Tag: habits

fitness

Checking in on my 26 Things in 2026

Diane HarperLeave a comment

Mostly because of the school year, fall always feels like an opportunity for new beginnings. It’s also a great time to check in on progress and do some course correction on earlier goals, if you want.

Back in January my 26 in 2026 looked like this. How’s it going and what do I want to change?

I didn’t camp much more at the cottage: between work and driving restrictions following surgery there just wasn’t time. However, I did get proper furniture installed and have actual cupboards and shelves to store the essentials, so it’s getting really easy to stay overnight when I want to. The electricity project is moving forward nicely so I should have power soon.

The canoe is still sitting up onto its blocks, but I have permanent stairs, a new lifejacket and a boating emergency kit so it will happen next year for sure. In the meantime, I have purchased an inflatable kayak so I can go out even if my friend isn’t around to canoe with me.

I’m way behind on my 1,000 km cycling goal but my e-bike finally has a new battery after two years of trying to figure out what was wrong, so I’m starting to get back into the cycling habit. I’ll be happy if I hit 500 km and I’m pretty sure I can do that. I didn’t get my bike set up for winter cycling, but winter is coming so I’ll try to sneak that in before the end of the year.

I have already hit my goal on books read, but only at half my goal on magazines. I’m determined to get there!

Cooking goals have been a mix. I’m cooking more vintage recipes, but making very little use of my medieval cookbooks.

I am debating giving up one of my gardens. It felt like too much this year, though my garlic harvest was the best ever.

I was at 61,173 M as of Tuesday, so I’m pretty happy with that. I still have three months to go and I’m getting into the habit of having a short swim at work in addition to longer weekly swim practices, so I might just hit 100 km. Not bad considering I wasn’t allowed to swim for over a month.

Crafting, sewing, decluttering Mom’s without adding to my own clutter, something artistic, meeting up with friends, vacation, relax: fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, mostly fail, fail. Some things got done, but not nearly enough.

I am being more conscientious about monitoring my health, eating more fruit, trying to spend more time with Mom, volunteering less, and doing more stretch and strength exercises. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but I’m going to count all of these as successes.

Summary: between now and the end of December, do more biking, reading , swimming, relaxing, and a bit more cooking.

Oh, and keep saying hello to all the good dogs I meet, even if I don’t actually pat most of them.

This happy dog may not be real, but at least she stood still for a photo (unlike a half dozen others I saw that day). I like how she’s ready for the changing of the seasons, dressed as a ghost, holding a pumpkin bucket in her mouth.
A drawing of overlapping patterned circles in fall colours with the word “update!” at the top. Update on Christine’s September Circles
fitness · habits · health · mobility · self care

Update on Christine’s September Circles

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Ok, so I am reporting back a little early but since I don’t think there will be a drastic change in my results over the next two days, we’re in the clear.

On September 1, I told you about my experiment for this month – 5 minutes of circle-based mobility exercises each night before bed.

And, despite the fact that I was ‘going in circles’ this whole time, I have definitely made some progress towards increasing my mobility and improving my sense of well-being.

Here are my discoveries:

1) As I suspected in my initial post, doing circles seems to reduce the restless, twitchy feeling I was often experiencing while sitting in bed reading before going to sleep.

2) I feel far less stiff and achy when I get up in the morning.

3) My body feels a bit more mobile and fluid overall.

4) I like having a small physical practice as part of my bedtime routine.

5) If I had trouble settling into sleep in the evening, doing a few more circles was soothing.

Obviously I am declaring this experiment a success!

And I am giving myself bonus points and a gold star ⭐️ for sticking with my experiment even though this month included some travel with friends and coordinating a 10 day arts festival.

Normally that kind of shift in routine would affect any kind of new practice I was trying to incorporate into my days but I guess that my plan to go in circles was just the right-sized practice for almost any circumstance.

And since it has worked out so well, I plan to keep this circular strategy going.

