Tag Archives: control

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NEW DAY 122: Where it’s due

A funny thing happens when you start saying yes to things. You become your own best friend.

Going straight to “yes” is not my factory setting. I overthink and overanticipate everything. It makes me an excellent planner, a cool-headed navigator of emergencies, and a strong leader. In equal measure, it also makes me an inadvertent self-saboteur of my own enjoyment. I not only look before I leap; I look towards the landing zone the whole way down, so much that I miss the full experience and thrill of the leap itself.

Or at least, I was that type of person.

My true nature isn’t suddenly erased and replaced, of course. I will still instinctively mentally map out every possible outcome in the name of contingency preparation for even seemingly inconsequential things, 90% of the time.1 The difference is that I now know that even if consequences other than the most-ideal ones happen as a result of my decision, it’s probably worth that bit of messiness for the trade-off of feeling enjoyment during the leap. Why should I turn everything into stakes-based choices full of weighted consequences? If it sounds good, why not jus say yes and trust myself to figure out how to go from there no matter what? Nothing is guaranteed; all my scenario planning is only a best guess, anyway. It makes more sense to believe that it — whatever it is — will work out as it’s meant to regardless of my decision, and know that I am capable of managing that — whatever that is — when the time comes.

This was not a choice I actively reflected on and then made, but rather my analysis of how my mindset shifted and my lived aftermath in the time since. I can honestly say that my life has improved as a result of it. I wasn’t consciously aware that I needed this change, but circumstances conspired that pushed me into it, and I’ve never looked back. I talked about it in elusive terms here and here, but as I’m feeling kind of wistful today, I’m going to expound just a little on some of those pieces now.

While I was aggressively job hunting this summer, I got to the final interview stage with what seemed like a good prospect. Unfortunately, that stage was a rather ludicrous task-based presentation I needed to prepare and then deliver to a 7-person panel before a Q&A. Concurrently, I was taking inventory of my relationships and re-evaluating their places in my life respective to the effort it required to maintain them. This was not unrelated to how people showed up (or not) for me when I was going through a very difficult time that had begun in February and from which I was still very much reeling. On top of this, I was plagued with self-doubt born of that struggle, and of my lifelong subpar but worsening physical health (and appearance) at a time when I desperately needed confidence to surmount the various hurdles on my path to a safe landing.

Enter: the external forces.

I found a professional support group of people who saw through my shaky veneer, to my true self. They supported me, they reminded me who I am, and they commiserated with me — but more importantly, they did so without coddling me and letting me avoid doing the work. They pushed me to tap into my strength, which wasn’t as inaccessible as I had made myself believe. Being a part of that community helped me rediscover my brand of personal inner magic that I needed not only to get through that season, but also to present to outside entities that needed to see it in order to find me an appealing candidate.

When I first started my tentative return to the gym, I was unsure of my ability, weak on my commitment, and hesitant to push myself in the way I needed to. Early on, I got an injury that worsened when it got infected, and the necessary pause from high-intensity workouts forced me back into my head when I had finally gotten back into my body. Knowing the risks that this presented, I took control by returning to playing instruments and starting to venture back into unstructured creative writing again. It kept things under control when my physical outlet was temporarily unavailable.

I gradually started getting out of the house more. I intentionally spent productive time in cafes on weekdays with a then-acquaintance who has a wfh job, who has become an actual friend as a result. We helped each other not only stay focused during those sessions, but we also encouraged and supported each other as we both grappled with getting through our respective tough situations.

There were also plenty of constants who were by my side throughout that wobbly chapter of my life. They checked on me, they lovingly imposed kind gestures on me, they found ways to give me space AND make sure I knew they were in my corner. I would be remiss to not mention that. I am, and have always been, as people-rich as it gets.

I finally found an insightful, competent therapist with true professionalism but also an actual personality, whose care and commitment I have never questioned. Working with her and being able to tell her things I have not talked about with anyone else has been a huge relief, not to mention a huge help in keeping a clear head. It’s the first positive experience I have had with therapy after several attempts over the years, and it came along at exactly the right time.

