37
votes
What healthy habit has made a difference for you?
Any habit, related to any area of health.
What is the habit?
How has it helped you?
How easy/difficult has it been to keep up?
Any habit, related to any area of health.
What is the habit?
How has it helped you?
How easy/difficult has it been to keep up?
I posted up above in a reply about forming habits to establish and maintain friendships. This has done a lot for my mental health. I spent a good portion of my life feeling like no one liked me. Somewhere in my early 40s, I started creating a a life of isolation. It was like well, since the world doesn’t like me, I’ll just check out from it. I’ll stop wanting any of you. Over the next decade I went to incredibly dark places inside my mind. The self loathing, the hopelessness, the pointlessness of my life, the lack of love, the unworthiness, and the suicidal ideation and more were constant companions. Then I added alcohol into the mix and things got darker.
So what happened? One day I get a text from this woman who in retrospect I realize had been trying to make friends with me for about five years, off and on. This particular day she was asking me if I wanted to go for a walk and catch up. The thing is we didn’t know each other well enough to catch up, but for some reason I said yes. It’s odd that I said yes, because at the time I thought she and I were nothing alike. I thought that the only reason she had ever reached out to me was because she was a nice person, not because there might be something about me she found attractive in a potential friendship. I mean this woman was a scientist and well known artist, and super rich, and worldly, and had a tight knit family, and belonged to different clubs, and held dinner parties, and well, she had everything. I on the other hand was uneducated, and couldn’t shake of my white trash roots, and was a former sex worker, and had spent time incarcerated, and had delved heavily into drugs and the seedier side of life. Why the heck would she want anything to do with me? I felt like a charity case. But anyway, I said yes, and we went for a walk. And it was terrible. The entire time I felt uncomfortable. When we were getting back to our cars, she asked me if I’d like to walk again the following week, and for some reason I said yes.
My life was blowing up at this time. I felt like I was at a crossroads: make changes or watch my life get even more miserable. The problem was I didn’t know how, and I was sick of the hope that comes with trying. Hope was like this trap that would lead me in only to have another failure close in around me. But I tried anyway. I just started doing the opposite of whatever I had been doing. I wanted to say no to something, I said yes. I wanted to say yes to something, I said no. So I said yes to walking with this woman.
After about 5 months worth of walks and visiting with her at her house, I still didn’t know why the heck she kept asking me around. One day she says we need to talk and proceeds to tell me how I’ve hurt her feelings by never initiating contact. She feels like she’s doing all the work in the friendship. I don’t know what to say to that other than the truth. I tell her I’m afraid of bothering her, and that I am unsure that she likes me. I ask her if we’re friends. I tell her I haven’t had a friend in decades if ever and I don’t know what friendship looks like or how to be a friend. I start crying. She tells me, yes, she does like me that’s why she keeps reaching out to me. She tells me that she doesn’t have many friends because she gets tired of putting in unreciprocated effort and endless superficiality.
That was the beginning of me realizing that if I wanted people in my life, I had to stop letting my fear drive all my actions. My brain is fully capable of lying to me. So I started reaching out to her and putting effort into finding cool places for us to walk. I pushed through the fear of feeling like I had nothing to offer. I was knowledgeable about things she was interested in like gardening, plant propagation, sea life, birds, and the like. I stopped being afraid of sharing these things with her in fear that I would come off as a know it all.
And then I started reaching out to other people. Some of those people were people I had ghosted years ago, some of them people I had met recently. Some of those people didn’t reply in kind. At times I’ve felt like I was putting in the majority of the effort, and I’ve come to realize that it’s okay to do that and other times I can let them go because the effort isn’t worth it. I’ve realized that I don’t have to hang out with people just because they give me attention, that people aren’t better than me, we’re all just people.
And it has been a life changing habit. The habit looks like this: once or twice a week I text a few people, and I call a couple. I pick up the phone when someone calls me if I’m not working or sleeping. A couple times a month I try to ask someone to do something with me (they don’t have to say yes), and if I’m asked to do something, I give at least one yes. I respond to texts. I’m willing to try new things and go new places, even if I think I won’t like it. I’m forming new likes and dislikes that are based on the person I am today, not on the person I was 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
I don’t have a busy social life. I don’t want one. But what I do have is connection. I have a couple intimate friends, and a few people who I enjoy spending time with if our schedules align. People text me and share their joys and sorrows and mundanes. And I do likewise. I have a couple of telephone friends, and honestly talking on the phone is better than binging another show I’m just pushing through because there’s nothing better to do. I no longer have this aching loneliness that had burdened me most of my life. I’m not stuck with the unreliable narrator that was my mind every single second of every single day. And the narrator has started being more truthful now that I’m paying closer attention.
