Habit Cultivation

Changing Weather, Changing Options, Changing Strategies

/ Bethany / 4 Comments

This will be another boring post, unless you enjoy reading my inner monologue about what goes into developing and maintaining certain habits.

In a previous post, I wrote about how we can have some developmental stumbles while forming new habits.  Today, I’m realizing that seasonal changes can pose new obstacles too. I’ve written quite a bit about the process of developing a walking habit again.  Last month, I wrote about some of the specific things I needed to do in order to make this a habit (and when I say *I*, I mean “me, personally.” Other people may have different needs and circumstances to address).

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Insomniac Weekend Update: Walking Slowly and Taking Breaks

/ Bethany / 1 Comment

I have had trouble sleeping this past week, and tonight is no exception. Since my body doesn’t seem to want to sleep, I am taking a break from sleeping to check in.

I’m feeling better than I did last week, but I still have some anxiety going on. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I process feelings and have trouble going back to sleep.

Despite difficult feelings, I’ve had a pretty easy time sticking with my habit goals. I love the fall weather, which is making it easy and enjoyable for me to get walking in. I’ve taken 2 trail walks with kiddo this week, and today I walked to the grocery store with kiddo (30+ pounds) on my back, and then pushed the stroller full of groceries and kiddo home (probably 70-90 lbs total).

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Inspiration: Try Something Tuesday (or any day)!

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If you participate in any online health, fitness, or sports-related groups, you may be familiar with “Transformation Tuesday.” Group members often post “before and after” pictures, which tend to get tons of “likes” and congratulatory comments. I’ve seen some discussion that some people feel discouraged when they see these. Others find them motivating.  Others don’t like them because they find them overly focused on appearance and under-ly focused on the process and how sustainable the change is.  Others find them triggering of eating disordered behavior. I’m sure people have other opinions too. In fact, having an opinion about people posting pics on the internet probably means you are winning at life in general and don’t have bigger fish to fry. Go you! Or not. It’s totally okay NOT to have an opinion on Transformation Tuesday pics. This probably means you have bigger priorities in life in general and are winning at life, too.

My opinion? They are some of my least favorite posts I see in some of my favorite online groups. I don’t find them triggering from a disordered eating standpoint, but I do think they probably give false hope for many people. I think they put a more of an emphasis on looks and less on health, since you can’t always tell a person’s health by looking at them. They don’t bother me to the point where I would leave a group over it, but I wouldn’t miss them at all if they disappeared.

So, I was ecstatic this week on Tuesday morning, when one of my favorite groups on the internet decided to make them disappear. And the way they did it was just….so positive. Instead of issuing a “NEW RULE!!!! ALL TRANSFORMATION TUESDAY POSTS ARE NOW BANNED BECAUSE THEY MIGHT OFFEND SOMEBODY,” the moderators announced that they would be retiring “Transformation Tuesday” and replacing it with something amazing: Try Something Tuesday!

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Turning Back the Clock: Bringing Back an Old Habit

/ Bethany / 11 Comments

I am in my 30s, as are many of my friends. It seems like a common experience that some of us feel nostalgic for our younger bodies. We would appreciate them so much more, we think (never mind that we hated our bodies back in high school too….). We wish for the energy we had when we were younger and could stay out late all the time.

Of course, getting a past version of ourselves back is impossible. Even putting aging aside, so many of our environmental conditions and habits have changed.  The hormonal climates of our bodies are different. We have different habits, different pressures, different responsibilities, different perspectives, and different values.

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Refining Goals, Saving Money

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This weekend I decided to skip barbell club and go on a trail walk instead with my local chapter of Hike it Baby.  Now that the weather is cooling off, I’m enjoying being outside again, and finally gathering some steam for my walking habit. I love going to barbell club, but I know my hiking options will be more limited all winter.  Kiddo and I enjoyed the walk! And thanks to the porch gym equipment, I was still able to get my weightlifting in later. I’m very grateful to have that flexibility. Between the hike and weightlifting, kiddo and I spent a lot of hours outside on Saturday and we both loved it! One hazard of training with a kiddo: he dropped a .5kg change plate between two of the porch floor boards. Barbell math just got a lot harder! Oh well.

Earlier this week I wrote about stumbles while developing habits. I’ve been thinking about another habit that was on my list. Or rather, it wasn’t a habit, it was a goal. The goal was to save $12,000 this year, thereby finishing our family’s emergency fund (we started the year with around $2200 in this fund). This is baby step 3 in the Dave Ramsey baby steps.

Well, we were making some progress towards this goal…..and then we needed to replace our car. That setback really took the wind out of my sails on this one, and the fund has been stagnating ever since, nowhere near the goal for the end of the year.