And finally… the doorstep deliveries. Not literal ones. Ones that showed up on my phone. In the form of completely unexpected and out-of-the-blue texts. Which were total context shifts from platonic to very much NOT that. From two different guys. Within the same week. The, um, charge of that got me going — interpret that however you want and you won’t be wrong — and gave me good distractions (enjoy the leap!), made me feel desirable when on my own I was feeling the opposite, and provided enough of an energy boost to kick my workouts into high gear. I almost don’t want to give this kind of credit here, but keeping it 100, it’s correctly placed. My motivation skyrocketed at the moment that turned out to be the most essential. Doorstep deliveries set the energy bar , which became the pivot point that has originated my inarguably successful recommitment to my health for the second half of this godawful year — and let’s just say the porch light is still on.

That all being said, the biggest share of the credit ultimately belongs to… me.

Saying that is not selfish. It’s not even bragging. It’s just true.

The universe could have lined up this same set of circumstances for anyone, and they might have done different things with them — or they might have done nothing at all with them.

I said yes.2

At every turn, I chose myself. I chose my actions and I enacted my decisions. I stayed on my own side. I respected my needs and what would give me something positive in the moment, promising myself to capitalize on it and bank on a high-yield ROI. Was it perfect? Of course not. Was it without hiccups, bumps in the road, weirdness, or twists and turns that produced entirely new challenges of different proportions? I mean, obviously not; that’s way too specific a list for the answer to this (clearly rhetorical question) to be anything but no. But the point is, I saw things clearly and for what they were, and did not let any undesirable potential or real outcomes deter me from my priorities. When I got stuck in my head, I knew how to get myself out safely. When I felt apprehension, I believed in my abilities to handle it and coached myself through it. When I caught myself wondering if I should have done something differently, I shrugged it off as a pointless internal debate because I was where I was; the only thing I could do now was move forward, with a little more insight and wisdom. And, importantly, when presented with any new challenge, I continued to say yes.

That’s how I wound up on 75 Hard. I’m currently on day 70. I’ll do a whole other long-winded post after I successfully complete the 75 days, so I won’t veer off in that direction now. What I will say is that it has not only solidified my path forward, but it may very well have helped me change my life.

I will end with this: being your own best friend isn’t sad. It’s a necessity. By saying yes to things outside of my head, I was actually saying yes to myself. That’s the true choice I am making every day. I choose fun. I choose joy. I choose quality interactions over quantity of friendships. I choose health. I choose laughter. I choose trying. I choose failure as a possible option, and I choose to not be afraid of that. I choose a fuller life. I choose me.

I say yes.

  1. Not including vacations. I am somehow a free spirit when I’m traveling. ↩︎
  2. The only “rule” I’ve set around this that it can’t be with the knowledge that anything I say yes to might be hurting someone — myself or anyone else. ↩︎
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NEW DAY 97: To heal, the six

Four days after I broke 5 miles for the first time in over 8 years, I hit 6 for the first time ever in my life. I hit 6.01, to be exact: that’s 6 miles and .01 to grow on.

My nasty hanger-on of a cold is still not all the way gone (!), but I’m putting nails in its coffin every chance I get. Breaking 6 miles tonight was not planned; I had a what-if spark early in my elliptical run and just felt I could get there — and then the feeling of what if and I could turned into I’m gonna make this happen. And I did make it happen! In 65 minutes exactly.

It was not as easy as that; I did almost stop at a few different points, and I did wonder if I was writing checks my body couldn’t cash. Would I potentially injure something in this mad pursuit? Would I be decrepit the next day? Well, to hell with the fear. There’s no place for that in this. Decide you want it, and then go get it.

I’m recovering not only from illness, but from trauma. The first half of this year was miserable, yes, but it’s deeper and longer than that.

I didn’t know if my legs — perpetually at high risk of ankle injury — could still do this.
I didn’t know if my lungs — 7.5 years removed from multiple massive pulmonary embolisms — could still do this.
I didn’t know if my mind — plagued by faltering, tentative confidence still in the process of rebuilding — could still do this.

