Healthy living hurdles

[prisoneroftodayMember]

Hey everyone, hope you all are having a wonderful weekend.

I was wondering what has been your biggest challenge in getting into a healthy lifestyle? Diet? Exercise? Sleep? Bad habits? What have you done to try to get over these healthy living hurdles? What are you still struggling with?

For me, my worst hurdles are sleep and bad habits. I have always been a night owl, work late in the evening, and have idiopathic insomnia. I can force myself into a fairly normal sleep schedule with a lot of effort, but if I go one single day of staying up a bit later than normal (be it to get some work done or just to hang out with friends) I am wrecked for days. My circadian rhythm is shot and it’s an absolute nightmare to try to get into the habit of sleeping like a normal person. Because of work and other things, I’ve spent years pulling allnighters and it’s catching up with me. I’m still struggling with this really badly. I try to get up at the same time every day, but the first few days after staying up late I end up shutting off all alarms in my sleep so I sleep in no matter how many alarms I set. I’ve started trying out chamomile before bed and it’s helping a little.

The other hurdle for me is smoking. I’ve quit several times, used all sorts of methods, and I keep falling back into it. I’m hesitant to try any prescription quit aids because of all the side effects. Last time I quit, it was cold turkey and it was an absolute nightmare. I spent most of the time laying on the floor waiting for the room to stop spinning, and trying not to throw up while punching something I might give the lozanges a try, we’ll see how that goes.

[TrinaContributor]

Hi there. After my diagnosis, I cleaned up my diet. It was difficult at first, but has been the easiest thing to maintain. I did it gradually, one thing at a time. For example…I decided I was going to cut out X, so I ate everything I usually ate, except X. I would do that for two weeks. Then I would cut out Y, so I ate everything I usually ate except X and Y. I continued like that until I had cut out all the junk. Does that make sense? I also ditched the caffeine. I found it was making my cog fog/foggy head worse. It wasn’t too hard since I wasn’t a big coffee drinker to begin with.

What else…I was off work last year and was very diligent about excercise and good sleep habits. However, since I’m back working full-time that’s kind of fallen by the wayside. Something I need to work on.

[TrinaContributor]

Gah! Sorry prisoneroftoday. Our names a v. similar. I will see if I can change mine. Don’t want it to be confusing

[prisoneroftodayMember]

No worries, Today! It shouldn’t be too confusing.

Heh, I actually did the opposite of you in terms of diet; I kept adding to mine instead of cutting things out Mainly more fruits and veggies (so far I’ve doubled my usual vegetable serving at dinner and tripled my fruit serving at breakfast). I’ve been a big coffee drinker for years so I’ve started just drinking smaller amounts and drinking it slower throughout the day.

Have you tried doing a sleep journal?

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