habit of good

How to start 

The first thing to do is join to the VKontakte group”, which is called, “The Habit Magnet”. To be honest, I wanted to give up already at this stage: the fact is that I have not used VKontakte since the time of university, and from social networks I now actively use only Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia).

In fairness, it must be said that registration took only a couple of minutes. All information about the marathon is marked in the group, a separate element of activity is chat bot, where you can ask questions, receive questions for passing tests, as a result of which the marathon participant gets a chance to win a prize or get bonuses on the card.

week one 

In the first week, task number one was to accustom yourself to breakfast. I usually start the day with half a glass of water (I don’t get more in the morning), then I put coffee on. After the first cup I drink the second. I feed my child breakfast and drink the third cup: I don’t feel like eating at all in the morning, and coffee with milk seems to saturate and create the illusion of tone.

After two hours, however, I already turn into an angry and hungry aunt, but then I certainly don’t have time for food — my morning hours are the most working. And so I open the recipes that Magnit, together with its partner Gastronom.ru, prepared for its participants for five days.

There were five recipes in total. I decided to start with an omelet with tuna in an avocado boat. A very pretty dish: a mixture of avocado pulp with tuna, scrambled eggs and tomatoes, all in a plate of avocado peel. 

The second experiment was syrniki with mushrooms: this, I tell you, is generally a bomb. I’m used to the fact that cheesecakes are usually sweet, but here mushrooms. Great and satisfying. I also made these for dinner. And my daughter really liked the chocolate oatmeal with soy milk and blueberries. 

At some point, my husband bought peanut butter and granola for no apparent reason (does he read my closed groups?), I had to cook up a couple more unusual breakfasts. On Sunday, I thought to take a break and replace breakfast with my regular coffee in three visits. But the daughter stuck: I want chocolate porridge. Cooked. 

So when I looked at my checklist weeks later, it turned out that I ate breakfast all seven days. And for five more days I started the day with peppy music and even praised myself for two days (not a bad result for such a “Samoyed” like me). These two habits also occurred at the beginning of the marathon. 

The second week 

Subject: self care. Then I remembered that I once even wrote about beauty, in those years the shelf in my bathroom was bursting with funds. But interest in beauty and care completely disappeared when I switched to other topics. And after the birth of a child, apart from a simple moisturizer that I apply to my entire body, including my face (and then according to my mood), nothing else is found in my house. Unless rare gifts from friends and relatives. 

In the second week, a visual table appeared in the group, which described in detail what stages of skin care exist. And a few short lectures by cosmetologist Daniela Terletskaya. 

At the end of the week, I remembered, firstly, that sunscreen should be applied in winter too. Secondly, that the micellar product must be washed off — but I thought that it should live on the skin. This is where my allergic reactions come from. The third discovery was that the hydrophilic oil for removing makeup is, it turns out, for oily skin. And dry, like mine, it only dehydrates. 

Closer to the weekend, I had a little shopping, and following the recommendations of body specialist Elena Umnova, I bought a body brush for self-massage. And even twice took a contrast shower for skin elasticity. 

The hardest part was starting to drink water. I honestly calculated my rate, but I forgot to drink. On Thursday I put a carafe of water on my work table and things went better. 

A specialist in conscious consumption talked about the benefits of shoppers and urged people to abandon packages. Fortunately, I have been using the shopper for a long time, so there were no problems here. 

The checklist for the second week was already much longer. In addition to the tasks of the first (breakfasts, music, praise), self-care, water and a shopper appeared.

Third week

For the third week, the main task was to improve sleep. When I saw this topic, I decided that I would not even start. No, I know perfectly well that sleep is good. Moreover, experience shows that in the absence of sleep, I turn into a completely different person — to put it mildly, unkind. But this experience taught me nothing. There are still a lot of interesting things in life, and there are still 24 hours in a day, and all this is not good for my regime. 

The first recommendation given to us by the somnologist Roman Buzunov was to start going to bed at the same time. With this point, things did not go right away: either the child played tricks until one in the morning, then she was about to go to the theater, then she wrote the article until the morning. 

Then I tried to start small. Tried to work on the second skill. I refused an hour before bedtime from the luminous screen of the phone — how much, after all, it is already possible to update the Facebook feed (an extremist organization banned in Russia). In this, Marina Nakhalova’s recommendations about digital detox helped me a lot. 

I liked her too. I immediately set myself a plus sign — the child never let me sleep off on weekends, so I’m no stranger to waking up at eight in the morning. 

Sport. Here, the seven-minute lessons of Irina Slutskaya were very useful to me. I’m used to doing sports thoroughly. But it’s not possible to ski or go to the pool every day — and here are such simple exercises that you can do at any convenient time. 

By the end of the week, I was surprised to find that I now go to bed more or less at the same time. Here, I think, the lecture of Roman Buzunov played a role, he told in detail how our body forms long-term memory in a dream, fights viruses and cancer. 

Week XNUMX checklist: 

• Healthy breakfast

• Active morning with music

• Praise yourself

• Love clean water

• Personal care

• Shopper bag instead of a package

• Proper sleep

• Move more

• Mental and digital detox 

There were already plus signs next to many points, and it was already noticeably easier for me to praise myself.

Fourth week

In the fourth week, I was surprised to find that all those numerous vitamins and supplements that I order on the well-known site-selling-vitamins-and-supplements, I did not really need. From a lecture by nutrition experts, I learned that live food is more useful and it is better to reconsider the diet and the way of cooking than drinking pharmacy vitamins. 

A cool life hack was about frying oils. I have long wanted to figure out which of them are the safest. It turned out that if you take the usual vegetable, then refined is better. But the most delicious and healthy cheesecakes are made on coconut. 

I remembered that it is better not to defrost fish in water — vitamins go away. And I gave up the habit of peeling potatoes in advance and leaving them in water, so that later I can simply put them on the fire and boil them. It turned out that in just half an hour such a peeled potato loses up to 40% of vitamin C!

Back in the fourth week, I decided to sort out the refrigerator and arrange a social distance between the products. It turned out that they are better stored this way than if they stand close to each other. This helps save money and reduce your carbon footprint. 

Week XNUMX checklist:

• Healthy breakfast

• Active morning with music

• Praise yourself

• Love clean water

• Personal care

• Shopper bag instead of a package

• Proper sleep

• Move more

• Mental and digital detox

• Cooking right

• Remember vitamins

• Store food properly

• Eat more fruits and vegetables

I have my fifth week ahead of me. Looking forward to new challenges!