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Man, I just reread last week’s post and I sounded so bummed! Going home is hard. Now that I’ve been back in my happy, healthy place for two weeks, I’m feeling some of the cumulative effects that Dr. Heskett described last week for the well path.

New this week

Hot/cold showers.

I was not excited for this! But at least I’m doing it in July, where the cold water feels pretty good. I would not want to be doing this in December. It does feel good! It feels like a really good workout. And I’m just going to let it feel good in the summer and trust that by the time it gets cold I won’t be able to live without it. I’m doing this in the morning lately. She said once a week, but I think this gets easier with consistency so I did it nearly every day.

Eating-incompatible activitieS

I’m not overthinking this one, because I’m already pretty well trained not to snack. (I can’t be trusted! So unless it’s a special snack, I’m not there.) But I have a pretty good list of these from when I quit drinking — my favorite eating-incompatible activity is crafting! So it’s been a good excuse to be making stuff with my kids.

Activity

This has been rough the last couple weeks. Because I’m on summer vacation and working in a relatively short window only most weekdays, there’s little consistency. During the school year I have a literal bell that rings to make me go do a different activity, but there’s very little consistency in my summer schedule other than camp dropoff on weekdays. I’m not excelling with these three fifteen-minute exercise blocks as a well path habit.

So far, doing one after work and one after dinner has been reasonable, but those are kind of the only fixed sections of the day! I didn’t do well adding a third one, and on the days where I didn’t go into school, it was hard to do two! Summer vacation is giving me more free time to work on well path stuff. But, because the well path is designed to fit into your existing routines, it has also made it more challenging in some ways. I remember this same feeling from the years that I was home while my kids were babies — the lack of structure actually makes it harder to do things sometimes.

New breakfasts

I don’t mind monotony so I didn’t do the new breakfasts. It just felt a little overwhelming. I wish there was a group where I could look at other people’s breakfasts and soups.

Going well

Small Stressor mantra. God, I love this. “There are no real consequences to not being early to spin class.” “There are no real consequences to the playroom clutter.” Or, “There are no real consequences to not having August’s lessons planned in the beginning of July.”

And of course: “There are no real consequences to not being perfect on the well path.”

I am hard on myself! Always have been. This is a really effective way of short-circuiting that self-critical voice.

Big Stressor mindset. I needed this one two weeks ago! My parents and siblings are big stressors in my life, and I don’t always deal with it super well. And sometimes I go decently long stretches where I don’t have to deal with it! But when I do, I feel like I’m not improving or getting stronger or more balanced. School is a big stressor for me a lot of the time too.

Exercise. I tried a new home exercise system this week and managed to exercise every day even when I didn’t make it to the gym, which was a great addition to this system for me! I’m planning to write it up in a future post.

Lunches. I’m not doing the well path soups during this incredibly hot week though — I made a big salad on Sunday and added a few different proteins through the week. I did eat it every time I wasn’t out for lunch, so I’m calling this a win.

Flops this week

Ran out of lemons midweek and it took me two days to get to the store! How did that happen? I subbed in green tea in the interim. Good enough.

I ate out a lot this week — a breakfast date with my husband, lunches with friends, dinner out after my daughter had a performance, and a Fourth of July barbeque. I don’t want to call this flops because it’s social! But I want to be more attentive to building a social life that is supportive of my health and wellness. After that breakfast date, we went for a long walk and talked, and that was really what was special to me about it more than the breakfast was. It would be good to be thinking about how I could do a lot of this social stuff without necessarily making it about food.

Calorie buster frequency – I didn’t make this change. If my calorie busters are parmesan in my soup and peanut butter in my salad dressing, I can live with reducing them like she said last week! But having my soup without that topping every other day is too dire and would leave me feeling deprived. I’m not sure that this part of the well path is healthy. The examples in the book are all things like cookies, and that’s not a daily choice for me.

Screen-free bedtime – blog stuff has made this difficult at times. A lot of my work here is in the evenings after the kids are in bed. I can do better on getting it done while they’re at camp; swapping some of the daytime chores to the evening would help me more with staying on track.

Mid-way check-in

I really do feel very good!

I’ve been really imperfect with this process, and there are enough small steps now that I need to make a little morning routine and evening routine checklist. But really, even though I haven’t been perfect and have been up and down with my compliance, these habits are really making me feel better in my body.

I know the book does advertise weight loss as a benefit, but I absolutely did not want to weigh myself after my vacation last week even though that was the true halfway point. Despite a week full of meals out, I’ve lost four pounds. (My starting weight was a “normal” BMI but my doctor always tells me she’d like to see me lose a little more weight, so I have great news for her.) I think it might have been a little more without all the Fourth of July ice cream and chips. I know a lot of people would say that that isn’t much for five weeks, but I haven’t been dieting or felt like I was dieting!

It feels great to see that change and to be in some (but not all) of my “skinny” clothes. I didn’t take any before and afters, but now I kind of wish I had.

But moreover, I feel, like, younger? I feel physically much more comfortable and less tired. I feel like I’m performing better in my workouts. I’m still having some trouble falling asleep, but I do think I’m sleeping more deeply. For a lifelong insomniac, that’s an incredibly meaningful change.