Stonie

June 4, 2020 Day 1 off. Morning Routine: 50% done. no workout or cold shower. But i did shower. I sat down and wrote down all the things that I would like to get done during my time off just so that i don’t spend all day every day living in constant anxiety from not achieving enough with all my time off. There are only 3 things that I would truly like to get done and the rest are optional but I’m going to try my best to not put too much pressure on myself and fail in having a restful time off, since thats the goal. I also made a bit of a plan so that my days still have some structure - do my morning routine, do some “work” for some daylight hours i.e whatever project you want to work on or some painting or some writing or something “productive” - and then spend the evenings doing fun stuff. Like playing all the video games i have half finished and never returned to. Workout: not done But i will probably walk the dog at some point since she’s bouncing off the walls. eating mindfully: tbd self-care: tbd meal prep: tonight. Gonna try a vegan pulled pork recipe using lentils and carrots. Evening routine: tbd

June 03, 2020 Morning routine: not done im not sure if getting up early and being more prepared, or getting more sleep was the right move for Wednesday. Wednesday was rough. It was day 6 of 6 at work (for like, The 2nd week in a row, after 1 day off) and I’d already been shifted from one position to another and then when i got to work I was supposed to go to a different position again... one that I’m still not technically trained in but can do passably well because of my training in other areas. Between that and the only staff left being the dead weight i just hit my fucking limit at work and couldn’t deal with peoples dumb shit. Mostly all things that people do 100 times a day that they seemed unable to do that one particular day. Ugh. My boss was also mildly put out because i didn’t want to be her doormat and absorb all the work she never got done because she starts things and never finishes them. Apparently sticking up for myself is me being “moody” but whatever xD (wondering what I do? Hospital administration. Medical records, ward clerk, front concierge screening visitors for COVID symptoms... I’m that one person at the office with no real position but does them all at a moments notice) other things that happened were me leaving my lunch and prepared coffee at home before leaving for work, only to discover that when i went to eat it, me flinging my phone out of its cover against a wall and onto the floor (unintentionally) to completely shatter the screen and my cat escaping the backyard when i got home causing me a momentary meltdown... before i found her basking in the vacant block behind my house without a care in the world. Anyway. workout: not done. eating mindfully: 50% done I did buy a small bag of chocolate buttons that i ate while doing things around the house so... whoops. Otherwise i had no choice but to do this since after i shattered my phone screen it promptly went flat on me for the rest of the day. Self-care: done. Spent the evening having a few drinks and drawing. Post-work routine: not done. so I had the great idea to do this after work instead of whenever i felt like... except that now I don’t go back to work for 12 days xD! I was supposed to be travelling interstate for a roller derby Tournament that obviously didn’t go ahead but i kept the time off because i knew I’d need a break from work (and oh boy was it right) so I’m going to have to reassess that idea.

Yikes I haven’t updated since Monday?! Alright. June 02, 2020 Morning routine: done So the light thing works good. Especially at 4:30am. Workout: done 1 minutes jumping jacks dynamic stretching super sets of: 3x10 incline pushups 3x12 split squats (Each leg) 3x10 kettlebell rows (each leg) Eating Mindfully: done Self-care: done, i think? surely. Evening routine: 50% done I had a exec meeting for derby to go to at 7pm which went for an hour and a half since we are trying to workout a return to skating plan post-COVID. Good news - we get to go back to skating on the 18th! Bad news - I didn’t get to bed till 9pm so I didnt bother trying to get up at 4:30am the next day. I already knew it wasnt going to happen.

The only day I missed was yesterday! Aha. Having the last few sundays off got me. Thursday I nearly died since I had to make up for Wednesday and Thursday was the biggest day, i ended up doing like 60 pushup variations! Since we did ours as a team i only had to do 1/6th of what was there though thankfully. I am so much closer to doing full pushups again though that I think I might stick with it as a thing, just do some pushups every day except sundays. How about you? How did you go with them?

