Settling Habits

Habit: a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.

I have been trying to develop healthy habits in my life. First is walking daily.  I strive for at least a 30 minute steady walk on week days and 1 hour on weekends.  When the weather is gloomy and cold, I have trouble getting motivated to walk.  This is a weird personal problem with me. As long as the day is bright and not gloomy, the temperature does not matter so much to me. Gloomy days make me gloomy.  Today, I started off at 6:40

about 30 minutes before sunup.

It is a half mile to Dan's gate.  I made that in 10 minutes. Another half mile to cemetery road, another 10 minutes. After the turnaround, it is 500 steps up cemetery hill, and 800 or so steps back to Dan's. Uphill combined with stopping to see what the dogs were growling about, the way back takes longer.  I think they detected coyotes.  I did not see any coyotes but I heard howls off in Dan's fields.  We saw one white tale flash up the rock quarry, but both dogs ignored that.

The sun was just over the horizon here.

I was back home at 7:30, making 2 miles in 50 minutes. My fitbit said it was 2525 steps.

I am also working on healthy eating habits.  First, I am trying set eating times.  Breakfast is at 8, even though I usually wake up around 3 am and nearly always by 4 am even on weekends.  Habits really work for sleep. I have tried different breakfasts, but oats, walnuts, dried cranberries with yogurt is what works from me.  Chosen snacks are fruits and nuts. I try to add lots of vegetables to my dinner. For lunch, I often have a sandwich.  I need to switch that to salads and soups, but so far that has not happened. Preparing work lunches at 4 am seems not to be my thing. Free fried chicken is available from 9 am till whenever I leave work, so my main habit for work food needs to be no fired chicken. This is a battle, but I think I am winning.

My other healthy rules include no soft drinks, no making sugary deserts, more fish and unfried chicken, less red meat. I have done fairly well with this until this weekend.  First I made an Oreo Cool Whip layer desert as practice for a birthday desert for work next Thursday.  I am glad I practiced because I am using real whipped cream instead of Cool Whip and I am putting more cream cheese and less sugar in that layer. Any way you cut it, it will never be healthy.  Might as well be really good and unhealthy.

So, for our birthday lunch we are having a huge salad, nachos, and Oreo layer desert.  I will try to eat lots of healthy salad and little else.  If the desert is really good, maybe it will be all gone by the time I finish my salad.  That's my plan anyway.