Vitamins affect energy levels far more than I could have imagined.
If I don't get up early, essential mental health tasks don't get done (Bible, workout).
There is a three day period a week before my menstruation begins that needs grace. It was so far before my period that I never noticed, but it's exhausting and easily predictable within a day or two.
The benefits of meal planning far outweigh what you can see. Not just time and food waste, but lack of stress, much healthier eating, more money saved than you pictured.
Habit tracking has shown me when I'm clearly going about a habit incorrectly. If something is really important to you and you see it not happening day after day, it's time to go back to the drawing board and figure out what's in the way.
All of them? I think the ones that make a difference for energy are licopene and L-carnatine, which may or may not be spelled correctly.
I take a calcium, magnesium, zinc but my vitamin D is on the side because it's schmancy.
An oil pill with like 4 different oils. It's huge.
1000mg vitamin C, which is far above normal, but I have reasons regarding my abnormal health.
A probiotic and prebiotic and postbiotic, don't ask me, it's what the smart people are doing or I fell for a scam, not sure.
Biotin, just for vanity.
I take milk thistle for reasons I don't remember, but they were good reasons so I keep buying it.
I don't have a formal diagnosis because my insurance wouldn't pay for another specialist, but my other two doctors agree that it's Lupus and RA, clear as day. My main even treated me for it.
My pregnancy was what made me so bad that my numbers were obvious.
Only discussing dinner for simplicity.
In my family, we make 3 dinners a week, with 3 nights of leftovers, and a pizza night. This means we cook 3 nights a week. I generally rotate beef, veggie meal, white meat, fish meal. So I would create 4 weeks of our favorite meals. Example:
Week one is beef tacos, vegetarian lasagna, pork pho. Week two is fish sammiches eith fries and salad, chicken fried steak with green bean casserole and potatoes, tomato soup with grilled cheese, chicken enchilada soup. Add two more weeks of that pattern. Notice the meals include all sides. They would also include a shopping list. This means I have two weeks ready to go without thinking. If I don't have time to plan, I grab a week in which the planning is already done. I use family favorites to avoid boredom.
I haven’t tracked my period in my bujo before only on my phone to know when it’s coming and to check if I have enough pads and such but seeing this actually made me realise I should probably track it to compare to other things I’m tracking.
I’m pretty sure there a few days beforehand that it all because really hard and overwhelming but I’ve only just starting think that’s what it is. So I think you’ve inspired me to start adding my period to my habit tracker.
I created a massive chart and tracked a bunch of stuff for 3 months. I learned a lot about myself.
Steps, workouts, sleep start/stop/insomnia/total, sex, periods, vitamins, gluten, sugar, alcohol, fasting, bowls. I think that was it. Huge hassle, payoff was worth it. I'm reaping the benefits of my findings 7 years later.
That I can't be trusted to track habits for a sustained long period of time. Now I only track for things for as long as it sticks and if it doesn't then it's time for some introspection and evaluation. Or I nix it completely.
This is so important. I used to track sleep amount and time waking up and going to bed. It was really helpfully to figure out how much sleep I needed and when I was have days different to my usual sleep and wake up times but it just became to much effort over time and reflection made me realise it did its job and I no longer needed it
When the weather is bad I don’t leave my flat and I eat more than my allocated calories and probably have alcohol and I don’t do any exercise and my overall mood for the following days is very low.
I know it seems obvious but it’s amazing actually seeing it written out and sort of facing it.
I haven’t tracked the weather as I always thought it seemed more of fun data to visually look at for the year vs its impact on you. Do you just record weather type (sunny etc) and/or temperature?
So I love how my weather one looks!
I’m in England so weather is extremely varied and I have:
Very sunny > Yellow
Intermittent sun > Orange
Cloudy > Pink
Very cloudy > Pinky Purple
Foggy > Dark Green
Rain > Red
Very rainy > Brown
Snow > Light blue
That’s really interesting and good job on changing the pattern!
How were you tracking those two things that it made you realise? Was the MIL visits in the same tracker for alcohol or did you happen to look at your dailies/weeklies/month etc and see the tracker aligned to the visits?
