How I achieved *most* of my January goals
lifestyle changes
Hi friends,
Can you believe that it's already January?
As I've mentioned in my previous newsletter, January was all about focusing on my health and myself so that I can stop obsessing over content creation.
So, I made some pretty serious health goals:
Learn how to make green smoothies
Become a 7 AM girl on my days off
Be consistent with yoga/workout
Learn how to do breath work
Quit caffeine
Learn new healthy recipes
Drink 2L of water daily
While also maintaining my social life and my content creation life.
I've been neglecting my health for six months and putting all my energy into content creation, which I didn't love. I wholeheartedly believe that when you feel healthy, you feel good about yourself, and therefore, all the self-doubts and overthinking in your mind also get squashed.
After 30 days of focusing on my health, I'm pleased to announce that I was successful in achieving most of my goals.
These goals sound like a lot, but here are a few things I did to help me achieve them:
Do a 14-day intense program.
Whenever I set a goal for myself, I always do it intensely for 7 days, 14 days, or even 30 days. I decided to do a 14-day detox green smoothie program to make myself healthy.
I found a PDF guide online that I followed religiously. I decided to do this because I felt bloated all the time, and I always felt like I had a foggy mind. The first few days were terrible because I felt hungry, I had headaches, and I just didn't feel good. But by the end of the two weeks, I had lost 5 lbs, and my bloating was reduced.
During the detox, I also decided to quit caffeine, which gave me withdrawal symptoms like fatigue and headache. I still drink caffeine now, but I have reduced it from 2 cups daily to 1 - 2 decaffeinated cups weekly.
I hated depending on caffeine to get my work done. Now, I rely on my natural energy and it's been a game-changer.
I mainly drank green smoothies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner during this program. In between those times, I would have healthy snacks. So I also learned how to prepare healthy snacks (veggies + hummus dip, boiled eggs, etc.) I didn't know how to make healthy snacks before.
I also needed to be hydrated during this program, so I drank 2L of water daily.
I basically learned a bunch of healthy habits in the 2 weeks program that I still incorporate into my day-to-day up until now.
Know when you're most energized to work.
One of my goals was to wake up at 7 am.
I've been able to wake up at 0700 for the first 3 weeks, but lately, I haven't been able to because I realize how much I like working in the evening and at night. So I push my bedtime, which pushes my wake-up time. I still get 7 hours of sleep, which is the most important thing in this whole process.
I still have hopes that by the end of the year, I'll learn how to wake up at 6 am.
Learn how to meal plan.
One of the things I wanted to learn was to meal plan so my husband and I could stop ordering takeout often.
This was challenging, but I actually learned how to do it. I made a list of the dishes I could make for each protein. For example, for chicken, I could make chicken stir fry, honey garlic chicken, oven-baked chicken, etc. Then, for salmon, I could make salmon teriyaki, oven-baked salmon, honey garlic salmon, etc.
I also made a list of beef dishes, tofu dishes, and healthy snacks. I rotate between chicken, tofu, salmon, and beef daily.
Doing this just gave me an idea of what to make every day without feeling like I'm eating the same thing every week. If you know me, I love variety, so I always need different yummy options.
One thing I did to make this plan fun and exciting was to learn a new recipe every week.
Last week, I learned how to make my favourite childhood Filipino dish which is called Sinigang. My Persian husband liked it which means I'll be cooking it more regularly. Yay.
Incorporate new habits into your existing lifestyle
Building good habits is hard. We all know this. But incorporating new habits into your existing lifestyle and routine is easier. This is why it's so important to have some anchor habits, and then you can learn to stack new habits into them.
For example, learning how to do breathwork is hard to do on its own and it also sounds boring. I don't want to take some random time of my day to do breathwork.
But because this habit takes less than 5 minutes, I learned to stack it with a habit that also takes less than 5 minutes. During my detox program, I needed to drink ginger and lemon tea in the mornings.
So whenever I waited for the ginger and lemon to steep, I took that time to actually do the breathwork. And it worked.
Anyway, that's how I achieved most of my goals this month.
But also, by focusing on myself, I stopped obsessing over content creation. I also have a better idea of the direction I'm going.
But I'm still not where I'm supposed to be, so I'll be giving up updates in the upcoming newsletters.
Let me know if you enjoyed this newsletter, and share it with a friend!
See you in the next one,
J