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Journal (10/2017 - xx/xxxx)


WorkInProgress

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Detox: 09.10.2017 - 09.01.2018

Week 1 (09.10.2017-15.10.2017)

Hello out there.

I know that this is a little out of topic here and you'll not necessarily be interested in reading this. Feel free to ignore the journal, I am fine with that.

Things are going fine on the gaming front. I sometimes watch a little Warcraft 3 Gameplay but it doesn't lead to cravings and is spent less then two hours/week so this is under control right now. I finished my masters degree with an accaptable grade and the job search seems to work out all right (next wednesday there will be my second Interview and the first one went well). I challenge myself, with installing Arch Linux on a virtual box and learning Linux-Admin-Skills which could be needed if I get an job offer at the first company. Soon my first son will be born and I am grateful for my life, my family and my friends.

Now I have the energy to try something new and change my eating habits. Basically I am a sucker for sweets and my self-discipline is a weak point. Lately I got to the point in life where I can't eat anything I want anymore. My weight increased to 83 kilos (I had my whole adult life around 70 kilos) and a little belly is forming. I want to stop this development and stay at ~80 kilos, while building up some muscle mass. I also have neurodermitis which leads to scratching and little open wounds all over my body. It never bothered me a lot but it got worse the last few weeks and I'll try to beat that annoyance. I feel like sugar consume is one of the main culprits for these problems.

This are some reasons why I want to stop eating processed sugar for the next 3 months. I tried this a few times in private but was never able to follow through with it. Thats why I'll write here from time to time to keep myself accountable (this helped a lot with my gaming detox).

So here we go. No sweets, no desert, no chips etc...

I wont get to dogmatic about it (if there is some sugar in a soup base I won't care) but I will actively try to stay away from this sweet poison and will report if I stray from the way. I will also create a mildly taxing training schedule (which I specify until next week) I will write atleast one entry every week.

 

 

 

 

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For the most effective way to eliminiate sugar and cravings, I highly encourage you to check out something called the Ketogenic Diet. The fundamentals are that this diet forces your body to shift into the metabolic state of ketosis, in which is burns fat for energy instead of carbohydrates/sugars. This is done by restricting your carbohydrate intake and eating around 70%fat, 25% protein which forces your body to burn fat instead. Lot's of veggies and fats. The only thing is that it takes a few weeks for your body to adapt to this diet, build new infrastructure to optimally burn fat. Eliminating carb intake will leave you quite fatigued for some time, but once adapted most Ketoers report higher energy and cognitive capabilities than before.

 

Most people do this diet for weight loss. It is the most effective weight loss diet. Other benefits are numerous and researched, but the by far biggest benefit for me when I did it, was that it completely eliminated sugar cravings. How does this happen?

Well, ketosis, when it gets going, feels great. You feel satisfied, energetic, and focused. Ingesting too many carbs would break this ketosis once your body sees that sugar is coming in again. Ketosis would break, you would lose that great feeling, probably feel bloated and crap, and it would take a few days to get back into ketosis.

So once you're in it, there are serious consequences for eating badly. So you don't want to. If you're craving sugar, and on a normal diet, then the consequences aren't big enough for you. "Yeah, I want to be healthy, and I'm gonna be healthy, but this bit of chocolate won't hurt" is so vague and shaky. On ketosis, there's none of that. Be 100% clean or face the consequences.

Secondly, your body is so nourished and satisfied from all the fat that you don't feel like anything else anyway. I used to crave snacks big time, on keto I just coasted through the whole day after a big breakfast easy, no need for further food. I even mountaineered with tons of energy with pretty much nothing while my dad was constantly needing bread and fruit to keep going.

I'm not even doing it anymore, because having a bowl of fruit in the morning suits my lifestyle better, although my evening meal is still always keto, carbs tend to make me bloated and tired. 

But since keto, and even after coming off it...0 cravings for sugar, 0 cravings for wheat, I've remained 100% clean, no sugar, just vegetables, nuts, cheese, fruits. And it's been fucking amazing.

