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So, I had a decent but not perfect week on the Well Path this week. I also weighed myself, if you’re into that.

Let’s take a look at my week 2 wins, losses, and challenges.

(if you’re looking for prep week and week 1 log, here you go!)

Things I got right on the well path this week

My lemon water routine was on point. There was a day I had to be out early, and I took my lemon water to go and bought coffee when I arrived. This is a big step for me, as I’m typically a total coffee fiend and would usually complain about doing a thirty-minute drive uncaffeinated. I’m growing to enjoy this ritual!

My non-exercise activity is going well too. So far, it’s been walking at some point in the morning when I need a little break from work. If the kids are home, they might come with, and if we’re at an activity, I’ll walk while they’re doing their thing. I’ve been in school this week packing up my classroom, and that’s been a good place to get a walk in too when it’s very hot.

I also did well with the lunches and breakfasts. I think I deserve a little pass for not making soup this week while I was in a boiling second-story classroom (no kids means no A/C), but I made a salad for the week that I think meets her criteria. And I mostly made veggie-dense protein shake smoothies for lunch.

I know this isn’t quite following the rules, but the idea of “soup for lunch year round” is great if you work in an air-conditioned office building (or doctor’s office) but not so great if you’re exposed to the elements!

And I continued to exercise. I did the ten minutes of stretching every time except one, and I really felt the difference!!

Mixed bags

The hunger diary thing is improving. More on that in a second.

The screen time has been a little bit of a challenge. I’m not a huge social media person (and I have my Brick to thank for a lot of my reduced scrolling) but most of my blog stuff does end up happening after my kids go to bed. School is out, so I can now stay up a little later, but I don’t want to have my bedtime shift too much. I’m actually struggling to keep up with my goals for the blog a little bit, and restricting my time window too much more will impact that further. I guess I feel like I’m glad it’s for “work” (I hope this will be work someday!) rather than social media scrolling.

Hunger diary thoughts

The hunger diary has improved somewhat. Partially this is probably from being out of school and having fewer, shorter stretches of rushing around. But also, I think I’m improving at stopping and interpreting my hunger.

It’s interesting but probably not super surprising that a lot of the time, when I feel like I’m experiencing hunger, what it really is is feeling overwhelmed or somehow wanting to make myself feel better. Stress is a big, disproportionate part of my work life. And that’s a bummer, but no one can fix it but me! And stuffing a snack into that feeling isn’t actually improving my circumstances, habits, or behaviors.

So this week, I’ve just been focusing on feeling the hunger and interpreting it rather than rushing to satisfy it — if I waited this long to eat, I can wait another few minutes and actually check in with myself. I ask how I’m feeling, and when I last ate or drank water. Often I realize I haven’t had water in hours, or that I drank more coffee than water. Or, I realize I feel more overwhelmed than actually hungry and I just take a little breather.

If this is all I take away from this experience, it feels pretty valuable to me. I still have a bunch more work to do here though.

Things that didn’t work at all

The pranayama breathing was a failure every day. I don’t know how anyone trains themselves to do anything first thing in the morning — there was not a single day where I remembered to do this before getting out of bed. Several times I managed to do it in the first half hour, but more often than not, I didn’t remember til evening. So this is a major area in need of improvement. I’m very dependent on my planner, but I don’t typically touch my planner til I’m starting the day’s tasks. So this needs a lot of help and change.

The hunger visualization has also been rough. I’m not sure that I’m resonating with it the way she intended — I tried to imagine it as a subway car that did or didn’t have chefs on it. (This feels SO silly to write on the internet!) But it wasn’t proving to be something I was identifying meaningfully with. I think this upcoming week, I’m going to try a train that either slows to meet me or blows on by. Hopefully, this will be a more literal symbol: something is either meant for you (hunger giving you a message about needing to eat) or not meant for you (incidental, non-communicative feelings of hunger). I want to give this a shot before I just say “oh well, not for me.”

Up next

I’m so excited to start my dry brushinggggggg. I know how much better my skin looks when I’m doing it regularly. I made a point of not re-adding it to my regular routine any more than I had been doing it until I got here, but I’m so glad to be here!

I also need to start wrapping my head around dinners. We’ve been very much in the beginning-of-summer mode over here and there have been a couple nights where we had ice cream for dinner! So I need to work on some recipes that I can change up and nutrify. I already had a simple grain bowl in the mix a couple nights a week (aka a clean out the fridge dinner). So I might attempt an orzo or farro type dish this week,