Sunday, October 4, 2015

Kind Eating- Week 5 (and fun with habits!)


This week was a rousing success!  I baked a bunch of chicken thighs at the beginning of the week and gave myself permission to throw lunch together.  I didn't have time to put the salad in a bowl, so I brought the bag of salad to school over 2 days and constructed it at work.  I ate a good lunch every day I taught, and I feel confident that I will do so this week.  In the upcoming weeks, I will experiment with making my own Caesar salad!  I've never made my own, so I'll ask friends for suggestions.


I am very interested in the science behind habit formation and am reading a new book on it!  In the opening pages, Rubin wonders why people have trouble starting activities that they used to do effortlessly.  A friend of hers wants to begin exercising and despite being a track team member in high school, she just can't get started.  I haven't gotten far into it, but it's got me thinking about I had so much trouble maintaining my habit last week.  I'm very good at figuring out when an activity is no longer interesting and I NEVER force myself to do anything I don't love.  I wonder what I'll learn about my teeny weeny habit-making habit by the time the book is over.  As a coach, professor, fitness instructor, friend, and wife, this is also important because I want to support the people I meet, encourage them to name their own reality and goals, and just generally not be a jerk.  I feel like so much body shaming is about our inability to let other people define their own concept of success, and this is something that I like talking about.

I'm also studying for my AFAA exam (oh the flashcards!) and learned an interesting concept, SAID (Specific Adaption to Imposed Demands).  This principle holds that bodies adapt to the physiological stresses we place on them and that in order to improve in a particular area of health and fitness, we should rehearse the exact movement we want to master.  Basically, if I want to run faster, I should run faster.  This week I'm going to identify areas where I want to use this concept to create new habits.  (In somewhat related news, I want to stop buying books for financial, environmental, and psychological reasons, and I get better at not spending money on books by not spending money on books.  I got this book from the library!  Go me.)

I'm looking forward to seeing what else is uncovered.

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