Give it a shot bro you won"t regret it. Changed my life.

Edited by thehondasc00py
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For the most effective way to eliminiate sugar and cravings, I highly encourage you to check out something called the Ketogenic Diet. The fundamentals are that this diet forces your body to shift into the metabolic state of ketosis, in which is burns fat for energy instead of carbohydrates/sugars. This is done by restricting your carbohydrate intake and eating around 70%fat, 25% protein which forces your body to burn fat instead. Lot's of veggies and fats. The only thing is that it takes a few weeks for your body to adapt to this diet, build new infrastructure to optimally burn fat. Eliminating carb intake will leave you quite fatigued for some time, but once adapted most Ketoers report higher energy and cognitive capabilities than before.

Give it a shot bro you won"t regret it. Changed my life.

Thank you for the suggestion.

I did intermittent fasting for some time which is grounded on similar thoughts (get to ketosis). So the whole concept isn't alien to me. I basically ate one meal per day. It worked fine but I found it a nuissance after a month or so and stopped it.

I generally like the idea of a Ketogenic Diet but I never did it because of a few reasons. Firstly it is more costly then cheap carbohydrates. Secondly it is hard to maintain if you cook for your wife also. Especially if she needs extra amount of carbohydrates because she is pregnant. And it seems so extremist . I like simple plans and small steps. They just work better for me historically. That's why I'll try the no sugar thing out first. We'll see how it goes. If It isn't showing enough promise I can still hang the bar a little highger and go full keto ;)

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@WorkInProgress I guess I'm in the same boat as you are :D :D Like about a year ago I was like living on sugar. I would eat a bunch of sweets throughout the day, and I would barely eat any normal food. Every single time, after school I'd go to the shop to buy a pack of chips or any other type of sweet. I was skinny as hell and I had very little appetite. My diet was shit. But that's how it was back  in the gaming days.
I managed to reduce the  amount of sweets I consume by not going to the shop after school and asked my parents not to buy 'em so often. My diet is somewhat better right now, I've gained a bit of weight ( like a few kilos lol ). Although sometimes I still have these  days when it gets out of hand, but it's better than it was before. :) 

Edited by Remigjus
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Detox: 09.10.2017 - 09.01.2018

Week 1 (09.10.2017-15.10.2017) Part 2

Hello out there,

two days in I start to experience cravings. I usually would jsut stop buying anything, but this time I did intentionally not ban the sweets out of my sight. ThThis leads to cravings which I was able to outlast and which led to me cooking two times a day instead of just eating a bread with nutella or smth similar in the evening. I have the hope that this will help my self-discipline in general. 

It helps a bit that I can eat some fruit in the morning which I start to enjoy more. I feel like I am able to taste more and be more mindful of my food in general lately. Could be a causation or maybe I am just focussed on the food and therefore eat more intentionally. It improves my appreciation of food which is a good thing either way.

For the first month I will jog two times a week and the see where it goes. This evening or tomorrow I'll start the routine (if my son isn't born that day).

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Detox: 09.10.2017 - 09.01.2018

Week 1 (16.10.2017-22.10.2017) Part 2

Hello out there,

I had some little slips out of carelessness. I.e. I automatically licked a yogurt cover after it fell down and got a whole. But I realized my mistake and gave the open yogurt to my wife. I stayed strong at family meetings with cake and other delicious stuff and it wasn't that hard to stay abstinent. Everyone seems to understand my reasoning for doing this so people feel a little bad for me and then support my decision. I also did go on two runs this week as promised. I think I will start a today rythm of running for the foreseeable future. It is just an easy way to get some exercise in my day plan. It also fits pretty well to my actual audiobook ("Shoe Dog").

Have a great week.

 

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Detox: 09.10.2017 - 16.01.2018

Week 1 (22.10.2017-29.10.2017) 

First the bad news to get it out of my system: 

I drank 1/3 liters of coke and ate two little chocobars. I got weak and this was followed by a binge session of porn, gaming content and staying up late instead of going to bed to a sensible time. That is why I reset the counter.

