Hello comrades and welcome to the third improvement megathread of June! 
As usual, some discussion ideas:
- Do you want to share something you've done in the previous week? Everything counts, nothing is too small.
- Do you have any plans or goals for next week?
- Do you have any streaks? For example, "sober for one day." Feel free to post your streak every day in this thread.
- If you don't have a continuous streak, did you manage to abstain from something for a day or more?
- Did you come across some useful information or resource that might help others?
Poster caption: Let the Chinese-Soviet friendship live eternally!
Good luck with your goals! 
my running and body weight workouts are going well and I'm back to liking how I look in shorts and crops
and I'm gonna continue it this time
this week i got back into meditation and running and it really helped. i think i was hitting autistic burnout cuz i got super overstimulated easily and just couldn’t bring myself to do anything but after reading ismatu’s article https://ismatu.substack.com/p/girl-go-to-sleep-ft-lessons-from i finally allowed? myself to actually get some rest and dear god did it help.
There's a great guided meditation for when you want to allow yourself to get some rest: Time To Unwind
I'm not very person shaped but I think I'm doing okay. I'm learning a language, just need to stick with it. My issue is always that I get bored with new things after a while.
I'm mostly just sitting on the couch scrolling on my phone, watching videos and smoking weed lately. It's not an ideal life. I think I need to go out more, but going out is expensive. Maybe I should make a habit of getting a coffee and people watching every now and again. Coffee isn't too expensive. But winter is wintery and I am cold.
I don't even enjoy weed much, but it helps with my chronic pain. Anti-chronic pain chronic.
早上很冷
我太冷了
谢谢 for reading.
拜拜
Oh also I broke my sober streak, but in my defence I didn't over do it. I'm still going on three months without being drunk, or less than a month without a drink. Not going to fall for the "maybe I can just moderate myself this time for realsies" trap.
No use beating myself up over it though.
This week I did healthy stuff (walking to places instead of lazy alternatives), social stuff (going to social gatherings without a friend for support), productive stuff (organising an event and contacting people to ask for help to improve my work environment) and resty stuff (sleeping early on some days).
Also slept through some days and honestly most nights I did not go to sleep early at all but overall I’m still proud of myself.
This week my energy was low and I was tired so my goal for next week is to resume tracking my nutrition. I want to make sure that I get enough calories every day so that I have enough energy to exercise and go running.
My secondary goal is to continue socializing and touching grass with friends. I went to the movies to see Furiosa with a friend this week and that was cool
I can go into more detail if needed, but in summary, I started seriously using a calendar and putting things on it. I have spent most of my life with a mental calendar but it’s way too hard to keep up with everything.
It’s one of those things that feels silly because it is so obvious, but I really only used calendars to remember holidays and birthdays. Not for planning mundane things like when I’m planning to do laundry.
Using a calendar for everything (ok within reason, I don’t need to schedule my shits) is more useful the more consistent you are with it.
The other thing about calendars is they inhibit procrastination. It is a problem for me. I believe one of the reasons people procrastinate is that they don’t have the tools to hold themselves accountable. If you say, “I’m going to work out in the morning,” you get that little dopamine rush for completing the task without actually doing it. Then when it’s time to pay, there feels like no reward. Instead, adding a calendar event that will remind you to keep your promise is a better approach. There is something about seeing a block on a calendar that makes an idea feel more solidified and real.
This has been big for reducing stress. I had grown accustomed to a baseline worry that I was forgetting something important like filing taxes or buying someone a birthday gift. No longer flying by the seat of my pants. Feels great.
Next step, after I get through a backlog, I’m going to start planning fun trips and activities. Again, sounds obvious but I’m used to being spontaneous about those things.
That sounds like a really nice way to be. Do you do time blocking for scheduling activities, or is it more of a checklist for the day?
I block my calendar if I have committed a specific time to something. If I signed up to use the laundry room, I put that time in my phone calendar with a 1 hour reminder.
I have a few weekly recurring events, like 2 hours on Sunday for chores, 1 hour for my partner and me to check-in with each other. This latter part is important. After ~3 months of check-ins, I think our relationship has benefited and we feel better mentally and emotionally.
