Today also begins tracking all my food and liquid intake. This is considered mandatory.
All studies show that people who track their habits -- any habit they are trying to develop and maintain -- have much more success than those who don't. Tracking keeps you honest, allows you to see your progress, and I find it can be a morale booster. Plus who can remember how much water you've drunk in one day? Tracking alleviates the need to remember everything -- worth it for that reason alone.
I already do a lot of habit-tracking for physical exercise, practicing piano, and all kinds of other things. (That's a post for another day.) But I haven't tracked my eating for a very long time. So I start today.
Many people prefer an app for this, but I am avoiding more reasons to use my phone.
For habits, I use a spreadsheet (I'm a total spreadsheet geek), but that's more useful for something you do once daily -- for example, every morning, checking off what I did the day before.
For this, I've decided to go old school: a paper journal.
Recently I was showing my partner two beautiful blank books I have, but have never used.
One book was a memento from my trip to France with my mother in 2014. Throughout the week she was trying to buy me things, mostly crappy tourist stuff that I didn't want -- and didn't want her to waste money on. In the town of Rouen, we went into a beautiful paper-goods and writing store, the kind of store I drool over. There, I made my mother very happy by suggesting she buy gifts for both me and my partner (poor guy, home with the dogs*) from this store.
The second book was a gift from a friend when I moved away.
Both books are beautiful with artwork and interesting designs inside (examples here), and both are meaningful to me.
And because of that, I have never used them! In this respect I am my mother's daughter: they're too nice to write in. Ha!
Recently this came up in conversation with A, my partner -- how I have these beautiful books and would love to use them, but can never bring myself to write in them. He suggested using them for my surgery journal. And I'm going to!
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* Don't feel too sorry for him: we went to London, Paris, and all over Spain the year before.
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