A blog I read had an article on the occasion of recovering from an injury or surgery. On Damaging Myself talks about Mike’s inability to do a pushup and his young neighbor who recently stopped doing pushups at 120 reps.

Here’s what I think from the perspective of age 62: rather than work his way up to 120 and then quit, what my young helper should do is…three pushups a day.

Three.

But every day.

I need to lose some weight and exercise more - luckily, these are correlated! I’m going to try this approach, the baby steps down the hall, the zen first step of 10000.

I’m starting with 5 squats and 3 pushups every day. Maybe I’ll add one a week, not entirely sure yet. My goal for these is to hit 42, my age, every day and keep doing them. I’m also trying to hit my three  watch goals every day - 30 minutes of walking, standing every hour, and 530 calories burned - which is doable with the walking if I move around some more also.

I’m going to change my diet. Step-by-step, so I’m adding more vegetables three times a week and starting next week I will begin having one vegan day every week and go from there.

More extreme changes are difficult to implement and stick with - my hope is the slow change becomes the background and I can focus on what is important.