That was a huge wall of text. It sort of got away from me.
Oh, the other part of the prompt: how easy has it been to keep up. It’s easier now than before. But I can still slip into the groove of isolation. I still have to be vigilant on that front. There are a lot of times I don’t want to do something and the unreliable narrator makes all kinds of plausible sounding justifications for giving into those impulses. But I’ve been trudging along long enough now that I know I feel better when I’m connected, so I make the effort to push past that. At other times it’s no effort at all and those times are starting to outweigh the other times.
Sorry to not engage directly with the main conceit of your comment, but if you retreated so severely into your own world, how did you even meet a woman so different from you? And how do you have so many people to reach out to? Like, I know people from work, of course, but there are very few people who I like enough AND would consider it appropriate to hang out one-on-one with. And that's how it's always been. I'm certainly happy enough, but your experience just sounds very different from my own, even without putting effort into hanging out or talking with people consistently.
Good questions.
Regarding the woman: My husband knew her husband through work. And years ago the husband invited us to a dinner party where I met her. I ran into her a few months later in a clinic waiting room where we chatted and exchanged numbers. And that is pretty much that. I still don’t know why she was insistent in reaching out to me. She says I was funny and interesting, personally I felt like a fish out of water.
To the rest of it: One night I posted to nextdoor that I’d lived here for a few decades and didn’t really know anyone and felt isolated. I mentioned being afraid. I was honest that I had judged my community as a group of judgmental people who would think they were better than me. I pointed out the irony of my judginess. I asked if anyone would be interested going for a walk or getting coffee or something else. My heart raced as I posted it. I woke up and checked for responses and there weren’t any, and I thought I should delete it. I didn’t. And then a few people responded. That didn’t pan out into the type of friendship I was hoping for, but it did get me out a bit, and one woman took me to a monthly community dinner where I met other people. I still go to that. And the woman who took me is someone I’m always happy to see because she’s warm, kind, and accepting.
Those dinners led to me meeting this ancient woman who at the time was having a hard time walking and was sick of being stuck in her house most of the time. I was attracted to her smile and offered to pick her up once a week and take her to a park where her walker could roll unhindered. Those were slow walks. And they weren’t always comfortable. I had so many things bottled up to talk about that my mouth just kept talking. I’d feel like an ass afterwards and promise myself I wouldn’t motor mouth the next time. But I would. One day she told me to shut up. She said that if I was really looking for connection I needed to be willing to receive as well as transmit. I told her I didn’t know how to unmotor my mouth. She said she could tell, but I wasn’t hopeless. That was awful. I wanted to hide. It hit me right smack in my insecurities. But I didn’t hide. The next time we went out, I didn’t say much of anything. She asked me if I was sulking. I didn’t think I was, I was just scared of motoring. She said I could ask questions about what she was talking about that that was a way to show interest in another person. And I started learning from her how to converse. I still motor especially when I’m nervous, but I’m better at listening and engaging other people. Some people I’ve found actually enjoy having a motormouth around. But I’ve been learning to make space for those quiet types also.
So I spent time with old people for a while. They were the most receptive to my vulnerability and the most willing to speak their mind about my floundering. And I still spend some time in that space because they are part of our community. I don’t always enjoy it, but connection isn’t always enjoyable.
And there were people I’d been friendly with when I was a farmer and had ghosted. I reached out to a few of those people. That netted a single person who I text regularly with and speak with on the phone occasionally. I had originally been the person who helped her and her family when they started farming. We had been friends before. So she was a safe bet. We’re not friends like before but when we talk we have deep conversations which is what I enjoy most in any connection.
Old people almost always know people you should meet. And the introduction I was given that was most impactful concerned my alcohol usage. I was struggling to get rid of that habit. I’ve struggled with addiction of one sort or another my entire life - drugs, work, video games, internet, relationships, anything that would keep me from having to look around at my actual life. But I’d always been able to just stop whatever it was. I couldn’t shake the alcohol though. So I was introduced to someone who was in a 12 step program and went and checked that out. That’s how I quit drinking and that opened up a whole other world of people that I could connect with. It also gave me the tools I needed to actually deal with the shitshow my life had become and piece together something better.
