Tag Archives: habit

Celebrating And Organizing (or And Yet Another Repeat Challenge)

I set out to make sure that I celebrated my birthday in August as my monthly challenge, and I would say that I accomplished that. I know that some people might do a lot more to celebrate their birthday, especially if it’s a milestone one like mine was, but I did exactly what I wanted to do. I had a party with friends, and it was one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time. I’m not great about planning things for myself, but I am glad I did it and loved seeing different friend groups coming together and having fun. I also got to continue my birthday tradition with my birthday twin and had our dinner out. It might have been a bit different than we thought it would be, but it was still perfect and made us so happy to continue the tradition.

I also just tried to be excited about starting a new decade of life, and I really did feel that way. I know realistically that turning 40 means that I’m not that young anymore or at the beginning of my life, but just because I might be in the second half doesn’t mean my life is over. I still love my life and have a lot of things that I enjoy doing. I’m planning for more fun things in the future and I truly believe that my life is just going to keep getting better as I age. And I feel healthier now than I did in my 30s, so that is helping me really enjoy my new age and new decade.

I’m really happy with how my August turned out and the celebrating that I did. And I know that I will continue to celebrate being in my 40s for a while. But I also want to set myself up for as much success as possible, and that helped to inspire this month’s challenge. I’ve done this challenge before, and it always has been helpful for me. I want to do another digital organizing/detox with the different apps and systems I use on my devices.

I have added a lot of apps to my daily routine over the years. Some of these are from challenges in the past, like using Duolingo to learn French, and some are apps I use to do other sorts of tracking in my personal life. But a lot of these apps or routines are just routines and are not really benefitting me anymore. I’m stubborn and want to continue a streak of doing something just to prove that I can keep it going, but that’s not the best use of my time. And even though most of these apps take minimal time from my day, it can add up and I don’t want to keep doing something that takes time if it’s not really doing much good for me.

When I’ve done this type of challenge before, I’ve gotten rid of apps that I know now were really just taking up time. Like the different food tracking apps that I didn’t use accurately so they weren’t benefitting me. Even though I had the best intentions to use it properly, it wasn’t working for me so I was making a minimal effort to maintain a streak but it wasn’t providing any results or data for me that I could use for other things.

There are a few apps I have in mind for this month. I’ve been doing my habit tracker either on paper or on my phone for over 8 years now. I haven’t changed the habits that much over the past few years and most of the things on there are things that I do on a regular or daily basis. I have reading listed as one of my habits, and the only time I can remember a day that I didn’t read was when I had horrible vertigo and couldn’t keep my eyes open. I have going to workouts on my list, and that’s something I do regularly and don’t need to have on a checklist as a reminder to do it. As much as I love seeing the streak of habits I’ve got going on the app, I think it’s time for me to let that app go since I really don’t use it for the reasons I started it years ago.

That’s probably the app that I use the most that I’m thinking about getting rid of during this month, but there are a lot more that I know I will probably delete. I plan on dedicating time to going through my various app folders because the way I organize apps means I don’t see a lot of what I have on there. And I know that keeping apps on my phone isn’t a big deal or makes using my phone harder, but I just want to streamline things. I want to do something similar on my computer, but with the various documents and things I have saved and not necessarily apps since I don’t put too many apps on my computer. And while I should do this on my iPad too, that device is starting to become a brick and not that useful, so I’m not using it that much. I don’t know if I’ll get another tablet anytime soon, but if I decide that I want one, then I might just start from scratch instead of transferring over all my old apps. So that’s a low priority for me. Working on my phone is at the top of my list and I’ll work on my computer after I feel like that work is done. If it takes me more than just this month, then I’ll continue into next month. But my plan is to really dedicate time so this should be done in the next few weeks.

Hopefully, while I work on getting rid of apps that don’t benefit me anymore, maybe I’ll also discover gaps in what I could be using to make my life better and I’ll find new apps or new routines that I want to add to my life. I just want to do whatever it takes to make sure that I’m not wasting time on unhelpful routines and that I maximize the free time that I do have in my life.

Dropping A Few Habits (or Still Deciding If This Is Going To Be A Good Choice)

There are a lot of habits I’ve had for a long time in my life. Some of them are necessary for my life and basically are things I do without a thought anymore. Some are things that are for my health that I do and maybe sometimes need a reminder to do (such as having an alert on my calendar each month to throw out my old contact lenses and use fresh ones). And there are some habits that I started doing because they were good for me in some sense and I’ve just kept them up because it’s routine.

