Preliminary Summary of Plan


It's day 4 for November and my pledge to write a blog post every day is being put to the test -- it's been a rather hectic day and I had an article due which I just turned in at 5. So, I'm grabbing a couple of lists from my notes. I probably should have started with this, the plan I've been pretty much following for the past six months.

Summary of the plan:
  • Sleep plenty: 8 – 9 hours of nightly rest, in bed, in the dark, with no electronics (except maybe a Kindle that’s on airplane mode, and that only if you are having a really hard time getting back to sleep).
  • Stay physically active throughout the day. If you wear a fitbit-type thing, your daily minimum should be 10,000 – 15,000 steps. If you don’t want to count steps, aim for about 3-4 miles of walking outside on top of your usual daily activities.
  • Get outside every day, for at least an hour, except in extreme weather (more on this later).
  • Over half of what you eat should be from whole plants; a variety of vegetables and fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds.
  • Don’t snack between meals -- and no more than 3 meals a day.
  • Stay hydrated.
  • Hang out with other humans.
  • Structure your environment to support good habits and healthy routines.
  • Don't poison yourself
A lot of this is about creating new habits, so it's probably best to start with one thing at a time... although that "one thing" could be a a new schedule with time set aside for sleep and getting outdoors.
Here are some notes I made the other day on habit formation. Habits aren't formed instantly, and some will take more work than others.  https://jamesclear.com/new-habit “On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact. And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances. In Lally's study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit.”  https://jamesclear.com/new-habit
Here are the steps he lays out:
  1. Identify the habit that you want to develop. (i.e., going to bed at the same time every night).
  2. Identify a time and place that you will engage in this activity – morning or evening routine can be good for this.
  3. Every time you encounter that time and place, do that activity.
  4. Repeat.
Simple, but not necessarily easy. 


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