Week three is going to be a big one…
Looking at the post’s title, one could kind of gather that we are breaking more into mental health this week. While the prospect of jumping into fun projects and DIYs sounds enticing, there is one thing that needs to be addressed first. My body and its health are the main focus this week. My brain, in particular, has needed some extra maintenance lately. To provide some background information, certain negative factors in my life have contributed to poor habits and irregular or dysfunctional behaviors. While my mental health has never been picture-perfect, I have more recently found myself falling into a rut of sorts.
Specifically, I want to address concerns regarding self-care, intrinsic motivation, and social health. These are the three “brain foods” I plan on exploring. The three topics have come up a lot for me in the past few months, so thoroughly breaking down and applying these ideas to my daily life seemed like the perfect opportunity for a Beeline post. Not only are they topics that are relevant to every person, but they also are great indicators of other avenues of one’s health and wellness. Personally, my wellness could have used a spotlight for a while now but there’s no better time than the present. It’s pretty easy to see that Week Two was more than just a week ago. This week will hopefully shed more light on that circumstance and other situations I have found myself in lately.
Starting With Naming the Problem
Firstly, I want to express the importance of knowing when it is time to seek out help. Whether it is through close personal relationships or from a mental health professional, it is always a good idea to know when to reach out. For me, this happened when 28 days of my life went past without me noticing. It was as if my consciousness had taken a backseat and I was simply an apathetic passenger to everything around me. I hardly spoke to friends or family. I felt disconnected from my work and far away from my needs. Goals simply did not exist.
This feeling of being far away from myself became quite a slippery slope. I would often get sucked into mindless engagement that was not stimulating in any way. Side effects such as fatigue and irritability became a staple for me. The scariest thing, however, was my inability to feel in control of myself and my emotions.
Miniscule events or lack thereof in my day would overpower any active part of my mental processes. I would be fixated on little hiccups and setbacks beyond reasonable understanding. This hopelessness was terrifying for me. I could never picture myself in a position to be at the whim of my emotions before but that is exactly where I was. I was losing regularity in my life regarding my eating, sleep, and physical habits.
The Turning Point
Thankfully, with the help of my partner, a bit of a light bulb moment helped to redirect me. We were sitting on the couch on a regular weeknight, and a few easy questions regarding the day drove us into a deeper discussion of what it is I may need help with. Getting this relative kick in the ass gave me a new perspective to look for. I needed to make a change quickly. Without it, I may be looking at negative effects further down the road or for far longer.
What is “Brain Dinner”?
Brain dinner is a term I use to describe the process of feeding my brain a lot of the nutrients that have been needing extra attention as of late. Instead of “brain snacks” which are little blurbs of positive practices, this post and its contents include a much deeper and metamorphic practice to pull me out of a funk I have been facing for a long time. While small bits of positive mental health are great for making a larger task seem smaller as time moves on, I am in a position where little changes will ultimately fall apart due to a weak foundation. “Brain dinner” pertains to the magnitude of what I wish to accomplish for my mental health. I want to feed my brain a nice hot homemade meal only a grandma could make.
A big pot of something warm and cozy on the stove is waiting for me. One that practically feeds your soul.
Preparations
This one’s gonna be a big one. Looking back on the main focus topics, self-care, intrinsic motivation, and social health, I needed a game plan that would help each of these problems in a constructive and buildable way. This meant I needed my plan to be able to grow and change with me for the future. Not having adaptability in this means as my plans or my environment change, my approach may fall apart completely. Tackling this meant going a little deeper into what each topic means in general and for me. First things first, it’s time to hit the books and dig up some respectable research.
Self-Care and Mental Health
The National Institute of Mental Health does well at encapsulating what self-care is exactly, and how it pertains to one’s overall wellness. Their overview and bulleted points provided me with a great starting point for how I wanted to approach the first topic.
