Thinking it out

 

“All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.”

William James 1892

Habits, everything we are habits it seems, from how, and what, we eat, to our relationships, to anxiety, to how we sleep... all of it just a set of habits we’ve formed throughout our lives that make us who we are.  I find that fascinating, we’ve become something, someone, because of habits; logic would therefore have it, that we can unbecome and rebecome in this same way.

There’s a recent paper written by the neurology department at MIT, about a woman who managed to turn her life around, by quitting smoking.  They studied her brain and what parts had changed, and saw that through the discipline she had created while quitting smoking, she created new pathways in her brain which later made it easier for her to continue creating new habits, and slowly changing who she was entirely.   As a result, she got a new job, moved to a new city, and essentially became a new person, and it all started with one, albeit a complicated/addictive, habit change.

A few years ago, I started experimenting with fasting, intermittent fasting, all day fasts, dry fasts, water fasts, you name it.  I was curious to see how my body would react.  Fasting was the new “fad” at the time, and like most fads, it had it’s believers and skeptical ‘fact-checkers’, but in my case it worked.  I felt more energetic, I managed to maintain my ideal weight, my stomach almost never bothered me (I've always had a temperamental stomach), and surprisingly I almost never felt hungry anymore.

When you think about it, it makes sense that the human body does not NEED to eat three times a day at a fixed time, it’s clear that we have been culturally conditioned to think of eating and food in that way.  I'm sure our hunter gatherer grandparents went about eating a little differently, and a little more more in sink with how nature initially designed us to be. 

Fasting therefore passed the first test, I could see the logic and then the second, after a few days of 16-hour daily fasts, I could see the results: I felt overall less hungry at my normal HANGER phases during the day, in fact I hardly ever really felt hunger at all.  I would feel that it was time to eat, but no longer that killing-anger must eat now feeling I would get before right before meals.

I also started occasional 24-36 hour fasts, and again the notion scares most people, but truly nothing will happen to any of us if we don’t eat for 24 hours, it might be unpleasant at first because our brains will not recognize the pattern and will signal us to want food at the hours we normally give our body food,  but once over this hump you feel fine.  Moreover, just like our smoker, I realised that discipline in fasting, helped me find discipline in other small eating habits, and from that, and Cait's book, came the idea for this experiment.

My Rules:

1)     Every 30 days choose a trend from each category, the ‘time’ category can have more than one do and don’t in the 30 days but the other categories are just ONE at a time.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither are habits it seems.

2)      30 consecutive days, every day no exception except health or really extreme circumstances

3)      New trends can be added, existing ones repeated or extended but nothing can be eliminated

j      No end of trend excess ((ie eating my weight in cheese after 30 days without cheese...mmm cheese)

4)      Record the countdown and write about it

Categories:

TIME: this is the major one

I know that it is a truth universally acknowledged that there’s never enough time for anything.  We work too much, we this, we that, and can never do all the things we set out to do or even want to do, yet at the end of the day we’ve spent 1-2 maybe 3 hours watching TV, another 1-2 on our phones, facebook, Instagram, tik-something… They say our average attention span is something absurd like 45sec on one activity, which pop-up messages, social media beeping, haven’t helped.

So, my first goal is to better manage/spend my time.

1)      Time

30 days do’s	30 days don’t’s
·       Spend time Journaling everyday, writing, just for me ·       Read 60 min of any book (my odd choices to read would be Dante’s inferno and Mein Kampf… I’ll explain later) ·       20 min meditation before bed (meditation defined in my case as trying to sit and stare for 20 min)	·       Phone time: 1hour per day max and off on Sunday ·       No facebook except to post this blog ·       NO TV for 30 days nothing, no movies, no documentaries, nothing!

 

2)      Schedule

I hesitated to make this part of the ‘time’ category, but wherever it goes, I know it’s something I need to work on.  I have always had a bit of a chaotic daily routine,  waking up at whatever time, going to bed, eating whenever, working from home hasn’t helped, neither is the fact that I’m much more of a night person than morning person, or am I?  But, left to my own devices I get completely lost and end up cancelling meetings, outings simply because I haven't managed my daily routine properly.  

The idea is a fixed schedule (to be outlined when part of the 30-day trend), to keep up for 30 days (to start).

3)      Food:

I’m a relatively healthy eater but I could for sure make some changes to my diet, in this category I’m only going to focus on the don’ts, since I don’t have a lot of issues with the do’s.

·       NO cheese for 30days: I live in France and have a borderline romantic relationship with cheese, so this will be harder than it sounds

·       NO meat for 30 days

·       NO alcohol for 30 days…again I live in France and I love love wine (and yes white wine counts!)

·       No sugar for 30 days

All of this combined with daily 16-hour fasts.

4)      Sports:

1)      30 days of yoga 

2)      30 days running 5km per day

3)      30 days muscles training

 

5)      Shopping:

In honour of Cait, and the book that inspired me to try this, I will do 60 days of no shopping for anything except food.  I will tone down the restaurants as well during this time.  No restrictions on things like museums or shows, not after 2 years of Covid!

Writing:

This category is a bit different, because it’s not so much a 30 day trend but more something I want to integrate into my life. I’ve always loved writing and yet somehow never really took the time to do it, so now I want to take time to do it. I still have to figure out the rules to this part, but it will come.