changing habits

Setting goals – again

November 1, 2008 by Susanne 5 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about losing weight and changing habits these past days. I even read one personal weight loss story book (“Der Kilo-Killer: Ein Jahr im Schlankheitswahn), and one book about self-motivation (“So zähmen Sie Ihren inneren Schweinehund!”). Since Thursday.

That’s a very common pattern with me, I feel lost, I want to change something, I buy a book. Only this time I’m quite proud of myself because I didn’t buy the books but got them from the library. And I’m glad that I did because while they did help me with the thinking I don’t need to have them here to look things up or anything.

Anyways, I decided to set some goals for November, and so I made another list. For the next week (maybe longer) I will:

only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
post on my blog 3 times a week.
write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I’m very tired of thinking about food and being fat all the time. And I’m not even sure if I want to do something to lose weight. So the first goal is my attempt at minimizing the energy I’m spending on thinking about eating. Also it’ll minimize mindless stuffing of food into my mouth.
I know that 30 minutes of exercise three times a week doesn’t sound much. But it’s doable. And by not specifying what I will do I leave room to just go for a nice walk if I’m not motivated to do “real” exercise. By the way, since setting that goal two days ago I already have been going on walks twice.

Playing guitar or piano for ten minutes a day likewise really isn’t much. But I know from experience that I do much better with setting small goals so that I don’t feel like a failure. Often when I sit down to play I will play longer than ten minutes. Actually, once I have started I often enjoy myself very much. Getting myself to sit down and start playing, on the other hand, is quite hard.

I have been struggling with writing on my blog. I feel that three times a week is about the perfect frequency for me both as a blogger and as a reader.But often I spend so much time on the net reading that I don’t sit down to actually write down the blog posts that are floating around in my head.

It’s time for NaNoWriMo again, and it does make me kind of sad to not participate this year. On the other hand I’m also really relieved that I’m not doing it this year. So this is like my “Ersatz-NaNo”. I’m using the same kind of energy to get some writing done.

The last point is something I have been doing for years but I found myself slipping, and skipping more often. So I’m re-installing this habit.
Of course I’m writing this to make myself accountable. You, my dear readers, are the ones who will be helping to keep me on track. I’m doing this because next week will be fall break (yeah, I know there are a lot of breaks around here) which will give me about two additional hours in the day to do what I want.
I’ll tell you how it went at the end of next week. Anything you want to accomplish? You can post your goals in the comments, or on your blogs and I’ll link to them.

The Food Journal

October 14, 2008 by Susanne 10 Comments

Some time ago I have written about starting to journal everything I eat in an attempt to help me lose weight. And then, at the beginning of September, I pulled out a nice, small notebook and started my food journal. If you were to look through it you might be surprised that according to the journal I seem to not eat daily, and on the days that I eat, I seem very often to stop eating after breakfast.

Since I never do that (part of me still thinks that if I miss a meal I’ll drop dead) there’s only one conclusion to draw: journaling my food intake isn’t working. I did find journaling useful when I first started to become more conscious about my eating habits years and years ago but these days it’s not as much about the unconscious inhaling of junk food anymore.

As of this day I release myself from the task of writing down everything I eat.

Phew.

So, now what to do about my size and weight? For the past year or so my motto has been “Eat more, move less.” with rather predictable results. Today in the morning before breakfast and dressing I weighed in at 79.2 kilos (174.6 lbs). That’s about ten kilos (almost twenty pounds) more than I feel comfortable with. Though I have to admit that when I was at that weight for the last time I still had the feeling of being too big. (My height is 1.74 m, a bit more than 5 ft. 8.)

In my head I’m still a lean person that’s just been a bit too heavy for a short time but if I’m more realistic I have to say that I have been overweight for about eight years now with a short intermezzo of being merely slightly too heavy for about half a year or so. In my head I have been on the verge of losing weight again any moment now. For more than a year. While constantly gaining.

And it’s not like I don’t know where it’s coming from, I am the one who, every single day, has “just one more treat”, “just one more sandwich”, or “just this snack”. “Just this once” is not helping me if it’s happening every single day. In the past few weeks there have been times when I stole my son’s candy, and when I broke every single rule about food that I ever made to help myself.

This is not about beating me up. It’s just my attempt at looking at the situation just as it is.

So. I’m heavier than I would like to be, and I’m not as fit as I would like to be. Is this really a problem?