Now to the good news:

My beautiful son was born the day before yesterday. It is still hard to grasp how my wife and I could create a new human life like that. It makes me more emotional then I thought. Even now as I write this I got watery eyes. I can only be with them from 9 am to 9 pm and go home for sleeping and eating. Luckily the hospital is only 5 minutes with the car away from my home.

I feel the urge to develop my discipline and stay true to my word. Be it towards other people or myself. To solidify that goal I read right now "Discipline equals Freedom" by Jocko Willinks (an ex seal commander). It is true that the only way to become truly better is through self-discipline. We need to want to become better, stronger wiser and we need the discipline to follow through with the necessary actions. 

My priority right now is my family and I'll need to be friendly, helpful and decisive to support them both as good as possible. But I have free time and I'll fight to never misuse that time for things that hurt my spirits and make me worse. That is why I'll stop watching porn and any gaming content. If I really need relaxation I will restore myself with reading, music or basically anything else which improves my mood and constitution instead of diminishing it.

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Detox: 09.10.2017 - 16.01.2018

Week 1 (22.10.2017-29.10.2017) Entry 2

Congratulations with your son!

Thank you. I am very much in love with him all ready and very happy that I have over two months with him before I start into full time work.

I think I will widen my focus here. I lately found a full time job as atlassian-consultant and will start there 1.1.2018. Because I'll get educated on the job and there is no formal education for this job I don't need to spend a lot of time learning to be better at programming. I will still do though for fun and profit.

That means  I have time for my little family and improving myself which is great. That is why I want to use excess time for fitness related goals. I started today an daily routine where I alternate between push pull lift and leg-work. I took it right out of the beginner section from the book "Discipline equals Freedom". The training is mostly calesthenics so I need only a pull-up bar which is in my possession all ready.

Herein I will do some sort of training every day. Of course this will vary in intensity and time. It is also all right if I have a lot of muscle aches or less time if I only get some stretches in. But I think building a daily workout routing will be very beneficial for me and I am excited to fight through the obvious roadblocks in motivation. I am also interested in joining a local muaythai/kickboxing school. It isn't expensive and close by. The time commitment is a little scary though especially now when my wife needs me a lot after giving birth to our son. I will consider going to some tryout training session in two weeks (6.11.)

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Detox: 09.10.2017 - 16.01.2018

Week 2 (30.10.2017-6.11.2017) 

I am still sugar free! An impressive week done ;) But without kidding I am kind of proud to stay persistent with my pledge because it was a challenging week with out son. Little sleep and a lot of stress if he cries and we can't figure out why.

I started a daily work-out routine which helps me a lot to stay sane an energized. It is a beginner routine out of the book I talked about the last entries. Pretty simple stuff but starting with a split routine. It will need some adjustments in the future because the core work uses some bad exercises (sit-ups) and the warm up is to challenging for me (no I can't do a pyramid of pull-ups just for warm up...).

 

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Hi,

I recently became a father too and I know exactly what you are going through. Our son cried for hours on end as well and we tried everything. We even went to different specialists. All saying the same: it's colic and it's normal. Some babies have it and some don't. It is probably due to the bowels still being immature and sensitive. If your wife is breast feeding you could try to experiment a bit with diet, such as leaving out dairy products, nuts and surely spicy food. If you are using a replacement, you could try a different formula. We tried it all. The only thing that had a little effect was leaving out the spicy food, but for the rest there was nothing we could do. Apart from waiting it out. Magically around 3-4 months our son turned into a happy boy that rarely ever cry. Just like that. So my advice to you is to simply hold your son close when he's crying and wait it out. Find a position that is comfortable. For me that was with the baby laying on his belly on my arm, with his head in my elbow, head turned outwards. My hand supported the his bottom. Like this. When it becomes too much, such as when he cries for hours, keep holding your son close, but distract yourself and focus on something else. If you force yourself to focus on his crying, you will go crazy.

Another thing that did help occasionally, particularly to get him to sleep was wrapping him in. Like this. Not all babies like it though. But for us this was no magic fix.

