My life is in a weird place right now.
But in a good way.
I no longer live a sedentary life where I sit in front of my computer from the minute I wake up until the second I hit the pillow at night.
I no longer sleep whenever I want but go to bed at a decent time and wake up early in the morning.
This is the closest I have come to a normal life in my eyes, and I changed all this with small steps at attempting to build healthier habits for myself.
Habits that give me energy, makes me feel happier and a lot more confident.
To fully understand this let’s dive deeper into 3 years ago, until today.
3 years ago
My sleep Pattern
It wasn’t uncommon finding me still asleep at 6 pm at night. Having gone to bed at maybe 8 in the morning.
I wasn’t working or doing anything super important.
I was playing games on my computer.
Endless entertainment throughout my day.
I was fully immersed into gaming and yes it was great. I had a lot of laughs with my friends, I was competitive and improved my gameplay, and so much more.
But what I didn’t feel I had, was a purpose.
A purpose of waking up in the morning.
A purpose to devote my life too, myself too.
I just did what I felt like, slept when I felt tired, and I had no sleep pattern in that time.
I would often stay up until I physically couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore
Eating habits.
This would fluctuate massively.
I would sometimes forget to eat entirely, being too busy in game to remember that I was hungry and would end up overeating just before bed.
Sometimes I would eat all the time, still massive portions, because food was good.
I would eat a bag of crisps watching my tv shows, often every day.
No rhythm, no pattern, no thought at all to what I stuffed into my mouth.
I just did what I felt like, and I gained weight quickly.
When I was experiencing emotional pain, due to heartbreaks or other things I couldn’t control in my life, I would hardly not eat at all.
and I would lose 20 kilos in 4 – 6 months, and after I recovered from this, I would gain it all back.
So, my weight was a yoyo. Constantly going up and down, without any control from my side.
Exercise:
I didn’t do any. I was sitting in a chair in years.
Why?
I’ve always hated exercise. Without competition and fun, I always found it tedious.
I do love to dance, but I was rarely going out to do this.
If I went shopping, I could hardly carry anything and would need to take breaks to rest.
It was exhausting trying to do anything psychical at all so that made me want to do it less.
As you can see these 3 areas in my life wasn’t great.
I did not consider me healthy at all, and I realised over the years I had to change.
I had to change because I want to live a full life experiencing many things before, I get too old to do so.
I want to see the world, I want to grow old, I want to accomplish my dreams, and I realised if I don’t do anything about my sleep, my eating patterns and get a bit more exercise in, I won’t be able to do all the things I want in life.
It took a long time to get to this place of determination to even attempt to start.
My love for video editing was actually what gave me that determination.
Learning about making videos on you tube, and video editing, taught me about planning.
I learned when I had a plan for my videos, they ended up a lot better.
I also had to learn about better time management.
That I couldn’t just record and edit it in one long stretch, since most of my videos take about 2 days to do.
I had to spread it out, and I found my energy and effort where better spent, if I had a full night’s sleep in between.
That was the first time I thought about really changing my sleep pattern.
It wasn’t easy to start with.
I set a time to get up and a time to go to bed.
Some days I did this with great success, but some days I still found myself up at 6 in the morning, so I had to turn it back to normal hours again, and I had to do it slowly.
I have to get 8 hours to function normally, so the way I pushed my sleep around, to fit the day, was push back an hour every night or morning I went to sleep.
It took time to do, but eventually I would find myself waking up at 7 in the morning and going to bed around 11.
I found myself making my first schedule in May, and I realised it was pretty fun to do.
I enjoyed the work and my progress and would soon fill it out every month.
Colour coding the tabs, writing in pretty fonts even learning more about excel.
Which brings me forward to a month or so ago.
Where I made a commitment to myself that I want to take it a step further.
I want to learn to eat better, to exercise, to go more outside and talk to people in the world around me, to really live my life again.
And doing this gave me so much energy, so much purpose and so much confidence.
