Tag Archives: sleep

Working On Feeling Better Mentally and Physically (or Picking A Workout Challenge For March)

Posted on March 1, 2023 | Comments Off on Working On Feeling Better Mentally and Physically (or Picking A Workout Challenge For March)

When I set my monthly challenge for February, I had no idea I’d basically be forced into sleeping better in order to get over the cold I caught. I was going to bed earlier and could sleep in because I wasn’t going to my workouts. I think the last time I got that much sleep was when I was out of work and was not getting up too early to work out in the morning.

And getting that much sleep that week proved how much I really needed to work on my sleep schedule. I’m back to getting up as early as I normally do since I’m back to my workouts, so my focus has to be on what time I get to bed. There are some nights when I’m getting to bed a lot earlier than I used to and there are other nights when I’m noticing I’m staying up too late. But even those later nights are still not as bad as they used to be. I’m averaging about an hour more sleep a night, which is a start. I want to get it up a bit higher, but that will take some time. But at least I’ve made a start that I can build off of. This is a work in progress, but it’s the most progress I’ve made on this goal that I’ve had for myself for a long time.

And for this month, I’m doing another health-related challenge and it’s inspired a bit by the time when I was sick. After I took a week off from my workouts, I did notice that I had gotten a bit weaker. This was expected since I had to take time off, but it was frustrating. And since I’ve been back, I’ve been really wanting to build my strength back up. But as I’ve been doing that, I also have wondered if I’ve been stagnant with what I have been doing. So this month, I want to challenge myself to find where I can be stronger and work harder in my workouts.

I know that there are some parts of my workouts that might be easier to build upon than others. I think it will be hardest to have improvements with my rowing, but I know I can still try. But because of some physical restrictions, there is only so much I can do. I’ll see what can happen when I try, but I’m not setting any crazy expectations. But I think I can make some good improvements on the bike and with the floor work. I want to see if I can increase the resistance level on the bike a bit more for some of the workouts and also see if I can pedal faster when I’m using the levels I’ve been using for a while. And on the floor, I know it’s not just as easy as using heavier weights, but I should be more comfortable with testing out the heavier weights to see if it’s possible or if I could do some of the reps with the heavy weights before using my normal ones. This isn’t the most straightforward progress, but they are steps toward improvement and that’s what I need to be ok with doing.

As much as I’d love to see super fast progress and immediately have improvements in my workouts, I think seeing how my sleep improvement went made me remember that any steps of progress are good. So even if I end March with marginal improvements, that will still put me ahead of where I am now. And if I can make small improvements every month or every other month, that will add up over time. All I can do is try and see what happens over the course of this month and hopefully, there will be some changes that I can continue over time so I see some big improvements and changes at the end of the year.

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health

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Another Challenge About My Schedule (or Hopefully This Month Goes Better)

Posted on February 1, 2023 | Comments Off on Another Challenge About My Schedule (or Hopefully This Month Goes Better)

As I wrote about halfway through January, I think I might have picked the wrong monthly challenge for my first one in 2023. I had so many good intentions to work on planning out a schedule and so many things happened that made that a lot more difficult than it should have been. I really did try to figure out at least something to have regularity in my week, but it was limited to only a few things.

I have a much better idea of when I can try to cook a meal since it’s really limited with my schedule. I want to try to figure out some faster things to make so I can cook after work and not feel overwhelmed or eat too late. And I’m working on prepping ingredients so they are easy to grab throughout the week. For example, I make my own pickled onions to add to salads and sandwiches on the weekend so I have them all week.

I also had a few small ideas about my cleaning schedule. There’s a lot more to work on with this, but I am trying to use my robot vacuum more so I don’t feel as much pressure to do vacuuming after work to keep up with things. I’m looking into other shortcuts to tricks I can use for other cleaning tasks, but I think I really should think more seriously about having a cleaning service come in once a month or so to do a big cleaning. I think that will help keep things in order so my weekly cleanings aren’t as big. I have to do some budgeting work to figure out if that’s feasible, but I’m making it a higher priority for me than some other things I was thinking of saving for.

