This post is part of a 5-day series where I follow Dr. Greger’s “Daily Dozen” recommendations for incorporating healthy food and exercise into every day.
Day Two!
I sometimes graze while I make the kids’ lunches, but since eating their snack crackers with my coffee wouldn’t earn me a checkbox, so I saved the crackers for the kids and waited until after drop off for my own breakfast. I’m not that hungry first thing in the morning, and I don’t really like the crackers, so this was good all the way around.
Breakfast: Raspberry, banana, kale, pineapple and flax seed smoothie with an Ezekiel brand sprouted whole grain english muffin with 1/4 cup of hummus and dill and tomato garnish. 1x berries, 1x fruit, 1x leafy green, 1x flax seeds, 2x whole grain, 1x beans. 8 checkboxes out of 24!
I had to decide whether I would use the kale in the smoothie to be a leafy green or a cruciferous vegetable, and I went leafy green because there’s broccoli in the fridge that I should probably eat for lunch. I often don’t add kale to fruit smoothies because it ruins the color. That sounds superficial, but if you’re trying to get your kids to drink one, it can’t be medium brown. It has to be “all the way I promise I have chocolate in me” brown, or it has to be fruit colored. I had to sneak an orchid into the background of my food photo to make it all look appetizing. (Did it work?) But the smoothie tastes great. A touch of pineapple really balances out the kale, and that’s two full leaves of kale to give me a complete serving of leafy greens. I might just have to start adding kale to every morning smoothie… and drink it out of a non-see through container if the kids are having it.
I missed a serving of beans. I could eat a spoonful of hummus right now but I’m not hungry! I decided one of my servings of broccoli counted as “other vegetable” after all because… broccoli.
I’m excited to try again tomorrow because I love all this fruit I’m eating. It’s delicious. I love smoothies. I love snacking to get in my extra nutrient dense foods. I wouldn’t have had a clementine this afternoon and I really benefited from sitting down and taking a break and eating it.
Things have been really busy lately, and they’re not slowing down any time soon. I felt like I’d slipped into a bit of a downspin where I was missing meals because I was so busy. Then I was less productive because I didn’t have the focus or energy I might have if I’d stopped to eat a nutrient dense meal or snack.
So I decided to stop trusting that I was a generally healthy eater, and spend a full five days trying to do Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen challenge.
I love the Daily Dozen because it’s not about what not to eat, it’s about finding creative ways to fit healthier foods into your day. I’ve always approached food with an attitude of abundance and not deprivation, so I love this way of eating healthier.
I tracked my progress using the Daily Dozen app, which is free and really easy to use. It lets you see serving sizes, lists the foods in each category (no trying to guess which vegetables are cruciferous) and you can even scroll down in the info sections to see videos on the health benefits of each food. I love that – nothing like seeing that shiitake mushrooms are linked to reduced cancer rates right before you eat them!
Day 1 – SUCCESS! Here’s what I ate:
Breakfast:
A strawberry banana smoothie with flax seeds. Berries, 1/2 a fruit, Flax seeds.
Second Breakfast:
Quinoa bowl with hummus and steamed kale. 2x whole grains, 2x beans, 1 x leafy green, 1 x cruciferous vegetable.
Lunch:
“Green Dream” smoothie with spinach, strawberries, banana and soy milk. 1.5x fruit, 1 x leafy green.
Second Lunch:
Lentils with chopped carrots and onions. 1x beans, 1/2 vegetable.
Snack:
1/2 cup of snow peas. 1x vegetable.
Dinner:
Quinoa, sauteed shiitake mushrooms in vegan barbacoa sauce, tomatoes, kale, cashew sour cream, guacamole. 1x leafy green, 1 x bean, 1x whole grain, 1 nuts/seeds, 1 other vegetable (tomato)
…after dinner snack
1/4 cup of dried apricots, shot of orange juice with turmeric, pepper and ginger. 1x fruit, 1x spices.
Exercise: 2.09 mile run with the kids, plus active housework to get up to the required amount (I think it counts, I was hustling.) The recommendation is 40 minutes of strenuous exercise or 90 minutes of moderate exercise – can be broken up during the day. I think between the 35 minutes of walk/running with the kids and the errands and cooking I did today that I hit the mark.
Beverages: Coffee, coffee, water, decaf earl grey, water, herbal tea, water water… I stopped counting.
Sitting down after dinner to check off the remaining boxes in the app, I realized that despite my fear I wasn’t going to hit the cruciferous vegetable mark (I had used my kale to count towards leafy greens, but then realized my spinach smoothie at lunch could count as one of those, add more kale to dinner… ok we’re good), I had only fallen short in two areas! I hadn’t consumed any turmeric, and I was being conservative with my estimate of how much fruit I really consumed in two smoothies and might have been missing a serving of fruit.
