- Daily Planning
- Floss
- strength
- cardio
- yoga/stretch
- Ate Veg
- Ate Fruit
- Vitamins
- Meditate
- walk
- Line a Day
I'm not sure I love habit tracking, but I'm learning some things about myself.
I don't eat fruit. I spend so much time chopping and preparing and serving fruit to the kids and then I will go days without eating fruit. I like fruit! Perhaps I need to start eating fruit whenever I make fruit for the kids. I think the problem with fruit is that it doesn't seem to fill any real need - I love strawberries but how many strawberries should I eat and why? I'm not going to reach for strawberries if I'm hungry. And I usually don't eat when I'm not hungry. Maybe 3pm needs to be "Rachel eats fruit" time, because eating fruit is good and I guess there's no good reason to wait until I'm hungry to eat fruit?
I also don't really meditate or floss. I floss more than I meditate though! But I feel like there's benefit in tracking the things I don't do, so I can tell when I do start to incorporate them or for how long. Sometimes I floss for like two weeks straight... then I just don't.
Yesterday - Saturday the 14th - was my first ZERO Habit day.
I had a dinner with friends on Friday which kept me out to 11pm (unheard of for me!) so did not get up early (ie before 6am which is the cutoff for kid/toddler wake ups) for exercise of any sort. I did not plan my day before it started. I did not eat any fruit or any veg all day (this was a big mistake, I was ravenous by the time we had dinner, which was macaroni and cheese, and I ate 3 bowls of it,.. although it have peas in it so maybe I did have veg?) I ate a bagel for breakfast, a cliff bar at 3pm, and half a scone for lunch because apparently moms eat like college students.
I did not take vitamins and I certainly didn't meditate. I did go for a walk carrying Clara and chatted with some neighbours but it was a 1/4 mile walk that took us 45 minutes because OMG are 19 month olds slow walkers. I guess I could count that, but I usually try and count walks where I maintain forward momentum for more than 50% of the time.
I usually do my line a day in the morning (because evening entries say "I ate x for dinner I am tired" and morning ones are slightly more rounded reviews). I did not do the line a day yesterday.
This was my first ZERO Habit day of 2025. It wasn't the worst day, but it certainly wasn't the best.
Also, as a 40 year old human, I really need to be eating some fruit and vegetables if I'm going to eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese for dinner. Habits are here to support good decisions... Macaroni and Cheese is always a good decision but needs some supportive habits to not feel like a bloat monster after.
I'm sure I'll learn something bigger and better from a year of habit tracking than "fruit and vegetables are good".... but apparently I'm not there yet.
Do you track habits? Do you eat fruit? Can you eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese?
Hello, entire baguette eater here! I could definitely eat three bowls of mac and cheese but in your defense, peas ARE vegetables. Also so are potatoes (hey, you did not say GREEN vegetables) and I have been known to have a potato with butter on it for dinner more than once. I think for myself, I am fairly boring, but I am also a non-food-waster, so let me explain. That means that I can eat the same thing over and over and over, and generally I don't really want to fuss too much, so it would probably be something simple like lentils and rice, or potato with butter, or "charcuterie board" i.e. bread/cheese/tomato/cucumber board or salad, i.e. cheese/tomato/cucumber in a bowl! Hah. But I also don't like to waste food so I will eat whatever is going to go bad first which also can be boring or interesting depending on what is in the fridge! Long story short, I am not always very good at getting in all the food groups, but if I buy a kilo of tomatoes I will eat them every day, so that is where I trick myself by overbuying healthy things and then I "have to" eat them so that they don't go to waste! However, that doesn't always stop me from stopping at the bakery on my way back home from a run.... nobody is perfect!
ReplyDeleteP.S. I just went to the dentist and she told me that the one thing I should get (off Amazon for like $25 according to her) was a water pic. Maybe if you had that you would floss more?
Mm, entire baguette...nom! -other rachel
DeleteI love seeing this!! I have admittedly not really been using my own tracker lately much- just feeling a pull to simplify my daily routines a bit right now. But I’ll probably use again!
ReplyDeleteYay for a zero habit day! That's an achievement in itself. Yes, habit are great, but you don't want to look back on your life and say "when the twins were little I flossed 5/7 days", you want to remember things like the time that you were out until 11 and the next day you went out for a walk and had a nice chat with your neighbor
ReplyDeleteI think habit tracking is useful for "things that I want/need to do but need a little push to get there". It's second nature for me to do a cardio based workout 5 times a week, and I've been doing it for pretty much all of my adult life. Back when I was starting there might have been a reason to track it, but now it's something that's so ingrained that I'm not going to miss it anymore than I'm going to miss brushing my teeth or taking a shower. However, I often fall off the wagon with doing pushups. It's something that benefits me, but there is an obstacle to getting it done (specifically a cute furry creature in the house who thinks that if I get low to the ground it's because I want to play). So it would benefit me to track my pushups.
I hear you on the fruit! I eat fruit and veg with meals, not stand alone. Mac and cheese with peas is an epic dinner.
"moms eat like college students"
ReplyDeleteI feel seen.
Also, i can attest to not eating as much fruit as I prepare for my kids, so something I tend to do is, like you suggest, eat some as I prep it. -rachel