Writing is hard for me so I hope I was able to answer your question.
Your answer was great and much deeper than I expected after I asked an off-topic question. Thank you very much.
Buying an alarm clock so I can leave my phone in the other room when I go to bed. It's a very striking change because the first two hours are you mentally reaching for the phone every thirty seconds, demonstrating perfectly why it's such an important change to commit to.
I put my phone charger in my bathroom, where I leave it overnight, but having a smart watch alarm clock has been a game changer for me. I regularly wake up 30-90 minutes before my wife does, being able to wake up to a silent vibration on my wrist and not having to wake her has been awesome. I tend to set backup alarms on my phone for 10 minutes later, just in case I sleep through my watch, but it's pretty rare. And the interface of a smart watch isn't so "screen addictive" that I'm trying to do anything in bed with it other than check the time or update an alarm.
In general, I think all my healthiest habits can be summed up as "having a routine." It's unexciting, but waking up early, eating breakfast every day, having a designated time to do stretching and practice mindfulness, writing every day, cooking all my own meals, going to bed early -- the impact of each thing is small but they really add up; likewise the impact of each day is small but as long-term habits the benefits cannot be understated.
My bedtime routine enforces proper sleep!
The routine takes a whole hour so I can't just go to bed whenever I feel like, I have to plan going to bed. This means I start the routine even if I'm not tired. The benefit of the routine is that by the end of it, my brain knows its bed time, and I get tired.
Everything is easier with routines, no thinking, just doing.
My best healthy habit is keeping a water bottle at my side at all times. It's become very natural to reach over if I'm ever dehydrated, or looking for a way to cool down.
20 years ago, I'd have a Coke in my hand at all times. It was an unending deluge of empty calories. If I hadn't killed that habit, I'm sure I'd be in far worse physical shape than I am now. Keeping a water bottle nearby helped substitute that oral fixation and wean me off the sugar.
Other considerations:
Second all this about water, but for me the drug of choice is seltzer water. I switched from ~6 diet dr peppers a day to seltzer water, and I started drinking way more water. Probably 2-3 liters a day. I had lots of IBS-like symptoms that had bothered me for years, and they just ... went away.
A little TMI
but bowel movements are also much easier.
To get caffeine, I started taking a caffeine pill, and I only drink water, except the occasional tea or root beer when at a restaurant. The pills I take are 100 milligrams of caffeine (about half a cup of coffee) and 200 mg of L-theanine. The theanine makes me less jittery than the caffeine alone. Separating hydration from caffeination has helped me cut my caffeine intake considerably. Most days I just take the one pill in the mid morning, and occasionally a second one at lunch if I'm really dragging.
I know what you say is true for many people, but I want to add: this is an individual thing, if you're someone who has tried this and it didn't help any, you're not doing anything wrong, that's just what it is.
Many people are just fine with drinking only when they start feeling thirsty or with a meal and eating a common amount of salt.
I am chronically ill and for my very mild heart problems two different doctors recommended that I drank more water, so I pushed myself. It had zero positive effects on me and years later, when I started having issues with very mild malabsorption of minerals (which is not common, but not rare either - it can happen due to microbiome issues, which can be triggered by covid, a round of antibiotics, chronic stress...), specifically magnesium and potassium, it actually made things worse. After I started drinking only when I felt like it, I started feeling better and stopped peeing all the time.
Drinking primarily water instead of any flavored drinks is definitely a good idea though.
Yeah, I definitely don't expect it to be possible for everyone. I still remember how I felt when I heard what the daily recommended intake was, and I thought it sounded impossible. Eight glasses a day of bland, gross water?! I can't say what flipped the switch for me, but I think just having the water bottle nearby helped a ton. Later, getting a proper thermos bottle that kept cool was even better.
I'm sorry to hear about your health issues. I wonder if a mineral water or such would offset any dilution caused by drinking, but I'll not profess to know anything about the topic. I'm sure you've tried everything you can. I hope you can find some solutions that work for you.
Making a fresh, hot breakfast every morning.
Cycling.
Crafting - mainly knitting and crochet.
Putting the effort in to create, maintain, and support friendships long term.
It is absolutely my dream to be a person who does this (I love breakfast food so much too...), but I struggle so hard to get out of bed at all in the mornings if I'm not rushing to get to something scheduled. Do you have any advice on how to make yourself turn this into a habit? Or does this sort of thing come more naturally to you?