No, really. What if I stayed at this weight for the rest of my life? It’s heavy but it’s not grossly overweight. I’m still fitting into regular sized clothes (thanks to stretch jeans). While I do feel a bit uncomfortable in my bathing suit that doesn’t stop me from going swimming. In fact, my weight doesn’t stop me from enjoying anything I like. The only thing is that I have put off buying a new pair of jeans for months now because I still hope to be able to fit into a smaller one. Any day now. It is as if I were secretly waiting for a visit from the weight loss fairy. One morning I’ll wake up and I’ll look the same as in 1996 again. And everything in between would have been a bad dream.

Why 1996, you might ask? Well, in the summer of 1996 I just had lost weight, and I was in the best physical shape of my entire life. I did step-aerobics, weight-lifting, and walking almost every day, and I weighed something around 65 kg. There’s a picture of me, taken at our annual summer party that year where I look really great. I had that picture of me on my fridge for years as a motivational tool, until I suddenly realized I’ll never look like that again, even if I weigh the same, and exercise the same, because I’m actually 12 years older now.

And that’s okay. This is not about turning back time. In fact I’m not so sure what this is about but I find that I don’t care about my weight or appearance enough to change my eating habits consistently. That’s the fact. All this talk about “I have lost a pound, hurray!” and “I have gained a pound, drama!” will amount to nothing.

My lack of fitness is the thing that bothers me more. I don’t like being out of breath so easily, I don’t like not being flexible, and I don’t like that beer cases and the groceries seem to get heavier every week. My current fitness regimen of a leisurely stroll every three days doesn’t really cut it. So, again, for about the hundredth time my goal is to do some moving every other day. Apart from my walks to kindergarten and grocery stores.

As for the eating I’m really tired of hearing myself setting goals and announcing the new shiny me only to revert to my old sluggishness immediately afterwards. On the other hand I was mightily impressed by another blogger’s account of how she quit smoking by just seeing herself as a non-smoker, and I’ll try that again.

You know, I don’t really care for sweets. They make me feel weak. And potato chips. Blech. Who would want to eat potato chips for dinner? I always feel so heavy and bloated afterwards. And really, I’m not that hungry. You know, I really have to move. If I don’t exercise for a day or two I’m going crazy.

Well, at least I’m trying.

You must release jelly donuts

September 2, 2008 by Susanne 11 Comments

if you want to lose ten pounds.

Yesterday my husband and I had one of these mornings where we talk, and talk, and talk, about us, and our relationship, and especially the problematic aspects of our relationship.

This, in particular, went on about me not doing housework. Well, not much anyway, and much less than my share. My husband kept asking me what he should do to deal with this. A reasonable approach would be to tell me that he wants me to do certain things, and then I’d go and do them, and everything would be alright. Another approach would be to assign certain work to each of us, then both would do their share, and everything would be alright. Alas, though I know that he’s unhappy with both the state of the house, and the huge amount of work that he has, I keep procrastinating about everything. (Right now, for example, I should have done the kitchen already, made myself a pot of tea, should have written my morning pages, and be on my way to cook lunch. Ahem.)

We both tried everything reasonable, and in the end the housework status between us is little better than about 14 years ago when we moved in with each other. He, of course, like a lot of women do, could just resign to the fact that I’m a lazy chauvinist pig, and do it all himself but then he would have no energy left for his music, something much more important than clean sinks. Unfortunately, we both need to have clutter-free and reasonably clean surroundings in order to be creative.

When he kept asking me what to do, and I couldn’t really say anything besides “I promise to do better.” which isn’t really helpful because I promised the same thing decades ago and about a millions times since then (and I am doing better than that, only this better isn’t very good), I resorted to pulling cards. I figured that might be helpful.

I pulled two cards for myself, one for help with the housework problem, and one to look at my life at general. Well. The solution to the housework-problem obviously is (besides just doing it): Priorities. For everything new something old has to go.

“Current routines, habits and even types of free times must be sacrificed so that you can open up to new energies.” (Sonia Choquette“Ask Your Guides Oracle Cards”)

Duh. That’s where I got my headline from. The book that accompanies the cards, I mean.

Because I still need to lose weight. Another week of beer, beer, Bavarian food, and extra helpings of ice cream, and sweets, thrown together with a definite lack of exercise has somehow failed to produce weight loss. I wonder why that is. Of course I know that I have to let go of, let’s say, eating handfuls of gummy bears at night, only I can’t really grasp the concept that this particular, tiny, innocent looking gummy bear, there in my hand, is the one that makes the difference between weight loss and gain. Surely this particular bite of pork roast can’t be changing anything? If I eat a bit less for breakfast? Please?

Seems like there is still something for me to learn. By the way I pulled a card for my husband too, to find a solution to the “Susanne isn’t doing her fair share of housework”-problem, and his said: Celebration. Seems like there’s still hope.