Now to figure out an experiment for October…

A small painting of a shiny gold star Go Team 2026: Forge Ahead, Pivot, Restart!
advice · fitness · Go Team · goals · habits · motivation · self care

Go Team 2026: Forge Ahead, Pivot, Restart!

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team,

Here’s your semi-regular reminder that you are the boss of you.

Soooooo, it is up to you how to proceed with your plans. 

If your current plans feel good and you are getting where you want to go, then forge ahead. 

I mean, it’s good to check in every now and then but you are under no obligation to examine every single detail of your fitness plans over and over. 

And you certainly don’t have to keep changing them to match trends or to prove a point. 

Basically, if your current plan is working for you then… FORGE AHEAD!

But what about if your plan sort of works but there are stil rough spots, friction, and/or you often find it hard to get going.

In that case, it may be time to make a few changes.

You may want to switch up your plans a bit, change the exercises you’re doing, find some company, take on a different challenge, put in some extra effort or maybe dial things back a bit. 

Basically, if your initial plan is getting on your nerves you don’t have to keep frustrating yourself (and you definitely shouldn’t be hard on yourself), instead, you can… PIVOT!

But what about if you started out strong but your enthusiasm waned? 

Or if you hated your plan from step one?

Or if you love the plan but life got in the way and now you just can’t?

Or if your plan worked when you made it but then your schedule changed?

Well, in that case, the only thing you *can’t* do is be mean to yourself about it. (Ok, I guess you can but I will give you a stern look about being mean to my friend.)

After all, finding a fitness plan that works for you isn’t about doing the perfect thing as your perfect self on your most perfect day.

Instead, it’s is about finding ways to keep doing things that you want to do (or achieving things that you want to achieve) so it only makes to make your plans appeal to the most important person in the equation – YOU.

Basically, if you aren’t doing the things you want/need to be doing then change your plans and …RESTART.

And yes, I know there is great value in starting something new on a significant date (New Years, your birthday, September 1) but there is also value in starting wherever and whenever you happen to be. 

(In fact, with a little imagination you can turn anything into a significant date. If nothing occurs to you, feel free to post in the comments and I’ll wrangle any ordinary day into an auspicious occasion for restarting you project.)

So, Team, the key information here is that it is ok for you to do the things you want to do, in the way you want to do them, on a schedule that works for you.

You can work hard or proceed gently or do anything in between. As long as you match your expectations to your efforts, your intensity is up to you.

You can have a strict schedule or something a bit more loose and responsive to your day to day plans. As long as it works for you, it’s a good way to proceed.

Basically, as I said at the beginning, you are the boss of you.

AND your needs are the most important factors in your fitness plans. 

So, whether we’re going to forge ahead, pivot, or restart, let’s do all what we need to do to help us stick with the things that help us feel the way we want to feel. 

Oh, and please collect your gold star for your efforts below.

Go Team Us!

A selfie of a woman in a dobok after a martial arts class Christine was right about TKD muscle memory
fitness · martial arts · mobility · training

Christine was right about TKD muscle memory

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

…and the other good stuff about heading back to class.

Thursday night was just as good as I hoped it would be.

I thoroughly enjoyed the familiar routine of walking into class, talking to my friends, and doing our warm-up.

My body and brain were utterly soothed by the rhythm of the beginning of our class.

You know how it is – you can be a bit addled or off-kilter and then start some familiar routine and the momentum of that routine (making tea, preparing a meal, working with a partner in a project, following your morning plan) carries you forward and you soon realize that you have left that weird feeling behind.

And when we started our patterns, my relaxed state allowed me to access my muscle memory with ease.

I still made mistakes, of course, but my errors felt a bit funny instead of frustrating.

I swear I made up several new movements – perhaps I should consult with the technical committee? Ha!

And along with my amusement at my mistakes, I was thrilled to discover that my summer exercise plan was making a real difference for my mobility, my strength, and my flexibility.

I already felt encouraged by my fitness progress but seeing how my exercise efforts were positively impacting my ability and capacity at TKD made me even more determined to continue with the Hybrid Calisthenics program.