Not Hobofarmer but my also ADHD advice is to aim low. Like, really low. Buy those packaged oatmeal pouches and begin with hot water + oatmeal + fruit that's already dehydrated in the pouch. When you're feeling fancy and the habit has formed, add your own additional fixings like apple bits, fresh or frozen (defrosted) fruit, cinnamon etc. They can also be a big bag of quick oats pre-divided with your desired amount of sugar as well.
Another aim low hot breakfast is fried/ scrambled eggs. Eat by themselves or between two slices of bread if you need carbs.
Edit: because my flavour of ADHD runs counter to being able to form/maintain routines, I benefit from shelf stable and already-in-fridge options so they don't go to waste when I stop, and can restart easily again.
This is basically how I got into the habit. Started with cold cereal, worked my way up to oatmeal, then rolled oats, then actually cooking -- eggs, sausage, mushrooms, whatever. There was a period where it seemed like we were eating freshly baked biscuits and gravy multiple times a week, which can be quite detrimental to your diet I should add! Nowadays I usually prep and freeze breakfast burritos in bulk instead of cooking in the morning, and reheat them while my tea steeps, which fits perfectly into the daily routine, but gradually working your way up in terms of effort will allow you to find out what levels of effort work for your mornings.
Prep breakfast burritos in bulk now thats an idea
I used to do that as well, but it's really hard to form an intermittent habit like that.
I mean I was thinking maybe just like, prep for this coming week haha
I've done this for two weeks now and it's amazing. A couple of hours on Sunday (and the shopping a day or two before), and I've got a meal that's gonna be hot and delicious after a couple minutes in the microwave for the week or longer.
I use them for lunch at work, because lunch was my main culprit for overeating and going for unhealthy choices
I think my bigger ADHD issue here is the "getting started" part, as opposed to the complexity of the breakfast. I love a scrambled/fried egg, so getting there is success for me! But I have trouble actually initiating the "get out of bed and do morning stuff" process, even just making coffee. It's too easy to stay in bed on my phone and doze back off. I think probably being unemployed and not having a set schedule atm is not helping on that front.
How about this :) for the next week, while you're in bed, spend 1 minute visualizing hot breakfast and then you can roll over and sleep/rest/doomscroll some more. But it has to be before noon, otherwise that's hot lunch. If that worked out, the next week, sit up from bed while thinking about hot breakfast. You don't have to actually have gotten up or had hot breakfast but think about it for now. Visualize a delicious steaming sausage and hot cakes spread that magically appears, for a minute. Give yourself the rest of the morning off as a treat, you earned it.
The funny thing is I actually do this... I sometimes spend a few minutes before I get up thinking about the food I'm about to make.
It helps.
For me, it does two things: (1) lower the threshold of feeling like it it's a possibility for some scaled down version, and (2) make me actually want it instead of merely intellectually be aware it's an adult thing I should want
Honestly I think "really low" for me is "not in bed at 14:00" at this point...
It was absolutely not natural to me! I used to go to a Dunkin Donuts for a hot bagel every day, or Starbucks for a breakfast sandwich. I stopped being able to afford that, which turned into a big motivator for me to try something else. I began in the weekends, and started simple. Toast, breakfast sausage, and scrambled eggs. These were simple things I could put together with minimal effort while getting lunches packed for the family as well (on weekdays). I practiced it in the weekend so it could be automatic on weekdays. As I got comfortable with this, I started trying new things (again, always trying novel ideas on the weekend).
My go-to breakfast now that I barely have to think about is chorizo with potato, onion, and pepper and a sunny side up egg on top. I flavor it with chili paste and garlic. It sounds like a lot but it's effortless for me - I set it up on the stove top and spend my time while it cooks getting lunches ready, putting dishes away, or doing other morning things to get ready for the day.
This is coming from someone with ADHD - it is 100% possible for anyone!
Trying it just on the weekends is a good idea, though not super applicable in my current schedule-less situation... I'll keep this in mind for starting the habit, though!
This has been the hardest yet most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. And it has paid off in spades for me also. I don’t know what forming that habit looked like for you, but for me, the beginning of it was SO uncomfortable at times, I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep it up. Definitely worth every uncomfortable moment.
Reading books in print provide me with a truly offline, slow-paced experience that disengages from the torrent of information of the internet. It also provides me with a kind of introspection that is not really about myself. Which is great because my thought patterns can be very obsessive.