Even though my January challenge about scheduling didn’t go that well, I have another scheduling challenge for February. This is a part of my big annual goals for the year, but this month I want to really focus on my sleeping schedule and making sure I get more sleep each night.

This has been something I have known I needed to do for a long time, but it really hit me hard this week. Last week, I was doing really well with getting to bed on time and getting an hour or more sleep each night than I have been getting. I know I still need more than that, but I did feel a difference and I was feeling a lot better. But this week, I’ve been getting back into my usual habits and I’m not getting enough sleep again. I’m actually getting a bit more sleep this week than I did a few weeks ago, but it’s still less than last week. And it’s making me more tired than I have been before. I wasn’t expecting it to be such a huge change, but I guess this is a sign that I really do need to focus more on sleep.

And that’s exactly what I plan to do this month. I know it’s tempting to stay up late to read to catch up on tv or other things, but I just need to remember that I can do that another time. Unless there is something urgent that has to be done, I want to really try hard to stick to a better sleep schedule even if I want to stay up later. I know this won’t always be possible, especially if I am meeting up with friends in the evening or going to dinner. But I can make an effort for all the evenings I’m not out and don’t have a good excuse to stay up late.

I’m curious if I’ll be able to do this since this is something I’ve been struggling with for a while. But I’m also curious to see how this makes me feel if I’m able to do it for most of the month. I want to see how it affects my physical and mental health. I know it will only have positive effects, but I don’t know how much of a difference it will make yet. But hopefully, but the end of this month I will be able to update you with the results!

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Getting Back On Track (or Another Continuation Of A Monthly Challenge)

Posted on October 1, 2020 | Comments Off on Getting Back On Track (or Another Continuation Of A Monthly Challenge)

For September, I challenged myself to get back on track. I’ve done a lot of variations of this challenge since the pandemic started. It’s been hard to get back to good habits when my world is not the way I’m used to. It’s hard to have a schedule when you don’t have things to schedule around. I tried to find a way to get things to feel a bit more stable, but I kept struggling.

And just like every other attempt at this challenge, I feel like I made some progress but I didn’t fully succeed. But I do feel like I made more moves forward than I have before, and that’s something I’m proud of. I think it did help that I had 3 things that I really focused on and I had some clear ideas of what I wanted to do. I focused on my sleep, my workouts, and my food.

For my sleep, I’m not quite back to my regular sleep schedule. But I’m getting closer. I am still staying up a bit later than I would like to, especially when I know I could sleep in if I wanted to the next day. I’m really trying to get back to my regular schedule where I don’t sleep in. There’s really nothing happening now that I need to stay up for. I just don’t go to bed on time. I’ve been getting much better at getting in bed before midnight (I want to get it closer to being in bed by 11:30 or maybe a little earlier). And while I do read in bed before I go to sleep, as long as I’m in bed by that time I usually do ok with my sleep. I had occasional nights where I was up until 1 or 2, and I felt really miserable the next day. I think that I just need to keep working toward going to bed earlier and I’ll be back to my schedule soon.

My workouts also are feeling a bit more on track. I’m having setbacks and my bad weeks are really tough on me. But having weights really has helped me feel like my workouts are closer to what I used to do when I went to the classes in person. I’m feeling sore, which is a good feeling to me (I still can’t believe I like feeling sore) and I know that I’m getting some of my strength back. I’ve been lucky that I haven’t struggled to keep up with my workout schedule because that would have been really hard to fix. But having half-ass workouts has been a bit of a struggle too and I feel much better about how my workouts are going after this past month.

Getting my food back on track was harder for me. This is something that is so hard for me even in normal times. But doing it during a pandemic when I’ve had so many setbacks is even harder. But I still had some good things happen. I’ve been more mindful of what I already have when I make my grocery list. I try to limit how often I get groceries delivered. I’ve tried to not order in as much from different restaurants because I know I always have something I could eat at home when I do that (it just might not be as tasty or what I’m craving).