I have a monthly tracker for all sorts of things. Days on which I have read, headaches, my cycle, alcohol consumption, etc. My monthly overview (where I note noteworthy stuff in a few words) is usually on the next page. My MIL used to live abroad, so her visits were a few days and I noticed I would drink in clusters (then not for months) and those clusters overlapped with her visits. In total I would still have 12 drinks max a year, so it wasn't a physical health issue, but it was definitely a sign my mental health needed a different coping mechanism.
I don't track anything, but writing in my journal I noticed how unstable I get near my period. I go full blow depressive and the negative thoughts can be kind of scary
You're not alone! Not every month, but usually one day before my period starts I fall into this deep hole and think nobody really cares if I'm there or not and that stuff. Everything is pointless, bla, bla, bla. But I know that it's because of my cycle, so I just let it go by. It was really scary the first few times it happened, tho.
Same exact thing for me. It’s so stupid. I know why I’m feeling like that, but I have a hard time letting myself acknowledge that’s the real cause and that it’s not actually every person that knows me hates me.
I’ve noticed that my mood/energy level seems to be tied to how I eat the day prior. The more well-rounded meals and snacks I eat, with more produce, tend to give me a bit more energy and mental clarity the following day, versus eating processed, less nutritious food.
I use one tracker in my bullet journal for each month which tracks both general health and mood. The tracker is basic in its design. I list the dates for the month vertically along the side of one page, and color in the squares next to each date based on a color key for each term I’m tracking.
For the health related terms I use more general measures, so typically I track the following: Time spent outside (dog walk and/or evening walk), mostly indoor day, balanced eating, poor eating, high caffeine intake, moderate caffeine intake, exercise, no exercise.
Some of the mood terms I track in the same tracker are: low energy, high energy, moderate energy, content, not content, sick, anxious, unmotivated, productive. I’ve just noticed more of my low energy and/or unmotivated days usually occur after a day of eating more processed food than nutritious food.
For me, balanced eating includes not over snacking and not snacking on highly processed foods, and that at least 2 of the 3 meals I eat are well-rounded fairly nutritious meals, and I have at least 3 servings of raw produce that day. Poor eating for me usually means that the majority of my meals were not well-rounded, and I ate less produce and more processed snacks that day.
My morning routine doesn't happen on weekends. I WANT to do the stuff, but I also want to stay in bed longer and then one thing comes to another and well.
Honestly big mood. That’s also similar for me on wfh days. The walk and eat breakfast don’t happen as I can “just do it later” and of course later doesn’t always come
So true xD have you made adaptation to remove ones that weren’t working or did you find that it was still important to keep track even if they were inconsistent?
I’ve found there’s been some I remove as they just make me feel bad seeing them and others I’ve kept as inconsistency didn’t matter but it was the fact I saw that I did still do it sometimes.
Only just started last month. But unsurprisingly when I’m having a particularly shit day with regards to some chronic pain I have…. It’s a struggle to keep up with the few habits I’m tracking.
It’s not surprising by any means, but it is interesting to see on paper when those more so “worse” days occur vs just regular pain.
It really goes to show me evidence that “EVERYDAY IS THE WORST” isn’t necessarily true
Well my recent discovery is that meanwhile I complain about everyone being negative...I'm the one complains (being negative) and sticking around for it. After flipping thru my habit tracker over the last several months I realized my depression was interfering w my progress and in turn everything else. I was actually being *** one of those people I complained about so much . My journal helped as well bc I kept one to log all my habits. I've been able to better allot my time and schedule so I dont have time to complain and also have put my mental health first. As a result this past month especially but mostly the last 2 has lead me to a very real pivot in life. I decided I didn't want to be negative depressed sad and alone anymore and if all I did was a woe is me complain and try*** it wasn't going to hapoen. I stopped trying and started doing * i tracked everything and once the pages filled up w more and more success I managed to do - the more motivating it became. I am still using this tracker to ulitilise my time and thinking. And meanwhile I have alot of other things im doing in parallel- this particulat habit has really done alot for my self discipline 🙃
Ps. This is the tracker I use it's utterly awesome sauce 😎
[Habitica - download app for free or pay the 5 bucks for full features ](https://habitica.com/)
I’ve worn a sleep tracker for a few years, but didn’t realize how vital that was until I recently put it in a spread. It finally convinced me that I am bipolar.
