Patterns

This morning I finished the fourth week of the Couch-to-5k plan. I've been running Thursday, Sunday, and Tuesday since the first of the year - haven't missed a run. This is better than I've done in a while for non-karate-related workouts.

I've also been hitting the gym, going to karate at least 3 days a week, and eating quite a bit closer to right than normal. Plus the house is cleaner than it's been in ages. How am I pulling this off? I finally took a step back and looked at some of my patterns.

I live alone, and so must amuse myself. Sometimes I play video games; mostly I read. And since I was a little kid, I would read while I ate. This translated into eating while I read, and I could (and too frequently did) curl up with a book and any amount of food and plow through both without noticing. If all that was in the house was healthy food, I'd eat that, but I was still eating out of habit rather than hunger. And if I was hungry, I'd grab a book and end up killing an hour or two as well as having a meal.

My decision, then, was to try to focus on purposeful, rather than habitual, actions. I moved my book-in-progress from the bedside table to the breakfast bar, and now I prepare a meal, set it out, and only read until it's done. I was super-strict about this for the first couple of weeks, and I'm only easing back a hair now to make sure I don't backslide.

This has done two things: first, it's made portion control much simpler and less painful. I figure out what I want to eat, I eat it, I'm done. I'm not on any sort of super-strict diet or anything - I'm just cooking my own food and tracking it so that I know the new pattern is working. Second, I am not losing entire evenings (or days!) in a book unless I consciously decide to - and the thing is, I usually don't. I have time to do the dishes and sweep the floors and work on the novel, and I don't have to pry myself away from the book to do it. If I decide I want to read, I usually take a nice long bath and read in there. It's lovely and relaxing and there's no temptation to snack.

I grump all the time about the 50 pounds I put on just before I moved into the condo. But the thing is, yeah, I made some bad choices there, but that's not why I haven't been able to lose the weight. That is the result of years of patterns that I've set for myself while living alone, and it's finally time to toss them out and make some new ones.

Writing Elsewhere

I have a short essay up at our dojo page - check it out!

Happy New Year!

I've been exceedingly lax in posting since my October blast. Hopefully that will get a little bit better over the next month. I'm trying some new things with my routine and I expect them to have at least some effect.