But I’ve been doing some of my habits and routines for a long time just because I have been doing them for a long time and I don’t know if they still benefit me in any way. But they are things I still am aware of and track and I have to remember to do them or I feel like I forgot something. And as my schedule gets busier again and as I try to build my life again after having so little to do for so long, I have started to wonder if it’s worth it to continue doing these things just because I have been doing them for years.

There are 2 main habits I think about when debating if I should stop. First, tracking my food. I’ve been doing this for so long and have even made it a monthly challenge before. And in a way, it does keep me sane when I have a binge episode because I can have a reality check when I need it. But at the same time, unless I need that reality check I don’t always track everything I eat. Because of my schedule, I’m not always eating specific meals but instead eating small meals and snacks throughout the day. I know there is debate if having specific meals is better than grazing or snacking, but this isn’t about that. Based on what I see on the scale and how my clothes fit, I’m eating a very similar amount either way so I’m not worried about that. But on days that I graze, I rarely enter all my food. I might just add my breakfast and then nothing else. Or I’ll add one thing I ate but not the entire meal. Figuring out how much I’m eating is necessary, but the serving size from a container might not match up with the food tracking apps, so it can get frustrating.

Since I’m not usually tracking everything, I have started to question why I do it. For a long time, it was because I wanted to keep up my streak on the app in case I was going to go back to tracking everything. But I could always start back up without having a streak on the app. And maybe not focusing on tracking whatever I think of will motivate me to focus on my food in another way. I’m not sure yet.

The other thing I’ve been questioning tracking has been my daily steps. This again was a past monthly challenge that I kept up for a long time. But things came up in life and it’s been a while since I’ve had a 10,000 step day on my FitBit app. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been hitting 10,000 steps, they just aren’t always being tracked. I don’t wear my Fitbit that much during the day. I do have a clip so I can put it in a pocket or in my bra, but it’s not comfortable anymore. During my workouts, I used to keep it clipped to my pants, but that was bothering me too. My phone does track steps, but it’s not as accurate as wearing my Fitbit. And I know I could wear it as a watch, but I like my regular watch more and I don’t like the look of my Fitbit on my wrist. I do still use it every night to track my sleep because that is valuable information for me, but that’s all I’ve been able to accurately track for a long time.

So just like with the food tracking, I’m wondering what the benefit is for me to be half-tracking things. This one doesn’t concern me as much as the food tracking one goes, it’s more about me being ok not wearing my Fitbit or trying to find a random place to clip it to or put it when I go out somewhere. So accepting it as just a sleep tracker, for now, is what I think I want to do. That doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind and wear it if I’m going out somewhere and want to track my steps. But I’m not going to worry too much about it and look at what the app says each day for my total steps. I know those haven’t been accurate for a while, but I still have been looking at them and they do make me think about if a day was a good one or a not-so-good one. Having that stress off my mind might help.

Stopping these habits won’t change that much about what I’m already doing each day. I just won’t be tracking them and using them as a judgment of how I’m doing. And if I start to feel like I’m getting out of control or panicked, I can start tracking again. But since I’ve been only doing a fraction of the tracking I should be doing anyway, I don’t think this will make that much of a difference other than having a few fewer things to worry about in my daily routine.

Still Working On Creating Better Habits (or Getting More Prepared For “Normal” Life Again)

I’ve written a few posts about getting ready to be back to “normal” life again (whatever normal means in the future). I know I have created some habits that I have used to get through this pandemic and being isolated that I know are not good. And I’ve slowly been working my way through some new habits and seeing what I could turn into something productive and what I need to work on switching.

The biggest new habit I have gotten very used to is being alone and not reaching out to others. While I am not always the most social person, I used to try to make plans with friends and see if there is something I can go out to do. Or I’d see fun events happening around LA and see if anyone I know wants to join me. But now, I don’t really do that at all. I have seen plenty of virtual events posted online (which I’m now trying to make more of an effort to do) and I’ve never really thought about asking around to see if anyone else wants to do the same thing. And even though I had the recent monthly challenge of being more social with people in my life, I’m still not great at doing that. It’s hard to think to make a phone call instead of sending a text. And maybe when things are normal again, I won’t want to do phone calls as much. But it’s still something I want to work on making feel more normal in my life.

