Shaeon Takes Small Bites

[shaeon]

So, a couple of words about my personal inspiration: 

 

I am a total fangirl for Kelly Sue DeConnick, comic book writer extraordinaire.

 

 

She has a motivational text list you can subscribe to which she calls the bgsdlist, aka the Bitches Get Shit Done list. One of Kelly Sue's rallying cries is SMALL BITES. 

 

As if the wise words of Kelly Sue weren't enough, I also came across this article today. It's not actually all that different from a lot of the Nerd Fitness blog posts, but for some reason, reading this made it sink in. A problem I've had is goals being too big. I need to scale it down. SMALL BITES.

 

So with that in mind, my goals for the current 4 week challenge are:

 

1. More sleep, with the following weekly goals: 

Week 1: Never go to bed after 1 a.m. on a weeknight.

Week 2: Never go to bed after 12:50 a.m. on a weeknight.

Week 3: Never go to bed after 12:40 a.m. on a weeknight.

Week 4: Never go to bed after 12:30 a.m. on a weeknight.

 

2. Mindfulness about food. I must write down what I eat, taking notes on cravings I was having and how I felt after eating. Here are the weekly goals: 

Week 1: Record each meal for 4 days out of the week. 
Week 2: Record each meal for 5 days out of the week. 
Week 3: Record each meal for 6 days out of the week. 

Week 4: Record each meal for 7 days out of the week.
Note: these are probably the biggest bites I'm taking, with the end goal of recording meals daily. But honestly, this habit is much easier to maintain once it's daily. It is a lot easier to do it every single day than it is to do it only some of the time. 

3. Exercise. I must move some each day. Here are weekly goals: 
Week 1: 15 minutes of exercise daily. 
Week 2: 16.5 minutes of exercise daily. 
Week 3: 18 minutes of exercise daily. 
Week 4: 20 minutes of exercise daily. 

Note: The exercise can be basically anything - bodyweight, going for a walk, going to the gym, anything. I don't want to be able to give myself excuses not to do it. 
 

My life goal is to design and make a bag for my mom. I'm a leather worker, and I want to make a bag for her birthday. I'll be trying a new design on the construction of hers, so that will definitely be a learning experience. 

I'll work out what points go where at the end of the challenge. I tend to change my mind about what each goal is doing for me during the course of the challenge, so I figure it's better that way.

 

[SevenofSeven]

Great goals! I like the idea of small bites, it's how you eat that Armadillo cake, one bite at a time,

[shaeon]

Great goals! I like the idea of small bites, it's how you eat that Armadillo cake, one bite at a time,

Mmmm, Armadillo cake.

[RES]

She could inspire me to do a few things as well....

*ahem*

Stalking Following you again

[shaeon]

She could inspire me to do a few things as well....

*ahem*

Stalking Following you again

 

Oh, indeed. I met Kelly Sue at DragonCon this year. I was costuming one of her comics, Bitch Planet. After I got a selfie with her, she grabbed my face and gave me a big ol' kiss on the cheek. 

I had a goofy grin on my face for the rest of the day after that.  

[Heidi]

I like your approach!

I'm a fan of small bites, too. Looking forward to cheering you on.

[shaeon]

I like your approach!

I'm a fan of small bites, too. Looking forward to cheering you on.

 

Thanks Heidi! It's a lesson I need to learn. I am terrible at taking small bites. I tend to do things all or nothing - which means that it's much more likely for nothing to be the result. So I'm trying to learn to do the small changes. The hardest part is scaling it back.

[shaeon]

So for my 15 minutes of activity today, I wanted to just take a 15 minute break from work and go for a walk. But it's cold here - well, colder. Colder than it has been yet all year. But I told myself that it wasn't so bad when I left the building for lunch, so I'm sure it's fine now. Here's the thing though - it got windy during that time. So according to my phone it was 40 degrees F outside, but only after I went outside did I realize it FELT LIKE 30 according to the same weather app. I can confirm that, by the way. It does feel like 30. 

 

The parking lot is just about 5 minutes per lap, so I knew that 3 laps would be the perfect break. I did my first lap around the parking lot saying "it's so cold! It's so cold! I'm going back inside now!" But when I finished the first one, I surprised myself and kept going. And then did it one more time. 

 

And not surprisingly, the tension that has been sitting in my right shoulder all day started to let up, and my abs stretched out and felt better as well. Which, of course, I know is what happens when I go for a walk. It is excellent for stress relief, because it's excellent for tension relief. But yeah, it is nice to do it instead of telling myself that I ought to do it because I would feel better if only I did. 

[shaeon]

This morning I did not want to get out of bed. Just wasn't feeling it. I decided to lay in bed and do a few minutes with my meditation app, and that gave me what I needed to get going. 

 

So that is how today started. Hopefully it gets better from here.

[shaeon]

Today has been a bit of a bummer. No real true setbacks, just a true bummer. I found out that my hair stylist, Rebecca, quit and moved to Texas. This would normally not be the kind of problem I would even be worried about - I'm a total tomboy and I'm not all that precious about my hair. But I really adored my hair stylist. She was just a real cool lady and I always liked my appointments with her. 

