The Science of Self-Help

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Day 834 & Meal Prep Sundays and the Hangry Blues

Day 834 Record Keeping
Day 806 Fixed Meditation (30 min)
Day 680 Writing (3 rounds of 30 min)
Day 220 Rowing (30 min, 5300 m)
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Eating
Day 58 Pantry Check (79)
Day 56 Recording

ok sleep, good wakeup.
Despite waking up and not being able to go back to sleep and dragging, I did really well today. Really unfocused meditation.

Meal Prep Sundays and The Hangry Blues
In a previous post -  “Syncing with Significant Others” - I talked about problems Lydia and I have with syncing our eating plans. This came to a head again today. I haven’t started my “early to rise” plan and since I still wake up later, our schedules don’t always match up.

She wants to eat early when she’s at a breaking point in her day and she wants to at least sync up for dinner so we can eat together. She’s fine taking care of her own lunches without me, but worries that since I don’t get hungry until later in the day I won’t be hungry when she will be for dinner.

I am pushing and extending several of my habits. Writing/work in particular is being extended, and there’s a certain rhythm I get into after I start. It’s gotten to the point where I either am being forced into a wake up habit (which is something I want to do eventually) or I gotta break my rhythm. 

I have no problem starting multiple chains now. I know I can do this; my tea and food recording habit before bed has proven I can start new chains (perhaps with the aid of a ritual). 

I don’t however want to start a new habit of eating then working more. Mainly because it requires a more global change in my food habits. I need to plan at least my lunches. The last several days it hasn’t been a problem because I usually cook the day before and have those leftovers during lunch. It doesn’t really interrupt anything that much in that there’s no leaving the apartment or cooking anything from scratch.

Our solution, other than starting a wakeup habit, is to start planning meals. As Lydia mentioned, I’m extending more and more, of my habits so there’s going to be an inevitable point where I have to deal with those habits abutting against the need to eat whether or not I wake up early. 

We discussed a Sunday morning meal prep, a happy coincidence because I just stumbled upon a SubReddit for that - Meal Prep Sunday (and Lydia was reading about it on http://meljoulwan.com/) . The how of it all is still in the air. We’ve got a few ideas, and it will be my first foray into a once a week habit. This also has been inevitable - there are too many planning things I feel like I need to incorporate once a week. I’m thinking a ritual of perhaps gathering metrics and stats, course adjusting, meal prep, and later a social/leisure planning session might be just the thing I need for Sundays. 

After I grumped about having my work interrupted and grumped some more because I was getting hungry, we ordered in some Indian food with no naan (Naan is one of my kryptonites) - just curries, which are (mostly) clean. I don’t like planning the entirety of my life, but it is amazing how much needless stress I run into by not planning. We’ll see how it works.