Tag: emotional well-being

Christine’s Planuary: Part 2
ADHD · fitness · health · self care

Christine’s Planuary: Part 2

Christine Hennebury

So last week‘s Planuary post was very much about physical wellness- about how I’m going to add pushups and upper body yoga into my routine – and this week’s post is about mental wellness – how I am going to (re)implement a stress-reducing practice into my days.

Sidenote: I haven’t actually added the pushups and yoga into my day-to-day yet. Planuary is a deliberately slow process but I will let you know when and how I proceed with the pushup plan.

So my next part of Planuary is about reflection – reflective journaling to be precise.

A photo of a person’s hands writing in a journal.
This isn’t me, obviously. Their writing is tidy and their nail polish isn’t chipped. Image description: a person’s hands are shown writing in a coil-bound notebook. They are wearing a brown sweater and dark nail polish.

For over a year, I was doing long journal entries via voice dictation every day.

It was really useful for my brain and I found that processing everything aloud reduced my stress levels overall.

Then, I just kind of got out of the habit.

There were several reasons for that but the main one was tech-related.

I was using Google Docs for journaling but I use it for a lot of things and it got to be really annoying because it doesn’t have a good way to organize your files and my journal entries were popping up at times when I did not want to see them.

I tried switching to an app instead and while that was better for keeping my journal in one spot (and letting me choose when to see it instead of having it sprung on me), the app itself keeps crashing on my somewhat outdated phone. So, I would be chattering away to my journal and then discover that I hadn’t been recording for ages.

So I tried recording in Google Docs and then copying and pasting the entry into the other app but that made every journaling session a two-step process and my ADHD brain started protesting at the waste of time. (Yes, I know it was just a few seconds but sometimes my brain just won’t.)

Because of the ‘longer’ process, I started delaying my journaling time until later. (In this case, later is ‘the not now’ – a possibly fictional time in which the thing I am trying to do will be magically easier and hassle free. This is a common ADHD trap.)

And that turned into hardly journaling at all.

But I have been really missing the stress-reducing nature of the journaling process – especially when I can use voice dictation to process everything verbally.

So, I want to get back into the reflective journaling habit in a way that works with my brain instead of against it and here’s my plan for doing that:

  1. Record into Google Docs every day for a week and then cut and paste into the app with good organization. Sure, there will temporarily be a single journaling document with up to a week’s worth of reflection in it but I think I can live with that. Also, my brain is fine with a ‘every Friday we cut and paste’ kind of task even though it objects to doing that daily.
  2. Do my journaling as early in the day as possible. Journaling at night is never going to happen for me. I can do short entries but I don’t seem to get into the same rhythm at night and it doesn’t have the same stress-reducing effect. So, I’m going to turn on voice dictation for 10 minutes as soon as I can during the day.
  3. Keep a list of questions to ask myself. I don’t often get stuck for a journaling topic but I want to be prepared, just in case.

Unlike the pushups, I can and will start this practice right away.

As I was considering why I feel drawn back to reflective journaling, I realized that, not only did it help me to reduce my stress levels overall, it also used to help get my brain into ‘time to start work’ mode and anything that helps me with work-related task initiation is good for my mental health and for my overall well-being.

I’ll let you know how this goes!

walking · weight loss

Walking 10,000 steps a day won’t help you lose weight, but who would have thought that it would?

Sam B3 Comments

From the Independent: “Over the last few years, the theory that walking 10,000 steps a day has become popularised as the key to health and weight loss. However, according to a new study, walking 10,000 steps a day won’t actually prevent weight gain, or lead to weight loss.”

I don’t have a lot to say about this start to the story, except….

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THERE WAS A CONNECTION BETWEEN WALKING LOTS AND LOSING WEIGHT?

More on the study: The study took 120 first year university students, all women, and had them walk either 10, 12 or 15,000 steps a day, 6 days a week, for 24 weeks. They also tracked their weights and their calories consumed. On average, no matter what group they were in, the students had all gained 3.5 lbs which is the average amount of weight students typically gain during their first semester of school.

Again, my reaction….

Let me act shocked.

But here is the bit they don’t mention until the end of the story.

“However, the researchers did note that the increased steps meant an overall positive impact on students’ “physical activity patterns,” which they stated “may have other emotional and health benefits””

Why isn’t that the headline? It’s good news. Students struggle with stress and anxiety and all sorts of emotional and mental health issues when beginning university. Why isn’t that the focus rather than the 3.5 lbs they typically gain when confronted with stress and cafeteria style eating?

Probably my biggest complaint about health and exercise reporting is the emphasis on weight loss. If people do it for reasons of weight loss and then don’t lose weight, they quit. And then they miss out on all the real health benefits of physical activity.

I’m with Yoni Freedhoff (again): Exercise is the world’s best drug. It’s just not a weight-loss drug.

Let’s talk about the other benefits of walking lots. I’ve got a post in our drafts folder about the wonders of walking.

It starts like this: “Walking is obviously wonderful. You can’t blink an eye these days without some news about the wonders of walking flash by. It’s a radical act in fast paced world. Walking makes us wiser. It makes us healthier, happier, and brainier. Even philosophers are in on the act. Here’s five philosophers on walking and wisdom. Yet more, why walking helps us think. A few years ago Adam Gopnick penned, Heaven’s Gait: What We Do When We Walk which covers both contemplative walking and walking as a sport.”

So walking is wonderful. It’s not about weight loss. And that’s just fine.

More later about walking and my reflections on walking for those of us who can’t.