Using my Sweatpants for Sweating
Looking at my physical health, specifically my energy levels and overall strength, I knew there were a few points I was missing when cross-referencing with NIMH. Having a majority desk job meant I was hardly moving my body during the day and the fatigue I felt when I got home was not working as a proper motivator. The cyclical nature of how inactive my body was drew heavily on my energy levels and almost dormant status. If I’m not moving and I don’t have to, why would my body give me any more than the bare minimum in its current state? Point #1, “I am not getting the right amount of physical activity during the day.” This encouraged me to formulate a more forgiving workout regimen as I ease more into working with my body and getting my energy back.
Mostly, I wanted to focus on building a more resilient body that feels more limber and doesn’t have 10 things crack every time I do something. For this, I thought some beginner’s yoga and regular daily exercises could be a good start. For the yoga portion, I have chosen to follow the St. Jude Yoga Challenge curated by Yoga with Adriene. Because she explores so many forms of yoga in these challenges, I thought utilizing the diversity of each of them could yield better results for me overall. Instead of locking myself into the same practice over and over again, a variety of approaches could help to keep me engaged. For the more regular exercises, I decided to focus mostly on aerobics with a bit of strength-based techniques. Adopting these habits, I hope to build a more resilient, balanced, and stronger body for myself.
Brain Fuel
Mental health has often been tied to what one eats. The types of fuel in one’s body and mind can have a significant impact on what can be utilized. An intense presence of one food over the other may affect everything from how we sleep to how we handle stress. Unfortunately, I can’t say my eating has been great as of late. That means my brain isn’t quite getting the fuel it was hoping for.
To counter my couch snacking and late-night bowls of ice cream, I have decided to build a meal plan. Focusing mostly on macronutrients, the foundations of the meal plan include prioritizing increasing my protein, vegetables, and overall grain intake. I hope to achieve these intakes without losing the regular dairy and fruits that I consume. I was able to calculate where my diet may be lacking by taking a healthy eating quiz created by the University of New Castle Australia.
My results came out looking like this:
Reviewing my scores, I felt a little surprised regarding my eating habits and the types of food I was eating. While I do have my sweet tooth, knowing there was room for improvement made this feel a lot more achievable. With my results in hand, now came to choosing the right recipes, especially ones that I could cook reliably. No more easy takeout, it’s time to prepare something!
Serving for my Mental Health
I’m not saying I’m a poor cook, but I am saying that it’s hard for me to steer away from foods I already like eating. This is still an exploration in improving mental health. This means I have to not only find tasty recipes but also ones that help me feel fulfilled in what I am doing when I cook them. For this, I looked to All Nutritious‘s Karo Tries and their 25 Macro-Friendly Meal Prep Recipes. Because the recipes are designed to be prepped and ready for later eating, I was excited to transform my current lunch break at work. Instead of microwave meals and the occasional take-out, it would feel like I was eating real food again.
With these changes and a bit of an overhaul to my current grocery list, I hope to better my body from the inside out, starting with what I put into it.
To Snooze or Not to Snooze
I do not get enough sleep. It’s quite simple with this issue. At best, I may get 4.5-6 hours of sleep, and that’s on a good day. This deficit in my sleep has been detrimental to my performance at work and on many other of my responsibilities. The worst of its effects have landed on my body and mind. My skin has become duller and my poor eyes could be used as carry-ons at this point. While I have been able to coast along recently, my schedule is about to change drastically. Not enough sleep seriously negatively affects my educational performance. Achieving my Master’s is a must if I plan to continue on my career path. Getting my Z’s fixed is crucial for me as I prepare to start my graduate program. Without it, I’m afraid I’ll be carrying mental jetlag through the whole thing.
This problem is much less of a physical issue and more of a problem regarding my habits and the habits of people that I live with. While I love getting to spend time with my partner, having that time cut into the bare minimum of the rest that my brain desperately needs is not good. Ultimately this is less of a research-based issue and is simply a requirement for habitual changes. I plan to track my progress with this topic by logging my sleep hours. Then, I will chart them out to calculate overall growth.
Working from the Inside Out
Intrinsic motivation is defined as, “an incentive to engage in a specific activity that derives from pleasure in the activity itself (e.g., a genuine interest in a subject studied) rather than because of any external benefits that might be obtained (e.g., money, course credits),” by the APA Dictionary of Psychology. In the past, I had some difficulty with this type of motivation. I, very clearly, am negatively affected by how I perceive the expectations of others. I am often worried about how other people value me. It took significant measures to build away from that feeling.