The habit I’ve been struggling with the most in the past few months has been my sleep routine. When I was out of work, I got very used to staying up later than I’d like to and sleeping in a bit (although, for me, sleeping in is usually 8am). Once I started working, I had to get into a better routine. And while I have a much better habit of waking up on time and it no longer feels early, I’m still struggling with making sure I go to bed on time. And I know I’m not getting enough sleep these days. It’s affecting me already, and I can only imagine how much more it will affect me when I have more things happening in my life. This is a habit that I mainly need to fix since I can’t see how having a lack of sleep could be turned into something good.

And while this isn’t necessarily connected to my lack of sleep, I know that part of staying up too late is because I’m watching a lot more on my tv. I have been watching a lot of shows and movies to fill my time. It’s a good way to help pass the time when there is nothing else happening in my day. And just like sleeping in, this was a habit I was doing more when I wasn’t working. Once I started working, I didn’t have as much free time to watch everything I wanted to. And I had to look at my viewing habits and see where I could cut back. Right now, it’s a bit of a hard time to cut back on movie viewing because I have SAG Awards screeners to watch. But I know that after I’m done with those, I need to limit how many nights I watch movies. And the same idea with tv. I added a lot of random shows to my DVR just so I would have things saved that I could watch when I needed something. But I’ve slowly been deleting the shows that I feel are just filler shows and not things that I want to keep up with.

I know there are other habits that I picked up over the past year that may not be things I should keep doing when life starts getting normal again. And there are other habits that I started that I will try extra hard to continue, like cooking more at home. It’s a bit weird to keep thinking about when life is back again because everything shut down so quickly and instantly. But things will be reopening slower so there will be less of a drastic change. But I still want to be ready for whatever the next safe thing will be to do so that I don’t have to keep having adjustment periods as this year goes on.

Looking Back At Some Of My New Habits (or Things I Want To Keep Doing)

I know the pandemic isn’t really almost over, but I want to believe we are coming up at the end. I hope we are past the halfway point, and I feel like that is a safe assumption. Of course, things can change so quickly (as we’ve all learned this past year), but I’m trying to stay positive and hope that we are almost to a time when we don’t have to be in the middle of a health crisis.

And I think part of the reason I think this way is because I have slowly started to have a schedule that resembles what my schedule was like a year ago. I still don’t have a big social life (at least outside of my home), but I have a regular work schedule again and I need to plan out my days to make sure I’m getting everything done that I need to. And because things are starting to feel a bit more normal to me, I’ve been thinking a lot more about my life after the pandemic is done.

The idea of being done with the pandemic is a weird one still to me. It feels like everything went from normal to pandemic times overnight. That sort of switch is unlikely to happen as we come out of this. I would guess things slowly get back to normal again. But the idea that it could be like flipping a switch has stayed in my head and I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I want to be prepared for my regular life again, whether that takes time to get back to or if it happens overnight.

So recently, I have been thinking more and more about the new habits and routines I have started in the past year. Some of these things are things specific to the pandemic, like how I disinfect things more than I used to or things I have taken up because I needed to find ways to fill my time. But most things I have started to do in the past year are things that either I have wanted to have as habits for a while or are good and positive changes that I want to keep up.

I think the most obvious one is that I have been able to get more into cooking. I still struggle with cooking a lot and don’t do it as much as I would like, but it’s still better than it was a year ago. I have figured out more things I can buy so that it’s easier for me to make meals each day. Not everything has to be made from scratch. There are things I can keep in my house that help me put together easy meals with very little time or effort. And this is something I want to not only keep up, but continue to grow and maybe one day in the future I will be cooking almost everything I eat instead of relying on delivery food or microwave meals.

Going along with cooking, I’ve gotten into a new cleaning routine. This was something I was working on before the pandemic, but having the time to work on this has been good. I have always been someone who has a small bit of routine with cleaning. For as long as I can remember, I have always done my laundry on Sundays. This goes back to when I was in elementary or middle school (whatever age I was when I started doing my own laundry). But the rest of my cleaning hasn’t been a regular schedule. I do still do 5-10 minutes of speed cleaning every day, but it’s always been random cleaning tasks. Now, I’m trying to be more mindful of what days I do different things. This is still something I’m working out, but I’m getting better at it. And since I have focused more on cleaning, I have gotten better at what cleaning products I have in my house. I have made it easier for me to do a big clean around my house and keeping all the tools I might need in a central place. Having a cleaning caddy is a very small thing I did, but it made a big change in my life.

