Starting today, I too am going to try a month of health. Just to see what THAT’S like. Here’s my list of activities:

1. Green tea instead of coffee. I drink a lot of coffee, and also a lot of sugar and half-and-half because I splurge on mochas when I feel luxurious.
2. Drink a lot more water. I’m keeping a glass of water by me all the time while at work, and at home. I’m drinking at least 3 or 4 more glasses of water than I usually do.
3. No hangovers. I don’t really get hangovers, but I’m talking about even feeling spacey and spongey the next day. I think this’ll mean just drinking with a slower pace. I don’t want to set a drink limit because I don’t think that really has anything to do with it. Something like one drink every 45 minutes would be a lot more reasonable for me at this point. Especially since I have so many reasons to celebrate this month.
4. Go to the gym twice a week. I’ve gotten off the gym track since vacation a couple weeks ago, time to get back on.
5. Optimize for healthy. (instead of tasty or cheap) This one has been fun so far. Most of the time this means choosing the healthy vegetarian option. Rather than just not eating meat, which might lead me to eat unhealthy vegetarian, I’d rather optimize for healthy regardless of whether or not there’s meat in it. This is mostly so I can continue eating sushi, I think.
6. Lose 5 pounds. I gained some weight on my San Fran/rafting trip (because the guides supplied us with so much tasty food), and while I don’t necessarily need to lose the weight, I feel like I should lose some of the fat in exchange for muscle if possible.
7. Keep track of my breathing and heart rate. Only tangentially related to the health aspect, I’ve been trying to do this in order to know what emotions I’m feeling. Knowing whether or not you’re stressed out is a lot more difficult than just noticing if you’re breathing faster or have an increased heart rate even though you’re sitting at a desk typing.
8. Document rule-breaking. I’m going to peer-pressure myself into following rules by documenting when I break them. As long as I’m following them I can be lazy and not report back.

This reminds me of my Mecember project in 2003. It was a crucial turning-point month for me to realize how easy it was to make big changes all of a sudden. In a lot of ways, lessons from that month started the ball rolling for a lot of other things (changing jobs, moving, fixing relationships, etc). It’ll be interesting to see if I can rejuvenate some of that healthy momentum now when it could be said that my lifestyle is a little more crazy than it was back then.