Non-Linear Progress

One of the things I’m trying to do here is illustrate my challenges of getting better from this point in hopes of helping other far-gone individuals. Undoing damage is not gratifying at all, at least not in the early stages I’m in. It’s very easy for me to focus on recent mistakes and get demoralized with the process. It’s very easy for me to beat myself up over mistakes and allow the self-hatred to derial other improvements. I have been given help tracking improvements which has helped contextualize failures and successes.

If I take it as a big picture, I do think I have made meaningful improvements over the last three months. I have walked every day in the last week, and my daily eating and sleeping has improved significantly. I am frustrated however that I have found it a big challenge to dedicate the time to ride the bus to go swimming. Walking instead of just wallowing in self-pity over not going has helped, but I do fully intend to return to the pool.

I’ve also taken to soothing my addiction to sugar with frozen berries, specifically blackberries. It does seem to help a great deal so I am likely going to stick with it until I am sick of it. While I have definitely avoided consuming too many sweets over the last short while, I haven’t made complete progress on portions, so I am in no way done improving my eating habits. Some days are ideal, some are far from it.

A huge change is that for the first time in a long time I am regularly awake during the day. For most of my adult life I have been used to staying up late. This accellerated after I started working nights, and meant that sleep had always been a challenge. Now I am a “daytimer” most days, which is very different from being awake until morning being the norm rather than the exception.

Summary

I’ve made progress in some areas, and fallen behind in others.
Here is a non-scientific self-assessment demonstrating what I’ve been tracking:

Sleep has definitely helped my productivity, I just need to keep reinvesting it better.

The Good

• Sleep: Started awful, has improved a lot.
• Eating: Started terrible, has improves fairly.
• Walking: Wasn’t walking much at all, now walking regularly.

The Bad

• Swimming: Started Great, but has fallen off.
• Writing: Has stayed consistent, but hasn’t improved.
• Reading: Made some progress, but fell behind.

Other things I should consider tracking:

• Stress management: Stress locks me into bad habits
• Screen time: …Yeah

Additional Thoughts

I had realized that part of the reason I haven’t done quite as well as I had hoped is that I am under a serious time crunch. In response to this I am cutting back on my work hours specifically to devote more time to this. I am realizing that it’s very easy for me to fill up my schedule to avoid thinking any of this through. I am grateful I have the luxury of being able to reduce my working hours, and cut back on fixed time commitments that were above-and-beyond what I should have expected myself to take on. Part of this is that I’m still finding time management quite a struggle.

I am hoping a quarter from now I will have much better news. Given that I’m giving myself more time to focus on it, I’m optimistic. I am committed to the goal of getting better but I’m still very disheartened and overwhelmed by just how far there is to go. I haven’t lost any weight over this period which is unsurprising. I am hoping that will change throughout the year.