The Habit Factor

Hannah's finally starting to get on a decent schedule with an easy bedtime (though this week has been an exception - crazy teething plus swim lessons mean that she's fussy and wired up, which is making bedtime tough again) and she's in her own room, which means that I can wake up in the mornings without waking her.  This has been good for several reasons.  First, I get to do my morning meditations, and drink my coffee in peace.  Second, I can actually start to do some of the things that are important to me again.

So I downloaded this app called The Habit Factor, and their thing is that it's the small actions, ie habits, that make up our lives, and help us achieve our goals.  So you use the app to input big goals, like losing weight, or writing a book (mine) and then you associate them with different habits, which you also input.  So I have the following habits already set up:

- spend at least 20 minutes in the morning working on my book

- meditate daily

- exercise daily

- log food in loseit app daily

- write in my various blogs 5x/week

- think about what I'm grateful for each day

- do 50 situps each day

- go to church at least twice a month

... and on it goes.

Each day you get reminders for the habits you wanted to practice that day, and they have all these nifty graphs and such that let you track how well you're doing.  And then when you input big goals, you can then link the habits to them, so you can start to see how the daily activities impact your big goals.

It's a pretty neat app, and it fulfills my great "I wish someone would invent that" need that I've had for years, which is that each day I write a to do list that has 10 of the same things on it, and then I have a few unique things each day.  Every day I write the same things over and over.  What I wanted was a tablet where you could create templates, like online or something, and have the 10 things you do each day on it already printed, and then have half the page blank for the other stuff.  Since I just have those things input as habits, I don't need to write them each day (though I miss physically crossing them off).  Attention somebody who is a graphic designer and has time on their hands: make something like this and sell it through cafepress, or whatever the kids use these days.  I'll buy it.

In the meantime, I'll cultivate the habits using the app.

Project Fitness starting again

Jonathan and I were talking today about how having a kid has made us so much more productive.  There are a couple of reasons.  First, before having a kid, if I was "tired" I wouldn't do the things on my list.  Since having a kid, "tired" has taken on a whole new meaning.  If I stopped doing anything just because I was "tired", I would barely be able to get up in the morning.  I wouldn't have breakfast.  I wouldn't work.  Nothing would get done.  And the second thing that has made us more productive is simply that we have to be.  If you want to do anything outside of feeding, changing diapers, and being a human amuse-the-baby machine, you simply can't spend time thinking about doing things - you have to, in the famous words of nike, just do it.

So things are getting done.  The house is getting clean.  Projects are being completed.  Things are getting crossed off lists.  It feels good.

One huge project that I'm undertaking again is my fitness.  I had reached a point before Baby H where I was feeling really good about myself.  That all went down a Lucky Charms sliding board when I had pregnancy cravings.  And so I gained like 53 pounds.  I still have about 20 to go to get to where I was pre-baby.

I've been reading Julia Cameron's The Writing Diet (count words, not calories) which is a series of essays about creativity and food, and how linked they are.  I'm really clear that I'm not expressing my creativity in the way that I would like, and I wind up numbing it with food.  What's comforting about "comfort food"?  The essays all are thought provoking and have assignments - usually writing assignments, though there has been the occasional assignment to take yourself out to eat a really special meal to see what you really like, etc.

The one today was on taking one day at a time, like AA.  I don't know if I can commit to eating healthy for the rest of my life.  It seems so daunting.  But I can commit to it today.  Today is doable.  Tomorrow, I don't know about.

So I've gotten into this habit of stopping at McDonald's on the way home from my walks around the lake.  We all know I have this Diet Coke addiction, right?  I used to stop at 7-11 for my fix, but with a baby it adds extra steps of having to take her out of her carseat, etc.  The drive through seems way easier.  But then it's easy to get a McFlurry.  Or some other genetically modified crap that makes me miserable.  I know it's terrible for me.  But I keep doing it.

Today I was walking around the lake and started feeling really hungry.  I thought about what I would get at McDonald's; ie a small snack before dinner.  But then I remembered.  No, I've committed to being healthy today.  I passed by the ball fields where the little league game was going on, and I bought a diet coke from their snack bar, and then ate a handful of almonds in the car.  When I got home, J and I cooked dinner together while Baby H sat in her high chair.  We made a coconut tofu carrot curry, and nibbled on bits of tofu and carrots as we were cooking.

McDonald's was avoided.  Small Victory.