Laura: Ok
John: Is this the exercise?
Chris: (incoherent)
John: Why do I look so fat in the mirror but so awesome in person?
(Intro ding)

J (voice-over): Day 3 of 100 Days was a self-directed exercise day. This means we can do anything from brisk walking to jogging to golfing to doubles tennis as long as we do it for 30 minutes.
J (voice-over): For me that meant forty minutes of jogging on the treadmill while wearing argyle socks because I did not purchase enough athletic socks in preparation for this project. For Chris, it meant golf. Self-directed exercise days usually mean golf for Chris.
I had some yogurt and granola for breakfast, astonishingly good leftovers for lunch and then my first meal out that evening. We went to a restaurant where I got pasta and meat sauce that I'm guessing would not have thrilled my dietitian, but I did limit my portions!
J (voice-over): And then, on day 4, we were back in the gym with Laura.
C: I'm gonna speed walk at 7 miles an hour.
L: Are you serious? (laughs)
J: No. He can't. Can you? That's incredibly impressive. Wow!
C: Yeah.
L: (?)
J: You could be an Olympic speed-walker!
J (voice-over): We jumped right in with a few more metrics that Laura wants to test over the 100 days. The first was a half mile run followed by a heart rate check.
J (voice-over): We both picked a speed; Chris is running at 8 miles per hour, I'm running at 6.5 and we'll stick with those speeds as we test this metric in the future.
J (voice-over): Afterwards we moved onto how long we could hold a plank. For me this was 1 minute 40 seconds, for Chris it was 2 minutes flat.
L: So you guys doing anything fun this weekend?
J: (lets out a tired breath)
L: (laughs)
C: I don't have time to talk.
J (voice-over): And then we did pull-ups. We managed five a piece, but we did have help from these assist bands.
J: Aaaand three quarters.
C: (groan of pain)
L: Alright. We'll go ahead with the five.
C: That was a very weak five.
J: It wasn't a hard five but it was better than my five.
J (voice-over): And then we had our favorite metric: high jumps.
J: Ok, you guys got this? 'Cause if I fall I want it on camera.
(Music to build up tension and sounds of John and Chris landing on the blocks)
J: Barely!
(Music to build up tension and sounds of John and Chris landing on the blocks)
J: Whoap!
(Sounds of all the blocks falling)
L: Alright, So....
C: (clapping)
J: I mean, I lost my courage but I also didn't have it.
(Music starts up again)
C: That does look high, doesn't it?
J: Yeah, it's starting to look high. You got it though.
(Sound of Chris landing on the blocks)
J: Easy!
C: I saw JJ Watt does this at, like, six feet.
J: I mean, JJ Watt can do a bunch of things that you can't do.
C: That's true.
J: You know he sleeps for ten hours a day?
C: I can do that.
(Music starts up again)
J: How?
(Sounds of Chris landing on the blocks)
J: That was it.
L: Ok, that was it.
J: That was barely it.
L: (laughing)
C: I'm gonna hit my head.
J (voice-over): Our last metric for the week was wall sits. I sat for 48 seconds, Chris (forever trying to make me look bad) sat for 2 minutes.
J: It looks like you're meditating. It doesn't even look hard.
(Sweet piano music plays in the background)
L: And if you even want to add more intensity to it you can always jump at the top when you lift it up.
J: No need.
L: (laughs)
(Piano music continues playing)
J (voice-over): My God we look majestic on balance balls. This is humiliating. Please- let- jump cut!
(Music ends)
J: Ok.
L: So pick your 15 or 12. Ok?
J: Let me see how much this weighs. Yeah, that's good.
L: Why the heavy basketball?
J: There's no need to be a (?) at this point in my career.
J (voice-over): We went from balance balls right to medicine balls. At least I look a little less silly here.
J: (noises of pain)
L: Rule of thumb is 220 minus your age is your 'max heart rate', so let's talk about that.
J: 180.
L: So you're supposed to be between 75% and 90% of your heart rate max. 153 is 85%.
J: Great.
L: So you're close to the anaerobic, so you're right there. (to Chris) But you ran a little lower, so you're not in danger of (?)
C: We're at 87.
L: Ok. (laughs)
J: (sighing) Shut up.
C: I'm gonna do some conference calls while I'm in here...
L: Alright, ready?
(soft piano music starts again)
J (voice-over): Then we did push-ups and squats and lifted weights, and finally Laura had one of us do knee-ups while the other pushed this incredibly heavy bench across the room.
J: I feel obstacle course bad.
J (voice-over): Fortunately, Friday was another self-directed exercise day and those are much easier.
J (voice-over): Honestly, I just went for a PokéWalk around my neighborhood; I hatched some eggs, caught a bunch of Rattata, you know.
J (voice-over): But our other Day 5 activity was cooking with our dietitian Kim. She taught us how to make healthy fish tacos and pepper nachos. She did not teach Chris how to juggle avocados, though. That was a skill he already had. 
J: Oh, you can juggle? How have I been your friend for this long, I didn't know you could juggle. You're not good, but you can juggle.
C: I did bruise this one a little bit.
Kim: Yeah, that's what happens when you juggle with avocados.
C: Yeah, that, I'm sorry, I screwed that up. I feel bad.
K: (laughing) I'm gonna have to spoon around it.
J (voice-over): And we were delighted to learn that there was a dessert. You can find the recipes for all these on our community tab, where we'll also put a recipe for the chicken apple soup that fed me for most of Day 4 and Day 5. 

Over the weekends, per Laura's instructions we can either choose self-directed exercise or to rest. Rest days are extremely important. But I was feeling really good (still in that honeymoon phase I think), so I went for a 4 mile half walk/half run on Saturday and a long walk on Sunday, while Chris played golf both days.

I'm not kidding, Chris plays a lot of golf, and he's only given us this one clip of him playing golf, so we're just gonna have to use it over and over.

So now we've come to the end of Week 1. Overall I think it's been a success. The exercise is going unambiguously well. I don't really feel physically different, but I have noticed and immediate and dramatic benefit in terms of my mental health. I have OCD and many people with OCD who exercise regularly experience a decrease in their symptoms. And I've noticed a sudden and dramatic improvement. I don't know if it's the exercise or meditation or both, but this week has definitely been my best mental health week in years.

And as for food, so our dietitian Kim agreed that we could not track our food consumption one day each week. For me that day was Saturday, and I did not eat very well. Like I had some of my kid's candy and also some granola bars and some cookies and also do you see this bag of tortilla chips? I ate it. I could go on, but I'll stop. Once I start eating like this, it's really really hard for me to stop. But it's also hard for me to imagine not having a day off from this really meticulous food tracking.

By Sunday morning, I was back to the plan, and had a very good food day. I ate well, but not too much and never felt hungry. Basically, bodies are weird and I've still got a lot left to figure out about mine.

J: (heavy breathing) F*cking majestic.
J (voice-over): Thanks for watching. I'll see you on Day 8.
(soft piano music outro starts)

J: Alright, so like what Chris is doing right now?
L: Yes. 
J: But Chris looks really stupid.
C: I may need you guys to stand on the bars on each side.
L: (laughs)
J: Sure.