Well… they could.

And they did.

With every step towards 6.01, I proved something critical to myself. It’s not just that I’m physically capable or mentally strong. It’s bigger than that. It’s that I’m healing. I’m learning to trust myself, to believe in myself, and to care for myself again. And even if it’s months before I see 6.00 on another gym screen, I will revel in the moment when I was still unsteady and took command of my story like never before anyway. Because I wanted to, I believed I could, and I decided to.

That’s fortitude. That’s resilience. That’s growth.

That’s recovery.

That’s what leads to peace.

I didn’t cry when it happened like I thought I would. Something even better happened: I got emotional, and I leaned into it. I let the waves of pride, surprise, impressed-ness, relief, success, joy, and accomplishment wash over me. I felt it all. After months years of self-preservation-based blunted feelings, I felt it all. It was the type of rush that is life-affirming. It was the type of rush I thought I was no longer capable of experiencing.

POSSIBILITY.

I may find a way back after all.

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NEW DAY 22: Pause

Since I took a spill yesterday, I decided to be very cautious and take the day off from cardio today for the first time in more than a week. In addition to my gym workouts, I’ve started doing short isolated workouts from the app Lazy Fit. I’m actually enjoying them so far, so I’m thinking I’ll keep the subscription! But man, I woke up this morning feeling it from the one I did yesterday — another reason why a rest day was in order. I did still do my daily Lazy Fit program, but I’ll admit it was a little tougher than it should have been while carrying yesterday’s earned soreness… although I suspect some of it is also from the fall. I cushioned my fall with my left arm, and that’s feeling the burn today.

Luckily, I haven’t had any intense restlessness I’ve felt itchy to relieve today, so I’m grateful for that. It felt a little weird to take the day off from a good elliptical or treadmill sesh. It almost felt risky. But it would have been riskier to push a mildly protesting ankle, so I’m glad I listened to my body. Looking forward to getting back to the gym tomorrow!

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NEW DAY 20: Running scared

What if I can’t do it… again?

There’s so much I can’t do. I’ve failed at what feels like innumerable things in my life, and so much this year in particular. Today, I suddenly realized I am having imposter syndrome about everything. EVERYTHING.

My mind is very unhealthy right now. The only thing that has acted as a release valve has been movement.

My current situation is bad, but one luxury I have is that I can go for a workout whenever I want. It’s become a crutch to the point that I wonder if it’s actually problematic to be creating this type of likely-unsustainable precedent for myself, but it’s extremely helpful to me right now, so I’m gonna punt that potential problem to a later time.

The feelings of inadequacy, the fears that things will never get better, the preoccupation with how much I’m doing wrong, the outsize concern over rather trivial matters, the involuntary “what-if” thinking… they’re consuming. They’re suffocating. They’re draining. They’re LOUD.

But not when I’m running. Thank goodness.

I’ve had a long history of fitness attempts, all of which had notable success before ultimately failing. There were big similarities between the trajectories each time. I don’t remember this apprehensive state being part of it before. I know it’s because the stakes are at their highest now, and that this shitty year is casting a very long, very dark shadow over everything I do. It’s one more inner demon to combat in my very noisy mind amid the deafening silence of the faltering existential landscape around me. The discomfort from working out gives me something to feel other than sadness, and the challenge of keeping myself going when it feels too hard gives me something to think about other than how much I’ve fucked up my life. I kind of remember experiencing those benefits before, when the stakes were lower.

One thing I know I’ve never experienced in my past attempts is a total absence of “bad” cravings. It’s like I woke up one day and had zero interest in consuming anything that isn’t a healthy choice. It almost feels like cheating; as hard as physical conditioning and exercise are, especially in the beginning, the diet part was always harder for me. Temptation lurked around every corner, threatening to derail me in a moment of weakness — even in my dreams. This time, that’s a foreign concept. I doubt it will last forever, but for as long as I have this unexpected and incredibly valuable tool in my arsenal, I will be grateful for it.

