Last night I had guest speakers in my class, a married couple. One partner is a creative writer who works with a nonprofit to bring writing to inner-city classrooms, and the other is a high-level corporate executive. The wife was the corporate exec, and she brought her husband in to a team meeting to help her work with her team to set goals for the year.

Being aware of the shape of story -- beginning, encounters with challenges in the middle, peak action or goal, falling action, and conclusion -- can help set more realistic goals and also plan for problems. Because the exec's team had planned for potential hiccups and even written them into their story for the year, it was easier for the team to keep working together productively instead of looking for someone to blame when a setback occurred.

Why yes, that IS a Passion Planner...Thanks Fitbloggin' Secret Santa!

I didn't weigh in at home this morning -- I had fasting tests this morning for our insurance company instead. They did weigh me, but since I was clothed and it was a different scale, I'm not going to try to compare the results with my home scale weights.

If I had gotten up a little earlier, I could have weighed in here too, but as it was, I was glad I remembered the appointment and managed to make it there on time. I am still feeling a little tired and groggy after my race yesterday, especially because I had to stay up to watch the newest Mad Men.

Mad Men fan question: Have any other Mad Men fans noticed that Peggy's wardrobe colors often relate to the account she's working on? When she was working on Burger Chef, her clothes had the colors of the logo. Last night she had a peanut butter account, and her dress was a brown print in one scene and in the next, she had a suit with a tan stripe in it. She is looking very pretty and soft lately -- they let her harsh cut grow out a little and she has been wearing more luminous makeup. When things are going bad for Peggy, they seem to use more powder to make her look tired.

Okay, now back to our regularly-scheduled program.

My numbers at these things are always good except for weight and, as a result, BMI.

Here are today's numbers with desirable target numbers in parentheses:

Total cholesterol: 133 mg/dL (less than 200)
HDL cholesterol: 73 mg/dL (greater than or equal to 60)
LDL cholesterol: 45 mg/dL (less than 130)
Triglycerides: 77 mg/dL ( less than 150)
Glucose: 85 mg/dL (less than 100)
Blood pressure: 109/81
BMI: 29.7 (18.5-24.9)
Waist circumference: 32 (less than 35 for women)

Overall, pretty good. I'm working on weight loss and stress management, which will hopefully take care of the BMI and the higher diastolic blood pressure number.

Our health care plan gave us a free Fitbit Charge for participating in this assessment, so soon I'll have a review of that gadget. It's amazing to think that they believe they will save enough money through this intervention to pay for the screening personnel and the Fitbit devices for everyone who agrees to take part.

I have been just a little active lately. Once I was fully recovered from my hike into the Grand Canyon, it was time to get a little more activity.

I have the great fortune to be part of a really fun triathlon training group, Team Endurance Fusion.  On Friday we had a Spaceballs Prediction 5K (a few of our team members registered for a virtual 5K and got cool medals, but I just ran). I wasn't sure whether to predict 34:00 or 35:00, so I split the difference and said 34:30. I ran most of the race with a team member who had predicted 33:00, and surprised myself by finishing in just over 33:00.

I wore my Enell gear for this race and even had a chance to evangelize a bit with a team member who didn't like her current sports bra. We had a fun party afterward with lots of healthy food and a dunk tank. It was too cold for me to dunk but I happily tried (and missed all my throws) to dunk another team member.

The problem with race photos is you see the problems with your form. Look at that arm!

The party was to celebrate the opening of multisport season in Toledo, which kicked off with the Dooby Du today. This event is more than a double duathlon and goes Run-Bike-Run-Bike-Run. I wasn't going to do the race, because of the heavy emphasis on running, but I let myself get peer-pressured into it. It's a small race and attracts mostly serious multisport athletes. I was seriously worried about finishing last.

The start of the race. I am hidden behind the woman in gray.

I had never done or even considered doing the race before, and had no idea what to predict for a time. I decided my goals for the race were, in order of importance:

I have been using LoseIt! to log my calories lately instead of the Weight Watchers app. I'm still technically a Weight Watchers member, mostly because I like my leader, but I have been having trouble getting to meetings lately since my class schedule changed.

Anyway, when I logged in today, I noticed that the app seemed to be suggesting that I eat more crackers.

Working with my weight coach has really helped me to get back on the tracking without getting down on myself. I am loving working just with Lose It! and not bothering with the Weight Watchers app. The only thing really keeping me in WW are the meetings with my leader.

I lost 0.4 from last week, which is not too shabby after an indulgent weekend with lots of food around.

Note: This review is unsolicited and unpaid. The views expressed are my own. This post contains Amazon Affiliate links.


This newest book contains a lot of useful insights on why some habits, even the habits that we really enjoy and want to cultivate, don't stick.  There are helpful strategies, like the strategy of pairing -- tying a habit you want to cultivate, like exercise, to something that makes it more fun, like binge-watching your favorite TV shows. There are great insights, like the fact that once you stop a habit, it's much harder to re-start it because you don't have the fun of starting something new to keep it fresh. My marriage even made more sense once I realized that I am a Questioner and my husband is an Obliger.

However, and maybe this is an artifact of listening to the book rather than reading it -- I began to find Gretchen's lawyerly tendency to classify and codify everything a little dull by the middle of my first time reading the book.  I got tired of the long strings of questions, especially in the chapter on Distinctions.  I understand and appreciate her perspective that habits will stick better if they are tailored to the individual, but some of the distinctions "Are you an Opener, or a Finisher?" seemed a little bit trivial.

What I missed was the element of story that made  fun for me to read. As a midwesterner living in the suburbs, I enjoyed hearing about the life of a Manhattan apartment-dweller and her family.  It was more interesting to learn about one person's individual way of applying the strategy of resolutions to her own unique experience than it would have been to hear a more general discourse on happiness and resolutions. I would have liked to see the same approach applied to habits.

There are a few great anecdotes in this new book, like Gretchen's sister Elizabeth using the treadmill desk while writing for TV shows. Those made the book fun for me, and I wish that there were a lot more. Other than her conversion to low-carb and her use of the  to track activity and sleep, there isn't as much focus on Gretchen's own habits as on the changes she helped others make. It's understandable that as someone who writes about her own experience, Gretchen might be desperate for a little privacy.

Even with these limitations, I'd recommend this book to anyone trying to change break a bad habit or adopt a good one. On the second listen, I enjoyed it more (probably because I skipped through part of the Distinctions chapter). There's plenty of help here for people who want insights on why some habits are hard to keep and others are hard to break.

Have you read this book? What did you think?