Thankfully, that innate desire to be unconditionally liked slowly faded away as I further distanced myself from that version of me. Instead, I have adopted a less strict philosophy of pleasing others. This slow build to a more solidified status could perhaps be something I dive into in another Beeline post. Now that my motivations can be balanced, it’s time to build a little more mental pampering for myself. That means, bringing back intrinsic motivation in a fortified way.
Back to the Pages
The strongest contender for true intrinsic motivation for me has always been my writing. Rarely have I measured the prospects of what I could gain from writing. Instead, I often wrote because I found myself compelled to, and loved it. I wanted to make the scenes and worlds in my head come alive, no matter if anyone read any of them or not. I plan to bring writing back into my life because I want to. To record my new explorations, I have added a writing workshop tab to BeelineWeekly. There I will post on the poetry wall along with longer works to be read by anyone who cares to take a look. I have long desired to bring true joy back into my life. Knowing that my creativity can be explored again has already brought me so much positive feedback. I can’t wait to get started!
Right now, I am editing and hopefully publishing a short story on the site. Keep an eye out for that if you’re interested!
Collective Connectivity
The last point of my “brain dinner” is my breaking away from avoidant behaviors regarding my social health. To be blunt, I do not have the social strengths that I need. This is not a fault of my close personal relationships. Rather it is a deficiency that I have witnessed a few times before. My friends and family are great support systems. I have so much love and support around me. It’s me that needs a bit of a social overhaul.
Mainly, I find my problem involves me losing social energy or other negative mental health effects impacting my ability to engage with others. I have trouble bridging social gaps that were once easy for me. Whether it was because of recent global events over the past few years or simply the overarching changes in my life, some bad things have developed with me connecting with others. The goal of my “brain dinner” is to break down those deficiencies and build up a stronger and more socially confident me.
To address the current state of my social health, I need to learn how to be more open. I have to make some progress when it comes to connecting and being present. I don’t have a perfect science regarding this topic. However, I do have some pointers going forward.
Research for Relationships?
The NIH published an article on the topic of social bonds and just exactly what they mean. While I don’t plan to use science to build friendships, I liked the ability to alter my perspective on how I could be better in my close relationships. Knowing where I could grow and be more open helped in the confidence department as well. This topic will likely not have measured data as it is hard to quantify a person’s relationships and their value.
Process
While on most occasions I would follow the process of a Beeline post over a week, this post took over a month to make and execute. I don’t have a specific number of days marked down from start to finish. It at least covered the entire month of November and into December. I didn’t necessarily expect an overnight transformation and am glad that perhaps further down the line another reflection on this post can be made.
Self-Care and My Mental Health
Self-care was a rather large portion of this post topic. It included many various factors and active ingredients to make my growth possible. To be thorough, I have decided to address each element individually.
It’s Okay to Not Like Working Out
The first two weeks of working out were awful. When completing my yoga, I found it difficult to center my body and retain the many poses I was put into. I found my body was much stiffer than I had originally expected. Working in and out of positions made me feel almost weaker than I had thought. I tied this back to my many hours doing office work and then coming home to my college assignments. My back and shoulders especially were much more locked up than I would have hoped. Seeing the negative effects being immobile had on my physical health, I wasn’t too keen to see where it had been keeping me mentally. Imagine feeling stuck doing the same things in the same position for weeks on end. It was just plain awful.
The second half of my physical activity involved more regulatory and weight-based exercises. These had less of a slow burn as I had already been using my treadmill more regularly. The biggest obstacle with this was the inclusion of resistance bands and starting from minimal experience with those. I have never had a more strength-based approach to working out, so following along with new exercises that went away from what I am used to was an interesting approach. At first, unsurprisingly, I had some difficulty. I specifically remember by the end of my first week, certain points of my body felt more sore than they have ever been in my life.