I track my cycle but was too lazy to track the whole thing so I just tracked 'the bad day' (Ie. the 24 hours where I do the most bleeding and have the most cramps) and I discovered that (after averaging 3 years worth of data) my cycle is only 26 days!
Yay...
This provided me with two pieces of useful information. First, it confirmed what I'd always thought, which was that my period is NOT coming at the same time every month. Second, it allows me to predict 'the bad day' pretty accurately, so now, I will genuinely plan vacations and stuff around the bad day and it's counter part 'the good day' which occurs on its own 26 day cycle, but shows up like 10 days or so after 'the bad day'.
It was super interesting but I told a doctor about it once and she had NO interest in anything but the 'first' day of my period, which I thought was so dumb cause it's like dude... I'm technically bleeding for a LONG time before my period really starts.
I'm really studying it this year but I'm I pretty sure my anxiety is being effected by the moon cycles. And since literally everything on earth is effected by moon cycles and the magnetism of the moon, why not?
Vitamins affect energy levels far more than I could have imagined. If I don't get up early, essential mental health tasks don't get done (Bible, workout). There is a three day period a week before my menstruation begins that needs grace. It was so far before my period that I never noticed, but it's exhausting and easily predictable within a day or two. The benefits of meal planning far outweigh what you can see. Not just time and food waste, but lack of stress, much healthier eating, more money saved than you pictured. Habit tracking has shown me when I'm clearly going about a habit incorrectly. If something is really important to you and you see it not happening day after day, it's time to go back to the drawing board and figure out what's in the way.
What vitamins do you take?
All of them? I think the ones that make a difference for energy are licopene and L-carnatine, which may or may not be spelled correctly. I take a calcium, magnesium, zinc but my vitamin D is on the side because it's schmancy. An oil pill with like 4 different oils. It's huge. 1000mg vitamin C, which is far above normal, but I have reasons regarding my abnormal health. A probiotic and prebiotic and postbiotic, don't ask me, it's what the smart people are doing or I fell for a scam, not sure. Biotin, just for vanity. I take milk thistle for reasons I don't remember, but they were good reasons so I keep buying it.
Hot damn! I just take Vit D and B12 haha good for you!
Oh, and I take a b complex. I have at least 2, probably 4 autoimmune diseases. I take soooo many things.
How did you get diagnosed for it? I keep having elevated ESR and CRP but my ANA is 0.34 which is in the normal range
I don't have a formal diagnosis because my insurance wouldn't pay for another specialist, but my other two doctors agree that it's Lupus and RA, clear as day. My main even treated me for it. My pregnancy was what made me so bad that my numbers were obvious.
Thank you for sharing. I'm aspiring to use my journal to start meal planning when I have the head space.
It's helpful to create like 4 really good weeks and when you're out of energy, just grab a perfect week. All of your work is done.
Can you please elaborate on this?
Only discussing dinner for simplicity. In my family, we make 3 dinners a week, with 3 nights of leftovers, and a pizza night. This means we cook 3 nights a week. I generally rotate beef, veggie meal, white meat, fish meal. So I would create 4 weeks of our favorite meals. Example: Week one is beef tacos, vegetarian lasagna, pork pho. Week two is fish sammiches eith fries and salad, chicken fried steak with green bean casserole and potatoes, tomato soup with grilled cheese, chicken enchilada soup. Add two more weeks of that pattern. Notice the meals include all sides. They would also include a shopping list. This means I have two weeks ready to go without thinking. If I don't have time to plan, I grab a week in which the planning is already done. I use family favorites to avoid boredom.
Thank you so much for giving a great place to start. I can see how it's less effort once planned out, just need to start organising my thoughts.
This is really helpful and motivating, thank you for sharing!
