Health and Fitness January, 2022

[Harriet]

It's 2022!

So, what's working?

(And if you know what's working, how did you figure it out? )

The Mayo Clinic suggests that if you know, it's probably because you are doing your record keeping.

If you’re not keeping track of what you’re eating and doing for exercise, you need to start. Record keeping is one of the most powerful tools in maintaining good health and managing weight.

Why? Records help keep you accountable, and find out what is and is not working for you. Record keeping can help you identify problem areas to work on and notice successful strategies worth repeating.

Harmony already told us last January 1, that she's noticed ABOUT US (yes, us) that we seem to do best when we are:

... ..posting a lot, looking into scientific studies, figuring out the best things to do, sharing a lot, filling in charts, etc.

(Hmmm. That means we are partnering, too, and we know when we have a partner, we're more likely to have success.)

According to The Mayo Clinic,

1) The right tracking system is the one that fits your style. Newest app or old-school pencil and pad - be yourself.

2) Keep it simple. 3 things: "What are you eating and drinking, and doing for exercise? In-the-moment recording is best, but at least do it as soon as possible. It won’t help if you’re forgetting all the mindless nibbling that occurs." how do they know about the nibbling?

3) Be honest. Your records are your own tools. No one needs to see them but you.

4) Be mindful of negative thinking. Focus on the positive.

[Lynlee]

Thanks for your post Harriet.
After 2 challenging years, regrouping to start over seems a health giving thing to do.

Last year at last I (mostly) maintained a small diary with a page of daily 'doings'. A first in many years.

This year I want to continue, plus using a check list for the year contriving a diary double page ready ruled to suit my purposes. I've started. Day 2, so tonight I hope to continue. 'the list' will grow.
I'm inspired by Lady M's tiny habits of the achievable, and a narrow focus at first, to later expanded to include more things.

Its not all health and fitness items, though everything is health and fitness when it comes to rebuilding our well being. So mentioning it here ... though our environment and company is a big part of that.

Walking or being active outdoors (gardening) for 20 minutes is my aim/ focus.
I restarted that a week or so ago, and am attempting to to vary the 'loops' in my neighbourhood, building up to tackle more of the hills with growing vigour the plan and a hope. I did well today if I do say so myself.

Honestly recording food etc again, there is a challenge, and a check of honesty.
Yes - a nibble grows to something more in my case. They count. Otherwise its 'binge here I come'.

[Twins' Mom]

I recorded my breakfast and lunch meals, but out for dinner, it's just too hard for me. A dab of this, a dab of that. Dfriend had amazing meal: fried calamari for appetizers, then later ribs, cornbread, baked beans, quinoa salad and wing beans - an Asian bean. Fruit for dessert, altho we were all too full to engage.

So my weight was a new high this a.m.

Try, try again.

Need to walk today! Goal is 52500 for the week which is 7500 daily.

[Harriet]

At this point (and things could change ), I'm going to switch things up and try using a month-at-a-glance 1-page circular habit tracker for healthy habits. Found one with what I thought was 10 categories and now realize it's got 12 and could hold the full daily dozen if I wanted. Hmmm. I hadn't counted on including exercise and water with the nutrition trackables, but maybe I will. Printed one yesterday and wrote in the dates on a copy, printed again and saved both those originals in my household notebook in a sleeve, to make copies every 1st of month. I'll record brief specifics elsewhere, maybe planner. If I don't like the system, no money is lost.

I can't find the tip/example now that I just saw yesterday of dotting several colored dots in one space on a tracker when there are more than one of a habit you are tracking, rather than just coloring in the whole space or not. If I can get that (or checks) to work with some thin markers or pens in the larger spaces, that will help me and give me some clearer credit/record.

January 1 was 22 of 24 healthy habits.

Twice with the grands I've watched Disney's Encanta on net flix this past week. Many things recommend it and although they do sing a lot , the music is certainly one of the very good things. I couldn't help but think the music is just made for Zumba (no wonder, since it is set in Columbia, the home of Zumba creator Beto). You really could exercise/dance to the ending credits until you dropped. I'm sure I'm not the first person who made that connection!

So, I've added Zumba back to my line-up of exercise for January and had fun with it. (I just play youtube videos, not dvds. The only problem with that is that it sends a bunch of exercise videos to your youtube feed whether you wanted any more or not. I wish my computer wasn't trying to understand me. LOL)

Its not all health and fitness items, though everything is health and fitness when it comes to rebuilding our well being.