The Energy for Mental Moves
Closing out the month with these exercises, I did achieve some goals I had set out for myself. I had shortened my overall mile run down to 8 minutes and 36 seconds. I also was able to use a more restrictive band for some of the strength-based workouts. Lastly, I felt like I had so much more energy than I ever did floating from desk chair to desk chair each day. My mental elasticity was moving in a positive direction.
Food Glorious Food!
The topic of diet and its impact on one’s mental health contains a lot of supporting evidence. Whether it’s sugar intake or how much caffeine one gets, food has a lot to do with how one may feel. My discoveries around food were a little different. During the month, I began to recognize that I would use eating as a way of avoiding under-stimulation throughout my day. Rather than eating because I was hungry, I was eating because I was bored. I needed something to fill the empty spaces I had in my day by hyper-focusing on what my next meal would be.
This was not my initial approach to diet and mental health that I had originally stated. It had veered in a new direction once the month was over. Mind you, I was still substituting old eating habits for more conscious ones. A new issue had arisen from the sudden attention to what I was eating. My realization came when I was at work and found myself encapsulated by looking for something to snack on. I was in a bit of a slow period in my day and just couldn’t sit still until I found something to do. Unfortunately, I ate my lunch soon after. It was 10 am.
An Extra Serving of Problems
Looking back on this behavior, I can’t help but wonder if my eating problems involve more than poor food choices. Instead, I am curious if my eating tendencies have less to do with what I’m eating and more about why I’m eating. Am I eating because I’m hungry? Or is it just certain manic behaviors manipulating my desire to fulfill empty time?
The Leftovers
Redirecting back to the main focus, my diet is still not perfect. However, it feels much fuller and diversified. A month of new eating habits brought on a lot more planned and executed meals. This meant I was packing my lunches, building more extensive grocery orders, and avoiding idle eating time. Most importantly, I was finding enjoyment in cooking for myself. Being able to combine all the time, effort, and planning it took to make my meals brought my diet to a complete cycle. There weren’t as many decisions for me to make floating around. Now, my eating habits were one less thing I could worry about during my week.
Secondly, having a more fixed schedule meant I didn’t have a load of time to stress eat or eat out of boredom. This helped me a lot to avoid things like bloating and upsetness due to overeating. Overall, I’m glad I got to build a new perspective. To reiterate, my goal was not to transform my body overnight or to recreate myself anew. Rather, the goal of creating this diet was to encourage energy retention and to overall increase the quality of food I was eating.
Five More Minutes
My exploration into a better night’s sleep has had its ups and downs over the past month. The first few days of having a strict “bedtime” I noticed a few scattered to-do’s that had never really come up before. Little random tracings such as how I took care of my skin and my morning routine suddenly became front and center.
For instance, my morning routine is an absolute mess. Most of the time, it’s me running around trying to figure everything out in ten minutes. I throw on clothes, brush my teeth, and try desperately to get my hair done. Then, I sprint for the door at the last second, hopeful to make it on time. Following that, I sit in traffic and carry on on busy highways until I get to the office. I can’t imagine that would be great for my mental health at all. Looking back now, I can’t imagine how little I paid attention to how I treated my mornings. They were an absolute disaster.
Following a nighttime routine, I’ve made a habit of setting out clothes for the morning and paying closer attention to my skin. The time I spend actually sleeping is much more prioritized. What was once a sad excuse for REM sleep is now a little healthier. I still can be caught up late though. When my boyfriend comes home late at night to tell me about his day, I still listen. Now, however, I’m listening with my sleep in mind. I’m dressed for and in bed, lights out, and air purifier humming. Just from the first few weeks of prioritized sleep, I can already feel some of that mental jetlag getting lighter.
Moving to Motivation
Now that the self-care experience is out of the way, my intrinsic motivation can be front and center. During the month, I was able to feel the push and pull of my motivation. Recent external life events such as family health and scheduling have had a significant impact on this topic. While I was coping with uncertainty, my intrinsic motivation seemed to dim when I attempted to explore writing or any other form of the arts. Looking back, it felt more like I was trying to harness existing motivation rather than building it anew. It was a bit of a switch for me. Throughout the early stages of the process, I was sure I was losing motivation due to mental fatigue. Now, I have a new perspective to dive into.