So for dessert, I had a shot of orange juice with 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric and ginger mixed in with a touch of black pepper to aid in the absorption of the curcumin in the turmeric, and then some dried apricots. It was lovely. I should eat dessert more.
Favorite things about this – I ate more food and more regularly than I often do when the kids are at school. Sometimes the morning gets away from me and it’ll be 11 a.m. and I won’t have eaten a thing. But when I kept entering in what I’d eaten and seeing how many checkmarks I was missing, it motivated me to add a smoothie here, a cup of snow peas there…
At no point during the day did I feel hungry, but because I was eating such healthy stuff I never felt overly full or sluggish either.
A lot of the benefits of healthy eating are long term, but feeling motivated to eat nutrient dense snacks and not letting myself forget to eat lunch is something that feels pretty great right away.
We’ll see what tomorrow brings…
I batch cooked beans, grains and hummus this morning in my instant pot so there will be some repeats! But I’ll let you know how I spice them up.
…it’s a big secret.
……..you’ll be so blown away!
……………ok fine it’s buffalo sauce. That’s the secret to ALL LEFTOVERS.
Catherine Price isn’t telling you that your smartphone doesn’t have any place in a happy life, nor am I. A more accurate (but less catchy) title might have been “How to Re-establish Dominance In Your Relationship With Your Phone”.
Price has no problem with people using their phones… as long as that’s what they want to be doing.
But she makes a compelling argument that our phones have started to use us instead, and that app designers have harnessed neuroscience to keep us scrolling and checking far beyond what has become useful for us.
The goal of her book is to make us aware of how and when we use our smartphones, how it makes us feel, and to break the cycle of mindless app surfing, scrolling and checking by breaking our addiction to the dopamine cycle.
The book begins with a section explaining why the current relationship between many people and their phones is not a positive one, and some potential consequences which include reduced attention span, reduced memory, and depression.
The second half of the book is a 30 day plan for “breaking up with your phone” and then reforming your relationship so that it’s a healthy one where you’re actively deciding when, where, and how you use the phone.
You may be using your phone more than you think. I use Apple’s built-in tracker from the latest ios, and it was a rude wake-up call.
I strongly recommend this book to everyone with a smartphone.
I’m on Day 6 of the 30 day process and it’s already changing my life. I’ve reclaimed time in my day by taking those minutes of scrolling and adding them together into blocks of time which I can use to actually sit and read a book for 30 minutes, or bake something, or tackle cleaning out a drawer.
I’ve also noticed an increased level of focus. Because I’m actively trying not to pick up my phone unless I want to initiate something (rather than consume something) I’m better able to empty the entire dishwasher without checking Instagram or Facebook or seeing an e-mail that I must deal with right this second.
I freaked out when reading the section of the book about how our attention span is suffering and our brains may actually be changing due to our phone use. Now I actively try to see tasks all the way through. Every time I completely finish a task without stopping and doing something else, I’m training myself to have more focus and patience.
An exercise you can do right now:
On day 2, Price has you assess your current relationship with your phone. What do you love about your phone? What don’t you love about your phone?
I love snapchatting and texting Greg little moments in my day and connecting with him when we’re not together. I love being able to reach my neighbors so our kids can play outside together or we can carpool. I love posting a photo of plant-based food on social media with a link to the recipe and then learning that someone I know made it and thinking about the environmental and animal welfare impact of them eating a meatless meal they might not have otherwise. I love adding appointments to my calendar and getting reminders on my phone for events. I love always having a camera with me so I can capture some of my kids’ special moments.
I don’t love wasting time.
I don’t like that I delay doing dreary, mundane household tasks by scrolling instead and then discovering that twenty minutes have passed and I still have to get everything done only now I don’t have time to do it. (And I wasn’t even having fun during my “break”.)
I don’t love when my children burst into the room excited to tell me something and I don’t hear the first half of it because I was absorbed in social media.
I don’t love that I’ll pick it up during meals with my kids because I’m bored instead of initiating conversation with them or working myself into their conversation.
I don’t love not being present in the moment, or the pressure I feel to photograph every moment instead of living it.
I don’t love getting on social media and seeing all the negativity or negative news stories and then dwelling on them.
I don’t love experiencing FOMO when I see friends doing things on social media.
I don’t love checking my email when I don’t have time to respond and then having the mental burden of that task infiltrate whatever real-life experience I was having.
I don’t love that when I hit a road-block in my writing I reach for my phone and check my e-mail or social media instead of thinking and working through the problem and making progress. Every time the going gets tough, I seem to reach for my phone and distract myself instead of pushing forward.
I don’t like that I’m missing moments with my children that I might have had without a phone, even little ones, like talking to them in waiting rooms at the orthodontist or doctor’s office. How many minutes of my life have I missed having a conversation with them, and for what?
Do you want to be doing this?