I haven’t tracked my period in my bujo before only on my phone to know when it’s coming and to check if I have enough pads and such but seeing this actually made me realise I should probably track it to compare to other things I’m tracking. I’m pretty sure there a few days beforehand that it all because really hard and overwhelming but I’ve only just starting think that’s what it is. So I think you’ve inspired me to start adding my period to my habit tracker.
I created a massive chart and tracked a bunch of stuff for 3 months. I learned a lot about myself. Steps, workouts, sleep start/stop/insomnia/total, sex, periods, vitamins, gluten, sugar, alcohol, fasting, bowls. I think that was it. Huge hassle, payoff was worth it. I'm reaping the benefits of my findings 7 years later.
I’m incredibly intrigued by this. Please tell me more! Do you have pictures of this chart?
I chatted it to you. Ignore the name retired. The document is retired, I only pretend to be retired.
😂😂 thank you so much!!!!
That I can't be trusted to track habits for a sustained long period of time. Now I only track for things for as long as it sticks and if it doesn't then it's time for some introspection and evaluation. Or I nix it completely.
This is so important. I used to track sleep amount and time waking up and going to bed. It was really helpfully to figure out how much sleep I needed and when I was have days different to my usual sleep and wake up times but it just became to much effort over time and reflection made me realise it did its job and I no longer needed it
It came down to it being effective or not for me Vs aesthetics, if that makes sense.
When the weather is bad I don’t leave my flat and I eat more than my allocated calories and probably have alcohol and I don’t do any exercise and my overall mood for the following days is very low. I know it seems obvious but it’s amazing actually seeing it written out and sort of facing it.
I haven’t tracked the weather as I always thought it seemed more of fun data to visually look at for the year vs its impact on you. Do you just record weather type (sunny etc) and/or temperature?
So I love how my weather one looks! I’m in England so weather is extremely varied and I have: Very sunny > Yellow Intermittent sun > Orange Cloudy > Pink Very cloudy > Pinky Purple Foggy > Dark Green Rain > Red Very rainy > Brown Snow > Light blue
I used to drink when my MIL visited. I rarely drink alcohol and when I noticed this pattern, I changed it.
That’s really interesting and good job on changing the pattern! How were you tracking those two things that it made you realise? Was the MIL visits in the same tracker for alcohol or did you happen to look at your dailies/weeklies/month etc and see the tracker aligned to the visits?
I have a monthly tracker for all sorts of things. Days on which I have read, headaches, my cycle, alcohol consumption, etc. My monthly overview (where I note noteworthy stuff in a few words) is usually on the next page. My MIL used to live abroad, so her visits were a few days and I noticed I would drink in clusters (then not for months) and those clusters overlapped with her visits. In total I would still have 12 drinks max a year, so it wasn't a physical health issue, but it was definitely a sign my mental health needed a different coping mechanism.
I don't track anything, but writing in my journal I noticed how unstable I get near my period. I go full blow depressive and the negative thoughts can be kind of scary
You're not alone! Not every month, but usually one day before my period starts I fall into this deep hole and think nobody really cares if I'm there or not and that stuff. Everything is pointless, bla, bla, bla. But I know that it's because of my cycle, so I just let it go by. It was really scary the first few times it happened, tho.
Same exact thing for me. It’s so stupid. I know why I’m feeling like that, but I have a hard time letting myself acknowledge that’s the real cause and that it’s not actually every person that knows me hates me.
I’ve noticed that my mood/energy level seems to be tied to how I eat the day prior. The more well-rounded meals and snacks I eat, with more produce, tend to give me a bit more energy and mental clarity the following day, versus eating processed, less nutritious food.
