Wednesday, March 11:
Hiking: 7.3 km
Planking:
Push-ups (minimum 10):
Touch the Bar: 10 hanging knee raises
Total Body Strength:
House of the Valkyrie:
yoga: downward-facing dog, heart-to-earth, gorilla, cow face arms
A rainy day. But we managed to sneak in 4 neighbourhood walks in between downpours and even made it as far as a friend's house for a visit in the afternoon.
Consecutive days of exercise: 141
Writing:
Nothing this day
Weekly target: 20 hours
Minimum target hours week-to-date: 4
Actual hours week-to-date: 0:15
On or ahead of schedule?
Fiction Writing: 0/5 hours
No Solo Video Games: Day 106
Extended Gaming Rules: Day 24
Total Solo Gaming Time this Week (max 8 hours): 3:55
Get to Bed On Time (for midnight):
Fell asleep in the study again. Awoke in the middle of the night. Went back to sleep ~ 6AM.
I have fallen into some less-than-healthful habits. I blame stress. And sure: I have stress. My finances are wildly unstable. The state of the world is terrifying. But self-defeating behaviours aren't going to help me deal with any of this. So change is in order. I'm going to re-start my star system for healthy habit tracking:
GOBOT (Get Out of Bed On Time): 6:00 AM =
| 6:30 AM =
| 7:00 AM =
GOFS (Get Outside For Sunrise):
=
| within 30 min. =
| within 1 hr. =
[1]
NLNF (No Late Night Food): fasting after 7:00 PM =
| after 7:30 PM =
| after 8:00 PM =
[2]
SOOT (Screens Off On Time): 8:00 PM =
| 8:30 PM =
| 9:00 PM =
[3]
GBOT (Get to Bed On Time): 10:00 PM =
| 10:30 PM =
| 11:00 PM =
Notes:
[1] This is a new thing for me to formally track. The basic idea is to promote a healthy circadian rhythm by exposing myself to natural daylight early in the day. (There is a substantial body of empirical evidence that links a disrupted circadian rhythm to all sorts of negative health outcomes, including cancer,
heart disease, and obesity--all things I would like to avoid!) In theory, GOFS should help me to maintain GOBOT and GBOT, make me feel more energized during the day (and hopefully therefore be more productive), and in general make me better able to achieve my life goals.
I live almost 43° North of the equator. So the time for achieving GOFS varies considerably throughout the year for me. My earliest sunrise is at 5:45 AM Daylight Saving Time. My latest sunrise is at 7:56 AM Standard Time. This means that the time required for me to achieve 3 stars for GOFS is
earlier than my 3-star GOBOT time from mid-May to mid-July. I am okay with this. Trying to maintain a GBOT earlier than 10PM is socially limiting. And my social life is as important a contributor to my health as my circadian rhythm. So I'm just going to accept that I'll likely only achieve 2 stars for GOFS during the summer months. Which is fine. I get 15 hours and 21 minutes of sunlight at the Summer Solstice. So I'm not short of sunlight at that time of year. And I find an after-dark walk at the end of the day is a healthful way to wind down and get ready for bed. In the winter, however, when I only get 9 hours of sunlight, I need to make the most of it!
[2] This is going to mean I cannot eat anything after my Monday night Aikido class. (It runs from 7:00 - 8:30 PM.) It also means I won't be able to eat after evening runs (which I like to do in the summer). I think this will be okay. Aikido is only a moderate intensity activity. And I don't aim to run for much longer than 30 minutes a day (at least, not during the summer months when I don't need to wear much clothing, my paths are clear, and I'm consequently able to run at speed). I think my recovery will be fine with not eating afterwards. Plus, fasting late in the day will assist my ability to maintain GBOT--which will improve recovery--(
and also make it easier for me to maintain a healthy body weight). So I think the benefits will outweigh any downside. I'm going to try this for a bit anyhow. We'll see how it goes.
[3] I make all sorts of excuses for not sticking to SOOT. And sure: many of the activities of my daily life do require the use of screens. But a blue light curfew is important to my quest to maintain a healthy circadian rhythm. So I'm going to go for it. There are plenty of things I can do to fill a space of two hours a day that don't require screen use. And I will be exempting the following activities from this rule:
- following a DAREBEE workout or yoga video (in these cases my eyes are actually pretty far away from the screen)
- using my e-reader (it has a warm light, night-reading setting)
- using my Garmin watch to track a run or other workout (this involves only minimal screen light)
I also want to get back to being more physically active in general. To this end, I'm re-instating my goals to complete a minimum of 150 minutes/week of vigorous intensity physical activity (i.e.: running or equivalent) and a minimum of 600 minutes/week of moderate intensity physical activity (i.e.: walking, yoga, Aikdio, or equivalent). Because walking times vary considerably due to many factors (traffic lights, ice, bird-watching, stopping to talk with people, smelling the "flowers", etc.), all walking will be logged as 10 minutes of moderate physical activity per kilometre. (Unless I'm hiking up a steep incline and/or carrying a heavy load, in which case I will log it as vigorous physical activity for the actual length of time involved.)
Let's do this!
Current week-to-date intensity minutes:
Moderate Physical Activity: 325
Vigorous Physical Activity: 36
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Pronouns: He/Him