As someone who hates standard work outs and gyms but can no longer find time for martial arts or otherwise stay active, a suggestion that's helped a lot is "just stretch for one minute a day". Especially doing a position I don't enjoy. It's short and easy enough that I don't want to skip it like a real workout and often leads me to being motivated enough to do some small workout way more frequently than I used to.
Not reading as much mainstream news, and making an active effort to read forums or outlets which focus on 'good' i.e. more optimistic news.
It's been about a month and a week since I stopped doing the former (and I used to do it constantly) and my outlook on my country and the rest of the world has changed considerably.
It really is remarkable how much of an effect this constant cycle of doom after doom (both real and manufactured) has on you.
Seconding this. I set up an RSS reader and pulled down news I cared about like some gaming stuff, all the science things, my current hyperfixation hobby, and I'll have a separate folder for local city news that I check on occasion.
Ever since I did this and stopped using "algorithm curated" news feeds, I feel like my mental health has improved considerably. Like you said, not everything feels as doomy anymore.
It's also given me more time back because I'm not glued to my phone reading some politically sensationalized article designed to grab my attention and make me feel enraged. Time that I can put towards more edifying activities like learning about new science topics or just reading books. So that's a big win!
Any recommendations for science RSS feeds? I find it hard to find ones that are not just a flood of all new papers or are overly editorialized.
SciPost is primarily what I use for "hard science". I like that they have individual feeds for fields you're interested in. I apologize if this is what you meant by "a flood of new publications" though. I certainly don't understand half of what is said in fields I'm not particularly fluent in (I started out with a lot of biology feeds as my degrees are in it) but lately I've gravitated towards math and physics so I like reading them and just absorbing some knowledge.
I also have phys.org as a softer news source - I don't find that it's overly editorialized but ymmv. My comparison for instance is things like IFLScience, ScienceEveryday, Popular Science, etc. I find phys.org to be pretty neutral and accurate in their reporting and not over sensationalized.
Quanta magazine is another one that I've picked up lately after coming across their YouTube channel. They have great reporting and summaries of the latest topics in math and physics.
Science magazine was in my feed back when it was free but it's a paid subscription now. Still worth an honorable mention.
Being more aware of my inner monologue and how I look at myself has slowly but surely changed all of the assumptions I've made about myself that may have been true 20 or 40 years ago, but I never bothered to review.
I won't say that negative self talk was an easy habit to break and that just rephrasing "I can't do X" into "I'd like to learn how to do X, even if I'm not good at it at first" fixed all my problems. It took years of frustration and discomfort followed by a lot of work actually doing the things that I had convinced myself weren't worth trying.
Sometimes it meant asking myself uncomfortable questions to get to the heart of the matter and properly name whatever was holding me back. Once it had a name, it could be deconstructed and overcame.
For example: I'm a recent-ish career changer, I've never worked in corporate environments before and although my past career gave me a lot of valuable experience I felt intimidated, out of my depth, and not taken seriously.
I left this as vague feelings of "I don't belong behind a desk" or "I suck at my job" until I realized exactly why: I usually know the right decisions to make, but don't have the language and tools to back it up with evidence. Once I knew that, I started learning the language and skills. Now I dont suck at my job, I'm someone with a ton of real world experience learning how to apply it to anything.
These have been huge for me
There are many things, but exactly one stands out to me as having the most impact by a wide margin.
Getting to bed at a sufficiently early time to get these qualities of sleep:
Consistent sleep/wake times.
Sufficient quantity.
Sufficient quality.
In my case it was getting enough stimulants (and the right ones!) in my system to moderate my ADHD, then suddenly good sleep for the first time in 30 years.
I'm still adjusting to having, effectively, many more hours in the day as I don't spend most of it a sleep deprived zombie.
Still working on the going to bed at a sensible time bit ... the ADHD drugs have worn off at that point in the day so I give myself somewhat of a pass.
I'm also at that point in my journey. AuADHD, have been on Vyvanse for about a month and a half and we've been doing dose adjustments. Today was my first day on a new dose and I've been productive, though I also got good sleep last night. A single data point is a single data point, no conclusions yet, but hopeful.
Writing things down. Started with the Apple Notes app and it organically evolved into a personal system using a todo list, a calendar and a text-based reference using Obsidian. Body and clothing measurements, car maintenance schedules and part numbers, workout logs, recipe tweaks, travel itineraries, fixes to get older games running, which accounts I've put my bank, address and credit card information, active subscriptions and their renewal dates, nearly everything.
