Day 1516 - Moved Back to the States

Day 1516 Record Keeping
Day 1487 Fixed Meditation (10 min, vipassana)
Day 1362 Writing (7 13 min Pomodoros)
Day 901 Rowing (35 min walk)
Day 642 Mobility/Stretching (DID NOT DO)
Day 292 Social Media (STOPPED)XX
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Ok sleep. 

Moved back to the States.

It's been less than 2 weeks. I've surprised myself being pretty consistent with meditating and writing a lot, despite not recording it. Since I had to sell my rower in Spain (along with everything else), rowing has to officially change. Right now I'm just trying to get up to walking, biking, and maybe some kayaking. It's been hard - we missed one of our flights back and were "only 15 hours late arriving" (as my mother said). This resulted in some pretty massive jet lag. I also got sick for what seemed like the 10th time this year. 

This is a huge transition for me, the end of a full decade of living abroad as an expat.  What with all the change, I haven't had time to really think what I want my workout regiment to be. I'm seriously considering GMB Fitness, an excellent bodyweight program Lydia does with progressions. The more I hear about it the more impressed I am. 

I'm still contemplating reinstating my social media habit. I've put it on hold after reading Cal Newport's book on Deep Work. I definitely want to hold off on it until I get my proposal in. My procrastination protocol is still working like a charm even in this, the hardest writing assignment I've ever had.

One of the biggest reasons we came back was hitting a wall with mastering eating. Eating is a real lynchpin habit to me - it governs energy, aesthetics, health, and is a stepping off point for a lot of other skills I'd like to master.  But in Spain, it hit a wall - there wasn't enough space to store premade meals. Our meal prep was contingent on going to 3 or 4 stores to get ingredients. And that didn't even count for all lunches or any dinners. One of our main schemes with coming back to the States was the knowledge that it would be easier here.

And it has. The last week we went to the store, and bought all ingredients for a week. Easily. Hand chopping salads? Why bother, when they come in bags! You don't even need to zoodle your own veggie, they come pre zoodled! Making lunches has been utterly effortless, exactly what I want self change to be. And Lydia is going further with it. She wants to cook through paleo cookbooks and have a randomized list for dinners, so even the act of making a menu doesn't even come up at all!

I'm beginning to think that moving back was a really good decision strategically. Sure it's definitely easy to lose it with all the easy access to delicious food. But it's also really easy to make changes. I'll miss Spain but right now I think it's already paying off. 

Day 848

Day 848 Record Keeping
Day 820 Fixed Meditation (30 min)
Day 694 Writing (3 rounds of 30 min)
Day 234 Rowing (30 min, 5700 m) PR!!!
—–
Eating
Day 72 Pantry Check
Day 70 Recording
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Early to Rise
Day 3 Bacon & Water 17
Day 3 Sleep Recording 18 (1:20|1:40|10:00|11:15)
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Great sleep, great wakeup. PR in rowing! Meditation was better in quality today, but is starting to feel like it’s plateauing. 

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!

Day 629 & Ending Eating Habit

Day 629 Record Keeping (44)
Day 598 Fixed Meditation (77)
Day 475 Writing (49)
Day 15 Rowing (65)
Day 644 Eating ENDING EATING HABIT
Ok sleep, ok wakeup.

Ending Eating Habit
As I described in my last post I’ve had some serious thoughts when it comes to reformatting my eating habit, as it hasn’t concretely resulted in solid automaticity.

So I’m scratching it, a habit I’ve recorded for 644 days, and starting over from the beginning. It’s not all for naught - I think I’ve gotten a lot out of it. But I think at this point starting from the very beginning using all I’ve learned will get me to where I want faster. 

However, I’m not yet going to start. I think there might be another habit I want to institute first. I’ll get into that in another post.

Day 622

Day 622 Record Keeping (44)
Day 591 Fixed Meditation (70)
Day 464 Writing (55)
Day 8 Rowing (54) 
Day 637 Eating (51)
Good sleep, great wakeup. Eating is really lagging and I haven’t been eating completely clean this past week. But I had already gone into this phase - working on NaNoWriMo, starting rowing, getting all my habits back on track - with the understanding that I’m not going to be too concerned with eating.

Day 618

Day 618 Record Keeping (25)
Day 587 Fixed Meditation (60)
Day 460 Writing (58)
Day 4 Rowing (35)
Day 633 Eating (50)
Bad sleep, great wakeup. Rowing is going really well. Talking to my mom about how to properly do her habits got me underscoring how to do my own - the secret that I need to work on is BJ Fogg’s notion of “Crispiness.”

If if there’s a crisp if-then, then it works. For me that’s best with rowing - I do it as soon as I get out of bed. It’s not working with recording which I do “at some point before going to bed.”

I’m starting to record my eating for the day before. It’s been all over the place. I’m glad to know that some things are well in place in comparison to before. Drinking isn’t something I do. I rarely drink cokes or other soft drinks. If I drink coffee it’s black. When I make stuff at home it’s always clean. But when I need a snack or the option isn’t there or I don’t want to cook, I’ll cheat. The whole process of getting used to cooking and shopping - that’s not down, but I’m sure I’ll get there quickly again. Just underscores just how difficult eating clean is, whatever your choice or definition of what “clean” is.

Meditation isn chugging along quite well - the “shelf” I’m at is self sustaining. Really underscores shelving as a useful manner in which to rest habits and move other habits towards mastery.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo which is that habit’s push towards mastery. As such I really need to have a new way of doing the SRHI. Because I answer some questions as though it’s for writing in general - of course I will answer frequency questions really high if I’m answering them for writing in general. But for this push, it really should be treated as a separate habit. Or should it? It’s something I need to think about more.

I’ve also started taking daily shirtless pics of myself to record progress in weight loss and muscle definition in regards to rowing, since I see that habit as being really solid and practical. It can also be easily “shelved” in a way I haven’t been able to do with habits like eating.