June 1, 2020; Gay Pride Day ~*Happy Pride Month Y’all*~ Morning Routine: done Yesterday I set up a light with a timer in my bedroom to come on a minute after my alarm goes off in an attempt to wake me up better. Since the GD sun doesn’t come up until 7am now. Rude. so that worked good. I did forget to set it for 6am instead of 4:30am... so both my alarm and light went off at 4:30am. Thankfully I got the timer with an app that I can set with my phone so I could just turn it off with that 😂 I’m gonna be mad if my body clock has finally adjusted to this wake up time when I have time off in a few days. i dunno if I actually wrote this down on here But something I found with the cold shower is that th3y aren’t as “cold” feeling if I’ve done a workout just before. If I decide to skip the workout and just shower and get dressed it always feels worse. Workout: 50% done. I’ve decided to gift myself half of a daily success if I Just do some warmups And stretching in the am, even if I don’t do a full workout. Since I plan on doing push-ups every day anyway this gives me something that still gets my blood pumping but takes the despair out of having to workout if I -reaaaaallly- dont want to. Or if I dilly dally too long drinking my tea lime I did this morning. Oops. so I did 1minute of jumping jacks and 3 sets of 10 pushups (dining room chairs). ‘‘Twas good. Self-care: done i set boundaries for friends coming around for games afternoon. Knowing I had to get up early for work tomorrow. Eating Mindfully: not done. we snacked while chatting and playing Games and I’m not going to pretend like I was paying attention to what went in my mouth fully. Evening After Work routine: done. I’m changing this to be a routine for when I get home from work instead of whenever i want to go to bed since it doesn’t appear to be working. - do the dishes. - get changed. - do some skin and teeth care (my toothpaste doesn’t taste like tooth paste so I can pull this off and still eat dinner without a weird minty tinge) so we’ll see how that goes. So having said that I did do this just before bed, since I had people around pretty much as soon as I got home from work.

May 31, 2020 Morning Routine: 50% done 6:30am starts can go f&^$ themselves Workout: not done Eating mindfully: 50% done I bought a bag of tasty chocolate snacks which i was eating while doing things around the kitchen, and only thought about stopping Multitasking when I’d eaten most of them. Whoops Self-care: done went to bed early. Evening routine: not done.

YES! I finally got my hands on a kettlebell the other day too from Kmart. I was a few weeks too late when The ‘Rona hit and ive been stalking the fitness section for one ever since.

WEEK 3 WRAP UP Morning routine: 5.5/7 () half done days are better than nothing. days I manage to get up and eat breakfast before work are okay. better than nothing. I feel like i'm trying to hammer a square peg in a round hole with this. it's working, but barely. I've even been lucky this challenge to have a somewhat consistent work roster and still, half way through my work roster I am drained. I know that my evening routine going well does help me get a better nights sleep, but when I'm tired from getting up early i lose the will to do anything once i get home from work, so i don't do my evening routine, so I don't sleep well, so I'm tired all day, so i... you get it. *Evening Routine: 3/7 (eh) im thinking part of the problem with this is that i have no set trigger to start doing the things i want to do to wind down from the day. SO, I’m changing this to be a routine for when I get home from work instead of "at some point in the evening before bed time" because otherwise theres no trigger to get me to do them. i also just really, really hate doing the dishes xD New and Improved Post-Work Routine - do the dishes. - get changed into cozy AF pyjamas - do some skin and teeth care (my toothpaste doesn’t taste like tooth paste so I can pull this off and still eat dinner without a weird minty tinge) so we’ll see how that goes. Eating Mindfully: 6.5/7 () this is an interesting experiment and i'm enjoying it more than intermittent fasting. I'm starting to be more aware of when my body says "enough food!" and I -think- im starting to work out what my hunger cues are? im evaluating food as i eat it too to decide if its really worth over eating or if its okay to stop eating it and put/ throw it away when im done. Meal Prep: 1/1 (yess) I roasted a heap vegetables. a bag of apples (gone in like, 3 days) and attempted to make bread rolls. I have forgotten to score this for the last few weeks but I have definitely done it. Workouts: 3/3 (perfect-o) in struggle town with this this week but i bought a kettlebell so ill be able to do even better workouts now. the next few weeks give me some blissful days off so i will be able to focus mroe on myself than just getting ready to dragass through work until i crash. Self Care: 7/7 (noice) this is good and i can feel it helping my mood (when im not dog tired)

