Day 1041

Day 1041 Record Keeping
Weekend Habits
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Eating
Day 265 Pantry Check (DiD NOT DO)
Day 263 Food Recording (DID NOT DO)
Day 25 Sunday Meal Prep 66 (DID NOT DO)
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Early to Rise
Day 196 Water
Day 196 Sleep Recording  (1|9:30|10:20)
Day 167 Bedtime Curfew
Day 5 Wakeup Alarm 45
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Great sleep, great wakeup. Setting that wakeup alarm was automatic. Really have to face my eating program because it’s falling a part. Was going to do my meal prep today but there’s a family pot luck that’s going to take a lot of cooking time. Plan on doing my actual meal prep tomorrow and starting in on that and my food recording. Food recording has largely fallen off because it’s so difficult to accurately track food that you are eating out sometimes. I’m not talking about fast food, or standard restaurants, but more interesting places, with multiple platters or things like potluck dinners. I am at more of a loss for how to deal with my pantry check, which might be more of a vestigial habit as it it’s accounted for with my Sunday Meal Prep. It’s also incredibly difficult to do if you are staying at another person’s house. I miss my own pantry and fridge where I can usually count the number of cans and produce on my hands.

Day 962

Day 962 Record Keeping
Weekend Habits (Travel Mode)

Day 348 Exercise (4.5 hours walking)
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Eating
Day 184 Food Recording
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Early to Rise
Day 117 Water (DID NOT DO)
Day 117 Sleep Recording (12:10|2:10|6|6:15)
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Horrible sleep. Started travel stuff - right now visitors arrived in town, but still in Barcelona. I decided I would record Rowing (Now updated to Exercise), food recording, MAYBE water, and sleep recording. Was contemplating continuing my bedtime curfew - though for this last one it doesn’t really matter or count, since when I travel I usually go to bed quite early. It’s not the habit I wish to establish - the habit is more accurately “getting up early when I’m in ‘normal mode’”. And that’s an important distinction.

I am still thinking about beginning flossing while I’m in “travel mode” - will blog on this later in the week.

Day 818 & Food Recording Superhabit

Day 818 Record Keeping
Day 790 Fixed Meditation (12 min)
Day 664 Writing
Day 204 Rowing (30 min/ 5400 m)
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Eating
Day 42 Pantry Check (71)
Day 40 Recording (80) SUPERHABIT
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Good sleep, great wakeup. At 79 and 80 for 6 days, I’m going to call food recording a superhabit. Per my previous protocols as of tomorrow I will not be taking the SRHI for that behavior. Time to think about another habit to initiate.

Day 815, Total and Utter Depletion

Day 815 Record Keeping
Day 787 Fixed Meditation (did not do)
Day 661 Writing (did not do)
Day 201 Rowing (did not do )
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Eating
Day 39 Pantry Check (72)
Day 37 Recording (80)
—–
Good sleep, good but tired wakeup. 

Total and Utter Depletion
It’s been an exhausting day.

After about a week of depletion, I woke up today with absolutely no energy whatsoever. I did, however, automatically do a pantry check, which was good, and food recording. But writing, rowing, meditation…just didn’t happen. I slept a lot today.

From a willpower/endurance perspective, I can understand this depletion. I’ve been pushing rowing what with my HIIT program, I’ve been pushing writing by doing a project I consider incredibly difficult, and my meditation has been intense lately and I’ve been trying to extend the time. I’ve also added two eating habits.

From a pure carbohydrate/caloric perspective, my pantry check and food recording have both had me more attentive to food. According to MyNetDiary, the food recording program I’ve been using, I’ve been under my calorie goal since Monday May 9th. That’s under the amount I’ve inputted in order to make my goal weight by November (not a serious goal, just something the program had me input), which is itself a lower caloric threshold. And quite a few days I’ve been under a thousand calories.

Today Lydia suggested I take the day off. I nodded but secretly kept trying to get up the energy to just start to end the week on a high note. After flopping around a bit I realized there was no way I was going to get anything done, but I still have this odd fight in my head.

I still think that this game is about fighting the good fight, character flaws, and motivation rather than fuel in a tank. You don’t ask a car to magically summon up forward motion. If there’s no gas in the tank, you find some way to get gas in there rather than giving the car a stern lecture.

If I can sense a lack of energy, I shouldn’t be berating myself or summoning up anything. I have a list of things I can try. Eating more, since some experiments suggest that glucose can replete willpower. Watching funny videos to improve my mood or perhaps some types of meditation. Altering my schedule and the type of work I’m doing - perhaps by not pushing multiple skills at the same time. Or taking a three day weekend and letting stores replenish.

Emotional self flagellation is not the way out. God knows I’ve tried that enough in the past without any benefits. Since I’m not the type of person that just uses anything as an excuse to take time off, there must be a reason, and strategically combatting that reason is the way out.