I feel with you. It's super stressful when they cry without you knowing why. You just have to know that it's not because you are doing something wrong. Some babies simply cry a lot more than others. It WILL pass, and I'm sure you are doing great.

 

 

 

 

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I whish you success. I am sugar free for some years now and I cannot imagine to eat this crap again.

Sometimes I prepare a raw cheescake or raw brownies with dates as sweetener. But in general, now I try to get 80% carbohydrates, 10% fat, 10% proteins. 100% vegan.

My new challenge: No Oil and Salt. I am in day 6 now. And really not eating salt is almost more difficult than not eating sugar. I am realizing now how addictive salt is. Before you think that it is offtopic: If you eat too much salt you automatically get sugar cravings.

 

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Hi,

I recently became a father too and I know exactly what you are going through. Our son cried for hours on end as well and we tried everything. We even went to different specialists. All saying the same: it's colic and it's normal. Some babies have it and some don't. It is probably due to the bowels still being immature and sensitive. If your wife is breast feeding you could try to experiment a bit with diet, such as leaving out dairy products, nuts and surely spicy food. If you are using a replacement, you could try a different formula. We tried it all. The only thing that had a little effect was leaving out the spicy food, but for the rest there was nothing we could do. Apart from waiting it out. Magically around 3-4 months our son turned into a happy boy that rarely ever cry. Just like that. So my advice to you is to simply hold your son close when he's crying and wait it out. Find a position that is comfortable. For me that was with the baby laying on his belly on my arm, with his head in my elbow, head turned outwards. My hand supported the his bottom. Like this. When it becomes too much, such as when he cries for hours, keep holding your son close, but distract yourself and focus on something else. If you force yourself to focus on his crying, you will go crazy.

Another thing that did help occasionally, particularly to get him to sleep was wrapping him in. Like this. Not all babies like it though. But for us this was no magic fix.

I feel with you. It's super stressful when they cry without you knowing why. You just have to know that it's not because you are doing something wrong. Some babies simply cry a lot more than others. It WILL pass, and I'm sure you are doing great.

Thanks for all that heartfelt advice. Luckily my little boy has no colics and it seemingly was just a phase of 1-2 days. He is still awake a lot and has a grumbling stomach but usually it isn't worse enough to cry about. It is really nice that we got some time together, because I did take a break before starting my first job after my studys. 

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I whish you success. I am sugar free for some years now and I cannot imagine to eat this crap again.

Sometimes I prepare a raw cheescake or raw brownies with dates as sweetener. But in general, now I try to get 80% carbohydrates, 10% fat, 10% proteins. 100% vegan.

My new challenge: No Oil and Salt. I am in day 6 now. And really not eating salt is almost more difficult than not eating sugar. I am realizing now how addictive salt is. Before you think that it is offtopic: If you eat too much salt you automatically get sugar cravings.

Thank you.

Wow your going a rather extreme route then. How does this influence your energy levels? with a carbohydrate percentage that high I am usually pretty sluggish. But I guess it is pretty challenging to go higher up in proteins in a vegan way.

Why do you want to ban Oil and Salt? Only because of the mentioned cravings or are their benefits I am nor aware of?

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Maybe it depends on the carbohydrates. White sugar and flour are very bad. Much better are whole foods like fruits, beans, quinoa, potatoes. For about 20 months now I do not eat bread, pasta and that stuff.

About Oil: Oil is an artificial product. Oil in nature cannot be found. It is high processed, 99.9% fat, clogging the body. There are some studies which are saying that it causes more deseases than animal fats like butter. For example rats get more tumors etc. (even "good" oils like oilve oil)

No using salt I do just out of curiosity. I have listened to some people who got some great detox results with this. They say that salt is so toxic that the body uses water to isolate it  so it cannot cause any harm. It is dehydrating the body. But I do not know any study about salt. Like I said, it is just an experiment.

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Maybe it depends on the carbohydrates. White sugar and flour are very bad. Much better are whole foods like fruits, beans, quinoa, potatoes. For about 20 months now I do not eat bread, pasta and that stuff.