And getting my food back on track fits in with my challenge for this month. I want to work on finding some more easy and lazy recipes this month. By easy and lazy recipes, I mean things I can put together with almost no effort and with things that I either usually have in my house or have ingredients that are easy to get. I don’t have a lot of these recipes right now in my life. I would say making a turkey burger or veggie burger and steaming veggies is one of them. Another is roasting some potatoes and onions and then putting an egg on top of it (sometimes I add cheese too). Those are super easy for me to make and I don’t have to think too much about it when I’m making them. I also have minimal clean up when I make them.

I know having more recipes like those will help me continue to make progress with getting my food back on track. I don’t think I will ever be someone who wants to cook every night (although that is a challenge I’m considering), but I’d love to cook from scratch a majority of the time. If I eat a frozen dinner once or twice a week and have things I made the other nights, I would consider that a huge step forward. But in order for me to have that happen, I know I need to find more lazy recipes. That’s the only way I can see that idea sustainable.

Hopefully, I’ll find some great recipes that I will want to make over and over again. And if I don’t, I’m still hoping that this challenge makes me cook more and gets me to a better place with my food. The only way I see myself failing this challenge is to not try. And I know that is possible, but I’m really hoping I don’t allow myself to do that.

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Another Attempt At A Reset (or Feeling Sick Got Me Into A Bad Routine)

Posted on January 29, 2020 | Comments Off on Another Attempt At A Reset (or Feeling Sick Got Me Into A Bad Routine)

When I was feeling sick from antibiotics, I dealt with a lot of random symptoms. Many of them were similar to what I deal with each month with pain and nausea, but they weren’t being resolved by the things I usually do to feel better. I was also dealing with other symptoms that made me just feel awful.

I was able to work and go to my workouts, but that’s about all I could do. I was exhausted because I was waking up constantly at night. I wasn’t eating well because I went from not being hungry to feeling so hungry and nothing seemed to be what I wanted. And I wasn’t drinking enough water (which is a rare issue for me to have since I tend to overhydrate) because for some reason drinking water was making me feel very full and my stomach was hurting.

I’m not proud of what I was doing while I was feeling sick because they really weren’t the best choices for me. The sleep issue was one that I couldn’t help too much, even though I probably could have tried to go to bed earlier so I would have maybe gotten a bit more sleep. But whatever sleep I would have gotten would have been interrupted, no matter how early I went to bed. That’s been a bit easier to get back to my normal routine than getting my eating back has been.

I didn’t do anything as bad as I have done in the past with binge episodes, but they weren’t good either. I was making bad choices constantly and I’m paying for it now. I don’t feel like myself and I just feel like I’m recovering from poor nutrition choices and I’m not feeling better. Fortunately, this is just a general uneasy feeling and not a sick feeling like the week before.

I was finally done with antibiotics over the weekend and I started working back toward what I know I need to be doing. But it hasn’t been easy to do, just like every other time I try to have better habits. And I’ve done this attempt so many times in the past and I know how frustrating it can be for me. But I have to do it because there really isn’t another choice for me.

I’m trying to get back to some basics with food. As much as I want to learn how to cook a lot of good options for myself, I also know that having too many options can be a bad thing for me. I need to be a bit more regimented in what I keep in my house and what I might each for each meal. It’s not the most fun thing to do or super interesting, but it’s a way to reset myself before I focus on adding more things back in. And I’ve been wanting to do the autoimmune protocol diet for a while so I might not be adding things back in once I do reset things for myself. But that’s not something I’m focusing on right now.

Right now, it’s about making sure I’m getting some good food into my body every day, even if that’s not all I eat all the time. And I need to get back to drinking more water on a regular schedule so I can stay hydrated but make sure I don’t start overhydrating myself again. I’m not too focused on eating on a regular schedule since that is a much bigger struggle for me that I don’t need to worry about right now. But I do need to make sure that I eat enough so I don’t have horrible cravings.

As things are so often in my life, it’s a huge balancing act to figure out the right combination of foods and schedule so that I’m not swinging too far one way or another. And while weight loss isn’t the point for me right now with trying to reset myself, I know it will be a result of my efforts because the poor choices I was making last week did make me gain weight.