I’m travelling at the moment (I taught a storytelling workshop in Nova Scotia last night!) so I am missing our second class of the year but I am definitely looking forward to class on Thursday night.

Next step: set some personal goals for TKD for this year.

Kiya!

fitness

My Funny Old Body Needs to Move

Diane Harper1 Comment

It’s the weirdest thing, and I’m not even sure when it happened. Lately, no matter how tired I am, I feel compelled to move.

Once I’m moving, I sometimes feel energized for a while. Other times, I keep chugging away, even as my brain is telling me it’s okay to stop (and the rest of my body emphatically supports the brain).

I know that part of this is habit after years of commuting by bike to work, plus various dance classes and swim practice each week. The 22_ workouts in 202_ challenge has reinforced my tendency to want to move every single day. I see everyone else’s joyful pictures and activity reports and I want to do things too.

There is absolutely no logic to it. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of people participate and post. Most post no more than a few times a week. I think Sam is the only one who consistently does at least one thing every day. But do I think that it’s okay to take a rest day? No! Because people (not the same people) are posting every day and therefore I must post.

So, I’m trying to take a page out of Christine’s habits: be kind to myself, and give myself a gold star when I sit back on the couch like Milo, even if I’m still playing with something (usually knitting, not a kitty toy like Milo).

Milo, a great and white cat who alternates between intense action and total chill, is flipped on his back on the couch, playing with one of his favourite toys.

A drawing of decorated, overlapping circles in fall colours Christine and the September Circles
aging · habits · self care

Christine and the September Circles

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

In the spirit of Anne-Laure LeCunff’s Tiny Experiments, I am planning to spend September going in circles …but in a good way. 

Here’s the backstory:

For the last few nights, I have been doing about 5 minutes of mobility exercises before bed and the practice feels really beneficial. 

I didn’t start the exercises with a plan, I just did them one night while listening to the end of a podcast and I liked how I felt afterwards so I did them again the next night.

And since I often find myself feeling a bit twitchy and restless before bed – with an odd feeling or an ache in one place or another – but I haven’t had that feeling in the last few nights so it seems worth exploring if there is a connection between the exercises and the lack of twitchiness. 

This may be a coincidence of course but that’s part of the experiment.

I’m referring to it as going in circles because I made myself laugh when I referred to the exercises that way on Sunday night. 

And seeing as the routine includes rolling a ball under each foot and then doing ankle circles, knee circles, hip circles, upper body circles, arm circles, shoulder circles, and neck circles, it’s not wrong it just sounds a bit funny.

So here’s my experiment:

For September, I am going to go in circles for 5 minutes each night before bed and note whether or not I feel twitchy afterward and whether I feel more or less stiff each morning. 

I’ll report on my experiment on October 1.

A drawing of decorated, overlapping circles in fall colours
These imperfect circles were fun to make and they are a good representation of the imperfect circles in my practice. Image description: a drawing of 8 overlapping, painted circles in fall colours (shades of green, brown, red, orange) with a different pattern in black ink on each one (spirals, circles, grids, lines, triangles, squares) and each circle is outlined in black. The drawing has been cut out of a larger sheet of white paper in an irregular shape that resembles a cloud or a puddle. The outer edge of the paper is trimmed in black and there are gold dots between the black trim and the edges of the circles. At the bottom are the words ‘hello, September!’ written in black.
A photo of a purple flower Christine goes from back pain to back at it.
ADHD · fitness · goals · motivation · planning

Christine goes from back pain to back at it.

Christine Hennebury2 Comments

This time last week, I had to work hard to focus on the good.

At that point, I had spent three days dealing with some lower back pain that had kind of come out of nowhere.*

That was annoying, obviously, but what was really frustrating is that up to the first day of back pain, I was on a 40 day exercise streak with the Hybrid Calisthenics app.**

For the first time in ages (maybe ever?) I was finding it easy to exercise, I was generally enjoying each session, the whole thing felt very purposeful, and I was seeing and feeling some results.