Okay so early morning is starting to get the better of me but I'm doing my best I swear. May 30, 2020 Morning routine: 50% done I didn't have a cold shower and I didn't workout. I probably should have stretched since my body started aching from those kettlebell swings yesterday. oops. maybe next challenge ill add that in workout: not done eating mindfully: done. getting slightly easier, still trying to grab my phone while eating but ive caught myself every time a few bites in so thats a win in my books. self-care: done I had a nap and started a few paintings Evening routine: 50% done ngl, i only had the spoons left to do half of my dishes.

ooh I like those, thanks. ill add them to my list of upper body exercises to do! I could prbably do those with my kettlebell too...

huh? no? oh! I think i clicked the wrong emote thingy? sorry to confuse you if thats what it was! early morning work got my brain turning to jelly.

May 29, 2020 Morning Routine: done nothing interesting happened. I did all the bits. I felt pretty good at work today too which was nice. Alert, functioning Cold Shower: Na na na na (na na na na na na) by MCR workout: done 5 minutes of 20 seconds on / 10 seconds off kettlebell swings. I thought it was going to hurt more than it did but we’ll see how I pull up tomorrow. self care: done im sitting by the open fire drinking a not chocolate. Cozy AF. Eating mindfully: done. evening routine: not done

May 28, 2020 morning routine: done my one day off so I made sure I actually heckin did it instead of blowing it off. Cold shower song: I’m not okay my My Chemical Romance workout: done 1 minute jumping jacks dynamic stretching supersets of: 1-10 incline pushups / 3x10 pushups 3x12 body weight squats i also finally found a kettlebell in town for the first time since ‘Rona hit, so I grabbed a 10kg one to do workouts with since I actually really enjoy kettlebell workouts and you can do so much with them. Eating Mindfully: done. Almost lost my focus when snacking again but didn’t. Also since I was home I kept leaving my phone in places my body wasnt so that was actually helpful 😂 maybe I need to do a “separate your phone from your hand” challenge next round. evening routine: done slowly, but I did it. I really didn’t want to address the pile of dishes on my sink but I had to since it as well, most of the dishes that I own. self care: done i sat in my sun room and just sat and enjoyed it. It’s full of plants and I have a comfy chair set up in here to just hang out in. It’s glorious.

*sets up tent in camp Intuitive Eating* yeah I’ve definitely been trying to eat every few hours as opposed to IF-ing it and that has done something (I think?) for my need to stuff my face with anything I see. I think the hunger from the fasting state was something I definitely couldn’t handle. I’m still going probably too hard on sweet things just because, well, tasty. And sugar. And prepackaged. Once I eat through the bag of marshmallows in my house I will be better off too since I don’t often buy sugary things. I just had one specific craving for s’mores once. right? I just need to adjust back to to having like, one doughnut instead of a whole box 😂

