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.
In the past couple months I’ve had a lot of changes going on in my relationship with food. I’ve been making a lot of progress with eating intuitively. I’ve been hesitant to blog about this, but I wanted to at least document these changes for my own processing. And I kiiiinda want to share it, because I feel like it might help somebody, but I feel REALLY nervous about it, too.
One of the things I have been asking myself lately is “why am I hesitant to share publicly about food relationship developments?” A few answers come to mind:
So, just to put all my cards on the table: In my food posts, I’m talking about my own personal relationship to food. I am not suggesting other people do what I do. I am not promoting dieting or intentional weight loss, regardless of what happens to my own body weight as a result of changes in my relationship with food. Even if my body weight changes as a result of changes in my relationship with food, I have no reason to believe that the new body weight will be permanent (as evidence shows that lasting weight loss is very uncommon). I do enjoy eating. I think the cultural expectation that all women eat like birds is fucked up (nothing against people who are naturally small and naturally have bird-like appetites. You people carry on and keep doing you).
Okay then! Let’s begin.
The other day, on my “habitiversary,” I wrote about all the cool outcomes that happened this year as a result of tracking habits (instead of body weight or clothing size). Since today is the last day of 2015, this post is all about the numbers. How’d I do with my habit goals?
Here is a list of habits I worked on in 2015, and how I did.
So, I reached or surpassed my goals in 8 of these habits. In the rest of them, I am happy with how close I came to the goals I set. Even though I did not make it 100 percent of the way there, establishing the habits have helped a lot in my life. I am proud of my progress, and looking forward to 2016.
Happy New Year, everyone!
A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about a new habit I had started that was provoking some conflicted feelings. A month has gone by since I started this habit, and I’ve been having some thoughts and feelings I wanted to document before I forget about them. So, you get a post! Yay!
The habit goal I am writing about is “finish my food by 8pm, 25 times by the end of the year.” I was experiencing both optimism and apprehension about adopting this habit. My biggest fear was that a habit like this would send me back into a dieting/restriction oriented mindset.
Overall, this habit is going a lot better than I expected, both in terms of emotional response and implementation.
This post is Part III of a series. If you haven’t already read Part I and Part II, you’ll want to do so before reading this post.
This post will cover how I set up my habit tracking spreadsheet, how I track my habits, and how and when I know to add more habits.
I get a lot of questions on how I track my habit goals. This post is not a comparison of different methods, as I only tried one, and it works for me. I know there are habit tracker apps available, and I can’t comment on how they work, because I haven’t tried them. If you find one that you like, I’d love for you to show me sometime, just for curiosity’s sake. This method works great for me. Don’t be intimidated by the initial set-up. After you set up the spreadsheet for the first time, it takes less than a minute per day to track your habits. Really.
Step 3 – Set Up Your Habit Tracking Spreadsheet
You’ll need a spreadsheet program. It doesn’t matter if it is Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc, or Google Sheets. I prefer Google Sheets because I can then access my spreadsheet from any device. If that isn’t important to you, use any spreadsheet program; it doesn’t matter which.
You can even copy my spreadsheet.
If you prefer to set up your spreadsheet from scratch, and can follow written directions well, here are the steps:
If you are good at spreadsheets, put in percentage formulas below the total column. Then you will be able to see how close you are to accomplishing your goals.
Step 4 – Track Your Habit!
Once your spreadsheet is set up, here’s how to track your habit.
On each day, go to the row labeled with that day’s date. In each habit column, enter “1” if you did the the habit. If you didn’t do the habit, don’t enter anything.
THAT’S IT!!!!
If your sheet is set up correctly, your totals should calculate at the bottom in the “Total” row.
Step 5 – Adding More Habits
Another common question is “how often do you add new habit goals?”
I typically add new habit goals every 3-8 weeks, depending on how solid I am feeling with the habits already on my plate. The commonly quoted “it takes 21 days to make a habit” is not quite wrong; it’s more like a half-truth. It can take anywhere from 21 to 254 days to form a habit.
I have found that some habits are easier than others to establish. For example, remembering to take my Vitamin D was easy: once I added it to my spreadsheet, it gave me a daily reminder to take it, so that habit formed pretty quickly. Habits that take more time and planning may take more time to solidify. For example, movement habits or cooking habits may require more planning and more practice overcoming obstacles before they are really solidified.
My best advice is to be honest with yourself. How solid do you REALLY feel with your habit? Once you feel pretty solid, it may be time to consider adding a new habit. If you read Part I of this series and came up with a list of habits you wanted to try, just look at the list and choose the habit that you WANT to work on most, and add that one. Go back to step 1, and repeat the steps as needed.
As I added more habits, I added them to my spreadsheet. You can even categorize and color code them, if it makes you happy. (See the second tab in the spreadsheet linked).