I’ve also changed up my beauty/self-care routine in the past year. Some of this was due to boredom and needing to find things to fill time. So I did a bit more into my daily routines since it took up time in my morning. But recently, I’ve been a bit more selective about what self-care things I do each day since I don’t have endless time every day. But I still have gotten into a good routine especially with my skincare. I actually have reduced the number of products I’ve used when compared to a year ago. I’ve realized I don’t need to use as much stuff on my skin to make it look nice. I did change up a few products because I noticed some issues after wearing masks, but those are all minor things that I know will be easy to stop doing once that’s no longer an issue with my skin.

But I think the best new habit I’ve started that I want to keep up is just finding different ways to stay in touch with people. Everyone has had to do that over the past year. I have done more phone calls and video calls in the past year than probably in the 10 years before. In-person hangouts will always be best, but I have learned that I don’t have to just use those to stay in touch with people. I know that my calls will be reduced once I’m not using that as often, but I won’t be getting rid of regular phone calls with friends.

I hope that one day in the future, I will look back at this time with a positive mindset. I know that it’s been horrible and so many people have died who didn’t need to. There’s no doubt that I wish we never went through this. But I’m working on being grateful for the things I have learned and picked up during this year of isolation and seeing how it can make my life better going forward.

Baby Steps With Cooking (or I’m Cautiously Optimistic)

I wrote about how I have been doing a lot more cooking these days a little while ago. At least being forced to cook more often is one positive of the current situation. I know that I could have just done a lot of frozen dinners and delivery food, and I am proud that I didn’t do that. I have gotten some delivery food and I do get some frozen meals when I get groceries, but I don’t do it that often. And compared to before, I’m not getting delivery food as often (both to try to save money and for safety reasons). And since I don’t like to just have meals made of snack foods, I have been forcing myself to cook a few times a week.

Some of the cooking I’m doing has been stuff I probably couldn’t do during normal times. I have been cooking a nicer breakfast/brunch several days a week. If I had work, I couldn’t do that. But since I only work an hour, I can do my work and then make food after. The breakfasts that I cook aren’t anything fancy, but I have been making lots of egg dishes and it does feel special compared to what I normally eat in the morning. I haven’t gotten super creative with breakfasts since I’m usually cooking when I’m hungry, but the fact that I’m cooking that many mornings is a good change for me.

Since a lot of days I eat my first meal as brunch, I usually do brunch and then dinner (sometimes with a snack). And my dinners aren’t fancy either, but they are more creative than things I used to cook. There have been a lot of days that I cook pretty basic stuff, but it’s still more interesting than just a turkey burger and veggies (and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s a lot of what I used to make). For example, the other night I had a spice packet for fajitas. So that’s what I made. Cooking veggies and some chicken wasn’t too crazy, but it still was more than I probably would do before. And part of the reason why I might not have done it before was that I wasn’t doing a lot of planning.

I’ve tried meal planning several times. Sometimes it clicks with me for a little bit, but it has never really stuck. And I don’t know why that is. I’ve tried to do stricter meal planning with prepping everything one day a week so it’s all ready. I’ve tried writing out a menu and planning on when I’d eat leftovers. And I’ve tried so many ways in between those ideas. It just hasn’t worked for me. And I’ve tried to force it to work over and over again. And now, I’m realizing that maybe meal planning just isn’t going to be something I can accomplish. I’m not really meal planning right now, and I’m doing more cooking than ever. Even when you take out the breakfasts I’m making, I’m still cooking so much more.

Maybe I need to meal plan with the idea of what days will I cook, what days will I eat leftovers, and what days will I eat a frozen meal or get something from a restaurant (either going out or getting delivery). I need to feel comfortable with a few different recipes that I know I can make and don’t feel too crazy. There have been a few things I’ve been making over and over again and I feel comfortable making them without having to look at a recipe. And if I can build upon those things I already feel good about making, then I could have a lot of recipes that I could turn to when I need to cook.