Alright, I’ve had a busy few days but let’s get this updated. my routine these last few days got a little thrown off by a friend having a home crisis with her brother (Who she lives with) so I’ve been helping her through that since her family are less than helpful. She’s been leaning on me for support which is fine but since she doesn’t drive and has no where else to go I offered to Help her move some stuff and cat-sit her cat when the argument with her brother came to a head and she couldn’t handle being there any longer. so now I have a temporary extra cat which is sure to throw some sparks into the household for a while. At least until my own cat and dog get used to her presence. May 26&27, 2020 Morning routine: 50% done / 50% done Both days i did the cold shower and got my work stuff together (made coffee, breakfast, lunch! Etc) but i didn’t do any exercise or writing. workout: not done / not done just push-ups. Mostly done in the stairwell at work that no one uses. I actually think I forgot to do them yesterday? Whoops. eating mindfully: done / done this has been the hardest around snack time, I had to work hard to not pick up my phone or be working while snacking. I think I might even be feeling less like overeating since I’m trying to drop the “no you can’t have / don’t need that” mentality and am just eating things if I want them. I’ve also been trying to work out what my hunger cues are since they aren’t generally my stomach yelling at me for food but other things like not thinking straight or feeling tired. I’m trying my hardest to not supplement that with copious amounts of coffee but that like, a 50/50 for me. I love coffee too much to ever cut it out of my life entirely. 😂 Evening routine: 50% done / 50% done so Monday / Tuesday evening I took my meds too late which is what made it too hard for me to get out of bed at a reasonable hour, and I didn’t do my dishes last night since there are like, 2 plates and 2 bowls and 2 4 knives that need doing and I did the ol’ “it can wait till tomorrow” so I’ll have to do them today. I did try to go to bed when I felt sleepy too but Tuesday night that didn’t go well and I lay in bed for ages before finally falling asleep. Last night I slept well. I’m starting to adjust to this early routine and it scares me. I woke up of my own accord at 6am and even got out of bed willingly before the sunlight on my day off. self care: done / done on Tuesday night I re-painted the nails I chipped doing housework, and last night i played some more saints row IV

Alright and with that, Week 3 is upon us. May 25, 2020 Morning Routine: done, easy. Cold Shower: The Adventure Zone: Amnesty, Episode 27 (or rather, 3 minutes of it) Workout: done 30x kitchen bench incline pushups done. I did just foam roll all my other bits Instead of doing anything fitness but it helped immensely because I was sore. intermittent fasting Eating Mindfully: done from the time I decided to do it from anyway. so my plan for scoring this is the same. 5 of 7 days is a success. If I’m going to eat something I need to drop everything and just do that. No shovelling lollies into my face while doing mindless data entry at work. No mindless phone scrolling while eating. Having conversations with other people is okay. Listening to the radio / a podcast: acceptable for now. But I want to be fully aware of how I feel about the food I’m eating and what I actually think of what I’m putting in my body. Not gonna lie, I tried my best to immediately forget that this was a thing I wanted to work on! Since I posted that update then immediately grabbed a biscuit out of my back for a snack and then probably not even 30 seconds later went “ oh, I should write this thing down in my phone!” And was this [] close to scrolling through my phone mindlessly while eating a biscuit. Mere seconds after deciding I Was gonna stop that shit 😂 HOWEVER. From then on I was okay with it. I feel hopeful about this as an idea. also also, since I was actually paying attention to the biscuit I was eating, I realised it was half stale and lost interest in them after eating the two I had, instead of just eating them because SUGAR. Meal prep: done I didn’t actually have to do this today but I had a craving for roasted vegetables (so I did that) and then baked some apples too so I have them as a topping for porridge... or ice cream. I also forgot to score this for last week but I made tacos so it definitely happened. self-care: done fun fact, if you microwave a marshmallow that’s been strategically placed onto a chocolate covered digestive biscuit for like, 8 seconds, and theN Stack another digestive biscuit Immediately on top of that you get a lazy person s’more! Making two those was self care today. evening routine: done it was almost disrupted by a friend needing to stop by to vent about her housemate, but i was conveniently distracted by my hatred of doing the sides to notice I’d tidied my entire kitchen after doing all my meal prep. Which was nice. I still made it to bed by 8pm which is good because I have hit. That. Wall. Hard. i also slept awfully last night since I forgot to take my meds and then we had the wildest weather in a decade (apparently) swing through and try and blow my hometown away so I kept waking up to sounds I thought were my house blowing down. It didn’t. Everything is still where I left it. It’s also fucking freezing. Boo.