Yeah I think this is true. But german bread is so delicous and such an easy snack ;). But cool that you are able to keep yourself motivated to be as healthy as possible.

 

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Detox: 09.10.2017 - 16.01.2018

Week 3 (7.11.2017-14.11.2017) 

I am still sugar free and have an almost daily routine of excercise established. I am sometimes forced to take pauses from the daily rhytmbecause my family still is more important. If my wife needs support I'll be there even if this means I can't go jogging ( I jog when my muscles need a rest from bodyweight training). But whenever I catch myself with phony excuses I go out there.

My skin isn't improving so far though. It seems like I scratch a lot if I am stressed. This happens i.e. because I can't help my wife with here struggles (sleep depraved and still wounded from the birth). It isn't as I use scracthing to ease the stress it feels more like I can't control myself because my emotions take over and my self-control flies out of the window. The good thing at having a lot to do at home right now is that it forces you to do a lot instead of beeing lazy and searching for excuses ( as I usual do). My self-improvement over the last two years is helping too ofcourse but I never thought how easily a lot of things can be done if you don't have the time to argue with your self.

Another idea I have right now is very simple and could be therefore very effective. Like at gamequitting where I installed linux to remove the games I wanted to play out of my reach I could just cut my nails very very short so scratching is harder. We'll see how it works this week

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  • 2 weeks later...

Detox: 16.10.2017 - 16.01.2018

Week 4 (15.11.2027-22.11.2017)

Still no sugar.I stopped to train after 2Weeks of doing it. I think i stopped because of time issues. It is still pretty challenging to be there for my family. I struggle with spending my time productive. I should create more and consume less. But is it creating to clean your home? Or to learn something? I think to make this mkre ckear I will only count time which I have for my own. In this time creating is: trying things out i have learned in the past. This can be hard because i often have only one Hand free. Journalling. Excercise. Actually do To-Do's on my list. Meditating.

Consuming time is : learning about new stuff or watching videos. Or browsing.

Entertainment isnt planned for. I try to play in the time i have with my wife and my son. I try to phone more often with my Friends and Family because i see them seldomly because of the newborn schedule.

 

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Cleaning your home is creating - it is creating a space for you to be productive and focused. I really enjoy cleaning these days because the correct intent is there for me.

As for learning, what are you learning? Are you learning something that will contribute to you creating? Eg, are you learning computer skills so you can better produce content on your computer or be more productive with your time so you can achieve more in less time?

The theme here and what I always ask myself is what is the intent behind your actions, are your actions designed to help you create now or create in the future, and if so they are the same. If the intent behind your actions is to hide or defer from doing something else, then you are consuming or being counter productive.

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Detox: 16.10.2017 - 16.01.2018

Week 5 (23.11.2027-30.11.2017)

Still no sugar.

I still don't work out.

I've done the course from simpleprogrammer.com how to learn things fast and invested 10 dollars into an course on alexa skill programming. My goal for this week is to get an basic skill running on my amazon echo dot by following the instructions of an the course and tweaking stuff to make it personal (I want it to give me the age of my son in weeks and days). I think it is a fun project which is possible in the limited amount of time I have for productive work. I feel like I need to focus more on my development in one area and not spreading my starved resources to far. I'll try to make learning new technical skills a habit and I think the course will be a good way to do this if I implement it. Because I figured out I want to be rich and handsome and have a great family life. So I'll need some skills to do all this. I never allowed myself these ambitions (besides the last one) because I didn't want to kid myself. But there is no reason why I shouldn't get opportunities to become rich while having enough time for my family. I don't want to miss this opportunites out of forced humility. Aggresivness is a weakpoint of me. But I'll work on this now.

Maybe I'll need a shorter training routine to make some healthy movement a habit. I think I stopped my original routine because it took to muhc time and I needed to prioritize it too hard to make it happen. So I'll think about a basic high intensity 10min routine. For starters I'll do burbees and bridges. 1min burpees, 1min briges 1min pause. Repeat 3 times. After a month I will adjust it but this is what I want to do for the next month or until week 9 of my detox.