While I’d love for the total disinterest in crappy food to be a lifelong friend, I’d welcome a change in the rest of my mentality. Fear’s ability to power my workouts is a tarnished silver lining, but feeling powerful in my workouts on my own is what I’m running after.

I hope I catch it soon.

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NEW DAY 18: Mind over what’s the matter

Apparently I’m in a phase where it I can easily be triggered into anxious feelings. I had a wave of it yesterday that caught me off guard while trying to focus on something important. Today, I felt another coming on while reattempting the same thing.

I wanted to get out of my skin. It turns out that’s not a thing, so I did the next best one: I went to the gym.

I am not exactly in peak physical condition. In my fitness prime, I could go 5 miles on the elliptical without stopping, in well under an hour. The most I’ve been able to do in the past few weeks since I (re)started working out has been 10 not-fast minutes, getting me not-close to a single measly mile.

Today, I challenged myself: what if I could double that?

And then I did.

I can do 20 minutes. I could do 30. I could probably do 60. It wouldn’t be pretty — 20 wasn’t! — but I bet I could get myself there.

Another thing it wasn’t, was easy. Ho.ly.shit., the mental effort to keep going when I stopped wanting to around minute 12! But I pushed myself, because I didn’t want to feel that surge of disappointment for not doing what I had come there to do. I had something to prove. I had something I needed to do.

And I did it!

In 20 sweaty minutes, I ran 1.52 miles. I was consciously trying to keep my speed below 4.5 mph so I could make it the full time I wanted, and I had to rein myself in more than once. My legs have been sore from adjusting to returning to this type of movement after such a long hiatus, and they scream at me as soon as they feel the pedaling motion when I start the elliptical. They howled at me that entire time today, and they’ll probably be jelly tomorrow. But today, I felt powerful for turning my mental nerves into mental command, and exerting my mind over my body.
I was powerful.
I am powerful.

That feeling is unbeatable.

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DAY 038: The proclivity for negativity

DietBet Kickstarts 1 and 2 (out of 3) have ended, and I’m a two-time winner!  I have just a bit more to go before I meet the goal for my third one that weighs out this time next week, and I have every intention of winning it.  Anyone in a DietBet has every intention of winning, though, right?  Or they wouldn’t be betting in the first place.  The money is a huge motivator… but it shouldn’t be the focus.

Unfortunately, I’m seeing a new trend in the DietBet community that I’ve never seen before in almost three years on the site:  whiny, complain-y, negative comments about the modest winnings.  Both of my recently-ended Kickstarters heavily showcased these gripes.  In most cases, they came from people with misguided expectations about how much money they would come away with if they hit their goals — these folks pretty clearly didn’t bother to read or understand the rules before joining the game, or before shooting their mouths off at the end of it.  I know it’s disappointing to “only” win six bucks after working your tail off for a month, but imagine how much worse it must be to come within a pound of your goal after working your tail off for a month, and losing your entire buy-in on top of that!  (By the way, those people are the ones who financed your six-buck win, complainers.  And then you bitched about it.  Double ouch for them, huh?)

Many people have been quick to point out to the ranters that DietBet is a place for support, motivation, and accountability; it is NOT a get-rick-quick scheme.  It’s why I’ve come to DietBet every time I’ve felt myself slipping and needing to get back on track, and as long as I stay focused, it works for me.  Not because of the money, but because of the support.  I once hosted a DietBet, albeit a small one, with a $10 buy-in that only had about a dozen people in it.  We were VERY active as a group with posting and interacting, and we had a blast losing weight together.  At the end of the bet, none of us profited a single penny because we ALL met our 4% goal.  That wasn’t a fluke coincidence; that was because we were in it together.  The fact that we only got back our initial investment was beyond worth it because it meant that nobody lost the game and everybody had lost weight.  We were really there for each other.  It was the best DB game I’ve ever played.