I wanted to be a bit reflective last night but I had to get some sleep to be up at 4:30am without hating everything. now I’ve had some time so I’ve done that over in my challenge post. the TL;DR is that intermittent fasting wasn’t doing anything for me so I’m dropping that goal for eating mindfully instead. Shoutout to Tanktimus for pointing me in the direction of intuitive eating which I think fits what I’m trying to achieve in a way I can actually quantify and track instead of a “oh, you know, just eat without tracking things but still eat healthy but be able to eat all the tasty things...” cross-posted from my challenge log:

I have heard of Intuitive Eating before but didn't know there was a book! I might have a read of it. I've just found the 10 principles of intuitive eating and they sound like something I can work on. Thanks fort the suggestion Tank! I'm thinking (and more so now I've had a quick glance at that and flicked through some of the articles) that for now I might replace my goal of Intermittent fasting with Eating Mindfully. if I'm going to eat a thing then I have to only eat it. do nothing else. just eat it. stare at it. pay attention as i eat it. chew my goddamn food. Don't pick up my phone. just eat. if i don't have time to eat it mindfully... Don't eat it. Enjoy it. and if I don't... then probably stop eating it? This is something I was toying with for next challenge but hadn’t quite fleshed out yet. So I might just implement it now aaand see how that goes?

I wanted to be a bit reflective last night but I had to get some sleep to be up at 4:30am without hating everything. but now I have some time so I'll do that. Intermittent fasting: scrapped This hasn't been feeling great or useful to me. I've definitely not lost any weight (not that I was really trying to but it would have been nice for it to be that easy for once) I think i have a few reasons why. 1. My Main Weakness is sweet foods. Any kind. Lollies. Biscuits. Chocolate. Cake. Especially chocolate cake. 2. I am constantly surrounded by sweet snack foods at work. Apparently every department at work runs entirely off caffeine and sugar. 3. I am an opportunist when it comes to food and love freebies. "Well I might as well have a bit since it's free and not going to be here later" 4. If I'm hungry I find it harder to knock back opportunities to eat the foods. 5. I have 0 "stop eating" cues to rely on. But at least I can sleep! And I think most of these are being exacerbated by not eating until lunch time. I have an 8 hour window to eat so I take the chance to eat whatever I can while I can. especially if that 8 hour window is when I'm at work. and especially if someone brings something in that looks tasty. Self-Care Things that Don’t involve Spending Money: a list playing video games I already own light the fireplace do some art self care things: hair mask, face mask, nails, moisturise your entire body etc. stretch out a sore part of my body (or foam roller it) brush the pets walk the dog im coming back to work on this but if i hit post i wont lose it all

WEEK 2 WRAP UP bit scattered but their heart is in it.. Morning routine: 4.5/7 (oof so close) A couple of things threw me off at the start of the week but I did okay. I struggled with being at work 6 days in a row and the next few weeks don’t get any better until my booked time off in June. i started using my first 30 minutes of waking time to do some writing and that’s been super good! Even if I write literally 3 words I’ve achieved something. Otherwise I drink my beverage and scroll facebook or Pinterest or something less useful. I also get to play around in my own imagination for a while before I have to face the real world. That’s fun. Today I threw down some glyphs for the skeleton of an alien language I’ve been tying to not have to create. i am still weirdly enjoying the cold(ish) showers but it is still a little hard to motivate myself to do them when it’s already cold outside. That’s not going to get better though so I’m going to have to work around that. Evening Routine: 4/7 (eh) My routine went a bit wobbly when I finally got some time off. Oops. I’ll have to make it a focus again until I get it right. It is a good routine that works for me I just need to... remember to do it. This week definitely felt like it went forever. I spend too much time at work. Intermittent fasting: 2/7 (irrelevant) The only difference I’ve seen with this is I’m tired and hangry by 10 am and can’t wait any longer and just want to eat all the things. I don’t think this is helping me eat better? I’m going to try something different for the next two weeks. Something along the lines of “make this one thing and eat it for a few days” “stop eating sugary junk food at work” things like that. Workouts: 3/3 (perfect-o) Considering my week I’m v glad i got this done, I can definitely fit in 15 minutes of flailing about most days (if not every day) Definitely did all my pushups again this week and I can definitely feel them getting ever so slightly easier still. Even my jumping jacks aren’t causing as grief as they were when I started back up. I’m going to attempt to work 3 different exercises in every time I do a workout but no loss if it doesn’t get done. As long as I do something for now that’s, well, something. Self Care: 7/7 (noice) Yass. my Therapist was so proud of me. I just need to do more things that Don’t involve spending money. Might try make a list tomorrow.

