Before you can stop nail biting, you have to recognize that you have a problem in the first place.
I totally blew it yesterday, both on the insomnia front as well as the nail biting front. Yep, my bad. I did not blow it though on the food front, nor on exercise.
Actually, I did not exercise at all yesterday, except for taking a long walk from Union Square to Midtown. But I could not get to sleep till again 6am and the anxiety of that had me causing too much pain to my hands aka nail biting.
So the question today was how to recover. I had an early breakfast, slept some, did some study, and tried to rest up a bit. I made it through the whole day without more nail biting and I will not give up.
This is a bad habit from early childhood, I cannot remember a time that I have been able to kick it, but I am not going to get discouraged.
Today, I thought about how far I have come, I am now standing at 260 days, closing in on a full year believe it or not. I know that I can do this, I can if I keep at it consistently, make it a conscious part of the day, the same way that I have done with my food choices and working out schedule.
I was wondering about the strategies I could use. I am sure you have all heard of people putting rubber bands on their wrist to pull, or putting cayenne pepper on their fingers, or putting some sort of polish which has a really putrid taste.
I have tried them all. Somehow, the nail biting is perhaps similar to smoking or drinking or some other habits which calm a person down.
I have to feel that I am getting more pleasure, a greater sense of calm when leaving my hands alone than when not. This is the reason that I have been able to stay on Hashi Mashi for 260 days.
I feel better doing that , than not. I feel stronger and more in control than if I would go back to my old ways of junk food and processed food most of the day.
So, I think I have to get that same feeling of accomplishment, that has to be more pleasurable than the habit has become over so many decades. Enough about that!
On to other news, for my 260th day, I wanted to have a real strong workout and I did. I went up 5lbs on squat, bench press and barbell rows.
This is only the second time that I am doing the sets this way, but I can feel the difference. It is almost as if I can feel my body growing more muscular, I know that might not sound possible, but check it out, start doing 5 sets of 5 reps in squats, start at a light weight, and put 5lbs more on the bar for every workout, and you will see too.
It is not my idea, nor is it Mehdi of stronglifts.com as he says many times, it is the idea of Reg Park who was a weight lifter and bodybuilder in the 1950s, boy that is sounding like a long time ago!
But Mehdi has done a great job of popularizing it and being a great exponent of this method. I am seeing the results myself, so I want to give credit where the credit is due!
On Wednesday, I did squats, shoulder press and deadlifts. Today, I did squats, bench press and barbell rows.
On monday, my plan is to shoot for 5 sets of 5 reps of squats with 105lbs, which is 5lbs more than what I did today, 70lbs for shoulder press, and 140lbs for deadlifts.
One more thing, today , I was so tired from not sleeping, I really could not do any pushups, so I will go for that tomorrow, hopefully I will get 8 hours of sleep tonight and will be rested for it.
I am also going to try to to my pushups tomorrow with stricter form, lowering my chest to the floor on each rep, I will not be able to do as many, but I think I will get stronger that way. I will have to see how my shoulders react to it.
Have any of you identified a bad habit that you are going to shake? How are your workouts going, what are you doing?
My goal here is to keep going up, 5lbs a week, until I get into the triple digits for lifts, over 200lbs, who knows, maybe more, as hard as that is to believe, I think I can do that!
It is now a bit after midnight, I will shut off all the lights, electronics, and see if I can get to sleep by 1 or 2 the latest. Wish me luck!
Rich is a certified personal trainer-AAPT and the author of