I didn’t really have a plan for eating yesterday. For a while now, I’ve been out of the habit of fasting all day, and I haven’t been good at sticking to the vegetarian salads on days that I eat. There doesn’t seem to be much of a diet in place at all right now, and I think much of that is related to feeling overwhelmed by work. That aspect of my life just feels out of control, and my eating patterns seem to be a response to it. Anyway, I ate too much cheese, some peanut butter, and a couple of Snickers bars (another impulsive buy) for dinner last night. As a result, I gained about a pound.

I do have a plan for tonight: I’m going to stick to my vegetarian salad. As for the weekend, I’m not sure because I’m meeting up with my friend, and that always makes it hard to behave. Beginning Monday, though, because my anxiety level should be much reduced (I won’t be grinding through the misery of my normal job; I’ll be in a training class), I should be able to stick to a weekly plan. I will make one day a cheat day, but that’ll be it for any slacking during the week.

I also need to get back into the habit of going to the gym at least four days per week. For the past two weeks, I’ve only worked out twice each week because of pain in my ankles and feet (I have very flat feet, and this sort of pain has become chronic). For some reason, if I can’t get my heart rate up via the elliptical, I decide that it’s not worth working out at all (which obviously isn’t true). The cardiovascular exercise is important for my mood, but weight lifting works for that as well (although through a different mechanism). Anyway, I need to stop finding reasons to skip the gym.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of habit lately. In terms of eating, I have a lot of bad habits, and I need to be more mindful of them if I intend to break them. But I also need to be better about establishing good habits. My current reality is that I don’t spend nearly enough time reading, writing, playing guitar, playing piano, etc. I’ve allowed all the work bullshit to spill over into my personal life, and that’s just consuming too much time and energy. There is “work after work” that I feel like I have to do, but I need to have more well-defined boundaries for that stuff. At some point, I need to not only recognize that too much of my brain power is being wasted on a job that isn’t rewarding for me but also actually do something about it. We’ll see…