So today I ate a lot, and finally had a high calorie and high carb day. I’m very curious how this affects me tomorrow, or if I’ll have to take other measures to insure a smoother allocation of energy throughout the week.

Day 814

Day 814 Record Keeping
Day 786 Fixed Meditation (did not do)
Day 660 Writing
Day 200 Rowing (did not do )
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Eating
Day 38 Pantry Check (69)
Day 36 Recording (80)
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Good sleep, good but tired wakeup. This was yet another day where I was utterly depleted. Did amazing amazing work in writing today despite dragging myself to my work desk and forcing myself to work. I feel like I’ve been working a lot on this particular project to no avail. But today I’m really close to finishing and it sounds worlds better than it did before. By my calculations I’ve honed roughly 10,000 words of brainstorming and writing down into 190 words. It’s the hardest bit of writing I’ve done, but I’ve managed to do it because I’ve sat at my desk and forced myself to work at it through this habit every day for only 30 minutes at a time.

There are times when I wonder if I’m making the right decision by this steady yet small approach. Today it feels vindicated.

Was super tired and Lydia suggested I take a day off from rowing. I think it was needed, but it also resulted in me not doing my meditation. 

I think it was a good decision. I definitely had more of a lighter day mentally and had the energy to do some intense cleaning and cooking. 

Very close to a superhabit with food recording. Will have to brainstorm what other habits it’s time to add.

Day 812

Day 812 Record Keeping
Day 784 Fixed Meditation (21 min)
Day 658 Writing
Day 198 Rowing (HIIT, 17 min, 30s:1min, 3500 m )
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Eating
Day 36 Pantry Check (71)
Day 34 Recording (78)
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Great sleep, good but slow wakeup. Changed up my HIIT, was really challenging! Really good meditation. Good bout of challenging writing. For a slow wakeup where I didn’t really feel that hit of energy, I did really good today. Had a high carb day yesterday, maybe that contributed? I should explore this later on, perhaps I can time this for more demanding days - I know athletes do this, would this work for general habits? Cycling carbs and syncing that with heavier output or pushing a skill more…

Day 811

Day 811 Record Keeping
Day 783 Fixed Meditation (23 min)
Day 657 Writing
Day 197 Rowing (30 min/ 5400 m)
—–
Eating
Day 35 Pantry Check (71)
Day 33 Recording (79)
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Horrible sleep, bad wakeup. I think I drank some coffee later in the day, resulting in horrible sleep. Also incredibly depleted - just feel exhausted today. But, I did everything! 

I’m hoping all this will normalize once my two eating habits are solid superhabits. It is usually what happens - a period of feeling exhausted, followed by a period of feeling energetic and chomping at the bit to do way too much. 

I also have to remember I’ve also been pushing rowing by adding in HIITs, and though that’s going well, it has to have an impact on the system as a whole.

Bit by bit!

Day 805

Day 805 Record Keeping
Day 777 Fixed Meditation (18 min)
Day 651 Writing
Day 191 Rowing (HIIT, 14 min, 15sec:1min, 2800m)
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Eating
Day 29 Pantry Check (72)
Day 27 Recording (76)
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Horrible sleep, horrible/slow wakeup. Oddly enough, my horrible wakeup got me to prove the automaticity of my pantry check - I stumbled out of the bedroom and automatically did it while half awake. This resulted in an increase in my SRHI.

Day 804

Day 804 Record Keeping
Day 776 Fixed Meditation (9 min)
Day 650 Writing 
Day 190 Rowing (30 min/5200 m)
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Eating
Day 28 Pantry Check (66)
Day 26 Recording (77)
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Great sleep, great wakeup. Low performance in meditation, don’t really know what happened other than I kept falling asleep. Better performance in rowing. Last night I finished doing a read of Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit. Have a bunch of bookmarks I want to go through before writing up my thoughts.

DAY 800!!!! :) & HIIT Progression

Day 800 Record Keeping
Day 772 Fixed Meditation (21 min)
Day 646 Writing
Day 186 Rowing (HIIT, 15s:1min, 2600 m)
—–
Eating
Day 24 Pantry Check (65)
Day 22 Recording (75)
—–
Great sleep, great wakeup. If you would have told me that I had the capability to do any task for this long deliberately (without falling into it or being pushed to do it somehow) I would have laughed. I tried so hard for so long when I was younger - hell, even a few years ago - and to have gotten this far is really really amazing. 

HIIT Progression
Today I switched up my HIIT - I found THIS LINK on bodybuilding.com about a HIIT progression that changes up every two weeks for 8 weeks. I thought I would try it because I felt my HIITS were getting a bit boring, and I want to incorporate small cycles of progressions into all of my habits. Though it is absolutely hilarious that I can consider 8 weeks as a “small cycle”.

The change felt absolutely great. It was longer, with shorter spurts of all out effort. At the end I felt exhausted but in a different way, which is exactly the point. We’ll see how it goes!