But then I had to break my streak to care for my back.

Part of my brain immediately went into story mode (a professional hazard for storyteller/writer types) and told me that a) I would have a hard time picking up where I left off and I might have to start again b) that I was probably going to put my routine aside and not remember it for ages c) if I did start again, I would have lost my momentum and it would take a lot of effort to convince myself to exercise.

Now, I’m not saying these are sensible thoughts but I have to admit that none of those scenarios are out of the question.

In fact, each of those scenarios is a very familiar groove and there was a definite risk of me and my ADHD brain slipping right into one of them.

This time, though, I was very determined not to let either of those stories come true.

Even though my back pain continued (with slowly diminishing intensity) right through this past week, I kept checking in with myself about when I’d be able to get back to my routine.

On Friday, I could feel clear improvement and Saturday was better again and Sunday was practically normal.

And on Monday morning, I asked myself the question I was asking daily before my back pain started:

“Am I exercising this morning or this evening?”

(A strong contrast with the question I would have asked myself during previous programs: “Am I exercising today?)

And, here’s the real victory as far as I am concerned:

It was EASY to get started.

I didn’t hesitate or try to negotiate with myself.

I didn’t have face any resistance at all – I just decided on morning and got started.

I felt a little rusty and my first set of each exercise was kind of slow.

But I did it. Carefully. Intentionally. With good form and while paying close attention to my back.

And I feel good. – physically and mentally – about getting back at it.

Now my worry is metaphorical – I don’t want to risk breaking my arm patting myself on the back.

😉

This photo is largely unrelated to the text except that I also had to take a break from walking Khalee for most of last week. My back was so uncooperative!

A dog looking at grass with a series of large mushrooms on it.
A photo of Khalee looking at some surprisingly abundant mushrooms on a a green space near our house. Don’t worry, I didn’t let her step into the faery ring. Image description: Khalee, my light haired medium sized dog is looking down at a series of large mushrooms amongst the green grass. She is wearing a blue kerchief and looks quite jaunty.

*My lower back is unhappy from time to time but it is usually short-lived and not quite this intense.

**To be clear, my program is two exercises a day for three days, repeat, active rest. I did not do 40 days of intense exercise in a row – it was gradual and had rest days built in.

a small drawing of a gold star with a happy face on it Go Team 2026: A Gentle Reminder To Give Yourself What You Need (When You Can, Of Course)
advice · fitness · Go Team · meditation · motivation · rest

Go Team 2026: A Gentle Reminder To Give Yourself What You Need (When You Can, Of Course)

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

Hey Team, 

Here’s the short version of this post: It’s ok to give yourself the movement, the peace of mind, and the rest that you need.

I know this is not the first time I have given you (or myself) this advice but since I always need reminders about this stuff then I assume you do, too.

So, to reiterate:

Whenever you can, please, please, please, give yourself the things you need. 

If you need rest, then please get some rest

And please do that in a way that lets you meet your needs the best way you can in your current situation.

Resting doesn’t have to mean taking a nap (but a nap is great if you are able to take one!) It can mean resting in small increments, taking some deep breaths, pausing between tasks, choosing to limit the scope of some tasks, doing some yoga or stretching, or picking a restorative activity.

If your thoughts are feeling tangled and you need to meditate or journal then please meditate or journal. 

And please do those things in the way that meets your needs. 

Journaling doesn’t have to be pen on paper, it can be typing on a screen or drawing on an envelope or using voice to text or creating a collage or anything else that makes your thoughts more tangible and organizable for you. 

Meditation doesn’t have to mean sitting still (but that type of mindfulness is totally cool.) It can mean colouring, or doing walking meditation, or drawing a series of small lines, or doing a task with great care. It’s more about the nature of your attention than the specific activities involved.

If you need to get moving, then please get moving.

And please do that in the way that meets your needs.

If you need intense exercise, then push yourself hard in whichever ways are available to you right now. 

