When I color coded my habit tracking spreadsheet, I thought it was just going to be a fun way to categorize my habits and make my spreadsheet nice to look at. I didn’t realize that it would also encourage and reinforce moderation, balance and slow, sustainable changes. I didn’t know that it would discourage obsessing over one particular area of lifestyle at the expense of other areas. And yet, that’s exactly what it is doing.
It is the end of the month and I love statistics! Here’s how my habit goals are going, as of the morning of January 31, 2016.
Number of days tracking habit goals: 398!
2016 Progress:
Reflections on these numbers
I am doing so many of my habits really well! We are 8% of the way through 2016, so any habit where I did at least 8% is a habit that is on target or better. That means I am kicking ass and taking names at: lifting weights, eating green vegetables, finishing my food early enough in the day that I can sleep well-ish, not turning on the TV after 9pm, getting to bed by 10pm, naming things I love/appreciate about myself, naming things I feel grateful for, dates with my husband, cleaning my house sometimes, and getting rid of things that don’t spark joy.
I’m even going to say I am kicking ass at taking walks, even though I am only 7% of the way to that goal. It’s January in New England! I expected January to be a less productive month in the walking department. Last year we had tons of snow, but this year we haven’t so I have been able to take some walks. I’ve been working it into my schedule by taking a long lunch and walking at a nearby park on days I work if the weather has been nice enough (the walking track there is paved).
I need to find a “habit trigger” for taking my Vitamin D. It is such an easy thing to do and the only thing that is keeping me from doing it more is that I forget. So I need a trigger such as “take Vitamin D at breakfast” or “take Vitamin D with ice cream” or something like that. The issue is….sometimes I eat my breakfast in a rush, and I don’t eat ice cream every day. I’ll need to give some thought to a good “habit trigger” for this.
As for the habits where I am a little behind, I’m not worried about them. I’ve had extra responsibilities and expenses this month due my husband still not being able to drive after his injury. Given that, I think I should be proud of myself for doing well in the essential areas, and not worry about the things I’ve done less of due to prioritizing and triage.
Wondering how I figured out these habit goals? I wrote a series of posts about my process. You can start here.
Wondering how I track my goals? That’s covered in the third post of the series, and also in this post.
Wondering how I did in 2015, and what effects I’ve noticed? Here’s the report.
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I’ve read a few things recently that have me questioning whether taking an athletic approach to my training is really the best choice for me right now.
This week I was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea and sleep related hypoventilation.
I am feeling a lot of things around this diagnosis. A little fear (untreated, sleep apnea can lead to serious things like heart attacks and strokes), a little anger, but mostly relief and gratitude.
I am about halfway through my second week on a more minimal lifting program. Here are some thoughts and observations.
If you read about the Wendler 5/3/1 program online, you will see that each day has you do 3 sets of the main lift. There are different templates you can follow for assistance work. The templates have names like “Big But Boring,” and “The Triumvirate.” The template where you do just the main lift, with no assistance work, is called “I’m Not Doing Jack Shit.”
I love watching my kiddo at swim class. He is developing his skills and comfort level with floating on his back.
It’s interesting to observe that he has days where everything seems easy and fun for him and he makes a lot of progress (last Thursday), and days where he is having a hard time for whatever reason (today). Today he took an unexpected nap in the car on the way to the lesson, was overall droopy and tired after a busy day yesterday, and apprehensive about using the toilet. He still demonstrated the skills he’d solidified on Thursday, but didn’t work on them for as long. He was mentally ready to be done early today.
That was totally okay – I never thought to myself “oh, these setbacks means he will never learn to swim. What a waste of time and money.” Yet, we often think those things about ourselves when we have a day where we don’t practice our own new skills/habits to the extent we would like.
Just like I can observe him without judgment or apprehension, I can also learn to observe my own learning process in the same way. Skills will come in time, with consistent work, if they are meant to.