The card I pulled for my life in general said: Live from Your Spirit, always a nice one. And there it was, saying,

“If you feel that everything you’re doing right now isn’t working, or that every situation you face is working against you, be glad!” (Sonia Choquette: “Soul Lessons & Soul Purpose Oracle Cards”)

What? Be glad. As if. And then it goes on,

“Above all take a close look at how much of your behavior is simply an unsavory, unconscious “goulash” of conditioning acquired from childhood, peer pressure, the media, society, or even past lives, and not a reflection of your true spirit.”

It said I should eliminate overthinking and bad habits. Oops. (In German I’d say, “Treffer, versenkt.” that hit right between the eyes.)

I’m at a point where I don’t have much hope left that I’ll be able to do it. On the other hand I refuse to remain stuck in my old habits. If only they weren’t so comfortable and familiar.

It’s funny because if you back into my archives and look at what I wrote in the beginning of this blog you’d see that at that point I was quite hopeful that I could conquer my old bad, unconscious habits and build new, healthy, shiny ones. Now I’m telling myself that I can do it again, and again, and again, regardless of how long I’ll have to practice, and how often I will have to start over. All the while my poor husband will be suffering. And all this about things like cleaning, and eating.

What would you do in our place?

How much journaling is too much?

August 5, 2008 by Susanne 5 Comments

I have been reading “The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size” by Julia Cameron. I like the book very much. If you have read this blog for any time at all you know how much “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” changed my life. And since I love writing the idea to “write myself right-size” holds a lot of appeal for me.

So far I only read the book once, and – I’m sad to tell you – reading the book doesn’t really change much. I will have to change my behavior. Again. But that’s not what I want to write about today. I want to write about one of the first tools that she gives you, right after the Morning Pages and Daily walks, both things I have been doing almost daily for the past nine years. That tool is that you keep a food journal. It is for recording what you eat, and when, and how you feel, and sometimes for writing instead of eating.

I have found myself strangely reluctant to start this food journal despite the fact that I already bought one, and have been carrying it around in my purse for the past week, and despite the fact that I think it’s a great idea, and will help me a lot, and despite the fact that I unearthed food journals that I kept in 2001 and 2003 and found them very interesting to read. Or I might say insightful and a little disturbing. So, despite all this I was reluctant and kept telling myself I’ll start the journal tomorrow, or maybe next week, or maybe in September.

Then I thought about that for a bit because that’s what I do, I sit there and think, and I found that my reluctance partly stemmed from the multitude of journals that I’m keeping. I can scarcely look anywhere without stumbling over a journal of mine, and journaling already consumes quite a bit of my time. This is what I have so far:

Morning Pages journal (That’s three pages written by hand every day)
Practice journal (A notebook where I write down when I play music, what I played, and sometimes how I felt, or ideas for songs)
Quicken (In theory I record every cent earned and spent. In real life I have a high stack of bank statement and receipts sitting on my desk waiting to be recorded. I haven’t done that for about six weeks already.)
A gratitude journal (Every evening I sit down and write down five things I am grateful for.)
A general notebook (Filled with bits and pieces, phone numbers, ideas for blog posts, stories, notes on PTA meetings, everything.)
My “notebook” on ravelry (All the details of everything I have knitted since last summer.)
Flylady control journal (In theory this is where I keep track of housework and such, in real life I haven’t opened it for ages and, instead, transferred all the really important reminders to my PDA’s to-do list.)
And, not the least of them, this here blog.

So, self-improvement is a nice goal but right now I’m not sure if maybe I’m trying a bit too hard. Also who wants to keep a special nice journal just to record things like “Ate a whole bag of potato chips, and two candy bars because I was angry. Afterwards I felt bloated and still angry. Waited for fifteen minutes and ate a whole bag of gummy bears.”

I know there are people who change their behavior in order to not have to write down things like that. I also know that there are people who cheat when keeping a food journal. There also are people who are too lazy to get out the notebook for a handful of almonds and so they don’t eat the almonds. I’m not one of them. In the past I have written down minute detail of everything I ate and why and how I felt afterwards but it never kept me from eating still more even when I wasn’t hungry at all.

On good days I think about all these notebooks and journals as my legacy and hope that some future scholar will gain insight in the everyday life of our times (though that insight might be a bit warped). On bad days I imagine my poor son reading hundreds and hundreds of pages that his parents wrote. Every single day recorded. Poor thing. I better tell him that he can give that all away without ever looking at it.

So. Do you keep journals? Food journals? Do you think it will help?