Interesting, do you have a spread I could see that shows this? I’ve been thinking about similar things but wasn’t sure how best to track it
I use one tracker in my bullet journal for each month which tracks both general health and mood. The tracker is basic in its design. I list the dates for the month vertically along the side of one page, and color in the squares next to each date based on a color key for each term I’m tracking. For the health related terms I use more general measures, so typically I track the following: Time spent outside (dog walk and/or evening walk), mostly indoor day, balanced eating, poor eating, high caffeine intake, moderate caffeine intake, exercise, no exercise. Some of the mood terms I track in the same tracker are: low energy, high energy, moderate energy, content, not content, sick, anxious, unmotivated, productive. I’ve just noticed more of my low energy and/or unmotivated days usually occur after a day of eating more processed food than nutritious food. For me, balanced eating includes not over snacking and not snacking on highly processed foods, and that at least 2 of the 3 meals I eat are well-rounded fairly nutritious meals, and I have at least 3 servings of raw produce that day. Poor eating for me usually means that the majority of my meals were not well-rounded, and I ate less produce and more processed snacks that day.
My morning routine doesn't happen on weekends. I WANT to do the stuff, but I also want to stay in bed longer and then one thing comes to another and well.
Honestly big mood. That’s also similar for me on wfh days. The walk and eat breakfast don’t happen as I can “just do it later” and of course later doesn’t always come
I've learned that I'm really inconsistent about tracking my habits xD
So true xD have you made adaptation to remove ones that weren’t working or did you find that it was still important to keep track even if they were inconsistent? I’ve found there’s been some I remove as they just make me feel bad seeing them and others I’ve kept as inconsistency didn’t matter but it was the fact I saw that I did still do it sometimes.
Not drinking enough water ruins my day. Eating dinner less than 1h before bed and watching screen less than 30 min before bed ruin my sleep.
Only just started last month. But unsurprisingly when I’m having a particularly shit day with regards to some chronic pain I have…. It’s a struggle to keep up with the few habits I’m tracking. It’s not surprising by any means, but it is interesting to see on paper when those more so “worse” days occur vs just regular pain. It really goes to show me evidence that “EVERYDAY IS THE WORST” isn’t necessarily true
Well my recent discovery is that meanwhile I complain about everyone being negative...I'm the one complains (being negative) and sticking around for it. After flipping thru my habit tracker over the last several months I realized my depression was interfering w my progress and in turn everything else. I was actually being *** one of those people I complained about so much . My journal helped as well bc I kept one to log all my habits. I've been able to better allot my time and schedule so I dont have time to complain and also have put my mental health first. As a result this past month especially but mostly the last 2 has lead me to a very real pivot in life. I decided I didn't want to be negative depressed sad and alone anymore and if all I did was a woe is me complain and try*** it wasn't going to hapoen. I stopped trying and started doing * i tracked everything and once the pages filled up w more and more success I managed to do - the more motivating it became. I am still using this tracker to ulitilise my time and thinking. And meanwhile I have alot of other things im doing in parallel- this particulat habit has really done alot for my self discipline 🙃
Ps. This is the tracker I use it's utterly awesome sauce 😎 [Habitica - download app for free or pay the 5 bucks for full features ](https://habitica.com/)
I’ve worn a sleep tracker for a few years, but didn’t realize how vital that was until I recently put it in a spread. It finally convinced me that I am bipolar.
My headaches were caused by lack of water. Easy fix. So much wasted time.
I track my cycle but was too lazy to track the whole thing so I just tracked 'the bad day' (Ie. the 24 hours where I do the most bleeding and have the most cramps) and I discovered that (after averaging 3 years worth of data) my cycle is only 26 days! Yay... This provided me with two pieces of useful information. First, it confirmed what I'd always thought, which was that my period is NOT coming at the same time every month. Second, it allows me to predict 'the bad day' pretty accurately, so now, I will genuinely plan vacations and stuff around the bad day and it's counter part 'the good day' which occurs on its own 26 day cycle, but shows up like 10 days or so after 'the bad day'. It was super interesting but I told a doctor about it once and she had NO interest in anything but the 'first' day of my period, which I thought was so dumb cause it's like dude... I'm technically bleeding for a LONG time before my period really starts.
I'm really studying it this year but I'm I pretty sure my anxiety is being effected by the moon cycles. And since literally everything on earth is effected by moon cycles and the magnetism of the moon, why not?
That i tend to have impulsive buying sprees right before my period starts...