Day 201 Record Keeping
Day 169 Fixed Meditation
Day 115 Bodyweight Exercise (2x5 diamond pushups, 3x5 bent knee inverted rows)
Day 42 Writing = 64
Day 215 Eating = 77
Great sleep, good wakeup.

No Bread Challenge Analysis

I thought of this challenge more of an exercise in stabilizing habits that are more general and have wobblly bits to them, and a challenge to experiment with rising emotions and urges in habits that have to be maintained more continuously and as a negation (as opposed to habits that need only be performed once per day).

Eating right is a habit that is way too general. There are just way too many factors that have to be triggered at various times during the day. You gotta know what places around you serve the correct foods. You need to learn how to shop and cook regularly. If I were to do this habit again, I would break it down into minute bits. But, not having done so, I felt this no bread challenge was an excellent way to bolster the habit.

As for rising emotions in negative habits, this definitely worked. At my latest count I said no to bread or other high carb substances 31 times in the space of 4 months. Taking a picture really helped because it made it a challenge, and freed me to go places where I would be tempted. Posting it to this blog seemed to make it official. The whole process definitely became gamified - I felt like I was earning points.

I want to try this again, and I want to find what the tipping point is. How many instances of refusal does it take for me to make this into a habit? Does it change from challenge to challenge? Did I really make refusing bread into a negative habit? Or, as many people say that you don’t form negative habits - did I replace eating bread with taking a picture of it? Will this work with other habits? Is it still at work within me - will this habit continue?

I’d really like to try this with dynamic meditation - but I’d like to break it down into individual emotional concerns. For example - a month of no stress - rather than do everything at once like I did in the past. Each challenge will no doubt have unique problems - how do I take a picture of responding to tension and stress? I’ll have to think about it.