Tag: health

Details everywhere

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

Among all the details a person can monitor in their life, sometimes I wish it were easy to stick to things that require tedious and consistent tracking, and to be more specific, what I eat.

I’ve used different apps to log my food intake so I can have a rough idea of how much I’m eating versus how much energy I put out. (Currently I’m using “Lose It!” to track my calories.) And sometimes I do good at tracking meticulously every single day, while other times I’ll use it for a day or two, maybe a week, and then fall off the wagon again.

The reason I wish I paid more attention to these details is because these food tracking apps are getting more sophisticated, and the more people that use them the better they get. There is a plethora of data to be found in them, although sometimes it’s behind a paywall. Calories. Nutrients. Macros. Fasting windows. Eating periods. There are details in there that take a bit to notice, but also require some out of the box thinking for the normal person and a little extra effort. What am I eating and when? How did it make me feel? Is there a pattern? If I eat specific things at specific times on a routine enough frequency, is there an explanation?

This is just an example of one thing I could do to pay more attention to the details, but it’s a good way of looking at things in other areas. Reading between the lines, so to speak, to figure out the causal relations between everyday choices and actions.

It just takes a lot of work.

Small things add up

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
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There are so many different things I could change in my life that would be improvements. If I were to look at them the way I normally do, I wouldn’t be able to stick to them because I have a problem with that.

For instance, take the idea of “eating better/healthier” and trying to treat that in its entirety as a small improvement. The idea is simple enough to follow and seems like it could be a small thing to do but we often take for granted what our relationship with food is even like. How much thought do you put into what you’re eating?

I’ve gone through different phases of eating healthier and trying do things differently for weight management. I’ve seen success with some, while others I failed miserably with. Although the thought of eating better is simple, it means a change in lifestyle. You have to identify many more changes than you expect when trying to make a “small improvement” related to food. Source and acquisition. Quantities and preparation methods. Storage. So, rather than trying to treat something that is actually much larger as a “small improvement” one thing I’ve been slowly trying to integrate into my life in an attempt to modify my lifestyle towards eating better is simply just “eat some veggies” or “have some fruit” in addition to the other things I eat.

It doesn’t matter that I might be adding more calories to my meals, I just need to add better sources of nutrition to those meals. Then when I’ve made that a consistent thing I can move on to the next small improvement.

My life post pandemic

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?
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I’ve talked about it before multiple times but only really as brief mentions for other topics.

The way I adapted to live during and after the pandemic.

During the pandemic, I ordered a LOT of food through DoorDash and Grubhub. An embarrassing amount, considering I was basically confined to the house and could have cooked my meals anytime I wanted. Afterwards, when restrictions lifted and I was going back into the office nearly everyday, I try to avoid that and remind myself of just how much money I could be saving by not using those apps, but I still do use them on occasion. It’s nice to be able to have something delivered to the office (on very rare occasions) when I know I’m going to have a busy day full of meetings. It’s also nice to use those apps purely for reference too! I can pull them up, see nearly every restaurant near me, and check what hours and menus are for each. Then I can either order for pick up or remind myself I’m not really THAT hungry to warrant ordering out. The cost of convenience is not really worth it anymore.

Technology and the home work setup changed during and after the pandemic in a way I never really thought I would feel okay with accepting. I need my separate spaces for work and home. During the pandemic this sucked because I basically lived in my bedroom for 20+ hours a day. Work, eat, play, sleep. At the time, I built a room divider to help separate my bedroom into sleeping area and gaming/working area. (It’s just a 4×8 sheet of wood cut to a 4×7 shape with a cube storage shelf screwed onto it for stability and organization.) After the pandemic was more or less ended, I moved my computer setup back into the basement along with the room divider so that I could kind of shut it off from the rest of the basement for some privacy and to serve as a backdrop for when I was streaming.

Before the pandemic hit and everything shut down, I used to go to Walmart and other late night stores all the time. 2:00AM and can’t sleep? Walk around Walmart and do some light shopping. Although technically I did that a lot anyway because I enjoyed the peace and quiet of shopping when nobody else was around. Now I can’t really do that, unless I wanted to spend time at gas stations that are open 24/7. I’ve had to adapt to the idea that I’ll just have to be quick and methodical about my grocery shopping excursions and plan them as best I can at times of the day when the crowds are lightest. That usually means early mornings are an hour or two before close.

I’m sure there are probably some other ways I’ve adapted to life post-pandemic but if I can’t think of them off the top of my head they probably aren’t as broad or significant as the things I mentioned above. Oh well, life changes all the time and I’m sure I’ll have to adapt to new things again in the near future.