I’m noticing some uneasiness about my new fitness plan. I’m simplifying it a lot, because I have more responsibilities while my husband can’t do housework or drive. Jennifer Campbell of Healthy Habits Happy Moms suggested that I may need to re-examine my expectations for myself and my habits while my husband is laid up. I didn’t want her to be right, but I quickly learned that she was. Plus, it is winter and my kid is driving me a bit crazy anyway. So, my new fitness plan is as follows, for as long as it serves me:
It feels too….easy? Short? Mild? I’m not used to having so much gas left in the tank to handle household tasks (but that is the point of simplifying so I guess it is working). I’m not used to having a clean living room that I cleaned myself. I’m used to my muscles being tired so that lying on the couch feels good. I’m used to my legs being tired and needing to rest a lot. I’m used to being more sedentary when I am not actually lifting. I’m used to not wanting to walk up the stairs to get something. I’m used to my living room being more cluttered. I’m used to my husband doing some housework, and me doing less housework. Now that my husband is injured, I’m doing almost all the housework….and I’m keeping up with it for the past few days myself, and not feeling tired and resentful about it.
Noticing that life feels easier to handle is GOOD. My mental uneasiness, however, means I clearly have some beliefs to work through – such as “exercise needs to be intense in order to do anything.” Or, “being tired means my training is working.” Or “being tired means I’ve done something” or “not being tired means I haven’t worked hard enough.” I thought I was over these beliefs, but clearly I’m still hanging on a bit.
I also have some nagging thoughts like “what if I lose all my progress on the Olympic lifts?” To that thought I respond that nobody is paying me to get good at those, and that my number one priority is my health and my family. If that means taking a little break for a while to do something else, that is okay. Once a hobby adds stress to my life during a time period when I have plenty of stress from other areas, I can stop telling myself that it is helping my health.
Over the past month I’ve also challenged some of my food beliefs and been happy with the results. We are eating a lot of sandwiches, salads, and cereal in our house these days, in order to minimize cooking. I am buying packaged sauces and dressings rather than making them from scratch. It’s helping us get more flavor variety into our meals without too much work. I’ve been eating a lot more salad. My favorite salad dressings right now are Annie’s Papaya Poppyseed, and Brianna’s Blue Cheese. I have a bunch more I want to try. We’ve been eating off disposable dishes, and I’m just now starting to phase my regular dishes back in, now that I have some extra energy.
So, just as I am adjusting my family’s food plan to minimize stress, so too I am adjusting my movement activities to do the same. Yesterday I went to barbell club and did bench presses, some light snatches, and some experimentation with hanging from a pull up bar using bands. Today I did deadlifts at home. My hamstrings and glutes are like “oh hey! We forgot about deadlifts.” But my legs still had enough energy in them to keep up on the dishes today. We used some disposable and some regular dishes. Because it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I can phase the regular dishes back in gradually, and see how it’s working for our sanity.
My kiddo was sick today, so I had plenty of quiet time. It was a much needed recharge day for me.
Here’s to a week of feeling oddly energetic! I can get used to this :).
To be fair, it isn’t really my workouts that are driving me to drink. It is my three year old.
I’ll back up a little.
While the weather was warm, having a porch gym has served me well. I could lift on the porch while my kiddo played outside. If it took me an hour or two to get my warm up, lifting, and mobility and recovery work in, that was usually fine. My kid would play, eat snacks, and generally entertain himself.
Now though, it’s winter in New England. The gym has moved into my living room. My husband is injured and can’t play with my kid as much, and it’s too cold to get out much at all. Basically, my three year old is bored, and in mama-obsessed mood. He wants a lot of attention from me. And yes, he gets out of the house. He goes to his babysitter a couple days per week where he plays with other kids and goes on outings, and I take him to gymnastics class and swim class and the library and the grocery store and…..it’s still not enough. Especially since my husband and I were sick for a couple weeks on top of everything. My three year old is bored.
I’ve been trying to get back into my routine of lifting 3 times per week, for 1-2 hours start to finish.
Yesterday, I really had trouble getting going. I didn’t really want to lift. I wanted to go for a walk. It was sunny outside, and 27 degrees, which was the warmest it had been all day. I didn’t listen to myself though. I didn’t want to throw off my lifting schedule. In truth, it made me a little nervous to do it. So, I decided to lift instead.
Within the first sets, I noticed I felt irritable. I tried to get my kiddo to go upstairs and play with my husband. No dice. He spent the whole workout running laps around the living room and trying to climb all over me between sets.
