HEPABOLU

Finished with the old, in with the new

hepabolu — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:06:06 +0000

The 30 days of the habit tracking are over. I’m still not sure whether it was a success or a failure. The weight loss I aimed at didn’t happen. In fact I’m now 1kg heavier than I was before starting this habit.

I also noticed that I really miss sitting down in front of the TV with some snacks. It’s the quickest and easiest way to relax a bit between all the tasks I do. By setting the time of not eating at 20.30h I basically deprived myself of all this. At some days I even had some crisps early in the day, just to not strike the day off as a failure. Wrong outcome. So I decided that I’ll stick to this habit but I’m allowed to make one exception in the weekend. Not during weekdays (except Friday) and only one time a week. That’s probably easier to keep.

Now for the new habit: I want to do more physical movement but I’m going to write down a more measurable goal. One that I can easier say I’ve reached or not. More in a later post.

Tracking and goals

hepabolu — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:21:52 +0000

It’s been a while since I last posted my statistics. With a few holidays running together here I suddenly had a whole week off. Time to relax and catch up on the backlog at home. Relaxing also meant that tracking my habit was forgotten. It had immediate effects: one day we started dinner after 20.30h. Does that count as failure or success? Another day I totally forgot about the habit and had some snacks after 20.30h. The day after I stepped in the ‘I-might-as-well’ trap: I might as well give in and have a bag of crisps.

Usually this last action would make me give up all together, but this time I decided that I might as well get back on the wagon and try again. By looking at my tracking calendar I found that the number of successes still outnumber the failures. Something I wouldn’t have known when I hadn’t tracked my progress.

I also realised, with the end of the 30 days in sight (marked by a line around the 30 days), I haven’t decided when it qualify as a success. I simply started and hoped for the best. Sure, there are numerous strategies to count: total number of successes vs failures, total number of consecutive successes, success rate in the last two weeks compared to the first two weeks. I haven’t really decided about it.

For now the stats:

Failures: 5

Partial success: 5

Success: 16

Days into the habit: 26

Total weight loss: 0.8kg

Hard times coming up

hepabolu — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:37:41 +0000

As the days passes and one success followed another I already thought this would end as a smooth ride. Today I realised even such a simple thing has it hard moments. Normally I would ‘celebrate’ the coming weekend by vegging out on the couch. TV on, bag of crisps at hand. Today the ‘natural’ urge came up and I already started looking around for food to eat, when I noticed the clock. Too late. I now had to make a conscious decision: eat something or go for a success. I settled on a third option: I delayed the decision by doing some more work and then some more. Now it’s time for bed and no use to start eating. Winning by self deception.

Tracking advantages

hepabolu — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:11:23 +0000

It’s been a week since I last posted my habit statistics. I’ve been on a long weekend of origami folding and during the weekend I noticed how important tracking is to stick to your habit.

Until last Wednesday I was doing fine and not eating after 20.30h was becoming normal. I decided that I didn’t need to bring my tracking calendar, since I could easily remember that I would have 4 successes in a row. The origami weekend started on Thursday and Thursday evening flew by while meeting old and new friends.

On Friday evening somebody put a bar of chocolate on the table and invited all of us to take some. Without thinking I did and since it was good I ate more. Suddenly I realised that it was way past 20.30h and that I had failed at keeping my habit. The days before I conciously checked my watch before deciding I could eat something, but this was the old reflex kicking in. The same happened on Saturday evening. I was offered pastry and ate without thinking.

So how does tracking help? Well, had I tracked my successes and failures on my calendar the effort would be more in the forefront of my mind and I would have thought twice before eating after 20.30h.

Log:

Failures: 4

Partial success: 2

Success: 7

Days into the habit: 13

Total weight loss: 1.8kg

Three in a row

hepabolu — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:22:39 +0000

Hooray! Three successes in a row. Just a short post now otherwise I lose motivation for the real important tasks I need to accomplish today.

Log:

Failure: 1
Partial success: 2
Success: 3
Days into the habit: 6

Total weight loss: 0.8 kg

Slowly building a habit

hepabolu — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:49:39 +0000

I know it sounds premature, but with yesterday’s success I have more success than failures. I felt bad yesterday, no energy. Don’t know why but it’s one of those days that I would grab a bag of crisps and try to eat the misery away. Not that it would help. Yesterday I decided that instead I would just do some ironing. I was fed up with the sight of that pile of clothes on the couch and the ironing board blocking the way. I promised myself I didn’t have to do all of it, but it would be great if I could finish it so the board could be put away. You can probably guess that it didn’t take half as much time as I anticipated.

That felt good, so good that I could sit down on the couch and start pampering my hands instead of running to the kitchen. And then I went to bed early and that was that. Success day no 2.

Log:

Failures: 1

Partial success: 2

Success: 2

Days into the habit: 5

Total weight loss: 0.8 kg

My first success

hepabolu — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:47:19 +0000

A weekend without the kids is a good time to spend some quality time together as a couple. Ours was a simple date with dinner in a restaurant and a movie afterwards.

I was determined to get a success yesterday and the restaurant sure helped. The meal was gorgeous and I must have eaten a bit too much. Anyway, preventing myself from eating after 20.30u became a no-brainer, because I couldn’t stand even the thought of food. Yay!

Log:

Failure: 1
Partial success: 2
Succes: 1
Days into the habit: 4

Total weight loss: 0.8 kg

Adjusting the plan

hepabolu — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:42:36 +0000

After the failure of last night I decided to reread, more thoroughly this time, the post at Zenhabits. This time I read the comments too, since they often give more information and/or put the post in perspective. I decided that it would be time to adjust my plan. Some elements described in the Zenhabits post are missing. I really want this habit to succeed because I want to use it as a step up to create more good habits.

