The Plan: month two 2008

I am loving the latest version of The Plan. I have been doing so well! That said, I'm finally getting around to writing this post now, after getting to 30 stars on Thursday, because the lack of a current star challenge was a significant factor in me regressing today. I was having trouble deciding on a new challenge for this month and I hadn't gotten around to writing this post, so although I was trying to continue what I'd been doing, I knew it wasn't actually counting towards a 30-star sequence. I'm not sure why that matters, since I've never actually given myself an official reward for getting to 30, but somehow it does. Once I slipped up, it was too easy to think the day was shot anyway, so I may as well make the most of it and eat as much crap as I want (and then a bit more). So, I need to start again, since it really was working wonderfully.

Lab


I did so much work! I was even averaging 6 hours a day of actual work for a couple of weeks! That's getting closer to a real work day. I finally did the first pilot version of the experiment that was sitting in this section for the whole of last year, even!

I have been making a list of things to do each day, which helps a lot. I think a bit part of why I was doing so little work was that I wasn't planning enough experiments. I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed lately, since I have multiple things running at once, but I think it's a good thing. I need to remember to make the lists very specific, though, so I don't have to sit down and figure out what to do, because once I sit down and start looking at blogs, it's very hard to get up again.

Social
I feel like I've been doing better at this, too, but it's less quantifiable. I've been using my laptop in a communal room a lot more and I've done several social things with people. I have still been bad about keeping in touch with family and friends, though, so I'm going to make that this month's goal: to email/contact a friend or family member every day.

Health
This was going so well, too (until today, but I won't dwell on that). I started the month with xmas cake, cookies, 2 packages of peppermint bark, marzipan and ice cream and by the end of January, I still had significant quantities of everything except the cake left! I ate something junk food-y every day, but allowing only one thing made it a lot easier to be conscious of what I was eating and not just mindlessly snack on whatever was there. It was easier to turn down things like free cookies at lab when I knew they weren't especially good ones and I didn't want to waste my one thing for the day on them.

I also ate 5 servings of fruit and vegetables every day. That wasn't so hard, either. I did just find a website that calculates how many servings you need based on age, weight and activity levels, though, and according to that, I should be eating 4 servings of fruit and 5 of vegetables every day. I don't think I'd be able to eat anything but fruit and vegetables that way, though, so I'm sticking to 5.

I've been cooking big meals on the weekend so I can eat a proper dinner as soon as I get home, so I don't get tempted to snack while I procrastinate on cooking. This weekend is the first I haven't had a chance to cook, so I'm hoping I can hold out long enough tomorrow night to eat real food. I do have more than a week's worth of meals in the freezer for emergencies, but I'm so reluctant to waste them, that I'm not sure I'll ever justify eating them.

Lunches have been slightly harder to deal with. I like sandwiches, but it's hard to fit a whole serving of vegetables on one. I really don't want to have to cook for lunch, as well as dinner, but I may have to sometimes. It's been kind of weird to have to think about lunch on the weekends, too. I used to just eat a late breakfast and then snack on random things whenever I got hungry (or bored). I've been feeling like I'm using up weekday lunches by eating them on the weekend, but I need to get used to planning 7 lunches a week, not 5.

I didn't give blood still. I should do that.

Overall, January was a good month. I said I was aiming for 1000 points on Joe's Goals to award myself a gold medal and I got 1305! I'm going to aim for 1400 next time. And now I should go to bed, since that's still something I need to work on.