The wonderful thing about January is it does flip a switch in people to make changes in their lives where they feel unhappy, and weight is probably the number one thing people resolve to change about themselves at the first of the year.  It’s fantastic when people make strides towards health and self-improvement, and even more fantastic when they succeed.  Unfortunately, it means many newcomers flood gyms and websites with the most earnest of intentions, but without a real plan.  They haven’t done the research, and then it’s everyone else’s problem — sometimes fault? — that they aren’t having their sugar-free cake and eating it, too.  If you’re pissy because you didn’t rake in a windfall on a community weight-loss site, honestly, shame on you for having that expectation in the first place.  There is nothing anywhere in the rules or FAQs that should have led you to formulate such an idea.  Congratulate the people who busted their asses to win, just like you did, and get back to work.   **steps off soap box**

Ironically, all the negativity in the air on DB right now has triggered some positive thinking for me.  I’ve been kind of skittish lately about the eventuality of my foot surgery, which is likely to happen next month.  I know that as long as I plan, I can avoid regaining, and can even continue to make progress on my weight loss.  Even still, it’s hard not to feel kind of nervous about being essentially immobilized for such a long period.  That’s a slippery slope to negative self-talk.  What the pouters on DB have inadvertently reminded me with all their negative talk is that it’s incredibly unappealing and counter-productive.  I’m not on my mission for any other reason than that I want to be.  And you know what?  I can do it.  I just have to decide to.  Multiple times a day, every day.  The only way to do that is by staying positive.

In the meantime, I really hope this influx of downers is not the start of a new trend on DietBet.  It really crushes what has always been a positive atmosphere for most players.  No one is here for that.

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DAY 021: A woman’s right to chews

The recent days have been a blend of several non-scale victories and several non-scale fails.  A quick recap:

NSV:  I made it the full week between scheduled weigh-ins without sneaking a peak at the scale, which made seeing the loss today highly satisfying.

NSF:  I caved.  I had coffee this morning.  My sleep may or may not suffer, but I honestly can’t even say I’m that upset about the coffee.  This presents an interesting experiment opportunity at zero caloric expense.

NSV:  I chose moderately healthy options for my meal out on Thursday, last night, and this morning, and succeeded at staying within my calorie limit every day this week.

NSF:  My moderately healthy brunch choice this morning, it turns out, was actually not that healthy.  Nutrition calculators are wonderful and terrible at the same time — if only I had looked in the moment instead of after the fact!  It blew up more than half of my daily limit!

NSV:  I still stayed within limit today by severely adjusting my meal plan for the rest of the day.  Lunch was a banana, my PM snack was carrots, and my dinner was steamed broccoli.  It sounds extreme, especially on a day when I got a good cardio workout in, but you know what?  I’m not hungry!  This isht is working, y’all.

NSF:  I didn’t get to the gym all the days I should have this week.  I could have done more good if I had.

NSV:  I still hit my step goals every day this week, and I did still make it to the gym a few times.

NSF:  No more data — which means NSVs outnumber NSFs!

NSV:  I managed to fully prepare and portion out my meals for this week in spite of having company staying with me — a LOT of work and sore feet, but also highly satisfying!
The lesson for me here is that we have a right to choose what we chew, and we can even allow a few calorie-dense selections into the fray.  My Thursday and Saturday meals were both dinners this week, meaning I could budget my intake throughout the day and go into the meal knowing exactly how many nutritional points I had to play with once I had the menu in my hand.  That worked well.  Today, since my meal out was in the morning and of higher caloric value than either of my other meals out this week, it was more painstaking to stay under my limit because there was so much time left in the day.  But not only did I make it work without feeling deprived, I also felt more motivation to work out as a result.  I will keep my right to what chews I make because I know how to operate within the rules.

And my body knows it.  It shed 4.6 pounds this week.

That means I’m gonna crush those 4 new DietBets.  Ahhhh, this is more like it!

Screen Shot 2018-01-21 at 7.25.39 PM

It also means I’m at -7.8 pounds so far for the month, and solidly within reach of losing the 12 pounds I wanted to lose in January.  It’s going to take some hard work, but my 3 weeks of habit forming are now officially in the books.