My plans for my videos have only increased.
My determination to accomplish my dreams are bigger then ever, and this determination is what drives me forward.
Today I manage what I eat. I challenged myself to do 10000 steps a day and find myself full of energy after this.
Building healthier habits for myself was a slow process.
It starts with a want or a need for something to improve, a goal, a purpose.
Then starts the work
It starts with a plan then action.
And what worked for me, was to remember the end goal and why I want to achieve this.
It also took some refining, what I wanted to do but also what is a realistic approach to it.
I had to learn to say no to some of the things I wanted
To say no to myself if I craved crisps, or to stay up one hour longer.
Always remembering why I’m on the path of changing my habits.
It starts with prioritizing what is important now and what can be postponed.
For me it was something like
“I really want to play a little longer, but I know if I do, ill have a hard time falling asleep so I need to go to bed, but then I can read a chapter in bed to help me calm down”
“I really want to make 2 videos this week, but my energy isn’t the best, so if I prioritize one video and write a script for the other then I get my energy up and have more energy to spend some quality time with the family and on myself”
“Okay its 7-o clock do I want to work for a few hours before bed or do I want to relax playing sims? Which one do I want to do more, I can’t do both before bed”
Doing this has increased my energy and self-care. I try to maintain a healthy balance of what I would like to do and what I need to do.
To not do too much so my sleep suffers, or I forget to eat or exercise.
It’s still a balancing act and I think it will always be, but I feel I’m a lot better at balancing every aspect of my life. Not doing too much or too little, but what my body and mental health feels is a perfect balance of what I need.
I still have a lot of work to do.
Now that I managed to work on healthier habits for myself, I have to maintain it.
Sometimes I’m sure i’ll fall back into old patterns, but I know now what works for me.
I have to have a purpose and a drive to change.
I have to do it my way, meaning for me, I have to create little challenges to make it fun, I have to make it a bit more interesting.
Like creating a 10000 steps challenge for myself is something I look forward to doing every day.
Learning new healthy recipes to cook makes me want to eat healthier, and because I eat at set times in the day and remember to eat, I look forward to every meal.
By not overeating I enjoy the food more. I get to savour the flavours more, and I crave vegetables and fruit more than crisps.
I’ve lost 5 kilos just by maintaining exercise and healthier eating patterns, and I have a lot of fun doing this.
I’ve learned to listen to my body’s need a lot more now, and I thrive, and I intend to do this for the rest of my life. No longer ignoring what I really need to stay healthy and happy.
I still need to work on creating a better work habit, and while I’m focusing on my health at the moment, I learn a little every day about planning, productivity, and how to rewire my brain in a positive way.
The next thing I want to dive deeper into is time management.
With creating healthier habits, I did learn one crucial thing.
One step at a time, and small ones if its going to work out.
I had to take mini steps, and if I found myself overachieving as I usually tend to do, then I have to create a little breathing space and take one of the plans I had out of my schedule.
That’s why at the moment, I’m focusing mainly on sleeping eating and exercising better.
My videos and gaming, has to be when I feel I have the energy for it.
I’m so much happier now then ive been in years
By creating healthier habits, I feel more energized, I feel stronger, because I exersice, and my relationship with food is a alot healthier, and feels a lot more rewarding.
My self confidence is pretty high at the moment.
My drive and commitment stronger then ever.
and even in all that I feel at peace with myself. I meditate every day for a little bit and this keeps me centered and ready to face any challenges I might find in my day.
By creating balance and overall health I feel like 100 % myself again. I dont remember a time in my life where I feel so strong at peace and truly happy.
And it’s all thanks to a little discipline, excel spreadsheets, a little planning and creating healhier habits in my life.
Do you have any experience in creating healthier habits? If so feel free to post below, would love to learn and hear more about it 🙂
Have an amazing night day and tomorrow.
MissFaylyn out… ❤
Missfaylyn 