all know how to be healthy. This game is about finding your limits, giving you incentives to make new habits stick, and helping you learn what works for you.

It also has links to all the social networks, facebook, twitter, flicker, tumblr and even foursquare. Interestingly, foursquare offer a merit badge for successfully completing a month so I'm well on my way to becoming a "Healthy Fox"

None of this explains my lack of blog entry yesterday, but it's no big mystery really. I just got very busy at Starfleet.  It's an odd thing when you feel that you're achieving nothing, you're swamped with work all of which seems futile and leaves you with no desire to even start it let alone get it done. Given that set of circumstances there is only one true course of action.  Stop procrastinating and get on with it.  I'd like to think I'm not a very good procrastinator, although in truth I'm probably as good as the next man. But I digress...

Ahhh..  see what I did there?...

So there we have my brief thoughts for today - onwards and downwards. Things to do. Go and get yourself healthy. Toodle pip!

 

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This post originally appeared here: Posterous