2024-12-01 – Taking better care of my body

Our first week back in Vegas for the winter: it's amazing how quickly we settled and I returned to my routines. Is there an environmental factor at play? Am I just doing a better job of managing my energy and avoiding burnout?

I've been feeling less impulsive, more able to do things, more energetic, more motivated and interested in doing things I enjoy. This could be either the changes I've made in energy management, or the ADHD meds. In either case, feeling this way has given me a foundation to start working on three other areas of self-care: sleep, diet, and exercise. This week was largely defined my experimentation and observation as I work on these three things.

Sleep

My friend Nate invited me to go to the gym with him at 5am every morning. I did that twice, but by the third day, it quickly became obvious that I don't get enough sleep with that schedule. Sleep, then, became a focal point for me, which led to several questions: How much sleep do I need to feel good? How do I know I “feel good”? What does “tired” feel like?

I've always struggled with alexithymia and poor interoception, which I didn't have words for until I understood myself as Autistic. And the feeling of tired – or not tired – is one without clear and obvious indicators to me. I've always associated being tired with a gritty feeling in my eyes. As I started being more mindful and paying closer attention this week, I noticed that I woke up every morning with that feeling, but my brain was alert and active, and I felt more energetic. I also noticed that the gritty-eye feeling faded after a couple of minutes and a few mouthfuls of water.

So if the gritty-eye feeling isn't a reliable indicator of being tired for me, what is? By the third day of waking up at 5am, the feeling was more than that. But I can't remember what that felt like, and I wasn't being mindful of the sensations at that time. It just felt... different. A lack of energy, maybe?

Taking a closer look at my sleep, my Fitbit records me as “awake” about 15% of the time. That means I need to be in bed for about 9 hours to get 7.5-8 hours of sleep. If I can maintain a 9pm-6am sleep schedule, that should do it for me.

Diet

Normally, I eat freely. My diet is not well balanced. Especially in the evenings, I eat quite a bit of junk food: chips, cookies, crackers, ice cream, etc.

I made some small changes this week that I hope will have a big impact. First, I'm being more mindful of junk food portions. Interestingly enough, this has led to less cravings overall. Rather than pulling out the whole bag of chips or the whole package of cookies, I put a certain amount in a bowl and that's my portion.

Having my impulsivity under control has definitely helped. I'm also working on eating more whole foods and more protein. But I know myself: I need to make it as easy and low-effort as possible, because I don't always have the energy to cook. I wound up pressure cooking a bunch of chicken, shredded it, and packaged it up into handful-sized portions in the freezer. Now I can just grab one of these, plus some frozen vegetables and a stir-fry sauce, and make a quick stir-fry for lunch.

I love stir-fry.

Exercise

My new approach to exercise and physical activity is to focus more on the routine than the actual thing I'm doing. I knew that I needed to have options I could choose from based on how I was feeling that day.

First, I tried creating an elaborate menu of possible options, grouped by difficulty/energy level, but I quickly found myself stuck in analysis paralysis. I was unable to choose from the wide variety of options. I just sat there, looking through them, struggling to decide. Instead, I decided to simplify: pick one thing to do for each energy level, and do that until it becomes boring and I'm feeling the need for novelty.

In practice, I've made exercise part of my morning routine. It's the first thing I do after waking up and getting dressed, which is often the time of day I feel I have the most energy. Day-to-day, what I actually do varies. On days I feel energetic, I go for a walk and add a couple of 60 second jogging intervals to my walk. When I feel tired, or overwhelmed, or simply uninterested in working out, I go outside and just walk around the property, which takes less than 5 minutes.

I still put my shoes on, I still went outside, and I still did something. The consistency of the routine is what's going to help me be successful long-term.

Reflection

What went well?