May 24, 2020 Morning routine: done the cat and the dog have grown accustomed to my early starts so they were harassing me at 5:30am to get up and feed them (on my day off!!) so I did that. Then worked on my writing for a few hours. Cold Shower Song: ...damn. I can’t remember. It was a banger too. workout: done. Sunday is a blissful day of rest from push-ups which is good because my arms were going to fall off if I tried them today. 1minute of jumping jacks dynamic stretching supersets of: 3x12 (each side) single leg squats (onto a dining chair) 40s plank 35s plank 30s plank. dang it those planks we hard. It’s been a while since I planked. I also did more house stuff since it’s my last day off until Thursday. And we are supposed to get a wicked weather front come through with rain and “damaging winds” and all that. So I had to clean up my backyard and stuff things in the storage hole under my house so nothing blows away. Dragging paint cans around while on your ha do and knees under a house had me sweating let me tell you. i also gave my bedroom a makeover! I put up some shelves and a hanging rack for my clothes. my parents offloaded a free standing wardrobe to me when I moved in but it’s not big enough for all my clothes ( I have a wide range of styles don’t judge me) and since my house was built 50 years ago with jarrah I worked up a sweat just drilling holes into the stud work to get the shelf brackets up. But it looks so much better then the wardrobe that was there and my small bedroom looks much bigger now intermittent fasting: nah. I’m going to revisit my food intake problem tomorrow when I’m bored at work. Self care: done see above - bedroom makeover. Evening routine: done. Just barely. There was a small hiccup with my shelving adventure when I didn’t have the right screws and had to wait for my sister to bring me screws since I didn’t want to go to Bunnings for the third time in one day. That put me back a few hours but I got there. ill do my weekly wrap up and then I’m off to sleepy times.

May 23, 2020 Morning routine: 50% done i had too much housework to do and couldn’t focus on a workout. I planned to have a cold shower when I was done but... yeah. That never happened. I did do a bit of work on my writing at some point during the day though so that’s good. Workout: another rest day, I think the housework I did kinda almost made up for that though. I vacuumed and dusted and swept and scrubbed and emptied and washed all the things. I was expecting my parents around to help me move Some furniture but they got busy. Intermittent fasting: not done im probably going to scrap this for the next two weeks and focus on something else since it seems to be doing nothing for me apart from making me dozy until I eat.. I’ll think about that tomorrow. self-care: done I spent a decent chunk of time just sitting in the sun room reading Good Omens. That was good. evening routine: not done. I forgot to take my meds for the last two days? Probably my why sleep has been all over the joint.

May 22, 2020 morning routine: done Cold shower: think about things, by Dadi Freyr I did do some more writing during my first morning coffee. I think that’s a good use of my time that is otherwise spent scrolling mindlessly through Pinterest or something. workout: done 1 minute of jumping jacks dynamic stretching supersets of: 3x10 incline push-ups (stairs) 3x10 body weight rows (stair rail) im Aaaalmost starting to enjoy working out at home. I’m pleased with Ive been able to create workouts with things I have around the house. I do have a few stairs which is a new thing Ive never had before which are great for using during workouts. intermittent fasting: not done i went into town to help a friend out and they bought me brunch as a thanks. evening routine: done i had to shower to get itchy plant bits off me after mowing the lawn so did my self are type stuff then. self-care: done Didn’t set an alarm today. Also bought a new plant. i also mowed my own lawn (for the first time ever) and repotted some of my indoor plants, and planted some bushy plants in the outside garden.

i also own more throw blankets then a single person reasonably should, do i can just layer those too 😂 it’s beautiful! One day if I end up on that side of the country I might end up there.

I feel this on a deep level! my house is quite chilly too but im trying to be frugal (sometimes too stubbornly) and not turn the heating on as soon as i feel the slightest chill. Sweet mountain view! where did you walk?