Hopefully, in a week or so I will be back to a slightly more normal situation and I can focus on improving it more from that point. But I need to get back to my normal first before I make more changes. I’ve made the mistake of trying to do too much at one time with fixing my eating and I have seen it backfire. So I’m going to go slowly this time and hopefully I can prevent the issues I’ve had in the past. But if nothing else, I just want to be back to my normal and reset myself so I’m not feeling like I went so far back to old habits and I’m stuck there.

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My Monthly Challenge To Finish Out The First Half Of The Year (or Sleeping And More Organizing)

Posted on June 4, 2019 | 2 comments

It’s crazy to think that after this month the year will be half over! I’ve said it dozens of times (and will say it probably thousands more), but time is just going so fast! I do love that I have so many checkins with myself to not let time slip by. I have things that I do to check in every week and every month and it does help me stay more mindful as time goes by. And one of those checkins is my monthly challenge.

Last month, I had a challenge to work on my sleep a bit more. I have finally gotten to a place where I don’t struggle to get up in the morning. Even when I can sleep in on a Sunday, I still usually wake up at 7am since that is the time I get up every other day. But because I naturally get up early, if I stay up late it means I just won’t get the sleep I need. And I had been noticing that I was going to sleep later and later even on the nights I needed to be up early. So I wanted to work on my better bedtime routine so I could be closer to getting all the sleep I needed most nights.

There were still a few nights that I know I was up too late and I did suffer for it. But I am in a better place now with being used to going to bed a bit earlier now than I was before I started the challenge. I did think about it more when I wanted to watch another show before going to sleep and I would often decide it wasn’t worth staying up. I still have a lot of work to do so that I’m averaging enough sleep a night when I take tossing and turning into account, but I’m much closer to that.

One unexpected thing I did discover about myself while doing this challenge was what later bedtime would also work. While I don’t want to be getting under 5 hours of sleep a night, there is something about making sure you are in the best part of your sleep cycle when you do wake up. So if I’m up a bit too late, I now have a slightly better idea of how much later I should stay up so getting up doesn’t feel as hard. It’s weird to think that sometimes forcing myself to have less sleep will result in not being as tired, but it does work. But it’s not something I want to get into the habit of and I want to work on increasing my sleep.

My sleep challenge is going to continue over the next few months for sure, but I’m glad I did focus on it last month so I could get some of the better habits started and I have a better idea of what to work on. I knew I needed to fix things, but the specifics were a bit up in the air until I tested them out and I discovered new things that I hope will help me.

I wanted to shift to a bit more concrete challenge this month so my progress was easier to see. I had a few ideas of what I could do, but I ended up being inspired by a few different things that happened. First, my phone gave me an alert that I was running out of space. I am waiting to see if Apple will release another smaller iPhone because I don’t like the giant ones, so I have to do what I can to make my current phone work as long as possible. I also realized that I wasn’t using my iPad the same way I had been using it when I got it. I still use it and am so grateful to have it, but I was just getting frustrated with a few things that were’t working the same way my phone would do.

So I decided that for this month, I’m going to do some digital organizing. I have already been clearing things out of my phone to add more space, but I know there is so much more than I can do. And I know that a lot of my frustration with my iPad comes down to not finding my apps as easily because they aren’t organized the same way and I just grab my phone because it is easier.

I know this is really a first world problem, but I know that being more organized on my devices will help me be more productive. And that really is my goal with so many different aspects of my life. I don’t want to have to waste time trying to find where something is on a device and then waste time being frustrated after I can’t find it. I do have a bit of this issue on my computer as well with a few things on there that I don’t need or links in my bookmarks that are outdated, but I don’t notice it as much. Maybe that’s because I spend so much time on my computer with work so I don’t feel like I’m wasting as much time. But I want to try to work on that as well.

I’m sure in working through this organizing I’ll discover other things with my devices that I want to work on. Maybe I’ll find new systems to make my life easier. Or I’ll discover new apps that I will want to help with things that aren’t as simple as they can. Doing any sort of audit or organization really brings out new and interesting things. I’m excited to see what I will discover over this next month working on it.