At one point, I decided to try a bench press. One of my coaches at barbell club had shown me how to do it the way the powerlifters do it. I got my rack out, figured out the height adjustments for benching, figured out where to place the bench in my set up. I got myself in position and ready to do a bench press. I was about to lift the barbell off the rack.
And then something soft hit me. My kid had taken a sock and launched it at me, slingshot style.
I sternly told him that it was not safe to throw things at me while I am lifting, and carried him upstairs to my husband.
He still made his way back downstairs before the end of the workout, and climbed on me while I was stretching. And climbed on me for a while afterwards. He hadn’t napped. I made plans to go buy wine and cook some macaroni and cheese as soon as I put him to bed. Comfort and decompressing was needed. As I was cooking dinner, I realized “I should have just gone for the walk I wanted to. I’d probably be in a much better mood right now!” I had a great time watching the Bachelor and felt better when I went to sleep.
And then it hit me….this isn’t working for me right now. I shouldn’t finish my workouts so stressed out that I need to decompress from them. And right now my kiddo is making that a reality.
The positive side is, having equipment at home gives me loads of flexibility to make changes! What if I tried something different? I’ve been wanting to try more powerlifting again (after taking a break for a while to focus on Olympic weightlifting). What if I just committed to one exercise every morning? I could do a Wendler style 5/3/1 program or a Stronglifts 5×5 model. I could make a schedule, for example: Monday deadlifts, Tuesday bench press, Wednesday squats, Thursday overhead press, Friday Pendlay rows. Each morning I could spend less than half an hour on a lift. While my kid ate breakfast. I’d be able to crank it out and be done before he started driving me batshit crazy. I could do it even on the three days of week that I go to work. On days I stay home I wouldn’t be too tired afterwards to do all the extra stuff that is on me to do while my husband is injured. I could maintain and even increase my strength. I could maybe do an Olympic lift on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday if I feel up to it if my kid is entertained, but I could take a break from focusing on them.
And I would be able to take a walk in the afternoon if the weather is nice enough that I actually want to.
So, this morning I came downstairs and did some sets Pendlay rows as my kid ate breakfast. And wrote this post. It feels strange to just do one exercise and still have this much energy after a workout. And it feels nice to be done with a workout and not be ready to drink. Let’s see how this goes!
Earlier this year, I came upon a blog post titled “How to Break Your Body Shaming Habit.” It was since removed from the website that posted it, but I managed to find an excerpt. The blog post promised that there was something someone did, in just 15 minutes, that helped her end her body shaming habit. Not 15 minutes every day. 15 minutes, PERIOD.
She changed whom she followed on Instagram.
“I realized I was looking at certain women in my Instagram feed and feeling bad about my body,” she says. “So I unfollowed them and followed more women who were beautiful, but in a wider variety of shapes, sizes and colors. I just added more variety to the images I was seeing every day when I scrolled through my phone.”
After a few weeks, she also started following women who were doing things with their bodies that she wanted to do. Strong things. So she followed Olympic weight lifters. Javelin throwers. Women doing handstands and flipping logs.
“I was enjoying following them so much that the ‘fitspiration’ crap on my Pinterest board started looking stupid. Those women were just skinny and sweaty. So I started unfollowing them, and my Pinterest board started to look like my Instagram feed. And I was feeling even better about myself.””
I love this advice. I also did this early last year, and I highly recommend it. With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of my favorite groups, people, and pages I follow on Facebook. I’m not on Instagram, but many of these pages have Instagram counterparts as well.
One of the really great things about having moved my porch gym into the living room for the winter is that getting a workout in no longer requires as much preparatory work. Any parent with a gym membership can attest to the fact that it can be a lot of work to get yourself and your kid dressed, diapered, fed, lunch packed, and out the door to the gym. Today I felt pretty depleted from a high stress week (my husband broke his kneecap in a bicycle accident, and my kiddo was sick). I was feeling pretty grumpy and tired this morning, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten us out the door to go to the gym, even though I had a workout planned. I was considering skipping it.
But, since the gym is now my living room, I simply got dressed in my workout clothes, in case I decided to lift. Then we ate breakfast, and I put on a movie for my kid because I was way too grumpy and stressed to mentally engage….and then decided to put on my shoes and warm up.
Power, Peace, and the Porch Gym 