I also got my hair undercut on the right side a year ago, and Rebecca was the one that did that. Mostly I miss her, but I have to admit that I also miss how she would trim my undercut. 

So I decided to just go back to the same place, and after I explained to the woman that I just needed the length trimmed and my undercut shaved close again, she said "if you don't mind, why did you do the undercut?" Like, making it very clear that she found the style unpleasant. It annoyed me right away. She also told me that when she was at her last job and was a Pentecostal, she would have refused to cut my hair that short, and this time in which she was previously Pentecostal sounded like it was maybe a couple of weeks ago (she was also pretty quick to note that she's now baptist, so... not that big of a change really). Then she just started sheering away at it, not very carefully (which freaked me out - she didn't cut it uneven or shave off any of my length, but she wasn't being at all careful). In the end the haircut was fine, but it lacked the finesse that my old stylist had. Oh, and the whole time she wanted to gossip about celebrities, mainly complaining about female celebrities that she thought were too wild and were probably going to destroy themselves. Because this isn't a huge shocker, but the very recently Pentecostal are often not so big on feminism. 

So now I need to find a new stylist, and I'm genuinely sad that I won't see Rebecca anymore because she was just awesome. 

I'm about to do my 15 minutes of exercise for the day. I kind of regret not having gotten it done earlier, but I'm sure it will improve my mood a bit. Also catching up on season 3 of Orphan Black to make this bummer day a bit nicer. Because yay, Cosima...

[shaeon]

Did my 15 minutes. Just did 15 minutes of some bodyweight stuff - squats, push ups, etc. Felt good to get it done. 

And of course, Cosima was awesome. 

[shaeon]

Things are better today. Got my exercise in already. Went for a walk. 

I'm hitting my other goals as well, but I'd rather update at the end of the week then day by day, because otherwise daily goals stress me out too much. 

I'm also excited that the new issue of the comic book Bitch Planet, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick (my source of inspiration) is out today. Me and a friend of mine are in the back pages of this issue, from where we cosplayed Bitch Planet at DragonCon. She took a pic of us because we were both wearing leather Bitch Planet cuff bracelets that I made.

[shaeon]

A few words about my sleep goals and why they are on my list of goals: 

 

Ideally, I should go to bed at 11:00. If I did that, I would get 7 and a half hours of sleep every night, more or less. Going to bed at 11 allows for the possibility that I might not go to sleep immediately. It allows for things that might stop me from going to bed right away at 11, as well. It kind of makes it easy to get 7 hours of sleep if I plan to get 7 and a half hours. 

 

But this going to bed at 11 thing rarely ever happens. 

 

What happens is I get involved in a project, or a TV show, or a movie, or sometimes a book (it's a lot easier to put a book down, though. Reading while tired makes me more tired). Or I just have a long to-do list that night. 

So I've tried setting "7 hours of sleep" as a goal before, and that falls apart immediately. I decided to specify a bedtime during this challenge instead because frankly, I couldn't bring myself to write that the first small bite for this goal would be "5 and a half hours of sleep". That sounds terrible (that's mostly because it IS terrible). Also, if I say "I will sleep for 6 hours each night" I will do things like sleep in until 7 to meet the challenge, and then screw up my day even more. 

Anyway. Listing a bed time is actually working way better than specifying a certain number of hours. I am getting to bed before 1 a.m. every night. I am telling myself things that are worded to make it a positive reinforcement: "I always go to bed before 1 on weeknights." I don't think transitioning to bed before 12:50 next week will be difficult. But I am amazed at how I can start winding down in the evening - like last night, at 11 thinking "I could go to bed right now, I'm pretty tired" and then finding little things to prevent it from happening, until suddenly it's 12:30. 

 

Aside from the sleep issues, yesterday was a work from home day, so I also took advantage of that to do something I wish I'd taken the time to do on the weekend - I cooked a couple of things that I can eat all during the week. I made this recipe for balsamic chicken thighs, and this recipe for pot roast, minus the veg - I like to cook the pot roast and just have the meat, to eat in whatever way I like. Last night I had it with brown rice and mushrooms. Tonight I am going to use it to make an individual shepherd's pie. And I had some of the balsamic chicken and leftover mushrooms and rice for lunch today. Yum.

[shaeon]

Alright. Review week 1 time! 

 

Goal 1: More sleep. I must go to bed before 1 a.m. on weeknights - and for the record, I'm counting a night before a working day as a "weeknight". Kind of wishing I'd called it a "worknight", which is more accurate. 
Here are my bedtimes for the week: 

Monday - 12:13

Tuesday - 12:57

Wednesday - 12:53

Thursday - 12:07

 

Friday and Saturday don't count, because I don't work on Saturday and Sunday. 

 

In case you're wondering how I get such accurate numbers on my bedtime, by the way, I use an app called Sleep Cycle. It tracks how well you sleep, and it shows me the precise time I started the app (which is when I went to bed each night). 

