First and foremost, I want to apologize for this morning‘s post. After reading it, I realized that every sentence except for one ended in an explanation point. Which was probably kind of annoying to read. 

Next order of business…who’s going to the Healthy Living Summit in September? I really, really want to go, and it’s before school starts so it’s plausible. Besides how awesome it would be to meet a ton of bloggers, I feel that as a new blogger, there’s so much I can learn!

I’ve been promising you guys a leg workout for a while, but here’s the thing. I want to make it look pretty. And I really don’t know how. Help? What do you guys use to make those pretty images with your workouts? (I’m looking at you Miranda!) So look out for that workout once I figure out all that. 

As for my day, I went to abs class in the morning, and then blogged a bit before heading down to school to log a couple of hours of research. I swear, my car uses SO much gas. I’m NOT down for filling it up more than once a week-that’s just crazy. 

I came home to a fabulous lunch of leftovers-Greek seasoned chicken, and tons of salad with a little Greek dressing and red pepper hummus. Perfect!

My afternoon was spent not doing my homework for my Health Psych class…which coincidentally is what I should be doing right now…In my defense, I did read the first chapter, which was about old beliefs about the 4 bodily excretions associated with illness (yum), and more interestingly, different cultural beliefs and attitudes to health and illness. One thing we’ve talked about in class is how important it is to think about the cultural aspect when trying to communicate about health to people. 

This evening, I hit up the gym for an awesome spin class by one of my favorite teachers. I actually ran into one of my long lost best friends at the gym as well (she’s pretty busy so texting her is basically a black hole). We chatted some and made plans to figure out when to get together sometime (very concrete, right?). I had to get to the gym early to sign up for the class, and didn’t have any particular plans on what to do in the meantime. All the ergs were full, booo. I hate going to the gym in the evening-it’s so crowded and I can’t get on any of the equipment!

Dinner afterwards was pretty basic. 

Salad with Farmer’s market heirloom tomatoes, a veggie scramble with sauteed mushrooms, spinach, and gouda, and squash topped with butter and cinnamon sugar (yumm). I don’t really know my squashes too well…can anyone tell me what type of squash this is? I got it at the Farmer’s market. My guess is either acorn or kabocha?

After eating a snack, I started talking to my mom about health and the brain (LOVE these conversations). It came up that it takes 3 weeks to break a habit. This has been proven in many different respects-my favorite in that if you give up sugar, you stop craving it after 3 weeks. So here’s my challenge-what do you want to change? Now’s the time. Whatever it is, what if it was no longer an issue in 3 weeks? How much happier could you be 3 weeks from now? Maybe you bite your nails. Maybe you procrastinate on dishes (guilty…). Maybe you weigh yourself every day and stress about it. We’re at the half way point of the year-get after it! 

What am I doing? I want to break my habit of snacking. I would really like to work on Mindful Eating (my mom bought me a couple of books so I can read more about it). Breaking my snacking habit is a big step for me in this. Specifically, my habit of eating everything in sight after a nap, regardless of whether or not I’m hungry. My goal for eh next 21 days is to eat no snacks. Before anyone gets too crazy on me, I’m not necessarily trying to eat less. I may bulk up a little more on my meals if need be, but the biggest goal is to break the habit. 

Need some help? Try this:

1. Distract yourself. Find another activity to replace whatever habit you are trying to break. At school, I tried to get in the habit of drinking a mug of water immediately upon walking in the door. You can retrain your brain!

You can be a psychologist! Classical conditioning (think Pavlov’s dog) is when people (or animals) associate a certain stimulus with a reward. For instance, Pavlov’s dogs associated a bell with food, so whenever the bell was rung, the dogs eventually began drooling. Retrain yourself! For me at school, the moment I walked into my dorm room, I wanted a snack. The environment was my stimulus, my bell. Out think yourself! Build a new habit and condition yourself to it, through repeated exposure. For my goal, maybe going in the kitchen will start making my thirsty if I drink a glass of water every time I walk in.

3. Avoidance-avoid any stimuli that might lead to the habit. If I normally snack in the afternoon, I could try going to the library (to finally to my homework) during the time I normally spend munching away.

4. Support and attention- tell people around you what your goal is. If you bite your nails and are trying to break that habit, you might not even realize what you’re doing until someone else points it out.

Good luck and Happy July!

What would you do to change your life in 21 days?