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Doing More Tracking (or Finding Out Some Data Is Just Too Emotional)

Posted on May 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Doing More Tracking (or Finding Out Some Data Is Just Too Emotional)

Last month, I had a goal to work on tracking a few things in my life. I knew that things were getting a bit out of control and tracking is a way to gain control again. All of the things I was planning on tracking were things I have tracked before so I figured it should be a relatively easy challenge. And of course, since I thought it would be easy it wasn’t.

It was easy for me to track my spending and income. This was a habit that I had been doing for a while and it was pretty easy to get back into it. There were a few moments where I forgot to track something or had to spend more time than I would have liked double checking things, but it’s been relatively easy. It helps that right now I have more money coming in than I’m used to so I’m not seeing everything in red. But I want to get this habit back to where it was so I’m ready when things aren’t as great.

I also wanted to do accurate tracking of my weight and food. And this is where I struggled last month. Tracking my weight wasn’t too horrible, but I’ve realized that it’s not something I want to keep up as regularly as I was. I have some big weight fluctuations due to hormones and even when I know that my weight gain isn’t real it feels that way. It’s not easy when the scale says you are up 10 pounds overnight and all your clothes don’t fit. I know that it’s due to swelling and water weight, but I still hate seeing that. I need to figure out a better way to track weight because I need to do it, but I can’t do it as often right now. I’m not sure if weekly would be right and mostly doesn’t seem often enough, so this is something I will have to play with.

And tracking my food was kind of a disaster. Food tracking is such an emotional thing for me and I thought doing tracking would help take that away a bit. But instead, it made it more emotional and I could sense my moods being affected if I had a good day or bad day. I know I do need to do some tracking, but I’m not sure how to do it without the emotional tug I was feeling. It may have just been harder for me this time because of where I am in my life and outside factors, but whatever it was I know I failed at tracking food last month.

And for this month, I have another tracking related challenge. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am not sleeping enough. I have had several days of only getting 4 hours of sleep. Part of this problem is how well I have trained myself to get up at the same time every day. Even if I go to bed really late, I’m still up at 7. If I sleep in, it’s only until 7:30 or 8 and that’s not that late if I get to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning. It’s not always that I am out late, sometimes I am in bed at a reasonable time and I stay up reading. Before I know it, it’s 2am and I’m still awake.

I know in a perfect world I would be asleep by 11pm so that I will get at least 7 hours of sleep even if I wake up in the middle of the night. That’s not totally realistic since there are some times that I’m just getting home at 11. But I think setting a goal to be in bed by midnight on those late nights and by 11:30 on not late nights isn’t too hard. And I need to set a limit on my nighttime reading to make sure that my lights are being turned off by midnight. It probably sounds weird to have to limit how much I read at night, but sometimes I just get so into a book that I forget that I need to put it down.

I think working on having a set bedtime also relates to better time management in general. I don’t have to get everything done in the evenings that I make myself do. I can save some for the next day or if I was better with how I use my time I could probably get them done during the day. Procrastination is my enemy when trying to get better about when I go to sleep.

I know that some people have alarms to remind them to go to sleep, and I’m going to look into those options. I might just add something to my daily reminders to remind me that I need to start winding down. I already have my phone and computer set to reduce the blue light I see in the evening, but I don’t have that for my tv. I know that they have blue light blocking glasses so those might be a good investment for me (I just don’t know how they would work if I was also wearing my regular glasses if I took my contacts out). I also am going to look at what parts of my evening routine I can do earlier so that it’s not a lot of self-care work at the end of the day and I’m tired.

I’m ready to not feel as tired anymore. This has been a problem I’ve been dealing with for a while but it has gotten significantly worse in the past few months. I know that getting more sleep will benefit so many aspects of my life and I can’t wait to see those benefits. And hopefully it will have some benefits I’m not expecting and my life will be even better when I’m well-rested a majority of the time.

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Hating The Heat (or Again, My Body Is Lying)

Posted on May 2, 2014 | 1 comment

I’ve mentioned before how I don’t like when it’s really hot out because my body feels like it’s gained a ton of weight. Well, with the current heat wave in Los Angeles, I’m having the same problem again.

First of all, let me say that I know that the heat here is temporary and I’m grateful for that. And that most of the country has much worse heat waves that last for a lot longer than this will (it should be normal again here by next week).

