I will walk through my list top to bottom. Taking my blood pressure medication has been hit or miss over the past few months. It is a stronger habit than flossing, but it still has a lot of room to improve, and I would say it is one of the top 3 highest yield habits(with sleep and hydration) I could improve since starting the scorecard. However, my adherence has improved dramatically since I started tracking. Even on the days that say I missed, I most likely took it, but I couldn’t explicitly remember taking it so I didn’t give myself credit. Also, disregard the vitamin portion of this row, I didn’t take vitamins this iteration and will most likely to add this up in upcoming iterations.
The next is sleep. I did not have any sleep tracking device for this iteration, but I just got a Fitbit so the next iteration will have more accurate data. My numbers here were just my best guesses from when I went to bed and when I got up. All of the nights with nine hours of sleep, I am willing to bet were Benadryl induced the night before a quiz, and/or the night after a heavy workout. To improve in the future iterations I am looking at getting a sleep test, and a new mattress.(The reason for a new mattress is a central focus of my current scorecard)
The next few 10 rows(skipping flaxseed and turmeric) are all food related. It’s really basic; eat whole grains, fruits, and veggies. I like the whole grains, fruit, and peanut butter throughout the day. For post-workout I like to get into the veggies, eggs, and greek yogurt. As you can see I struggled with spinach and berries the most. I got strawberry greek yogurt and I have been eating that a lot, but I feel like that’s cheating so I didn’t mark it down as “berries.” To improve my berries intake I feel like I need to start making smoothies. Something that I have been doing to improve my spinach intake is adding it to my omelets, stir frys, and tacos or nachos. I think I will focus more on diet and recovery moving forward and add turmeric and flaxseed in later iterations.
Next comes my dedicated water intake. There is no way this is an accurate representation of how much water I have had over this scorecard. I easily have a half gallon over the course of my workout. The measure is arbitrary, it really serves more as a reminder to make sure to take in extra water. I might start setting alarms at different times throughout the day to remind myself to drink more. I tried to take a drink of water every time I took a drink of coffee, but that didn’t really workout very well.
Calorie counting did not work out. I have heard that is the single best method for sustainable weight loss, but it does take an extra effort and I was too lazy. Something I did instead was a plate method which is pretty popular with different health organizations. I brought a veggie tray to most of the parties, or dinners I went to and made it a point to basically eat the whole thing and fill up as much as possible before the meal and dessert.
The blood pressure tracking needs to get better so I can actually see what things I am doing are helping and what things are hurting. In my current scorecard I am focusing on smoothies, but mostly my back pain and recovery which includes:
Stretching
Foam rolling/lacrosse ball rolling/stick rolling
Hot tub
Ice packs
New mattress?
I have ignored my back pain for some time and I want to see if I can make a concerted effort to alleviate that over the next month or so.
The Syncytium 