Report Card

I updated the report card I did a couple of months ago. I was still too busy when September ended, so this adds both September and October. I added a couple of fields, and was tempted to add even more. I have plans to collect and report more data, but I decided to post this as is, and not wait.

As before, I've shrunk down the size of this to show all the months at once. Darker color is better, so if no numbers show, you still get an idea of "good" versus "bad".

First comes activity. Both September and October were mixed, with news of my mother's death coming on September 11, and her memorial service on October 12. Between the two, all bets were off. So most of my September activity is early, and most of my October activity was at the end. I also took a small cruise in October, and the two days on the small ship had very few steps. I'm not feeling the bike riding, and I'm not likely to start up again now until spring. But I do aspire to ride more.

Conclusion: August was the big month for activity, but it didn't go entirely to hell when I was derailed from my emerging routine. The Days >2,000 cal measures busy days, and I had plenty of busy days. The Days < 5,000 steps measures very inactive days, and those were up in September but stayed low in October.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Avg Calories Exp	####	####	####	####	####	####	####	####	####	####
Days >2,000 cal	6	7	7	10	16	14	12	13	10	12
Avg Daily Steps	####	####	####	####	####	####	####	####	####	####
Days < 5,000 steps	5	4	5	3	1	2	4	3	4	1
Miles Biked	-	-	-	-	-	-	5	9	-	-
Miles Walked	26	16	8	17	15	38	28	48	15	12
Miles Run	-	-	6	3	5	11	6	1	11	-

Next is weight. I wrote about this in the previous post. Not a pretty picture. But it's data. Tracking is what I can do, what's under my control. It had an impact in August, and I've started up again, with more advance planning (pre-tracking) as opposed to simply recording the sad facts afterwards.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
End Weight (week)	159	160	161	163	163	163	164	164	163	166
Days Food Tracked	-	10	-	-	-	-	-	16	-	-

The next group is kind of a report on my head. Meditation, migraines, and sleep. (I added migraines and sleep since last report.) Lots of meditation may reflect more feeling bad at the time, but I still choose to code it as more is better. But October was a terrible month for migraines. I have an app to track the migraines and try to make correlations for triggers, reliefs, and preventatives. I think I chose not to use the app at the beginning of the year, when I was all in on trying to prevent the migraine through mindwork - meditation, self-talk, expressive writing, guided visualizations. I think it worked pretty well, and part of my mindset at the time was that tracking put too much focus on migraines, granted them too much importance, so I shouldn't track. But I've had such severe heads that I'm back to tracking as well as trying to prevent through those mindwork methods. I record the actual hours of head pain, but typically the impact is for longer - a very low activity day with huge carb urges precedes the headache, and typically there is an incredible lassitude for a day or so when it's passed - no gumption, no energy, a strong need for sleep. So a big impact overall.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
# Min Meditate	439	235	178	81	143	295	215	333	229	223
# Times Meditate	42	22	20	11	15	23	21	29	21	26
Migraine Hours	-	-	-	-	20	24	11	27	13	44
Sleep Hours	7.1	7.3	7.3	6.8	7.0	7.3	7.0	7.4	7.2	7.2

Here's the money report. Spending was off the charts overall and for food, but gas stays reasonable without my daily commute. There is more to say on money thoughts, but that's planning, and this is reporting.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Total Spend

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

Food Spend

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

####

Gas Spend

$72

$59

####

$87

$83

$84

$29

$26

$53

$50

This final group is fun stuff, and it didn't all go away in the face of adversity. I slowed down on reading - I like to think it's because I was more active. But I blogged (both here and in the garden blog), got into the city (thanks, blogger's weekend!) and did spend some time on the boat. That is nearly done for the season, though I will record trips to the marina this winter. That's why it's not labelled "sailing" - it's days with the boat, whether doing chores or sailing.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
# Books Read	8	7	4	1	0	12	11	9	3	4
# Blog Posts	6	8	7	6	3	6	8	7	10	7
# Trips downtown	--	--	--	--	--	1	5	2	1	4
# Days Boat	--	--	--	1	2	3	2	7	3	1

So if you step back and squint, August still wins overall, but I didn't allow everything to go down the drain in the face of adversity. Except weight, and we'll stop talking about that for a while.