I separately started recording my tasks. I use Google Tasks since it integrates into Calendar if you set due dates. If I have an obligation with no specific time to do it, it is a task. So one example is I have a weekly task to schedule my weekly laundry. Once I book the laundry room, I have an actual time I can block in my calendar. Then once the calendar event is created, I mark the task completed.
Splitting my single calendar into multiple has also helped. For example:
- A shared calendar that my partner subscribed to and has edit permissions, so we put our joint events on there.
- A time-off calendar that tracks when I am approved for time away from work. I shared this with my partner so they don’t have to ask me.
- A local events calendar where I can write down things I learn about e.g. flea markets or festivals, and I put reminders on my phone so that I don’t forget about them.
Each of these calendars can have its own color and have display toggled on/off.
Finally, on top of blocking time, I use the location field and the notes field to jot down extraneous details like URLs, or if I’m getting a haircut, the name of the stylist I selected. Just trying to transfer all these random facts out of my brain and into something more structured than a free-format notebook.
roll call:
@SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net
@TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net
@LGOrcStreetSamurai@hexbear.net
If anybody else wants to be added to the roll call, just let me know
Do you want to share something you've done in the previous week? Everything counts, nothing is too small. I read 8 hours this week. Very happy with that. Do you have any plans or goals for next week? Game Development and start looking for a new job Do you have any streaks? For example, "sober for one day." Feel free to post your streak every day in this thread. No yet, just thugging it out at the moment If you don't have a continuous streak, did you manage to abstain from something for a day or more? I'm staying away from sugar, I really want to get shredded by this time next year Did you come across some useful information or resource that might help others? Nothing insightful, I just want all the comrades and homies to reach their goalsFirst week back at work was pretty good. Didn't go to the gym nearly as much as I wanted, but still got in a few runs during the week. Diet since I've been back has also been ok. Still mostly the same stuff I was eating before, but I'm burning off those calories a lot more.
And I'm actually just about to hit my first milestone in my weight loss journey. Down in the 8-10lbs lost range so I'm really happy about that. Only problem is that I thought it'd help with my knee pain, but its looking more and more like I might just have a big of a muscle imbalance, which is causing my knee cap to rub against bone, aka runner's knee. Thinking of how exactly I'm going to correct it. Massaging seems to help a lot temporarily, but as soon as I sit for more than 10 minutes my knee starts to bark. If I can't do anything to improve it in the next week or two I may end up going to a doctor to see what I can do.
Socially I'm hoping to reconnect with my friends some time during the week. Had a convo with one about a month ago, but I really want to see if we can hangout since we used to hangout almost every night when we worked together. Also trying to see if I can hang out with my crush. Finally feels like I've finally gotten in a bit of a groove and things are looking up. We've been getting a bit more affectionate and now that she's on her own break from work we've been texting just about everyday since she left work midweek.
Someone on here recommended the book Built from Broken for dealing with injuries and fitness in general
runner’s knee
This can be caused by a lot of things, no? Are you sure your running form is good? Small bad habits like over-striding can add up with heavy mileage.
I used to almost exclusively run for my cardio, but I reduced stress injuries when I mixed up my workouts. Run one day, swim the next, bike after that (where I learned that I really enjoy biking for exercise). Maybe some high intensity ab workouts too.
I usually do short runs (3-6km). I also don't do long strides just because I feel I can pace myself a bit better either short strides. I'll probably look into mixing up my workouts though.
I've been going on daily morning walks and it's been really nice! Today marks my 18th consecutive day. One thing I've been really proud of is the two or three days where I missed the morning walk for whatever reason, but I mustered up the energy to do it later (e.g. yesterday I finally went for a walk at 9 PM). I'm not gonna pretend it's completely changed my life or anything, but it's nice to be able to have at least one thing I can point to every day that I'm doing to take care of myself. Starting the day with some fresh air and light exercise has made me feel a little less gloomy and given me a bit more energy to tackle my responsibilities.
