01/09/2023
Having a little reflection on my own habits after a busy August.
When we talk to our friends, family and people we meet, we see different ways of living.
I've started trying to be more observant when someone tells me about themselves. If something in conversation gets flagged in my brain when I hear it then surely I value it somewhat. We all value different things after all, so not all habits I hear resonate with me.
What I've changed this month:
I used to loosely follow my finances but the more I transition to self employed the more in control/confident I feel knowing where my money is at. I've always used spreadsheets to track my money, I expanded the functionality of the sheets tenfold so I can feel like an accountant. Easy input, easy output, lots of detail. I'm spending like 30 mins weekly on this.
Mindful food shopping, since budgeting better and having 3 different food spending categories (Basic, Easy, Luxury) I realised that my diet was majority unprepped easy foods, which is more expensive, less nutritious, and less calorific than if I spent the time to prep wholefoods. I justified this to myself because I eat 4000kcal and it's alot of food to prep and cry cry cry, but it's only an extra 2/3 hours per week. A fair trade really.
I feel like I've been lazy with my food recently and the numbers don't lie, so I've began cutting out frequently consuming sugar. When I do this I look towards cold drinks, hot drinks, breakfast, cereals, snacks, and desserts. I fall into this habit a lot from when I was younger. I just mindfully begin reducing my intake of all these. I need to adjust my taste buds, so no sweetener too, I want to unlearn sweetness. Black coffee drinkers and dark chocolate eaters might relate. I feel like when you don't have that thought pattern ingrained to avoid sugar, you can just build a tolerance to sweetness and crave sweeter and sweeter treats, more and more frequently. Ending up feeling low energy all the time rather than feeling fueled from meals.
So just by finding around 3 hours a week I can make big improvements in my mood, health and save money? Nice.