Breaking into this idea, I explored more options regarding limiting distraction. I worked to ensure my creative space was optimal by getting rid of the stuff that got in the way. Instead of starting fresh, I was simply making more space for what I loved. This approach varied from my original plan and brought on its own effects. This could also be seen in my personal projects.
One in particular included plans for this year’s Halloween costume. Every year, I plan and make my own Halloween costume. I don’t know if I do it to avoid cliche ideas or because I love the creative aspect of it. Nonetheless, I do it every year. The good news is, I don’t have to wait until the last minute to get started! By getting rid of distractions, I got the chance to sit down and plan out exactly what I wanted to make this year. It’s not even October yet! I plan to make this year’s creation into a Beeline post!
Mental Motivated Action?
Motivation isn’t the same for everyone. That statement is most likely obvious to many people. Following my development over the past month, the idea became less complicated for me and I was able to tie various outstanding circumstances to my ability to feel motivated. Stress being the frontrunner in this, I found a lot of my limitations sprouted from negative mental health effects. Along with stress, anxiety also got the best of me on occasion. I was being piloted by my emotions a lot of the time. They were navigating me more than I wanted them to. As the month went on and I gave this topic more attention, the ability to intervene became more common. Instead of getting lost in my responsibilities, I was redirecting my behaviors. My brain was actively being taken off of autopilot.
For instance, whenever I would get home from work, the stress of getting through traffic would always follow me around. I would be tense and irritable and it could take nearly an hour for me to exhaust that pent-up feeling. By acting on my negative health effects, forcing myself to redirect, and breathing out the excess stress, I felt more motivated to move in a positive direction.
Connecting Mental Health to Social Health
Due to recent events that occurred during this month period, I believe the social health portion of this post is a bit more of an isolated incident. So instead of reflecting on how I approached this topic during this event in the same way I did for the previous sections, I will be recalling this one a little differently. During the time brackets of this post’s development, the magnification of my social health was thrown a bit of a curveball. Dealing with significant events within my family circle, I often spent extended periods of time socializing, emoting, and processing with people close to me.
Reflecting on this, I believe I was able to push through and properly digest a lot of negative feelings that would have been devastating for me to feel on my own. I was angry, frustrated, fatigued, and sorrowful. However, I had my family to not only feel those things alongside me but support me when I needed it. This shows a great example of what having positive and engaging social relationships can do for someone when the need arises. Before, when attempting to handle all of my grievenesses alone, I felt less stability. I was overwhelmed with feeling without being able to go through the motions of processing them. After going through this month with the people that mattered the most to me within reach, I can say for sure that investing time in my social health has had a significant impact on me mentally. I would suggest reaching out to people you haven’t talked to in awhile. You won’t always be able to do that. I know from experience.
Pros
So what went well? Overall, this process felt almost like I had shifted a little. As if I had been sitting at an oblong angle and finally readjusted my chair. Overall, the most positively impactful steps of this process were the schedule changes and conscious decision-making practices found throughout each topic. New tactics that stemmed from physical health changes ultimately influenced how I build and maintain a schedule. Making meal prep lists, following exercise challenges, and working around a new sleep schedule have done a lot of good for this post’s major topics. Similarly, more of the social and internal active changes have also procured some positives but in unexpected ways.
Self-Care and Mental Health Positives
My mental health has been the main focus of this project. Specifically, when it comes to my self-care, intrinsic motivation, and social health.
One of the biggest positive outcomes throughout this journey has been my energy. Before, I was feeling intensely fatigued, especially at midday. Reworking my sleeping and activity schedules easily helped to regulate that midday crash I was going through. Not to mention, I did not have to give up my morning coffee which would have been a major con on this list. This was probably one of the most visible positives I can recall from the initial points made in this post. Having an easier wake-up call and a regular routine before bed not only gave me a better chance to form a healthier circadian rhythm but also made room for me to buff out the rest of my daily activities. This meant I didn’t need to focus so much on the quantity of my time but instead the quality of it.