So, I’m tweaking this goal. As I talked about in the stumbles post, there have been other goals (walking, bedtime) that needed to be changed a bit in order for me to really take off and develop the habits. I’ve decided to make it a habit-based goal like all the others, instead of an outcome-based goal. Instead of saying “get to $12,000 in the account by the end of the year,” I’m now saying “deposit $10 or more in the emergency fund, at least 15 times by the end of the year.” This will help with developing the habit of saving. It doesn’t seem like much, but it is more than I am currently saving, and once I develop that habit, I can look into saving more aggressively.

Shana Tova, all!

 

Habit Cultivation: Adults Have Developmental Stumbles, Too!

/ Bethany / 12 Comments

Today I want to offer a new perspective I am learning in my habit cultivation practice.

Whenever we learn a new skill, we expect to stop and start. We see this all around us. Babies take a few steps, then fall down. Kids ride their bikes a short distance; they don’t ride all the way around the block on the first try. When I learned to play the clarinet, I first learned Mary Had a Little Lamb, not the Stravinsky 3 pieces.

This is all normal and expected. We don’t beat ourselves up every step of the way. We celebrate every step.

With children, we also expect that each child will develop different skills at different times. Most children start to walk around the time they turn one year old. But there are some who walk at 10 months old, and fall down every few steps while they are learning. Other children crawl until they are 14 or 15 months old, and then start walking and almost never fall down.  The same is true for every milestone. Some kids meet a certain milestone early. Some late. Some kids meet one milestone very early and another milestone very late. Some kids meet most of their milestones right around the average expected time, without fail. This is all considered normal and we expect these variations. We also expect that most children will stumble many times while learning new skills.

When adults try and form new habits, it’s often the opposite. Instead of starting small and expecting to stumble a little, we start with big goals, then declare our attempts a failure and give up when we stumble. Then we beat ourselves up (either internally or to our friends). In the case of health-related habits, we talk about the fact that we started and stopped multiple times as though each attempt is isolated and separate.

What if it wasn’t? What if each attempt wasn’t an isolated and separate, but a normal part of the process of learning something new?

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Role Models Part 3: Self-talk and Self-Listening

/ Bethany / 2 Comments

This is the third post in a series about role models. (You can read the first post and the second post too).

One of the reasons I chose habit-based goals instead of outcome based goals is that I wanted to keep myself open to whatever outcomes may come as a result of adopting healthier habits. I did not want to attempt to force certain outcomes on myself, which I ultimately could not control anyway.

One of the really nice outcomes I’ve been experiencing as a result of walking away from weight loss pressure is getting a lot more practice speaking to myself kindly – the way I strive to speak to (and listen to!) my own kiddo. I want to care for my kiddo as best I can, and that includes a sense of a emotional safety. Why would I want to do anything different for myself?

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Role Models, Part 2: Some Real Life Role Models!

/ Bethany / 2 Comments

Earlier this week I published a post about why I am grateful for fat role models.  I have a lot more to say about role models in general, so there may be several more posts on the subject!

In the earlier post, I wrote about how important it is for me to have role models that look like me.   Courtney, of Black Feminist Fitness, has a profound way of looking at this. As black woman, she finds that role models who look like her are often few and far between in the fitness world. Any time she wants to try a new sport, she seeks out a black female role model to inspire her. For example, when she wanted to try CrossFit, she looked towards Elizabeth Akinwale‘s example. For powerlifting, Taylar Stallings provided inspiration. For dancing, Jeni Le Gon.  She also follows community pages like Black Girls Swim and Black Girls RUN! 

When I first heard about Courtney’s approach, it didn’t really stick in my head. As a white person, I am privileged to have never had to consider this before – in any of area of interest, I am fairly certain I can find a white female role model who has gone before me.  Recently though, I have found myself profoundly affected and inspired by the journeys of several fat women involved in fitness, and I realized how important role models can really be.

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Active Listening and Active Rest

/ Bethany / 5 Comments

This has been an active rest/recovery week for me. Last week I was pretty tired a lot, and on Saturday I went to barbell club and was missing pretty much every lift. The training program I was using was on a competition mesocycle with lots of heavy singles. That wasn’t really what I needed at all – I still have so much technique development to do.

My coach looked at my program last weekend and agreed that it was way too much volume. He put together a new one for me to follow. I went to start it on Tuesday and my body basically laughed at me.  I knew then that I needed a few days off to recover. Even though I haven’t done any squats this week, my legs still felt like I had. I’ve been feeling a little run down in general too. Kiddo and I both have a slight cough – I think we might be having some allergy symptoms. Appetite-wise, nothing sounds good. I’m  having zero desire to cook anything. My CSA veggies are looking sad in the fridge.

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