{"id":916,"date":"2013-03-24T08:56:12","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T15:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/?p=916"},"modified":"2013-03-24T09:21:23","modified_gmt":"2013-03-24T16:21:23","slug":"a-new-week-a-new-resolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/2013\/03\/a-new-week-a-new-resolution\/","title":{"rendered":"A new week, a new resolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t normally do New Year’s resolutions. However, I did this year so here is my quarterly report.<\/p>\n

Oh, but I didn’t exactly do a normal<\/em> resolution. Instead, my plan is to have different resolution each week. Each resolution lasts Wednesday to Wednesday and should take 15-60 minutes of daily activity or thought. The goal overall is to try new things, see which better-for-me habits are easy to incorporate into my life and which ones are too difficult to maintain.<\/p>\n

Week 1: Health: 10,000 steps and some time on the exercise. Success. Most days did more than five miles on the bike, only one day did I not want to bike at all.<\/p>\n

Week 2: Happiness: more quality snuggling time with my husband. Mixed. It was nice but it require being in\u00a0sync though it did\u00a0keep us more in sync for a week or two after.<\/p>\n

Week 3: Health: every day have one meal with a whole grain as a main component. Success. The whole grains made me feel a little better in general, more balanced sugar-wise. I found lots of whole grain things that I like, including plain old oatmeal packets, an easy meal I’d forgotten about. This resolution was a really, really good one and even 9 weeks later, most days I have something whole grain because I like how it makes me feel more full.<\/p>\n

Week 4: Social: spend at least one hour a day talking to someone who is not my husband. Success but exhausting. Victims: house guest Nate (two days), She’s Geeky\u00a0various\u00a0people (three days), Ingo (birthday), and Jen + Alissa (on the embedded systems panel).<\/p>\n

Week 5: Health: sixty minutes of at-least-slightly sweaty exercise. It’s funny, I think I usually mange 30-45 minutes of exercise (almost) everyday so I didn’t think this would be a big deal. However, I had one of Those Weeks and just failed at this one. Too much work, too much crankiness, too much “does this activity count?”. I’ll need to have more\u00a0specificity\u00a0in the future.<\/p>\n

Week 6: Health: a different breakfast every day. My morning meal is exceedingly monotonous: a high protein food bar with low glycemic index and about 190 calories. What other breakfasts can keep me going until 11am without needing a snack? The goal was to keep the calorie intake around 200. This one was more interesting than I expected, changing up my morning patterns as well as my breakfast.<\/p>\n

Week 7: Health: 10 miles on the exerbike, no reading fiction books until after getting on bike. I often bike 10 miles but I’d gotten out of the habit and I’d been lazing away hours reading junk. So, getting back in the habit of a late afternoon bike helped both of these issues.<\/p>\n

Week 8: Health and Social: dual resolutions: to drink 8oz of water before each meal and to go out after dark each night. Having two resolutions watered it all down so I don’t think I get credit for successfully completing either one. The water one I just forgot about and getting up halfway through a meal to pound a glass of water was silly. As for going out, I just didn’t have things to do each night and didn’t have enough oomph to make stuff up.<\/p>\n

Week 9: Health: Count calories. Not trying to reduce calories (though counting them has that effect anyway).<\/p>\n

Week 10: Health: Count calories and exercise, making sure the total falls under the (generous) guideline given by the counting program. Still gathering a baseline.<\/p>\n

Week 11: Health: Eat a rainbow everyday. After two weeks of counting calories, I wanted to con myself into continuing. I decided to try the school-children challenge of eating a food from each color group each day (red, orange, yellow\/white, green, blue\/purple). This one I stopped because it was stupid: if I want carrots and snap peas with lunch then fennel with orange wedges for dinner, eating blueberries instead (or in addition to) is dumb. Plus, I don’t really like blueberries and I couldn’t bring myself to count wine as a purple fruit. Plus, plus, I don’t need ways to eat *more* food. So I failed this resolution intentionally.<\/p>\n

Week 12: Diet: No bread. After a few Sundays of bread-induced coma due to the amazing, spectacular, phenomenal bread from Manresa’s bread stand at Campbell’s farmer’s market, I realized I have a problem. (Still counting calories.) The resolution was really “no bread as a major component of a meal” which meant I could have a piece of bread but no bread-and-olive-oil meals, no sandwiches, and (horrors) no pizza. However, I’m mid-way through and I suspect “no bread” entirely is fine. I do miss it though.<\/p>\n

Other resolutions I might try:<\/p>\n