Physical Solutions for Mental Problems
My newly found diet and exercise routine was probably the least climactic when it comes to overall positives. Moreso diet than exercise, my attitude towards food did change. But its impact on my well-being as a whole felt less pungent. I will say that including regular exercise initially was not a pro as it was cumbersome and quite difficult. Looking at it now, I would say it has had quite a positive impact on my energy levels.
Similar to that of my sleep, putting my body on a more regular schedule on many planes has helped a lot when it comes to my mental health. I do want to say that going into this, I did not want to change the look of my body but to change how my body feels. Weight gain or loss was not a major focus when conducting these new living practices. If that is your own intention, I would suggest looking into something that deals more with numbers and less with qualitative measurements.
Bartering for Motivation
From all the changes this month, the hardest for me to calculate would have to be my intrinsic motivations. A month’s time does not feel like a large enough window to really look back on myself and gauge the genuine change from external to internal drivers. So much of what we do is based around our environment and what we see. So having such a big internal change within the same environment may take some time as I adapt away from my “normal” behaviors. The way I used to do things and the way I want to do things now both live in the same space. It’s now my job to make those changes more normalized and advance the status of my new normal.
One positive that rang pretty clear for this portion of the process included me getting back to my writing. I have officially completed a rough draft for a short story I am excited to dig deeper on. Writing was something I did to feel fulfilled in myself. I’m glad I can still feel such a way with the confidence that I’m exploring something I truly love.
Other Forms of Self-Care
Looking back on other forms of self-care that I touched on previously that did not receive they’re own dedicated section, I would conclude that a lot of positives also came from these. For instance, the idea of having my own personal care routine has made a lot of transformations when it comes to other aspects of my physical health. Specifically, my night time routine has done wonders with making a nice separation between productivity and relaxation. When I step away from my school work at the end of the night and allocate between 30 and 45 minutes to winding down, I feel that much more energized knowing I’m already prepped for the morning.
Saying “Hello” and “Goodbye”
Measuring the positives of the social health section is a little complicated. While working on this post, my family and I experienced a serious amount of loss. So on one hand, my social interactions became more concentrated as I was talking with family and showing my support to all of them. On the other hand though, I was also forced to say goodbye to some of the most important relationships in my life. So to measure Pros and Cons for this section does not feel wise or even informative.
Cons
The cons list for this entire process deals mostly with an overarching sentiment and the best way to describe it would be the term “overload.” In short, I decided to totally overhaul my way of living within the span of about 40 days.
Looking reflectively, this was a big task to set myself up against. Of course, unpredictable life events made adopting this large feat quite a lot to handle but without those factors this is still a serious change to someone’s life. I would not recommend someone taking such big steps with one’s life in such a short period of time. Like I listed in my reflections, some things are just not as easily measured within such a small time frame when it comes to a person’s mental health. Such as my shift in motivations, it’s difficult to expect an entire 180 degree flip for behavioral tendencies and thought processes I’ve had for a majority of my life.
If I were to revisit this plan, I would have likely extended out my goals across multiple points of time. Creating a more measurable and achievable plan would have made this process a lot more encouraging and visually supportive. I could have also bettered my attention to my progress through creating a list of SMART goal plans. Before, I was incapable of knowing how I compared from the start to the end of the plan. By being reflective and recording more about my process, I would have had more measurable information to provide.
Conclusions
Wanting to be a healthier version of oneself is always an admirable want. We as people are often subjected to comparisons that we or other people can make of us. While I do recognize the good this process has done for me, it’s hard not to recognize some of the problems and unpredictable life events that made taking on such a daunting task a lot harder. Highlighting the major factors in my life that needed the most change, self-care, intrinsic motivation, and social health, I have been able to build a more reliable system in my life. I am more active and focused on what I need to succeed. In the future, making changes for myself of this magnitude should involve much more measurable components so as not to lose my progress in the fog of it all.
Next week, I can start to focus on Beeline as a place for exploration just as much as a place for positive mental health practices.