A Possibly Optional, but Highly Recommended Step
I’m not technically sure this step is optional, since I used it. I feel this step has been key to my success. However, I can’t swear that it MUST be used.
This step is practicing self-awareness. During the year, as you practice your habits, notice how you are feeling. Before, during and after doing your habits. As you track them. Always ask yourself if the habits are enriching your life, or making it worse. Adjust accordingly if needed.
If you are new to my blog, here are some of my previous posts on habits. These will give you an idea of how the past year has looked for me as I focused on building habits, and where and how I used self-awareness to modify as needed.
This concludes my series on setting sustainable habit goals….for now. If you have a question I did not address, leave a comment! I’ll be happy to answer questions in a follow up post. Happy habit forming!
Welcome back! This post is Part II of a series on how I set my habit goals. If you haven’t already done so, read Part I first.
Step 2 – Choose a Time and Frequency Goal for your Habit
I answered a LOT of questions this past year about this step.
For all my habit goals, I defined a specific frequency and time frame. For example:
One of the most common questions I am asked was “how do you decide how many times you are aiming to do your habit?”
How do you decide on a time frame?
I’m going to go over time frame before frequency, because that is easy.
I am a HUGE fan of doing a year-long time frame, for several reasons:
My first habit goals were set with a year-long time frame. Then, any subsequent habit goals were set with the time frame of “by December 31.” That way I could reset all the goals as needed at the same time, once per year. Your mileage may vary.
How do you decide on a frequency goal for your habit?
Here is what I did to figure out a frequency goal for each habit. It worked really well for me, as I am on track to meet most of my frequency goals by the end of the year.
First, ask yourself these questions (write down the answers):
Now, choose a middle ground between the above two numbers.
It should be a number that is more than what you currently do… and you should be 95% sure that you can actually attain this number over the course of the time frame you’ve chosen.
Before we move on to the next step, make sure that the number looks achievable for you. Be honest. Don’t be a type A person who bites off more than you can chew. You are not aiming for perfection; you are aiming for consistency. Really look at that number and ask yourself if you are 95% sure you can achieve that.
But don’t overthink it. If you choose the wrong number, you can always adjust at a later date.
NOW…..convert that weekly frequency into a yearly frequency
Take that weekly number, and multiply it by 50. There’s your starting frequency.
That is not a typo. I know that there are actually 52 weeks in a year, not 50. And I also know that we all make mistakes when working on new skills, habits, and hobbies. In the case of water drinking, there may be fewer obstacles than say, going to the gym…..but you want to allow for them. The purpose of setting habit goals is to help improve your life, not to set unreasonable standards that make you feel guilty when you fall short. So, we use 50 and not 52 so we can allow ourselves a buffer for to allow for “life happening.”
What if I’m not using a yearly time frame for my goals?
Just adjust the number. Instead of multiplying by 50, multiply by the number of weeks (minus a couple) in the time frame you’ve chosen.
That seems like an awfully…..unexciting number.
I like to view these frequency goals as….goals, not maximums. If you meet your goal early, shoot for more at the end. You’ll be wicked proud of yourself. I sure am! Ask me how much fun it is to smash through goals in November, instead of giving up on my goals in January or February ;).
All right! If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably:
In Part III, I will go over my habit tracking system, which I assure you is just as unexciting as my goal setting process, and just as effective. It also requires much less thought on a daily basis than planning and setting the goals!
This post is Part I of a multi-post series. Over the past year, some of my friends and family members have asked me questions about the method I followed. I am always happy to share and help. And now, since we are coming upon a time of year when many people look to set goals for the coming year, I wanted to write a post all about how I developed some pretty rewarding habits.
We are coming up on one year since I began my habits-based journey. For me, this is big.
One year ago, I felt tired all the time and knew I needed to make changes. I knew I needed to live differently. And I knew that my previous ways of changing were not going to work with my lifestyle as a parent. I knew I needed to develop more patience. I knew I needed to develop more perseverance, and I wanted to model that for my son, so he doesn’t have to develop it from scratch after he has his own kids.
So I set some habit goals. And unlike other new years “resolutions” I had made in the past, these ones lasted all year long, and have changed my experience, outlook, lifestyle, and health for the better.
If you have tried to develop new habits in the past, but haven’t been able to stick with them very long, read on. I think you may find some good info here.
Dear Parents Who Struggle With Self-Care:
Are you feeling guilty about not taking better care of yourself (whatever that means to YOU)? Maybe you took great care of yourself (whatever that means to YOU) before you had kids, but now you feel pretty far off course?
I get it! The other day I caught myself thinking “It is crazy how far off course I was from living a lifestyle conducive to self-care.” If you knew me when I was in my 20s, you would probably say the same thing. I was the most health-fanatical person of anyone I knew! Now, I’ve been working on habits that I would have considered pretty basic back then. I would have thought that these habits were not nearly enough to maintain my health.
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?
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.
Power, Peace, and the Porch Gym 