I wish I could be able to do this when it’s easy to go to the grocery store to get ingredients. It’s not easy for me to decide what I want to eat a week or two in advance. I have been doing grocery delivery to get ingredients from time to time. But I also don’t want to end up spending a lot of extra money because I’m randomly buying groceries. At the same time, I don’t know how much I can change at one time. Maybe I should just be happy that I’m cooking more and not stress too much about the grocery delivery.

I’m still trying to stay hopeful that once life starts getting back to normal that I’ll be able to maintain at least some of my new cooking routine. I will probably still have another month or so before things start getting normal again, so that’s time to continue to build the habit. Eventually, a switch will have to flip for me and I just don’t know how that will happen. But this is another attempt at making cooking more routine for me and I can only hope that this is the way that it clicks in place for me.

Seeing My Therapist (or Building Habits)

I saw my therapist earlier this week. This was the first time that I had seen him in 6 months because he has been feeling like I’ve been doing a pretty good job lately. So he trusted me to be ok with a 6 month gap between appointments but let me know that if anything changed I could see him sooner if I needed to.

I had been feeling pretty good about this appointment lately. After my interview for the audition recently, I have really realized how much progress has been made and I knew that my appointment would be filled with positive news.

I had brought a couple of things with me to my appointment. Usually, I bring my happiness checklist, but I’m now using an app to track that so I made sure my phone was charged so I could show him if he wanted to see it. I also brought my Spark Planner with me. I’ve been tracking so much stuff in there lately and I wanted it to remind myself of anything as well as proof to show him if he wanted to see it.

The first thing discussed in my appointment was how I was feeling about Vyvanse. I think I’m doing pretty well on it and there was only one minor concern about things. I’ve been taking my larger dose in the morning and smaller dose at lunch, but I feel like maybe those should be switched. There is more time between lunch and bedtime than there is between breakfast and lunch. And since I’m not having sleeping issues with Vyvanse, I’m not worried about a slightly larger dose at lunchtime. My therapist agreed with me completely and my new prescription bottles will reflect that (for now, I just take the afternoon medication in the morning and visa versa until I’m using my refill).

After that check in, we discussed how I’ve been doing with my happiness checklist and other things. I told him how I had been using an app for the checklist since it’s easier and I always have it with me, and I think his biggest surprise is that I’ve continued to keep it up. He wrote down the name of the app (HabitBull) so he can tell other patients as well, so that made me feel pretty awesome.

And then we talked about my Spark Planner. I told him how I had been tracking a lot of stuff in there this year and I was showing off the various sections of it. I showed him where I can track my annual goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals and I think he was impressed that there is such a big focus on goal setting. It’s good for me to have goals to reach toward, so the more I can focus and have to think about my goals the better.

But what my therapist was most impressed with were the monthly challenges that are within the Spark Planner.

30 Day Challenges

I showed him the monthly challenges I’ve been doing and let him know that I’ve basically had 100% success with keeping up each challenge even beyond the month that I set the challenge for (the only one that hasn’t been 100% has been weighing myself in because I can only do that at home and I was in Santa Barbara for Rayshell’s wedding without my scale). And I know that I can’t do 100% perfection with all challenges for the rest of my life, but even if I only keep them up part-time these are all good habits that I’ve been building and that’s just awesome.

And habit building is exactly what my therapist wants me to focus on over these next 6 months. The more I build positive habits in my life, the more likely that recovery from my eating disorder will become a positive habit eventually. While the individual habits are sometimes recovery related, even the non-recovery ones are helping me get into a better space in my life and to build my habit building muscles up so that I can use them for whatever I need to.

I knew when I bought my Spark Planner that it was going to be a good thing for me, but to know that my therapist thinks that this is what will help me get to recovery one day is amazing. I’m still figuring out what recovery really means to me (and that’s something I did discuss with my therapist), but I’m feeling even better that recovery is in my future one day.

At the end of my appointment, I felt incredible and on cloud 9. My therapist even said that in some ways, I’m doing better than he is and he needs to get better and doing some things like I’m doing now. For me, so much of my habit work is having something to remind me to do it. I have so many alarms/reminders set on my phone so I know to do something. If I didn’t have that, I would easily forget and that’s what life was like before. There’s no shame in needing to be reminded to do something, but for some reason I was not willing to do that before.

But now that I’m fine with the dozens of alarms on my phone, I’m making sure I’m getting my new habits done and I’m excited to see how I’ll be doing in 6 months when I see my therapist again.