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Detox: 16.10.2017 - 16.01.2018

Week 5 (23.11.2027-30.11.2017) Part 2

Still no sugar.

10min-Workouts this week: 1

To get to my goals I need small things I do consistently. It is the slight edge all over again. I'll do some figuring out. I need new goals now are after I got a job and my son and start to manage that quite well. So I take stock now and think about a good strategy for every goal.

I want to become healthy and stay healthy until an old age.

What does that mean exactly?

I want to have good skin (not dry and itchy like now). I want to be almost never be sick (max. around 1week of bed time a year). I want to have no long-term pains (in muscles or elsewhere). I want to be able to run a half-marathon without walking. I want to be able to do 10 pull-ups without pause. I want to be able to do 50 push-ups without pause. I want to be able to do a free

Where am I?

My skin is extremly dry at some parts and I scratch it which doesn't let it heal properly. This is a constant strain on my body even if I don't actually feel this. I am allready very seldom sick, but I need to be careful not to develop pains in my back because of my incoming desk job.

What do I do to reach this goal?

10min workout with burpees for conditioning and muscle building and hip-raises (bridge-progression) for my back. I don't eat sugar.

I want to become handsome

What does that mean exactly?

I want to have a muscular body (somewhat like the transporter guy but less defined). I want to be clean shaven, tidy and well-clothed every day.

Where am I?

I am thin and have build some basic muscles but I have a pelvic-tilt and am still to scrawny. I also did gain some weight over the last year and build a little belly. I don't care too much for clothing and have not many fitting clothes (because I am hesitant to pay much money for them). I also like to wear comfortable clothes whihc look really bad. I shave my beard appr.  times a week and my head appr. 1month. So I look most of the time not like a hobo :). I ahve no schedule for shaving other parts like my arm-pits and jsut do it occasionaly if it starts to bug me.

What do I do to reach this goal?

10min workout with burpees for conditioning and muscle building and hip-raises (bridge-progression) for my back. I don't eat sugar.

What can I do better?

New rules: Joggin pants are only alowed if I work-out or stretch. Pyjamas only in the late evening if I have a comfy evening with my wife. I'll start to make schedule for personal hygene after my research (15min). Make shopping plans in my calendar and priorities  expenses while focussing on quality and fit.

10min workout with burpees for conditioning and muscle building and hip-raises (bridge-progression) for my back. I don't eat sugar.

What can I do better?

stay consistent wiht this and reserach more on the skin issue to find better solutions (I start a 30min session after this entry)

I want to become rich

What does that mean exactly?

I want to have more passive income then expences

Where am I?

I am living form month to month and still relying on money from ym dad until my first real job in january starts. I let my wife do all the taxes and paper-work wiht the government because I have no clue how to do else and doesn't want to make the time to learn it properly. I don't exactly now our expenses and lhave no passive income.

What do I do to reach this goal?

working a few hours a week in a supermarket to make some extra cash until my full-time gig starts. Thinking about how to excell at my job and learning new skills.

What can I do better?

Learn more about my taxes and other fincancial stuff. Start saving for a little passive income out of the savings. Be awesome at my new job and get as muhc experiences as possible to justify more money with the same time later on.

 

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I see how I have even more goals then this and to make sure where to focus I need a list of prioritisation.

1) Family: spent time wiht my wife and my son every day. Talk to everyone else in my family atleast once every 2weeks.

2) Carreer: Spent atleast 30min of my day on my actual project (alexa skills programming right now).

3) Social: talk or chat with everyone of the people I consider friends atleast once every two weeks. Try to find out something new about a aquaintance every week. Be interested in strangers.

4) Health: Reduce scratching by measuring it (today 4times), get rid of my nails routinely. Do the 10min work-out and stick to it.

5) Spiritual: Be thankful for what I have and enjoy my life (check at max. every 2hours and have a handy free sunday). Think about what is great in your life and what I am proud for every morning.

 

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