 

Goal 2: Mindfulness. I must write down what I eat all day for at least 4 days. 

I actually did 5 days. I did half of Saturday, and haven't tracked today at all because... I dunno. Laziness. I am lazy today. 

 

Goal 3: Exercise. I must exercise for 15 minutes each day. 

Done - but I didn't record the exercise day by day, and so I can't report on it precisely. I'm going to start recording my exercise in my food journal. The exercise I've done this week has consisted of bodyweight exercises, walking, and some yoga. 

 

Life Goal: Make a bag for Mom. I have looked at designs. Haven't started yet. Need to start very soon. 

 

That's pretty much it for now. Sorry I'm not saying much, but I'm really tired. Wanted to do an update for the end of the week, though. 

[shaeon]

Dammit. Bowie. 

I wrote a thing over on the LGBTQA and Allies forum, but Bowie was responsible for my sexual awakening - which I don't question at all as a lesbian, because what could be more queer than a crush on Bowie? 

I can't believe he's gone. 

 

[RogueLibrarian]

Bowie transcended orientation. I'm feeling the same way today.

[shaeon]

Bowie transcended orientation. I'm feeling the same way today.

 

*hugs*

[shaeon]

Well the character creation thing is up now. I went on ahead and made mine. https://www.nerdfitness.com/character/59014

[RES]

Very nice! I'm off to be nosey

[shaeon]

Man, today was depressing. I spent the day with my head down after the news about Bowie. It was hard to imagine coming home and exercising. 

 

But of course, exercise helps a lot with those feelings. So I did some bodyweight work followed by a little yoga to stretch out afterwards. I also sat down for 15 minutes of meditation, just to center myself after this day. It has helped a lot. I've had some issues with my neck being stiff and sore lately, and over the weekend I did a little self-massage by leaning against a tennis ball to try and work the tension out. It loosened up a lot today during my exercise, stretching, and meditation. I'm happy about that. 

 

Having some mint green tea right now, just relaxing at home. 

[shaeon]

Very nice! I'm off to be nosey

It's kind of fun to set up! Nice to have a place to put long term and short term goals down.

[shaeon]

I mentioned yesterday that my neck was sore and stiff, and I've had some issues with that. Just realized that it's probably due to using my smart phone a whole lot, and the effects it has on your neck and spine when you spend tons of time bent over a thing in your hands. 

 

Anyway, mentioning this to say that one of the things that I'm really liking about the new character creation feature here on NF is that this may not be the kind of thing I want to make a challenge goal. I may not want to spend one entire goal on it during the next challenge. I may also not want to wait until the next challenge before I start creating practices to change the habit of looking at my phone all the time, like challenging myself to go for an hour at a time at work without looking at my phone. But it's nice that the new system lets me add a goal like that somewhere, both as a place to track it and a place to get a little reward for succeeding in working at that habit. I think that's pretty cool.

[shaeon]

Came across this video yesterday. Good points made on the effects of negative reinforcement and the BS of the diet industry, and switching focus to health and feeling better. 

 

Also, due to the increased mindfulness with my current goals, doing a lot of thinking about what causes good intentions to fall apart - ya got food that you prepped in advance in the fridge and in the freezer, ya got little individual yogurts in the fridge for breakfast that you can just toss in your bag and take to work with you, everything is planned out and it's really tasty food and there's no need to get food out, ever! And then you have a bad day and you get breakfast at a drive thru, and lunch at a drive thru, and then dinner too. And you tell yourself it's just today, and then you do it again tomorrow... and the day after that...

 

Been thinking about THAT. For me, I know at least one thing that will cause a breakdown of my plans is a mix of exhaustion and doing things I don't want to do. So I don't get enough sleep, and then I have to wake up in the morning and drive to work and I'm just not feeling it, and oh hey. Drive thru. Which is basically why sleep is on my goals list and is going to stay there for a while, probably. Sleep has a huge impact on my diet habits. 

 

Of course, part of that is the issue of my current work being a thing I don't want to do. Still pondering things to do about that.

[shaeon]

Yesterday: Kind of a crap day. I was really tired, and I ended up staying an hour late at work because of a last minute fire to put out. Ended up getting takeout for dinner; this is why I was pondering the breakdown of habits. I was tired to begin with, and that extra hour at work made me feel like "ah, screw it." And honestly, if I'd just had brown rice ready to eat at home along with the food I already had prepared, so that I knew I wouldn't have to wait an additional 45 minutes to cook rice, I'd have eaten at home. I did get my exercise in though.

 

Work from home today, and I'm about to cook some brown rice.  

 

Also more well-rested today and in general, my mood is way better. And it's payday! I've decided that today, I'm going to take the plunge and go ahead and purchase Nerd Fitness Yoga. It's time that I make that happen. 

[RogueLibrarian]

Do you have a rice cooker? Put rice in, put water in, press a button. Effortless. I highly recommend it.