It may not sound like a direct physical benefit like exercise, hydration or fiber, but the mental benefits are immeasurable. I don't keep things "in my head" anymore and overall stress levels have gone down. Other habits have spawned from this, like building grocery/shopping lists incrementally. Find an item that's about to run out, in it goes into a list. Shopping time comes I have everything I need for that run. No further brainpower required, it's just ready when it is.
On the physical side, cutting out carbs and sugar down to the essentials and upping protein and fiber. I had this epiphany when I learned how to bake bread a couple of years ago and seeing firsthand the sheer amount of sugar that I had to dump in to make cakes and pastry tasty enough to match the taste of a commercial bakery. I enjoy the sweetness of fruits with their natural fructose instead of them tasting like watery chunks. Soft drinks taste like drinking syrup to me now, and I've had to dilute the occasional grocery store juice with water.
My overall energy levels have been much more even throughout the day, appetite spikes and hangry incidents have drastically gone down to being practically nonexistent. I eat because I have to and I don't immediately crave for things and shove them in my mouth. I'm just not hungry for a large part of the day, which surprised a number of friends and family that felt I must be fasting or secretly hiding an eating disorder.
After being on exercise routine and supplementation stints on and off trying to stack micro-optimizations on myself like an RPG character, the only supplement I take consistently now is creatine monohydrate. Dirt cheap and because it would take an unholy amount of meat to hit 5g daily. I'll let the research into cognitive benefits handle that part, but what I can anecdotally feel are the subtle effects on exercise. An extra rep on lifts here and there, a few more meters and a few more seconds that I can push during an uphill sprint.
The biggest perk I can feel is the recovery. You can sprint for your life one moment close to your maximum heart rate then a few minutes later you're ready to do it again. It feels like a slice of comic book superhero healing factor. I just feel peppy in general, less encouraged to lie down on the couch because I'm tired of whatever activity caused me to tire out immediately.
More than everything else I’ve read before, this has given me insights and motivation to try it. I think because it feels like a genuine lived experience not trying to sell me on “the latest new diet trend” or distilling every positive factoid into a single place. It’s just a few positive things you’ve noticed, and that feels so much more genuine (and therefore attainable?) than most things I’ve come across before. Thank you for sharing! Maybe I’ll try some stuff too!
Waking up early. Most of my life I was a very late sleeper and late riser, and I always felt like I was missing half of my life. I arguably was, since I'd wake up at noon on weekends and hear all about what I missed while I was sleeping. And all I got in trade was staying up late playing video games, deliriously tired and in no way enriching myself.
I got into running when I was living in Florida, where I found it unbearable to run after very early morning. I started getting up about when I used to go to bed - 4:30 or 5:00 AM. For whatever reason, the pattern stuck and I suddenly became a morning person for the first time in my life.
I no longer feel like I miss things. When my coworkers are starting their day, I'm already full swing into mine. I don't remember the last time I had to set an alarm clock because I can no longer sleep past 5:30 or 6.
I used to wake up DELIRIOUSLY tired on workdays, giving myself just enough time to throw on clothes and get to work on time. I started my days at my worst, grouchy and under pressure and behind. At times it was unhygienic because I would oversleep and not have time for a shower. And any event that started before 1 was "waking up early".
I'm grateful almost daily for having changed.
My magic habit: Committing to tracking my daily calories, forever. I'd struggled with my weight all my adult life, but every time I suffered my way down to a healthy weight I inevitably crept back up to the point where I'd regained it all then some. For years, I lost all willingness to try. Why go through all that work just to fail, again? I felt so embarrassed.
Three years ago, I was staring down the barrel of a diabetes diagnosis, and I decided to try one more time. Nothing wild. Just tracking calories and some light walking. I'd done that kind of thing before. The only difference: I resolved to keep tracking my food after I reached my goal. I slowed down and didn't try to crash diet. When I got to a healthy weight I kept on tracking. And the weight has stayed off. I've been maintaining for two years, and with that stability has come all sorts of gifts. Gradually, I found exercise I actually enjoy. My health is dramatically improved. I sleep great. My stress is lower. I like cooking and eating, and I no longer view "diet" as a temporary sacrifice based on willpower. It's just that I have a calorie "budget" and I know I can't stop balancing the checkbook.
It's no big deal, perhaps 3-5 minutes a day. A small price to pay for turning my health around.