(And, on a completely unrelated note, please remember to send me posts you read or wrote for the Just Post roundtable until August 7th. If you haven’t heard about that yet, just click on one of the little birds down on the right sidebar.)

Getting off auto-pilot

July 21, 2008 by Susanne 6 Comments

I actually might make this into my goal for the near future. I spend a lot of time dreaming and thinking while going about my day. I’m absent-minded and side-tracked. And I’m very reluctant to give that up.

So, why should I? Well, because it might be the one thing that can save me. I’m still a bit down, I’m feeling over-whelmed, and confused. These days that seems to be my natural state of mind. Especially the part about being confused. Some of it is hormonal (always, these days) some is the beauty that’s July, the last month before summer break with all the parties, events, barbecues, and social gatherings, because everything has to happen before August.

If I could get off auto-pilot and into the present moment I might feel calmer ad more at peace. Also I’d have more energy. I know that when I’m really in the moment all those worries, and fears, and unfinished things to do become a sort of background noise. They are less important and less overwhelming. And that often means that I’m getting more done, that I’m staying focused when actually doing something, and am able to follow things through.

I’m reluctant because I am afraid I’ll lose something crucial when giving up all this living in my head. Daydreaming is nice. Writing blog posts in my head while doing the dishes makes my life seem less mundane.

But in the end I’m fooling myself. When I’m blogging in my head while doing the dishes, I’ll be surfing the net while blogging, and knitting in my head while surfing the net, and so on, and so forth. In the end I will have missed most of my life because I wasn’t present to savour it.

So, that’s what I will be practicing for the next weeks at least. Doing the dishes while doing the dishes, blogging while blogging, be with my family while being with my family. And I’ll keep in mind the piano students of mine who say, “But I have been playing the piano for a whole year! Why am I still not brilliant?”. Because some things take a while.

It will be an interesting and unusual experience for sure.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something

July 8, 2008 by Susanne 5 Comments

First there was a blog post on the 50 songs in 90 days-challenge on the shy singer/songwriter-blog. Then I got my astrology newsletter where there was mention of a singer, and when I checked out the site there was a link to the Immersion Composition Society whose members challenge themselves to write 20 songs in a day. (By the way I like the music of Ultralash a lot but when I wanted to buy the CD I couldn’t because I don’t have an US paypal account. Meh.) I already sensed a theme here but I’m still not ready for writing music again. And just then I opened Neil Gaiman’s blog in my feed reader, and there was mention of his former web elf, and voilà, former web-elf has posted one-minute-songs to her site three times a week.

Humph.

Did I mention that I still have about a gazillion things to do without even having touched any instrument?

Humph, indeed.

You know, I have bought myself a new recording thingy. And I already used it. Once. In April or so. Since then I have wanted to mix the recording. And I still haven’t done it. But here is the draft of the blog post I intended to write about it:

I actually got my own “connect the mike with the computer”-device last Thursday half a month six weeks ago. It’s called Onyx Satellite, hence this post’s title. [The post should have been called “I got my own satellite”.] However, due to life, and yarn expeditions I only unpacked it three days later. And managed to record a very short and not that exciting improvisation. Of course I wanted to present you with something really great but then I thought I’d better just post what I have. Because if I wait for something really great I might never get around to post music on my blog again. Using that thing is much easier than using the big mixer my husband has.

So now I’m doing something that no musician should do. Ever.

I’m posting a raw first take of a boring improvisation. Without having listened to it again.

There.

Nice post, isn’t it? Even if it is a bit incoherent. The only problem is that I then had to listen to the improvisation again, and it had the deadly flaw of being far too soft. Not loud enough. When it started to play on my computer I checked and rechecked three times to see if the loudspeaker was on. So I couldn’t post it.

There was only one thing to do. I recorded another improvisation today. Which is based on a groove idea that I had on May 1. I carried that idea around in my head for more than two months. Then I connected my new recording device, everything was fine, I even remembered to check the levels, and then I sang it. It was beautiful. Really. Unfortunately you can’t hear it because for no good reason the computer didn’t record it. Which I found out after more than two minutes of singing. Then I had twelve minutes left before I had to leave to pick up my son. I recorded the thing again, well, something based on the same groove. I had seven minutes to mix it which is why I’m not completely satisfied with that artificial sounding reverb effect thingie.

But here, finally, is at least some music by me:

[audio:improjuly.mp3]

I had wanted to make a new category on this blog like the “Story of the Month”-feature. “Monthly music” or, why not go wild, “Weekly Improvisation”. But, alas, it seems that a month in music is like six months in real life for me. But who knows. Maybe there will be something else before Christmas. Though I’m sure there won’t be 50 songs in 90 days.