Invest in Myself: Week 19

Welcome to the recap of Invest in Myself, Week 19.

As predicted last week, this week was indeed steadily busy. I stuck to my plans and saw more progress on the scale.

Let's review my week...

Motivation & Accountability

I had great progress this week - losing 1.5 pounds and another 0.2 percentage points of body fat. Overall, I'm down 12.3 pounds and 3.3 percentage points of body fat. 

For week 19 of the Real Appeal program we focused on making healthy choices while dining out. Here is the Real Appeal restaurant survival checklist:

Nutrition

I had a solid week of making good food choices. I figured out a trick to packing my food for the days I'm in the DC office. I was doing it the night before when I was cleaning up the kitchen, which made the task of cleaning up feel longer. Instead, I've started packing my snacks and meals throughout the day on the day before.

So, if I'm in DC on Wednesday, on Tuesday I'll pack two snacks and lunch when I am making my Tuesday snacks and lunch. It doesn't seem to take much extra time to prepare two (often identical) snacks or meals at the same time. I also pre-track the food that I've packed - when I enter it on Tuesday, for example, I just copy the same thing to Wednesday.

Exercise

I ran twice, walked once, and did yoga six times! The Women's Training Program started this week, and that helps me make opportunities to exercise and keeps me feeling motivated.

Kickoff night for WTP, with nearly 300 registrants!
Shannon Scalan is teaching the group about proper form.
photo credit Kelly Faulkner

This week I started doing Yoga with Adriene's Yoga Ritual - 7 Day Yoga & Meditation Series. It's a really accessible way to get in a quick yoga and meditation session daily.

source

Self-Care

Our Happiness Project focus for May is work. This is a good month for thinking about how to improve my life at work. We have a new Research Associate starting in a week, so I'm putting a lot of effort into preparing for her onboarding and planning how I can make her transition as smooth as possible. I also have several business trips this month, and I'm viewing them as good opportunities to connect with people.

I'm continuing my morning routine with Habit Nest's Morning Sidekick Journal. I confess that I did hit the snooze button a couple of times this week, but overall the routine and journaling is still going well. In addition to being a journal, there is lots of useful guidance in it. For example, with regard to those snooze button hits:

Treat days you mess up as experiments. By consciously writing down what factors caused us to struggle, we can better prepare against them...These mental insights can really act as secret weapons on days we struggle. We all miss doing our habits. Let's make those days just as valuable as perfect days by treating them as learning experiences.

Looking Ahead

Next week will be increasingly busy, with a full week of activities, a business trip to NYC on Thursday and Friday, and a more active weekend than we typically have.

See you next week!