After that writing exercise, I started asking myself if my phone was what I want to be doing right then before I picked it up. Sometimes, it is. Sometimes I really do want to send off a photo of that homemade hummus, or snapchat Greg. Sometimes I’m in carline and it would be fun to spend ten minutes scrolling through Instagram for meal inspiration. But a lot of the time, the answer is no. I don’t want to be on my phone. I’m just reaching for it because I also don’t want to clean up from breakfast, or I’m bored.
It’s been less than a week since I’ve been working on Price’s plan, and I’ve already gotten much better at not mindlessly reaching for my phone when my children are present, at seeing tasks all the way through, and at using my leisure time all at once in larger blocks to do things I truly enjoy instead of wasting two minutes here and there throughout the entire day.
It takes time
I’m purposefully following Price’s 30 day plan because it takes time to change a habit. If you try to do it all at once, you might have a good week, but it may be harder for it to stick. Picking up her book every day and reading what “the plan” is for that day and journaling about my progress has helped me play the long game.
Verdict
I think everyone with a smartphone should read this book. Maybe you have a perfect relationship already… but I would be surprised if even the most technology savvy and mindful of us can’t learn something from Price’s straight forward tactics for being aware of your current relationship, forming goals for what you’d like it to be, and coming up with a plan to break your addiction and get back in control of your device.
But it’s definitely not here yet. Which means I’m drinking lots of tea and doing a lot of workouts indoors. And I can get bored, both of the monotony of indoor workouts and of the drudgery of being inside most of the day just in general.
One thing that lifts me up is having a great podcast to listen to, whether I’m on the bike trainer, treadmill, folding laundry, or stuck in carline picking up the kids at school because it’s 22 degrees and icy and no one’s interested in walking.
Here are my current favorites, in no order.
LeVar Burton Reads – Remember reading rainbow? Well, host LeVar Burton is now reading short stories for adults on this podcast and it’s incredible. I love his curated selection and have discovered new authors and enjoyed genres outside my typical reading routine. Stories are often around 45 minutes, and I get even more out of them because of LeVar’s brief and thoughtful commentary before and after the story.
Happier with Gretchen Rubin- Gretchen is the author of The Happiness Project and Better than Before and is known for researching and writing about happiness and habit formation. She and her sister Elisabeth discuss happiness hacks and pitfalls, take reader questions, and engage thoughtfully and without judgment in discussions about how to make your life… well, a little happier.
Reply All – This podcast about the internet ends up being about so much more. I love Alex and PJ’s lighthearted banter and full out laughing fits on the show, as well as the interesting rabbit holes of the internet and social media they explore. I’ve learned about spammers, the dark web, what it’s like to be a youtube sensation, who’s behind phishing scams, and even the background story on an online conspiracy network. It’s fascinating and they explore it all with a humor that keeps me coming back to the show.
By the Book – A comedian and her skeptic friend read self-help books, live the instructions to the letter for two weeks, and then recap their experience with unfiltered humor and a bit of bad language. But while they’re uncensored in their opinions of the books and in the language describing their experiences, they’re also incredibly positive and kind and uplifting of one another. It’s helped me skip some self-help books that were on my list and find others I want to read. I can’t help but smile at their irreverent humor and deeply supportive relationship with each other.
If you have one you love, drop me a line or respond in comments – I’m always looking for new things to add into my rotation!
I know I’m not the only one using January as a time to get back into good habits, clean out drawers, or find a small way to live a little better! Recently some of my past blog posts with ideas for living well have been getting more web traffic.
Tips for Stopping Junk Mail. I only received 4 pieces of junk mail for all of December – I keep track in an excel sheet so I don’t call companies for removal twice without giving them a grace period for pre-printed mail. I’m relentless about our mail, but it has worked! Now I come back from being away with a manageable stack, and bills and correspondence are less likely to get lost.
Eliminating Walking Breaks from Your Runs. This post was written early in my blogging days when I was struggling with active recovery myself. It talks about when you should and when you shouldn’t tackle those walking breaks and how to do it.
Form a Fitness Game Plan. This is the downloadable workbook I created for a talk I did at the Wellesley Wellness Retreat (coming up again January 27th, 2019, a great event though I won’t be there this year!). I love this workbook – it’s a compilation of my best advice from the blog completely rewritten in the order that I think is most helpful for anyone thinking about forming a new goal, with questions and exercises for you to narrow in on your true motivation and the resources you have so you can make a fitness goal that you’ll love and realistically achieve.
Eat Healthier by Including More of Dr. Greger’s “Daily Dozen”:It’s no secret how much I love the way eating whole, plant-based foods makes me feel. The more fruits, vegetables and whole grains I incorporate into my day the better I feel. One of my goals for 2019 is to eat more leafy greens!
Try a New Gym Class!You can read about all my adventures taking every class that was offered at the Equinox near me in 2017. I pushed myself to try tons of new and different things, learned how to feel comfortable walking into any fitness class for the first time, and discovered what I really love most when it comes to working out. You don’t have to try everything to get the benefits of trying something new!