If you need slow movement, then take your time. 

If you need to lift heavy, lift heavy. If you need to lift light, lift light. 

And please don’t feel like you need to limit yourself to doing some sort of established routine. It’s totally ok to put on some music and flail around like a fish that got washed up on the beach. It’s totally ok to head to the playground and swing on the swings. It’s totally ok to do squats while you watch TV.  And it’s totally ok to stretch while you talk to a friend. 

As long as your movement meets your needs, then forge ahead.

If you need something, then please do what you can to meet that need. 

Even if you feel you *shouldn’t* (I still hate that word!) need it.

In fact, ESPECIALLY if you feel you shouldn’t need it. 

Your needs matter. 

You matter. 

And if you need some sort of permission before meeting those needs – in whatever way you are able to meet them at the moment – then consider that permission granted. 

I may not be the boss of you but I am perfectly willing to boss you into being kind to yourself. 

(Yes, I *am* the oldest sister, how did you guess?)

So, Team, please, please, please take good care of yourselves out there. 

And here is your gold star for your efforts to meet your needs – whatever they happen to look like right now. 

Go Team Us!

a small drawing of a gold star with a happy face on it
This little gold star cheered me right up. If you have a minute, draw yourself a gold star – you won’t regret it!

Image description: a drawing of a cartoonish gold star with a happy face on it. The drawing is on a piece of white index card and the background behind the star includes a bunch of small marks (some dots and some are a little more like lines) and five short lines that are near each point on the star like it is either glistening or in motion. The piece of index card is propped up between the keys on my computer keyboard which is black with white letters.

advice · fitness · habits · mindfulness

Positive is Practice – Sam’s 3 Good Things

elan.paulson1 Comment

I interviewed Sam about her regular habit of sharing “3 good things” from her days on her personal social media feed.

EP: You often post “3 good things” on your personal socials along with photos. How long have you been doing this, and has your reason for still doing it changed since you started?

SB: I started six years ago in November. November is gratitude month, and it’s also my least favourite month of the year, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to look around and find things to be grateful for.

I’m not sure exactly when I started doing it year-round, maybe two or three years ago? I liked it so much I didn’t want to stop when November was over.

Why do I keep it up? I like the way it makes me feel. But also, and I notice this more these days, the practice itself trains me to start looking around for good things.

EP: This tracks with something I heard on a recent podcast about negativity bias. We’re wired to overfocus on the bad (to the point where we overlook the good), but intentionally practising the positive can help us rebalance. The researcher called it gain-framing, seeing experiences through a positive lens or treating setbacks as opportunities to learn. Does that match your practice?

SB: Yes, that definitely matches my experience. I do a bit of only good things and a bit of reframing. I’ve got a close family member in the hospital. Not good. But good that they’re getting the excellent medical care they need.

A woman in glasses looks through her fingers Ina square frame shape

I also share bad news. I’m one of those academics, for example, who posts about rejections. It’s not just good news. Junior scholars need to see that rejection is part of the process. I also share when I stop doing things, so it doesn’t always look like I’m doing more new things without stopping others.

EP: The podcast researcher talked about the value of sharing positive experiences with others, which reinforce them and connect us to others through that sharing. Do you think about how others receive your posts? How do you feel sharing them?

SB: I do worry sometimes that people think it’s all good things all the time, but there’s a lot of bad at work that I can’t share on social media for a whole host of reasons. Ditto bad personal news, which often involves other people, and sometimes it’s their story to tell, not mine. Sometimes I find it hard to get the valence right.

EP: It sounds like you are aware of thr bad, but it’s not always shareable. So that’s another reason why you just choose to focus on the good. And maybe that you don’t want the terrible to stop your from seeing the good?

SB: I find that seeing the good helps me understand what we’re struggling for, why it all matters. The world is a beautiful place.

We were canoe camping this past weekend and I loved the light on the water, the sounds of the birds, watching a hummingbird on the flowers, swimming with loons, basking on warm rocks after swimming in a cold lake, the taste of hot tea and cookies, swaying in a hammock and napping. So many good things.