Let’s rock.

 

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DAY 019: Souped-up menu

One of my big weight-loss philosophies is that you can’t eat everything you like, but you should like everything you eat.  I’ve learned this about myself:  if I’m not happy about my food plan, I’m far more likely to stray from it.  To that end, I’ve spent loads of time combing the net and my 4 healthy magazine subscriptions to build myself an ever-growing solid arsenal of go-to recipes that give me a good rotation of options to mix and match indefinitely.  Meal planning and preparation take up a HUGE amount of time for me, but they’re essential components of success.  After all…

cantoutexercise
getfit
rest
…and so on.

Adhering to my “like everything you eat” philosophy sometimes gets tricky when layered in among my efforts to try new things (which often means more than once — some new flavors can be acquired tastes), not overload one meal with the bulk of my day’s calories, get enough nutritional variety, and stay within my daily macros.  It’s a time-consuming puzzle to put together my weekly meal plans, but it’s usually fun for me.  However, there are times when I remember the hard way that there are certain things I really just don’t enjoy eating or am sick of at the moment.  I can usually put the distaste aside, scrunch up my nose, and eat the thing I’ve forced upon myself, especially when it’s paired with something I really do enjoy.  Prime example:  I’m still not exactly bananas over bananas, but they’re transportable and I’ve come to not mind them, so I usually schedule them as a snack with some yummy almond butter or yogurt.  This week, I had a miss:  I threw in some grape tomatoes, which has reminded me that I borderline hate them — and I made the unfortunate mistake of coupling them with a lunch it turns out I’m not wild about right now.  The only positive is that I’m hungry enough at lunch time that I’ll eat just about anything, and I’m OK with the split-pea soup, it just doesn’t hit the spot, ya know?

My mismanaged menu (re)taught me two key things:

  1. It’s fine to include a few items I find OK, as long as there’s something I really like to balance it out.
  2. I’m fickle.  The odds are 50/50 that I’ll have changed my mind on something I haven’t had in a while, for the better or the worse, or that I still like/dislike it just as much as before.  (I’m looking at you, grape tomatoes.)  That is, if I can remember how I felt about it in the first place.  (I’m looking at you, split-pea soup.)  So, when I’m not sure, I need to not group two questionable items together in the same feeding.  I just need to be a bit more thoughtful during menu prep.

I like souping in the winter, even when the temperature varies wildly between single digits and the high fifties, so I’m making up for this week’s soup miss with a soup for next week I’m already craving:  classic matzo ball soup… with whole-grain matzo meal.  Uh, yeah.  I’m jealous of myself.

TGIF — this week’s menu misfire is over!  Happy weekend, kids 🙂

P.S.  No, I didn’t go off plan in spite of not loving my choices for the week.  Bam!  #NSV

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DAY 017: The foodstuffs dreams are made of

They’re baaaaaaa-aaaaaack:  the food dreams.  With a twist.

Last night, I don’t even remember what I was illicitly eating in my dream when I reached the level of semi-consciousness where I realized I was dreaming.  At that point, I immediately grabbed a bowl of whipped cream that appeared from nowhere and started eating it with a spoon.  I could take or leave whipped cream in real life, so that was a surprising splurge!  Haha.

This was the second night in a row of food dreams, but with different indulgences.  I always hit this point when I start a new health routine.  It’s not even just one point; it’s more like a starting point of what will be an intermittent pattern that continues indefinitely.  Oddly, it seems to happen at times when I’m not having any waking cravings and am actually feeling pretty secure in my food and exercise choices.  I usually feel insanely guilty when I wake up, before it hits me that the sinful eating I did in my dreams didn’t really happen.  The best is when, like this morning, I become aware that I’m dreaming and I can go hog wild with no consequences.