Tracking calories feels so overwhelming, boring and difficult.
Could you explain in an excessive TMI step-by-painstaking-step how you count your calories one day?
Sure, here's my TMI description.
Download any calorie tracking app. (LoseIt, MyFitnessPal, Chronometer). At each meal or snack, use the app's database to find what you ate, log it, and hit "save."
LoseIt allows me to search for and copy entire meals from my past. "Hmm... I ate this sandwich last month. Let me search for it..." There's also a barcode scanner for quickly finding packaged foods. So let's say I eat lunch, I'll use my app to log what's on my plate real quick. If I eat a packaged snack I'll flip the bag over, scan the barcode, and hit save. Or if I have a latte in the afternoon during a meeting, I think: "okay, 12oz latte" and I log that later. You get in the habit of keeping a few things in your memory until you can log them. Not every log is perfectly accurate. You do your best and move on.
At home, sometimes I use a kitchen scale to figure out how much of a thing I'm eating. I know 100g of my favorite yogurt is 107 calories, but what's 100g look like? Toss my bowl on the scale and hit "tare" to zero out the weight before filling it. That takes less than 10 seconds. On the road, I estimate amounts and don't worry. When I'm feeling lazy, I snap a photo of my food with my phone and add it later. Am I going to a friend's BBQ with a million finger foods? Well, if it's a rare event and tracking would be a gigantic chore, I skip tracking for that meal. But I don't skip very often.
I refuse to log calories on Thanksgiving or my birthday.
For me, the "overwhelming and difficult" aspects faded away after a few months. It becomes routine. The boring part remains boring, but that's okay. Not being obese is pretty awesome, and I view tracking kind of like brushing my teeth or washing my hands after using the toilet. Just a thing I gotta do to maintain this body.
After a few years of doing this my brain is a great food estimator, so sometimes I just use the calculator app on my phone to add things up as the day goes on. You can even use pen and paper if you want, but I think the apps are easiest, because they have massive databases. The trick is to view it as data. When I eat terribly, I log it all. It's just data! This isn't about making the log look good, it's about being aware of what and how much I eat.
I was SO resistant to calorie tracking. Like... for 20 years I refused to do it. I hated the idea so much! Ha. :) Ironic then that it was the thing I needed to do.
Thank you, bookmarked <3
This looks mindnumbingly boring and unattainable to do, in a few life altering projects maybe this manages to bubble up to the top.
No, really, thank you!
Putting an alarm for when I shall go to bed, not just for getting out of the bed. Makes maintaining the amount of sleep much easier for me.
Regular walks, which led to trying to do regular runs, which eventually led to strength training! Just the regular walks was finally what seemed to lead to improving my lower back pain. From time to time before falling asleep, I'll just lie down and think about how I'm not in pain anymore. I'd be in a much worse mental spot right now if I had to deal with chronic pain on top of post-breakup things.
I think I have talked about it quite a lot, but changing my diet has dramatically improved my quality of life. A lot of the things that people eat regularly are probably things that are contributing a fine layer of misery over their daily lives. I’ve learned that too many simple carbs (including white bread) can lead to me feeling jittery and can even contribute to “crashing out”. Too many fats makes my skin oily, gross, and potentially even stinky. Not enough fiber affects bowel movements pretty directly. The thing that affected me most was what really surprised me at first: meat - regardless of if it’s red meat or lean white meat - just kind of gunks up everything. It’s cumulative so you won’t notice it immediately if you make a change. It’s a bit hard to describe, but it’s basically like the physical effect of depression or what you’d be like taking a “bed death” day if you’re used to being active. You’re just kind of generally sore and groggy. On top of that it’s usually served pretty greasy so you’ll get the same effect of high fats, and it will even make your stool smell worse than it needs to.
Of course, if any of these describe your regular diet, you won’t notice any of this because it’s just your regular baseline and you’re used to it. I assume that these things are why people feel good after doing fasts or cleanses or “detox diets” and the like. If so, there’s a reason why they have to keep repeating them.
And as someone who is currently dealing with medical issues keeping them from sleeping and only managed 3 hours last night, sleep is pretty damn important too.
I eat very little meat, usually just some lean chicken or turkey, but I totally know what you mean by the groggyness. Sometimes you just are in the mood to pig out on a nasty burger and proper fat-fried fries though!
Just gotta be aware you'll feel it the day after, and stay "clean" after, lol