EP: How would you recommend that others try out sharing “3 good things,” and what to do on the days when thry feel negativity bias creeping in?

SB: To be honest, I’ve skipped 3 or 4 days over the years where things were too bleak to do it. I think that’s okay. That’s life.

I keep a Google doc on my phone, called Three Good Things, for myself. But I also share on social media for the habit and the accountability. For a time I thought about starting a blog just focused on tracking workouts and sharing good things. You could do that too.

Listen to “Stepping Out of the Shadows” from Hidden Brain, hosted by Shankar Vedantam, with psychologist Alison Ledgerwood (University of California Davis).,who explores negativity bias, the deeply human tendency to hold on to what went wrong and overlook what went right. In the episode, Ledgerwood unpacks why our minds are drawn to losses and threats, and what can be done to rebalance our attention. 

a photo of a dog standing in some greenery Christine inches slowly towards her 2026 movement goal.
ADHD · challenge · fitness · goals · walking

Christine inches slowly towards her 2026 movement goal.

Christine HenneburyLeave a comment

When I started The Conqueror 2026 challenge in January, I set myself a goal of 730 kms of deliberate exercise* for the year.

For those of you playing along at home, that would be the equivalent of 2 km per day, every day.

Why ‘the equivalent’?

Because I don’t actually care all that much about walking that specific distance.

What I care about is increasing my daily exercise/activity levels and the Conqueror challenge lets me measure everything in terms of distance so all of my fitness activities are adding up to the same thing. *

If that sentence made you say, “Wait, what?”, please allow me to clarify.

  1. The distance was pretty arbitrary in the first place – I picked it to represent the approximate amount of activity I figured I could do most days.
  2. I don’t care specifically about walking that distance, I care about doing that much activity.
  3. The app lets me input other activities – like calisthenics, yard work, or dancing – into the tracker and tells me the walking distance that is equivalent to that activity.
  4. Since my ADHD self tends to struggle with tracking/measuring progress, especially if that tracking is overly detailed or fine-grained, having everything translated to distance is really helpful. AND having everything rolled into one metric reminds me that all of the different types of exercise I do are all part of the same goal – feeling better and moving more easily.

But even though the tracker is useful and has helped me to be way more consistent than I would otherwise be, I am currently behind on my challenge.

a screencap of a walking challenge tracker
a screen cap of my challenge homepage that shows two gray rectangles in the centre the top rectangle says ‘goal distance 730.0 km’ and the bottom rectangle says ‘Reason – to challenge myself to move a lot each day.’ behind the rectangles are two images that will be on the eventual medal I will receive. In the upper right corner is the long neck of a dragon outlines of clouds behind it. The dragon is gold and the cloud outlines summer gold, and some are bronze. In the bottom left corner is a grey silhouette of a howling wolf sitting on an outline of a rock and there are outlined clouds behind it. At the bottom of the image is a circular logo that says ‘Conquer 2026’. And shows two trackers. The top one in gray and black indicates that I have travelled 42% of the distance. I need to travel this year. The bottom one indicates that 57% of the year has passed. Underneath both of those is a sentence that reads 103.7 km behind your planned pace.

Luckily, I’m not fazed by this in the least.

There were definitely times in the past when I would have ditched the challenge by this point because of the focused effort it will take to close the gap between my current position and the ideal position for this point in the year.

But this current version of myself is looking at that gap and thinking. “I can totally close that!”

And guess what?

I’m right!

It may take me until the end of September but I am 100% confident that I will catch up, keep going, and earn a 2026 Conqueror challenge medal.

I’ll let you know how things are going at the end of August.

*And ‘deliberate exercise’ means additional movement that I have chosen to do – i.e. I am not measuring steps that are part of my daily activities.

**Besides fitness, of course, but the idea of being ‘fitter’ or having a good ‘fitness level’ is not even remotely tangible.