Revised plan

Goal: By 9 May I no longer eat food after 20.30h. I don’t want it any more and I can resist the urges. Drinks of any kind are allowed.

Plan: I’m going to achieve this by not giving in to the urge. Instead I will do some home work that keeps my hands busy, or I’ll simply start pampering my hands and nails. When I’m too tempted to have something, I can have a few small toasts. At parties these are usually around, although most of the parties I attend these days are over by 21.00h or even earlier, so not much temptation there.

Reward: I haven’t even thought about a reward. I haven’t made up my mind whether this should be something physical (i.e. some ‘thing’ I can purchase) or food (in full contradiction to the habit) or something else (like the fact that I’ve lost weight or the pride of achieving my goal). Food is out of the question, and something spiritual won’t be motivating enough to get me going, so it has to be something physical. My latest crave is a Bag-in-Bag Organizer, so I might as well opt for that one and decide on the actual purchase on the end date.

Motivation: I have two reasons for doing this. One is simply to start losing weight without dieting and the other is prepping myself for more drastic changes in my life.

Obstacles and triggers: Hunger and parties are probably the largest obstacles and TV is a major trigger. What I can do to overcome these is, as described before, getting my hands busy to avoid grabbing snacks. I don’t want the grease of the crisps to transfer from my hands to anything else, so keeping my hands busy with something that requires clean hands is a useful diversion.

Logging: Although I’ll post the success and failure rates here, they are not in my face. Reading through the comments of the Zenhabits post I came across a post of ScrambleJam using the Compact Calendar I found only a few weeks ago. Strangely enough I immediately recognized it as a good tool for tracking the occurrence of my headaches, but I never thought of using it to track the progress on this habit. I’m going to print it right now, dig up my colorful pens and start the tracking.

Learning the hard way

hepabolu — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:30:46 +0000

Ok, so I failed yesterday. I guess I need to learn it the hard way. While getting the groceries I came across a new flavor of crisps. I’m a sucker for testing new things, so I had to buy it. My grown-up side told me that it would most probably result in breaking my own rule and failing, but the child side came up with all kinds of excuses and I gave in and bought it.

We got home after 21.00h, so trying the stuff out would certainly break the rule, but I couldn’t resist. I filled a bowl (rather than just eat from the bag) and discovered that I really do prefer my favorite. What a waste! I broke my own rule and didn’t even enjoy it.

Today I decided that I needed to get rid of the bag, to prevent myself from breaking the rule again tonight. So I used it for lunch. Being brought up that good (as in still editable) food shouldn’t be thrown out, I couldn’t get myself to put the bag in the trash can. Hmm, I probably need to redefine my idea of good and include a notion of healthy.

Anyway, here’s the log. I’m including the weight loss now as an extra push for the better. I don’t think losing 1.1kg can be contributed to three days of trying to lose weight, but it’s nice to put it up anyway. The goal is to lose 5kg or more.

Failure: 1
Partial success: 2
Success: 0
Days into the habit: 3

Total weight loss: 1.1kg

One habit at a time

hepabolu — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:08:34 +0000

Sometimes I rate the validity of information by the number of times I come across it on my endless surfing quests. One habit at a time is such a nugget that I’ve read a few times now in the last week. It basically explains why my numerous attempts to impose new habits, or get rid of nasty old ones, have mostly failed. Following the post at Zenhabits I think I’ve done most of his “don’t do this” tips.

This time I’m determined to get it right. However, I’m starting small and use the advice found on Ben Tiggelaar’s website: plan for the worst moments. In short it comes down to thinking about the hard moments, the ones you tend to give in and give up. You often cannot survive such a moment by sheer determination, but a plan that helps you recognize the moment and find a way to get you through it increases the success rate.

Following the outline above I’ll put my habit down here and keep a log as well for all the world to see.

My ultimate goal is to lose weight (don’t we all, right?), but rather than doing all at once, more exercise, less food, healthier food etc., I decided to do just one thing at a time. One tiny habit to get me started. It’s probably low hanging fruit, an easy habit to accomplish, but it should prepare me for the tougher ones ahead.

My habit for now is to not eat any food after 20.30 until bed time. Drinks are ok. The reason is that I often stuffed myself with an entire bag of crisps during TV shows and it went from bad to worse. The habit started last Wednesday and should last at least 30 days, until 9 May.

Wednesday evening started off fine as I was out of the house from 20.00 until 22.00 for Tai Chi class, but on returning even this little habit didn’t work out. I gave in, but not completely. Rather than finishing a bag of crisps I took a small packet of toasts.

Same thing yesterday.

Looking back, I see my ‘hard moments’. Those are the ones on the couch in front of the TV. When sitting at my computer desk I’m much more content with just drinks, ranging from coffee to cola light, but watching TV stimulates an urge to eat snacks.

I’m not going to give up on watching TV, might be a next habit, but I do have to figure out how to curb this snacking. Ok, after some thinking here goes. When watching TV I can do either one of two things:

I do the laundry, folding or ironing
I do my nails and pamper my hands with lotion

I don’t always feel the need to do the first, but then there’s the second. I hate having lotion on my crisps and love to have smooth hands and nails.

Success is when I don’t eat anything, partial success is when I only eat a few toasts, failure is when I grab some snack.

Here’s the log so far:

Failure: 0
Partial success: 2
Success: 0
Days into the habit: 2