But it doesn’t help the feeling of annoyance that I feel whenever I try to get dressed in the morning. Lots of clothes in my closet don’t fit right right now. I spent the past few days in yoga capris and tank tops since those have a lot of stretch in them.

And I’m sure my annoyance isn’t helped by the fact that the past few nights I haven’t slept well since it’s very hot in my bedroom at night. I have a fan on full blast next to my bed, but it only blows hot air around.

This heat wave is one of the first times I’ve missed having to go into a job every day. At least when I had to go somewhere else for work there was air conditioning. Working at my house is pretty warm. But staying in yoga clothes helps a little (since those clothes are pretty breathable).

But the most important thing for me to remember in this heat wave is not to give up on trying to lose weight while it feels like everything is suddenly 2 sizes too small. I’m avoiding my scale until the temperature goes back into the 80’s (or lower) and I’m going to live in my yoga clothes unless I have to go out dressed differently for some reason (like when I went to work last night at my box office job).

Sorry to have a rant on here after having 2 really fun posts the last few days. Since getting back from Disneyland all I’ve done is work from home and try to survive the heat the best that I could. If I had something more interesting to share, I would. But this has taken over my life the rest of this week.

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Posted in Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

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Adventures On The Red-Eye (or Surviving On Almost No Sleep)

Posted on March 20, 2014 | Comments Off on Adventures On The Red-Eye (or Surviving On Almost No Sleep)

Well, I made it to NYC! It’s my first time being back since August 2000 (yes, a lot of things have changed here since then) and I couldn’t be more excited!

Since I was leaving from Los Angeles and my sister-in-law was leaving from San Francisco, we did our best to try to get flights around the same time. We got it to where she got in about 90 minutes before me, so that’s not too bad.

I haven’t taken a red-eye flight since January 2005 and that flight was a long one so there was plenty of time to sleep (that was Chicago to Paris). Since this flight was going to be just over 5 hours and I have my issues with flying, I really was hoping for the best this time.

I took my panic meds on my usual schedule for flying days and right before I left for LAX I took an Advil PM. I thought that would help me in 2 ways. First of all, it would help me fall asleep a bit easier. Also, it would help me from getting too sore since I was going to be sleeping in an economy class seat (upgrading to first class was an extra $300 and I just can’t afford that).

I had a friend take me to LAX (thank you Lupe!) and right before she came to pick me up, I did some more prep work for being ready to sleep on a plane. I got changed into comfortable travel clothes (leggings, t-shirt, and a sweatshirt/sweater hybrid), brushed my teeth, and took out my contact lenses and put on my glasses.

Once I got on the plane, I tried to get settled very quickly. I got as comfortable as I could in my seat (thank goodness I had a window seat so I could lean on the side) and got my neck pillow out and ready to be used. I also took a quick picture because the mood lighting on Virgin America was pretty awesome.

photo 1

I tried to close my eyes as soon as the plane took off, but I still wasn’t too comfortable in my seat. Finally, once we were allowed to put our seats back, I did and was able to feel a bit more relaxed.

But I have to say, my mission to sleep on the plane was a failure. I took a couple of naps on the flight, but each of those was under an hour and I was probably awake for a half hour in between each nap. I guessed that over the entire flight, I maybe slept 2.5 hours. That’s not too good for what was supposed to be my entire night’s sleep!

About 30 minutes before we landed, I woke up from one of my naps and I realized that I had to give up on trying to sleep. So I turned on my tv on the seat in front of me and watched our progress into JFK.

photo 3

The sun was starting to rise as we were close to landing, so I got a cool view of the sky.

photo 4

After the flight, I was able to meet up with my sister-in-law (who landed in a different terminal than I did) and we got a cab to take us to Midtown Manhattan to the Waldorf Astoria (where we are staying for this trip).

We had a pretty full first day in New York, but that will have to wait until the next blog post. I’m actually writing this on Wednesday evening (so technically less than 24 hours after I left LAX). It’s currently 8:17pm here in NY, and I’m going to bed! I seriously need to catch up on some sleep!

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