The weird part about last night’s dream was that, before the whipped-cream plot twist, I had an internal struggle about an indulgence of a different kind:  weighing myself.  It’s always a bit of a challenge not to weigh in between my usual Sunday night times, and I confess that I do usually give in around Thursday.  It’s been particularly challenging not to step on the scale this week, after annoyingly posting no weight loss at all last week.  My next scheduled weigh-in is still 4 days away, and I feel like my body has made it over the week-2 slump and has responded well to my consistency with diet and the introduction of regular exercise.  (I made it to the gym after work yesterday!)  I want to wait until Sunday to see the progress, and I’m so hopeful for a big number to offset the stall from last week, but I’m being diligent with myself not to.  If I can’t resist the damn scale, which should be an easy thing to resist because it’s THE ENEMY with a gremlin living inside it, how am I gonna say no to donuts and cookies and bowls of whipped cream?

Sooooo, I’m gonna ride it out.  In the meantime, I’m trying to prepare myself for a possibly disappointing number on Sunday.  I have to remember that the scale only tells me my relationship to gravity, not how I feel.

Unless it’s a big drop.  😉

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DAY 009: Coffiend

I’m not a coffee addict, but I do like my coffee.  It’s actually the coffee I like, by the way; I take it black, no cream or sugar diluting the hearty, nutty, bitter flavor.  I usually amble down the block on week day mornings to pick up a cup for myself to drink at work, and brew some at home in my French press on lazy weekend mornings or go for the bottomless coffee pots alongside leisurely weekend brunches with friends.  The smell of the roasted beans, the taste of the soothing liquid, the feel of the warm mug between my hands… I just enjoy the stuff.

I have a 3-year losing streak playing Starbucks for Life, which sees my fiendish behavior amp up significantly every year as I invariably rack up 2 out of 3 stickers in every category before ultimately only gaining dupes for the rest of the game’s duration.  That’s when a mild addictive pattern does start to form, born out of addiction to the possibility of winning MORE COFFEE, however improbable.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed I’m much more sensitive to caffeine than ever before.  I stopped drinking it after 12 PM a few years back when I realized it was wreaking havoc on my ability to fall asleep at night, but now it seems that if I have it more than a couple of days in a row, my sleep starts to suffer.  And so…

I’m giving up the brown stuff.

TEMPORARILY.  Like, for the rest of this month (and then we’ll see).

Conventional wisdom goes that it takes three weeks to form a habit.  Today was the first day I had no coffee, and three weeks from today is January 30th, which is just before the last day of the month.  So I’m going to be attentive to my physiological responses, where sleep is concerned as well as what effects it may have on my hunger and energy levels throughout the day and decide after that window whether or not it’s worth continuing the coffee hiatus.  I’ve given up coffee before for almost the exact same reason, but since it was during Whole30, it was impossible to isolate which impacts the diet was having on me vs. which ones coffee was, and/or how the two interplayed.  I’m really down with this sort of torturous self-experimentation, so hey, let’s call it science and party.

I didn’t sleep well last night, which is surely part of why I’m feeling draggy right now, but I’m sure the lack of coffee is also contributing to that.  I woke up his morning feeling as if I had been partially awake for a few hours.  It would be awesome to wake up from a full sleep to the sound of my alarm, rather than from a semi-conscious state in anticipation of my alarm.

Speaking of this morning, I noticed at one point of my semi-consciousness that my VivoFit wasn’t on my wrist, which is odd because I’ve been sleeping with it on for 3 years.  I felt around for it in the sheets, but it wasn’t there.  When I finally got out of bed, I saw it was lying on the floor.  I had clearly removed it and tossed it in my sleep!  Oh, subconscious self.  Don’t look for the symbolism, don’t look for the symbolism, don’t look for the symbolism…!

Also, last night, I finally did what could be classified as exercise.  My Wii Fit balance board arrived, and I did a Wii bit of activity for 30 minutes!  🙂  Baby steps still count towards that daily goal.

I’m hoping that once the caffeine fully leaves my system, I’ll get into more of a natural energy cycle that will make working out more productive.  I have a gym session in mind for tomorrow, which I don’t expect to be an easy time, but starting never is.

Don’t think, just go.  **breathes**