Yes, everything that rebuilds our well-being needs to be searched (researched?) to see if there are habits that can help. I'm trying to wrestle some answers out of my need for rebuilding, in a couple areas of life.

[Twins' Mom]

Harriet, do you mind sharing your 24 healthy habits?

[LadyMaverick]

I'm doing some review of 2021 Healthy habits. There were lots of ups and downs. Some success and some learning experiences. One of the things I switched to during 2021 was looking at the bigger picture. Instead of comparing day-to-day progress or failures, I tried to look at the month-to-month view. This bigger picture view is only possible because I was keeping detailed data on a daily basis. This helped me not beat myself up when I messed up one day. Those random oops are not what changes the monthly averages and they don't show up in the big picture. Knowing this I could recover from these ooops and remove the emotion out of it.

Another thing that was a big help to me was watching the Trend line on the graphs.

My weight loss effort did fairly well for 6 months (March to September) then I switched methods of tracking and the results show the method didn't work as well. For the last 3 months, my weight graph is flatlined. Now I am back to tracking the proven way it works for me.

Some habits I have down pat without any tracking. I fill water bottles in the morning for everyone and they have to be empty by EOD. Simple but effective.

I was surprised to see the sleep pattern when I looked at it from a yearly view. During the summer months, I averaged 7.6 hours of sleep During the winter months my sleep averaged 8.6 hours. I had no clue about this sleep pattern until I saw the yearly sleep graph.

[Twins' Mom]

LadyM, care to share your healthy habits? We have some great role models here!

[Harriet]

RunKitty and I both track at least partially with the Daily Dozen (really 24) developed by Michael Greger, nutritionfacts.org. I believe she, however, goes along with one of his higher recommendations for exercise by time spent and I am happy to meet the shorter time(s). I think she may use the app. I have it but have usually done my own tracking on a computer doc or now, on paper. We could both probably remember by heart, like this:

3 beans servings
3 whole grain servings
1 serving berries
3 other fruit servings
2 greens servings
1 cruciferous serving
2 other veg servings
teaspoon of flaxseed
tbsp of nuts
spice (tumeric preferred)
exercise
5 glasses beverage (12 oz)

There are a lot of specifics on these, of course, like: A serving of many things may be only 1/2 cup. There are a lot more cruciferous veggies than you think. Mushrooms count as a veg. Water is the preferred beverage. Bell peppers can count as a fruit, banana can count as the berry that it is, seeds can count as nuts, so lots of leeway.

LadyM, you're so right about the big picture view. How interesting about sleeping longer at cold times.

[LadyMaverick]

I most definitely don't feel like a role model. I struggle every day.

Now I track sleep, weight, steps, calories & protein % of those calories, Readiness score, active minutes exercised, and stress score. In addition to these, I monitor a wide variety of data a couple of times a week but I don't track it on a yearly graph.

In 2021 I tracked Sleep hours and weight all year missing only a few days when I was traveling or Fitbit broke.

In March 2021 I started tracking everything I ate. I developed a spreadsheet of everything I eat including all the macro data for each ounce of that food. I admit it was a PITA to collect the details but now this spreadsheet contains the 331 food items that I have eaten over the past 9 months. I only had to collect the data the first time I ate something new/different and then the data is available to be used over and over.

Lessons learned - IMHO, I went overboard in tracking too much macro data because after several months I realized I wasn't using most of it. So I hide all the columns showing macro data that I wasn't using to focus on Protein % & Calories. I have hard facts to show how my aging body responds to the various factors. These factors make plain what I have to do if I want to be at a healthy weight while still having enough energy to do what I need.

If I want to lose weight I have to keep my average calories below 1100 calories a day. That is super hard for me to do. Because it is lower calories than I would like I also track how many servings of vegetables, fruit, and dairy I am getting. I put an emphasis on getting enough of those categories of food each day while still maintaining my protein % goal and staying under my calories limit. I rarely make it perfect in all of them but I monitor the monthly averages and trendlines in the graphs and then tweak what I'm eating according to them what they show

I feel like this is TMI. You asked a simple question and I wrote a book.

[LadyMaverick]

Posting for accountability.

I mostly made good choices yesterday. I wanted to eat more last night but was able to resist the urges.

The scale dropped 1.6 lbs this morning but I have learned that means very little in the big picture. However, it does provide some positive feedback and encouragement to continue following my plan.