As far as goals, I've been having trouble motivating myself to practice piano consistently, so I want to get back to playing at least 30 minutes a day.
Going on 2 daily walks because of my dog has unironically been one of the things that has been the most beneficial to my mental health. Walks are super underrated imo
Ankle Technique
Ankle Technique BPM 125 -> 110. 10 mins.
Brush Technique
Quincy Davis Sheet Get up to 220 BPM. 10-20 mins
Ballad Brush playing
Big Circles in left hand, comp with right hand 10-20 Mins.
Brush Pattern 1
Brush Pattern 2
Comping Technique
KKLKLLKL 120BPM
KKLLKK with metronome in middle beat 110 BPM.
Play in three, practice all snare drum one note permutations 80BPM
Transcription
Roy Haynes transcription Keep working ideas.
Phrasing
Work on endings phrases on 4 and + of 4 with recordings
Tunes to learn
Finish ESP
Gloria's Step
Blue In Green
Scale put me at 207 today. A little more and I can be under 200 for the first time since high school
Streaks are still going for both exercise (4 weeks) and nutrition tracking (2 weeks)! The latter is very useful because it shows that I'm eating less than I should be.
This app (Foodnoms) adjusts the daily target based on how much energy I expend exercising. The idea is to keep the muscle I have and burn fat, then start building muscle back up once I reach a target weight. I should be more or less hitting the target line, but I'm consistently a bit below. Too severe of a calorie restriction coupled with an over-reliance on cardio exercise can result in muscle loss, and that'll be me soon if it isn't already.
Show
No good! I now have a bunch of nuts, dates, and figs handy for snacks and will aim to go over the calorie goal at least three days per week. Just gotta replace some cardio with resistance training and get things dialed in.
I've maintained my sobriety streak for around 50+ days now. I'm kind of regretting not having a definitive start date since it's a little difficult to put an exact number on it but all things considered it's not super important. I've managed to go to parties, hang out with friends, go to family functions, and go to bars while also still feeling like I'm sociable and fun so I'll consider those "tests" of my sobriety to have been successful.
My main goal has been to get my eating more under control and by that I mean eating more and consistently. I've eaten breakfast and lunch every day for the past week or so. I'm now maintaining my caloric needs instead of slowly losing weight. I didn't realize how many calories of alcohol I was consuming until I stopped and weight started flying off, so even getting to maintenance levels is a good sign for me imo. Now I just need to maintain and start working towards a slight surplus.
I have yet to start any kind of fitness venture because I've been both lazy and preoccupied with riding my motorcycle. I managed to put just under 300 miles on it in a week which probably isn't that much all things considered but my commute to work is ~1 mile so it's basically all been leisure rides. That being said, I have started to feel the itch to start lifting again so as soon as I find a gym near me that isn't a complete piece of shit with half of the machines broken I'll probably sign up again. Either I spend a whole bunch of money on a decent gym with good equipment and moderate levels of people or I go cheap and it's basically a waste of time since all of the decent machines are taken and there's 2x the number of people in the gym that it can handle. Very tempted to find some stuff on craigslist and just buy my own gym
For some reason that I'm not sure of myself this was the week that finally hit right and I felt like I should start caring for myself again rather than just not giving a fuck and hoping I die in a few years as a result. Last time I gave a shit was probably 2019 but after getting fired and COVID and everything I just haven't cared. I hope maybe I can keep this up for a bit and also help my mother with it as well since we've both been bad influences on each other for a while now.
I've gone a solid 5 days now limiting how much I eat to 2k calories when I'm pretty sure I normally average around 3k. Today I even stopped myself from just ordering out and rationalizing that it was probably close to my allotment left for the day. Today was more of a struggle though since I started getting lightheaded and ravenously hungry so I allowed myself a bit of chocolate and that helped me last until dinner.
That's awesome, keep it going!
If you want to track your nutrition, I recommend cronometer.com, it's free and easy. You can copy and paste entries and entire days so once you set up your favourite foods and recipes, tracking becomes really quick.
Keep us updated on your progress
